A Drop of Honey

“What non-sense is this? Have you got no brains you lazy fool!?” Bloody Blundaleomite.

That was what was happening between myself and my manager when I received the news – something which almost made even my manager’s words sound sweet! “Bro, we haven’t paid the electricity bill for the past six months! The department has disconnected our service it seems.” Middle of summer in Chennai with exams right around the corner – not a good time to be out of electricity. After another round of merciless tirade by my boss, I walked back into the hell-hole of a home of mine. Yes, hell-hole. Dark, sultry, suffocating pit of doom. The Azkaban of a room brought me down from “wannabe macho” to “Miss you mummy!”

There is this story quoted in the book “The Great Indian Novel” about a man who is being chased by a lion in a forest. He runs up a tree to escape the lion, but the branches crack and the tree slowly bends over. It is only seconds before the tree falls and the man turns into a lion’s buffet that he notices a leaf at the end of the branch with a drop of honey stuck on it. What does the man do now? He plucks the leaf and sips the drop of honey.

My roommate decided to crash at his cousins place, leaving me behind. Hungry, sweaty, dark, frustrated, tensed (frustrated because of the day I had and tensed about the days ahead of me), worried about studies and all alone, I made my way to the terrace of my apartments and lay down over there, gazing at the stars. A young breeze that carried with it the message of oncoming monsoon swept past me. And I tasted a drop of honey.

When life gives you a thousand reasons to cry, you still have one reason to fight your tears and laugh out loud. In a few minutes I am going to publish this blog and post the news on Facebook and a thousand people are going to ignore the post. But one angel will open the link and read it through. And say, “I loved it!” One drop of honey for me, and that alone is enough to drive me till next Thursday to put up my next post. And this drop of honey will be stuck on some leaf, here and there, in the form of a ping on gtalk, in the form of a breeze – a real super-hero to save the day. Look around you as you read this story and find out that drop of honey. Sip it. Enjoy!