Eggs.
It was Saturday yesterday since it is Sunday today and it will be Monday tomorrow. Mum and Dad returned from Lucknow in the morning, around 7 maybe. Mum has to go to Lucknow for her quarterly checkup. It is important. She was tired when she reached home, so was Dad. Dad passed out just after reaching, but Mum had to cook because she hadn’t eaten for two days as she doesn’t eat food anywhere except home, made by anyone but herself. She made a few Rotis, ate and she slept too. My brother had also gone to Lucknow and he passed out after breakfast too.
Now that leaves me there: the only one awoke. I can’t sleep now, I just woke up. I can’t eat just Roti while I have been working my ass off in the gym the whole weekdays. So I lit the stove and placed two eggs to boil, made a protein shake and drank it with the Rotis (Horrible thing to do).
It must have been around 12, I guess. Dad had left for work but my brother and mother were still sleeping. I was in the balcony working on my website just when I started smelling something awful, worse than a burning tire. I shouted to Mom what was burning. She was sleeping and she had no idea. I waited for a while with my hands on my waist concluding it must be from the neighbors. I put on my headphones and started coding again and that is when I remembered about the boiling eggs.
I rushed downstairs. And there was this huge cloud all around the corridor. It smelt horrible. I went up to the stove and there was it: my fried boiled eggs with shells all molted. The water had all evaporated. The pan was red-hot, it was glaring. The smoke was all over the downstairs. For about two hours, I had left it to boil.
I have had this experience a lot of times. I put on something on Gas-stove, I tell myself that I shouldn’t forget, I convince myself that I would forget that’s why I shouldn’t forget and I forget. I keep myself pretty much distracted all the time. I am always lost in thoughts. I have tried a lot of mindfulness techniques and they were quite helpful to me as well, but it has been a while since I did the last time.
Meditation is one the easiest form of Mindfulness technique. People often confuse these terms. They are related but not the same. Mindfulness is a state of mind. And Meditation is a technique to reach that state. Mindfulness can be practiced while walking, speaking, writing, reading, anything in general. It is all about being and remaining aware of your present scenario. While meditation has some rules: a posture to sit, an object of focus to focus on, pre-meditation and post-meditation activities. Meditation is an easier way to understand awareness, mindfulness.
Some people are already very good at neglecting thoughts, they have understood the insignificance of random thoughts and are quite aware of what is happening around them. And some are like me who get too attached with them and let oneself slip from one thought to another.
When I had been Meditating before, I could see the increased urge of remaining aware of my surroundings and letting my thoughts pass. I was getting better at remaining mindful. But again, you lose track of your habit once and it becomes a habit of not continuing it. Something similar happened to me when I came home for the vacation. I left myself to lose it.
I had kept two eggs today too. But today I was quite mindful about it since the smell of yesterday’s roasted eggs hasn’t passed, and even though I am lost in thoughts, the smell brings me back to my object of focus.