Slice O' Life IX: Call of the Swing Sets
a short essay by Shaurya Arya-Kanojia
I did something today I haven’t done in a long time. Couldn’t, actually, with the pressures of this lifestyle I maintain – an eight hour a day job, keeping up to date with my Netflix viewings, making sure I post one photo (as part of this one-picture-a-day challenge I’ve given myself) on Instagram, and going for a mandatory jog because I need to counter my caloric intake with some kind of physical exercise.
I sat in the park all day. Sounds like an exercise in unproductivity, doesn’t it? Before today, I would have agreed with you.
The park I speak of is a considerably small piece of land, divided into two unequal parts. The smaller portion of it is where kids come to play cricket. Once a grass-filled landscape, it has now been reduced to a patch of barrenness. The other side, separated by a rickety fence, is the part where I sat.
Last week, the resident association of the neighbourhood had agreed to the children’s requests to replace the older swing set with a new, bigger, shinier, and “more sustainable” (exact words the secretary said in one of our weekly meetings) one. From the balcony of my house on the first storey, I saw the installation crew arriving in their single-unit truck at nine thirty in the morning; and, on a whim, decided to go down to the park and watch them work. What was my motivation to want to spend an entire day doing something that didn’t have any tangible or direct benefits to my life?
Like I said, it was a whim.
Two days ago, I took a weeklong break from work. The stress of the previous month, when I put in eleven-hour (and sometimes even more) workdays, had gotten to me. Days appeared to shrink to nothing more than just a moment. They flew by in a blur, leaving me wondering how ridiculously quickly time was passing. Even the monetary incentive I received couldn’t make up for the time I felt had gone by.
Succumbing to the crushing stress, I put in an application for an unplanned leave. Luckily, my application was approved; and I thought to enjoy a slice of nothingness I hadn’t been able to for as long as I could remember.
So, on this gorgeous morning, with the sun out, a cool breeze wafting about, the smell of freshly cut grass in the air, I picked up the book I’ve been meaning to finish and headed to the park – to see the installation of the swing sets.
The crew spent the first quarter of an hour lugging the separate parts they would be assembling into the park. Then, they got around to moving it. A couple of hours went into loosening the earth around it, laying it down on the ground, and carrying it back in the truck. I split this time between reading and watching the crew work.
The secretary arrived shortly after that. She immediately donned on her supervisory role, instructing the labourers to “not damage the flowerbed” or “trample the grass anymore than you have to.” She looked at me, greeting me with a smile. The slight grimace I detected on her face was perhaps her wondering why I was spending my Wednesday morning in the most unproductive of ways possible. The grimace was replaced with a smile, and then she went back to pointing at something and telling the contractor, a lean man whose shirt had come untucked from behind, to “quit dilly-dallying and start working.”
I wondered, sitting under the spring sun on an ordinary workday watching a crew putting in a new swing set, if that was what there is to life. A moment of just… being. Letting time move its natural pace, living the interval between each second. After sitting there for quarter of an hour – between which, I’ll admit, I tried to read for a while and, when I couldn’t, scrolled through my Instagram at least thrice and my Twitter once idly even though I didn’t receive any notification – I started experiencing boredom seeping within me. I got fidgety, my restless leg syndrome kicked in, and my mind began wandering to places other than where I was. But I determinately sat through the initial few minutes of impatience, and, well, I came out on the other side feeling…
Maybe I can’t put what I felt in mere words. I’ll admit that a part of me, as I got up from the bench I had been sitting on as the sun had crawled to the other side of the sky, did feel unproductive; even wasted. But feeling undervalued was overpowered by a sense of relief. It seemed a weight of something I honestly can’t say what had been lifted off of my shoulders. A smile came on my lips. A waft of the late afternoon breeze fluttered about, its coolness quenching a thirst I didn’t even know until that moment I had been feeling.
It was joy that I was feeling.
A joy of nothing more than just… being.
About the Author
Shaurya Arya-Kanojia is the author of the novella, End of the Rope. He likes sports (cricket, mostly), eating out, and watching reruns of The Office and Everybody Loves Raymond. His social media handles include @shauryaticks (Twitter) and @main.hoon.ek.sharara (Instagram), and more about him can be found at www.shauryaak.weebly.com