The morning routine

What are routines?
Comforting stretches of the known in time and space.
My morning walk to get an auto to office is one of those.

I usually try and put as much walking into my daily as possible. I considered cycling to office but the traffic around my place is so horrendous that my courage gave way and I have resorted to a combination of methods. Anyhow that stretch of walk from home to appropriate hailing spot (which, as an aside, I have named my 'point of rejection' because it involves standing there and asking a gazillion auto men if they'll take me to my destination and face regular rejection) has increasingly become my comfort.

I know exactly where the sidewalk suddenly dips (having fallen once and scrapped my knee), where it becomes non-existent and where it is a smooth stretch and I can walk looking up at the sky and trees. I like how I can predict meeting some people and some creatures- the aunty with the enthusiastic labrador who always greets me with boundless joy, the slightly hefty but extremely regular man whose daily walking track this is, the old wise looking white and black streetdog with white long eyelashes sitting in his well chosen spot in the sun watching the world go by, the other streetdog with dachshund strains and bulky shoulders, who reminds me of the godfather each time. Then of course there are the predictable routines which parallel mine. The off-loading trucks full of fresh vegetables in front of grocer shops, the auto driver who helps the streetside flowershop with his supplies every morning, the women vegetable vendors with their carts full of tomatoes, their youngest sitting on top dangling his/her feet as mother and older siblings push, the many people at the darshinis having their first steaming cup of perfect South Indian filter coffee and sambhar dunked idlis and dosas, the young software crowd emerging from the million PGs with those very typical laptop backpacks, the opportunistic crossing of roads based on infinite mathematical calculations inside the brain taken in a second and some amount of regular prayer...

My list is long and the last road crossing, not very comforting. Yet sometimes I feel this separation from the scene of life playing around me, and I am filled with this sense of wonder. It is magical how automatic, unopposed and easily the stream of life flows.