Stop to smell the roses

There’s something to savouring the flavour.. I always pictured a cartoon in my head of a funny looking thing smelling a rose only to get stung by a wasp, the cartoon’s nose would then swell up and fist shaking and beeping would follow.. This is probably the product of an overactive imagination and way too many hours in front of ‘the idiot box’, so my take on such philosophical ideologies (that no doubt took scholars many hours of pondering to put to paper) was almost on the verge of disrespectful. But hey, I’m young, that’s a good excuse for a lot of things.. But with age comes wisdom, sadly, and I must be loony, cause I see the sense in that bearded coot’s thoughts. But what brought about such profundity! I’m growing up? Say it isn’t so!
It happened because I had time to myself , and when that happens I tend to delve into my own thoughts , because there’s no one to poke fun at or make jokes with .. I was in college and for whatever reason, I wasn’t in class.. (Don’t get me started on the Indian education system). Naturally , considering my lack of company , I needed something to entertain myself , the allure of something to eat or drink was too much to resist , So I made a beeline to the canteen .. (It’s called a beeline because the wasp was hiding in a rose at the time of the official meeting).. reaching the canteen , I pulled out my wallet , my little cow of possibilities , and found WONLY 10 rupees .. Surveying my options I decided that a Swiss cold chocolate was “the best use of my resources” (who said what you learn in class is useless, well, I guess most of it is.). Swiss cold chocolate , there’s absolutely nothing Swiss about it , someone in north India must’ve just thought ‘Swiss’ would be a nice touch..
So , drink in hand , I checked my phone , 45 minutes till class got over and I’d have some company .. So I decided it was a nice time to take a walk around the campus and observe the beauty of nature.. This thought lasted all of two minutes as my laziness got the better of me and I decided to just sit and stare off into space instead. I then realised that I had 45 minutes and only one glass of cold chocolate.. I needed to make it last. I luckily had one of those thin stirrer/straws that they give you at most of these ‘self-employed youth’ coffee shops.. So I began to sip so slowly that to an outsider it would look like I just liked having a straw in my mouth as a fashion statement.. As I sipped ever so slowly, I realised something about this cold chocolate.. It tasted really good.. now , I’d had this drink numerous times before , but today it tasted different , but still the same , it’s not like the guy had given me anything extra today, I mean , same old packet of cold chocolate goodness , so what was new? I pondered having lost my mind after the prolonged agony of silence.. But then I realised, I was just enjoying it slowly, letting my taste buds go over the delicate chocolate flavour ( I’m not going to go into details about texture and palate because I don’t have a cookery show, yet.). It was then that I figured out what people enjoyed about sitting with one cup of coffee and slowly drinking it while it rained and they reminisced about some lover who they would normally gossip about.
Lost in all this thought , I slowly finished my cold chocolate , which was heavenly , and then checked the time , 40 minutes of pondering , 5 minutes and I’d be back to the old routine .. I then got rid of the paper cup (in a dustbin, because kids, the environment, is, like, groovy, man).. And headed to wherever, vowing to take things slowly next time.. I checked my wallet again, knowing it’d be empty, but instead finding a hidden 50 rupee note, I went and bought another cold chocolate and devoured it in a minute.. So much for my resolve. :)