Monday Morning Blues

I die a little on Monday mornings, was her constant refrain.

But today she was unruffled, suffused with an astonishing sense of peace and tranquillity that comes with the knowing of what needs to be done and the mustering of enough courage to embrace a whole new way of life.

She had just arrived in Singapore after jaunting through the hilly tracts of Kumaon and Garhwal in the lap of the Himalayas for a fortnight. For two weeks she had ensconced herself in the midst of snow-capped peaks, overwhelmed by the magnificence of the cosmos, which mercilessly highlighted the inanity of her own humdrum life in the city. She had gulped great lungfuls of crisp, fragrant mountain air as though she had forgotten the art of breathing and was trying to learn it anew. She had worn flowers in her hair, bathed in the bubbling mountain brooks, and trekked five miles every day to her favourite vantage point atop a hill where she sat for several hours, transfixed by the green expanse of the valley below.

By the time her little jaunt came to an end and she set off for New Delhi on Sunday evening to board the overnight flight to Singapore, she had made up her mind to quit her job, wind up her life in the city, and retire to the countryside. Perhaps she would stay in Kumaon for a month, then set out on a long trek through the snowy tracts of Leh and Ladakh, then make her way down south through the deserts of Rajasthan and the mountains of Shillong to the beaches of Goa, wander in the mountain ranges of the Western Ghats, and finally sojourn on the pristine beaches of Rameswaram Island where the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal merge into a unified whole. Her travels would soothe her restive heart and fill her days with adventure and her life with a sense of purpose, she hoped. She would keep travelling, isn’t that what she had always wanted to do? Perhaps, someday, she would even pen down her memoirs and share her exploits with the world.

Surely, this is what life is about, isn’t it? To be able to live passionately, to be able to live for yourself, and not spend the best days of your existence cocooned in little cubicles in towering glass-clad buildings churning out reports for which your company charges its clients a million bucks but pays you only a fraction of that. The more she thought about it, the more convinced she was. It was an idea that had flared up harmlessly within her but had now irrevocably engulfed her with its promise and potential.

There was a spring in her step when she left home for work, a little after nine. How unusual it is, she thought, to be happy on a Monday morning. Riding the train from Novena to Raffles Place, she noticed for the first time her co-passengers, all looking morose, and she felt a deep sense of pity tug at her heart. Why do we do this to ourselves, she wondered. She immediately rephrased her question. Why do they do this to themselves? Don’t they all have a choice? Maybe some of them don’t, but that’s a defeatist attitude, she promptly countered.

Some of her friends had drawn up long-term plans for their futures. Her best buddy, an investment banker, had long decided he would retire at the age of forty with a bank balance he was confident would last him another four decades. And that is when he would set out to travel, write poetry, compose music and donate to charity. But what if he were run over by a truck or stress clogged his arteries and he died before his fortieth birthday? she had wondered but left her concerns unvoiced. What are people waiting for? What’s stopping them? Fear? Are they afraid to defy convention? Do they loathe change? Do they have a coping mechanism that tells them it is easier to live with regret than with failure? Are they too frightened to live?

She exited the Raffles Place MRT station and sat for a while outside the UOB Plaza building beside the river, which shimmered in the sunlight. Her office on Circular Road was a short four-minute walk away from Boat Quay. She sadly remembered the evenings she had walked down this path, exhausted after a long day’s hard work, envying the guzzlers making merry at the numerous pubs and restaurants, while she quickened her pace, desperate to go home and plonk herself on her bed, willing sleep to overpower her until eternity. No more of that, she promised herself, as she walked up to her office.

She wondered how her boss would react when she broke the news to him. He would be furious, no doubt. He would need to seek someone to replace her. She had been a good worker. She had been an exceedingly good slave. Her colleagues would probably miss her for a while, but life has a relentless way of moving ahead aggressively and all would soon be forgotten. Nobody was indispensable, she knew.

Her heart excitedly hammered against her chest as she punched in the four-digit access code to let herself in. It was a little after ten, but the office was unusually quiet. She looked straight ahead and was shocked to see Annie, the friendly girl from admin, sobbing at her desk. What’s the matter, Annie? She ran up to her, but Annie buried her face into her hands and wept louder.

Confused, she left the sobbing girl to herself and turned to her desk, which was right next to Annie’s. Her desk had been wiped clean. Her laptop was gone, so had her files and notepads. She turned to Annie with a questioning look on her face. Annie, do you know where all my stuff is? But her words were drowned out by Annie’s weeping.

She looked around, a little lost, wondering where the others were. Soft whispers emanated from the pantry at the far end of the office, and she headed that way. Her colleagues huddled together, staring long faced at the LED screen of the wall-mounted Sony Bravia television. On the screen flitted images of a large aircraft skidding off the runway and crashing into a hangar, bursting instantly into a mammoth ball of flames and black smoke.

The overnight flight from New Delhi to Singapore, carrying 321 passengers on board, met with a catastrophic accident this morning, the news anchor was saying. Airport officials refuse to comment on the cause of the tragedy. There were no survivors.