I take the last flight of stairs without much hurry. Why should I hurry? There is nothing to be done in a hurry. As I reach the landing on the ground floor, I look at the fish tank. The lone fish paddles its way around the constrained space of the aquarium. I wonder if it will ever know that there is a bigger world outside. Can it see the rain? What does it make of the water dropping all around it from above and never getting into its own world? The caretaker used to feed it. I have seen him do it once. I don't know how much to feed it or how many times. Right beside the aquarium is the fish feed bottle. I make my way towards it, open the bottle and sprinkle some of the multi-coloured feed into it from an opening at the top. The fish immediately makes its way and gobbles up all of it. It must have been really hungry. I decide to feed it whenever I can.

What about the birds at the house owners? I have never seen them and will never see them. I guess it becomes a reason not to care about them as much as this fish, which is something I come across daily.

Priorities. That is what it is. If I decide to feed every animal and bird crossing my path, I won’t have any time left to do my things. I am sure within a couple of days there will be a large number of animals and birds hungry. They would venture out of their comfort zone in search of food.

It can become a threat. Over time the wild instinct hidden in every animal that has been domesticated and made to be passive will come out. Hunger would be the prime driver of this. Without food, it becomes a question of survival.

I can ask myself the same question. What will I do when I am faced with a similar situation? To what end will I go to secure a morsel of bread for myself? Will I kill a fellow human being for it? In this current situation, I don't think I will come across many humans. Will I then kill the only other human I know of? Or will I find some other way to the situation at hand? What if he decides to kill me? In that case whatever feeling I had harboured to keep me away from committing the crime would have ultimately brought my own demise. Is it a crime by the way - the act of killing for food to survive? There wouldn’t be any concept of a society or a community to validate that. We are two living beings struggling to survive. If only one gets to go ahead then who would it be?

I don't think I have fully recovered from the philosophical state I was in a half an hour ago. I love philosophy and love to entertain all kinds of thoughts. But I should put a brake on them. I need to get going with my day. I can't be entrapped in its vicious circle. Yes, it is a vicious circle. It makes you wanna stay in it and ponder. You are of course doing a noble exercise when you are thinking of questions that transcend the mundaneness of everyday life.

Maybe life was made mundane so as to urge you to think on a very metaphysical level. Would you have entertained all these thoughts if you had the answers to them? What happens is these answers would call up more questions. Questions we only encounter when we answer the current ones. These questions take the place of the current ones and we find ourselves right where we started.

Life is surely a never-ending train of questions. We are traversing from one end to the other. We think we know the end only to realise it isn’t, and so we keep going along the path.

I get out of the building and pull up the scooter from the edge of the wall. I put in the key, pull up the choke and start it. It came to life in a single go. Good. I rev it up for a while before I push down the choke. I rev it a bit more before I turn the scooter and start moving ahead.

The sun is up. The sky is scattered with clouds. They must be the upper atmosphere ones. They are like brush strokes drawn on a blue canvas. I think they are called nimbus. Or is it cirrus? I think it is nimbus only. Anyways, I hope the day is good. I hope I do find some answers today.

I exit the premises in silence. Except for the sound of my scooter and the cries of the birds from the owner's home and maybe the odd crow, there is total silence. The air is still. There is no wind. The trees all stand firm and tall. As I observe them I see the leaves of the tallest coconut tree sway gently. It brings me a certain joy to me. I can't say why it did so, but it was nice. I think I had a small smile on my face that instant I saw it sway. It was a little moment of joy.

I remember this particular incident I had with her. I guess it was a couple of months after our marriage. I had come back from my work and was one week into my leave. It was a weekday. Since there weren’t many patients to attend to on that particular day, she was able to wind up well before her usual time. I had to go and pick her up from college. Back then, I was thinking of getting into eating healthy food. I have always wanted to make good salads, particularly Caesar salads.

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I was never a salad person, but I become one when I tasted the Caesar salad made by my father. It was heavenly. It was so awesome I immediately fell in love with it. I wanted to create it for myself. I instantly asked him how he had made it. He told me what goes into it and how to make the dressing. It was easy. Actually, I felt it to be very easy. There was no cooking involved of any kind. Dad had a packet of croutons with him and so he did not have to make them from the leftover pieces of bread. He told me though, how to make it. I had the recipe in my head for a very long time. Then I forgot about it.

Since I don't cook and don't have much idea about it (actually no idea at all to be fair), making a good salad was something I could do with all the time I have in the daytime. I looked for some recipes online. I was looking for the veg version that was healthier and easier to make. By easy I mean the ingredients were readily available to me. I know I wouldn’t get the anchovy paste which goes into making the dressing. It is one of the signature ingredients of the salad. That’s what my father had told me. He also couldn’t get it but he managed to make something similar with the ingredients he had. I wouldn’t be able to do it. So I was looking for an easier alternative.

I finally got my hands on an easy recipe. I got the lettuce, peppers and parsley from the supermarket. I had a leftover bed with which I made the croutons. I used some of the seasonings dad had given to me on my previous visit. The croutons came up well. I feared that I would burn them. I didn’t. I turned off the flame after it became a bit brown. They became better with the residual heat.

I made the dressing using the mayonnaise that was lying in the fridge. I added some lime juice, olive oil, few dried herbs and gave it a good whisk. I added some water to thin it down. It came out to be good. Later on, after seeing a couple of youtube videos on making a salad, I came to realise that dressing was the most important part of the salad. It determines the flavour of the salad and holds the various greens together.

I took the leaves and peppers and added the dressing and croutons to the bowl. I grated some cheese on top of it and gave it a good toss. In fact, I actually used a spoon to mix it all together. I shouldn’t have done that. The crunchiness of the greens which was very much visible on them before I added the dressing and mixed was gone now. It felt kind of soggy all of a sudden. I became a little heartbroken. But it tasted good. There was a tanginess to the whole mixture. It was because of the lime juice in the dressing. It was a bit too sour. I should have probably tasted it before adding the amount specified in the recipe. I can always do a little bit more if I am on the lower side.

Anyways, I decided to pack it up and take it along with me. When the call came from her to come and pick her up, I took the salad in a small container and drove down in the car towards her department.

She was expecting me to be in the scooter. As she got in and kept her bag in the back seat, she asked me why I had taken the car. I said nothing and gave her the container. She had a pleasant surprise in her face. She asked me what it was. I told her to open it and look for herself. She opened it and a smile spread on her face. She let out a long awwww and pinched me cheek. I was immediately blushing. I smiled at her and asked her to taste it. She asked me if I had brought a fork along. I did. I took it out from the cover. She took her first bite. She took her time to munch on to the peppers and fiddle with the leaves. She liked it. It was to be seen in her face. She did point out that the dressing was a bit tangy, the lime juice being the culprit. I agreed to it. She gave me the next bite. I took it and munched on it as I drove my way back home.

On the way, she told me how she had been getting this feeling of having something healthy for a change. We were not eating unhealthy food. We were eating good food. But not the kind of salad healthy. She didn’t know what made her think along those lines, but she did want to have something healthy for a change. She isn’t a salad person. But this one was good. By the time we reached home, the portion was done. She asked me if it was all that I made. A little bit was left. She skipped out of the car with a spring in her feet with the thought of finishing off the remaining portion.

I was happy to see her happy. I know the salad was not upto the mark I wanted it to be. But she liked it. It was good. No, it was great. I think I was seeking her approval in a way. She approved and so I was euphoric. I didn’t show it though. I think I was more happy when she told me how she had thought of eating healthily and I turned up with this salad. That was that little moment of joy. Those moments are the ones that make you feel all good and happy.

There are a lot of such moments in our life. Sometimes we appreciate them when they happen to us. Sometimes we appreciate them after they have happened. In any case, I think they are the ones that need to be taken into consideration when one is looking to make a happiness index or something similar.

It is the little things that matter - the everyday things we take for granted, the occasional positive gestures from our near and dear ones and the comfort of our dearest one. The last one is the most underrated. I now know how much I miss it. It is something I yearn for right here right now.