The Theatre of the Mundane

Change is engulfing us within its inextricable embrace, weaving together a tapestry of transition, with the threads of time...memories are spinning through the loom and creating new ones with each passing minute...over the past few days the pages of the social networks I subscribe to have been inundated with photographs capturing this change...old friends I used to play with are now new mothers, new lovers, expectant professionals and beautiful other halves of couples...change has caught me in its grip as well, and transformed my life from that of a lonely dreamer to a dreamy partner to a tender soul...and the revelation of partnership, of union has lived up to its rich legacy of Literary musing... I have often heard, read and been reminded that a marriage is but a domestic partnership, a way to adjust with the ways of another within the confined space of home...akin to alliances with room-mates...and some have shared with me that it is anything but romantic...but I do beg to differ as I am of the conviction that romance is not estranged from reality, rather it is sewn into its very fabric with adroit stitches... I fervently feel, (and this is my subjective insight), that the true romantic can squeeze out romance from a near empty toothpaste tube...Romance is not restricted to the pages of fantastically imagined novels or verses of carefully-thought out poetry...I believe that it spreads its wings beyond such realms and soars over it all, by diving headlong into the Theatre of the Everyday...and none of its enigmatic charm is lost even when it is infused within that which we commonly perceive as mundane or boring... With a dash of imagination and an ounce of creativity, the Theatre of Routine can be shipped from the realm of the Monotonous to the realm of the Sublime...stealing a mischief-laden glance while standing in winding grocery queues, a whispered secret while scrubbing dishes clean, the thought of reveling in clean, fragrant clothes while mixing the detergent, musing on the happy possibilities offered by a swept and scrubbed floor (such as sprawling a mat and having an indoor picnic) the inviting allure of a freshly made bed, the infinite potential of a bowl of just-peeled vegetables, the gleaming beckons of newly purchased pots and pans, the wrinkles of memory amidst the folds of crumpled linen, the charm of frugality amidst the uncertainty of humble beginnings, the varying degrees of struggle encountered by young, bewildered couples...how can any of this not be stammeringly romantic? Love blossoms in arenas where the Theatre of the Mundane is premised on a script which is lettered by promises of a shared togetherness, of an assuring sense of routine in a world laden with chaos, of the charm of adventure lurking in each kitchen cupboard (often in the form of insects :), of rest reposing in the thought of a shared, longed for midnight pillow... That is not to say that a holiday from routine is not welcome, that the reel of romance cannot play in distant, mysterious lands, but there is something romantic about the thought of having to return to the clasp of the time-table, if only to break its schedule at times...