Black Sabbath

Sunday is the weekend for me, wage slave that I am, working my way through the week in a blur of writing blogs (that no one responds to, grrrrrrr…..), interviewing people I have never spoken to before, trolling the Internet and phone contacts for new stories and watching the world wend its violent way to a state of greater chaos each hour. So even as Monday begins, I am looking forward to the day of rest, the end of the week, a time to stop and find out where I am and if I am still the me that started the week six days earlier. It never fails to surprise me that I still am, in the tiny moment I have to check on me. But almost before it begins, Sunday is over, with Monday looming largely into my face as I struggle to wake up and get going.

When I lived in Delhi, Sunday was a day of rest, too, with no driving. It started very simply – I drove to work all week, sometimes on Saturday as well, and if not, I would be driving around doing errands, buying groceries and vegetables, taking that cat to the vet, having the car serviced, etc, etc, etc. While I like driving, and am fairly good at it, it is exhausting to do it every day, especially in the mess that is Delhi traffic winding endlessly around Delhi’s famous circles. So I made a rule that my friends, surprisingly enough, actually complied with: no driving on Sundays. If people wanted me, they would have to come over to my house. Or, if they wanted me to go somewhere, they would have to collect me and then bring me back home. The rule gradually widened its scope – I decided that six days a week of fixing my hair and face and getting dressed up and putting on decent footwear was more than stretching my limits of endurance. So if I had to – and HAD was the operative word – be social, it would have to be at home only, allowing me to stay in my scruffy Sunday best, in old track pants and sweater or shorts and T-shirt. It saved me being polite and friendly and from putting on make-up!

Sundays thus became a day of change for me and for the cat. He got his slave at his beck and call all day, a nice warm body to snuggle up against during the winter and a willing handmaiden to let him in and out and in again in the simmering heat of the summer. He got samples of whatever I was cooking up in my tiny kitchen and could take a log nap sprawled on his back in my lap when I finally put my feet up in the afternoon. Most of all, he just had to squeak for me to drop whatever I was doing and run to see what it was that he wanted. As for me, I got my furry little friend to talk to all day, cuddle, play with and love, in between chores, cooking, cleaning, bathing and taking a well-deserved and much-treasured nap.

The morning would start the same way every Sunday – waking up at some unearthly hour to let aforementioned feline out into the garden, I would get back into bed to read the papers, drink hot green tea, do the crossword and stretch with the pleasure of not having to get up….except to let the little pest back into the house. Then, as he snoozed with his head on my pillow, having pushed me off it, I would potter about, getting his breakfast ready, cleaning out his catbox, sipping herbal tea, checking my email and, at nine am, calling my parents at home in Mumbai – that was a race that they won, more often than not. After chatting with me and the cat, with Mom’s good wishes and Papa’s fond teasing ringing over the wire, they would hang up, leaving me to wrestle the furry beastie into a nicely brushed mass of purrs.

The cooking followed. I would dig everything even remotely perishable out of the miniscule fridge, plan various menus and then start chopping, cleaning and steaming. My freezer packed to bursting, the refrigerator bulging ever so gently at the hinges, the cat would be hauled back in from under the car to eat lunch, watch me have a bath (which always seemed a little decadently dubious) and watch a bit of a movie with me before he clambered onto some part of my anatomy and we both fell blissfully asleep, his snores echoing in counterrhythm to mine. Tea-time and my landlady would invariably visit, asking why I never came to them to eat a meal and checking that the geyser had not blown up, the television worked and the sheets had been changed by the maid.

As the day wore on, boredom would start to niggle at the edges of my consciousness and I would wonder if Sunday would ever end. But, today, with the Sabbath packed to the last second with something or the other that needs to be done, I long for that day of peace and simplicity. When fun was a cat that cuddled and sleep was only closing your eyes.