As the sunlight tiptoes shyly through the folds of the dusty curtain languishing lazily beside the rusted bars of the window on the east side, the cacophonous notes of the alarm clock come to life in a rather practiced and sadistic manner. This results in a sudden jerk behind my back as Slimy sits up and slides down the bed onto the cold discoloured tiles. In a half-asleep state, my eyes follow her as she stretches ever so slowly, following it up with a short snappy yawn. Today is a Tuesday, I mutter to myself. Office beckons. I sit up and try to stifle a yawn that catches me unaware. The hazy blur of the room gives way to clearer shapes and forms as I go about with the daily chores of the day. My house can be fitted in somewhere between the stark levels of classifications that define luxuriousness and abject poverty. I am financially stable and yet I need the occasional odd job to supplement my random spurts of expenditure. The bookcase looks tidy today. It feels like a work of art, standing at the corner proudly and yet reposing calmly. The books, stacked neatly across the length of each row, generate in me a sense of warmth that results in a moment of unbridled peace, a moment when time stands still and I exist with my books while everything else blurs away into the sea of forgettable Time. These indescribably beautiful moments wake me up in the mornings and lift me up in the evenings. The smooth skin of the wood that makes up the few rows and walls of the shelf lure me ever so slowly into the warmth between the pages of the books that lie cradled in its lap. This is me encased in the perfume of carved wood.