The Morning Yoga

School and training days have taught me to clear my bowel, or “clearing the bathroom” as it used to be called, early in the morning.  They said it was healthy.  I cannot vouch whether it is so, but I can surely say that it has lot of advantages and conveniences.  Creature of habit that I am, I have become a slave to this habit.

Another habit that I can’t shed is my addiction to having something to read while I attend to this business.  For the life of me I cannot help it, even on emergencies.  The newspapers and books, forgotten and abandoned after I am through with my business, strewn all over the place, especially on the bathroom shelves, irritates my wife to no end.  But old habits die hard and I don’t seem to be improving; only my immunity towards her ramblings has improved so far.

Lately even my son has started imitating me.  He refuses to go for his potties without a book.  His favourite book is a “User’s Manual” of a watch I got last year.  It has instructions in multiple languages. He reads, or tends to read it.  Once I saw him deeply engrossed in the book, which he was holding upside down.  He is my three years old son.

My ‘morning yoga’ as my wife calls it, takes me a lot of time, hence the name.  In the initial stages of our marriage this habit of mine used to get to her nerves.  She would say, “You take ages!  Hope you are not going off to sleep in there?”  Now she has adapted herself to this and living with it.  I suppose marriage comes as a package; accept the whole of it with habits, both good and bad, and all.  I envy those people who take only a few seconds to attend to this call of nature.

On mornings when my children get up late, there are chaoses in the house as there is only one toilet in the house.  Before I am through with my business, my children would start banging the door.  They have to attend to theirs too and they are getting late for school.  I have to be very careful when it is my youngest knocking at the door.  Otherwise he would ease himself right outside the door, with a book in his hand.