Wake slowly in the silence of a hushed house, responding to the body’s unspoken natural rhythms. Open your eyes to the tree outside, the sky that could be blue or grey or bright yellow – depending on the hour and the weather. And then, if you are fortunate, there are the birds. It was probably a bird call that stirred you from the mists of sleep. As you stretch, there is a sense of being fully rested, of bien-être.

Not always, though.

The alarm jangles. The heart thuds, rudely interrupted in a dream, disoriented. For a minute, you don’t know where you are. The small, relentless being on the bedside table refuses to go away; or worse, a phone in the room recalls you to this world. And you plunge right off into that world of anxieties, a score of jobs, a list that you have neglected by sleeping that little more. Sleep you desperately need. However, there’s no question of lingering. You reach over, and switch off the damn thing.

It’s really no way to start a morning.

…

Lina Krishnan is an abstract artist, poet and photographer in Pondicherry. She has a chapbook of nature verse, Small Places, Open Spaces, with Australian poet Valli Poole.