Almost half a year since I posted here. Always the measuring of time. How we measure our life in minutes, hours, days, months, years and yet the best moments are somehow outside time’s linearity.
Every year, I think of a word as an anchor, a way to come back jto a single thought when life meanders like a river. This year, the word is slow. I wish to live it through all my senses. Since the last entry here, the home found a little cat who now seems to have become part of the household. A lot of tree time happened. The beginning of the year was almost a quickstart into meditating on the word of the year as I rested during a second bout of Covid. A few nights were difficult and I found calm in children’s stories that a friend read aloud.
Most of the tales are simple and the activities of the characters are at a pace which is dramatically different from the dizzying speed of our lives. How does one temper the way the world functions today with slower living? I don’t know. Speaking of stories, 2022 got off to a good start with reading. Except for one, all were a re-reading.
- A year of Magical Thinking
- A Tiger for Malgudi
- Papillon
- Things Fall Apart
- The Guest Cat
- Choker Bali
Return to Hogwarts meant watching all the Harry Potter movies again, this time with the youngling and she was tickled that I knew all the spells. I didn’t realize how much of a Potterhead I still am. ‘Occulus Reparo‘ would probably be my favourite spell considering the rate at which my glasses find themselves in need of fixing.
In other news, the sparrows come every morning and are no longer scared to peck at their food while I stand in the kitchen. The koel keeps a hawk eye on the jungle jalebi in the compound while the parakeets annoy him. They are strategic, one bird distracts the territorial koel while the other swoops in. It seems more like an exercise in pestering the gluttonous bird rather than truly wanting to eat. The tree itself doesn’t yield the fruits easily. There is a female koel who is permitted to snack on the fruits though. The peafowl family seems to have become smaller.
The city is a delight where trees are concerned and I enjoyed a good winter of their loveliness. The woods though are changing as an energetic group has taken over tree plantation with a vengeance. I’m not entirely sure that the space should change so rapidly. The western edge is still untouched for now while the rest of it is busy with well meaning volunteers. I’ll miss the solitude of that space once it becomes crowded. But, c’est la vie.
Today was a lovely spring day and I had a very heart-warming moment while waiting at the traffic signal. Y, a girl who lives on the street came running calling ‘didi, didi‘. We hadn’t met each other for long and there was such joy and affection in that exchange. Friends and family share love and affection but there is usually a twinge of expectation. The connections with strangers though are unsullied with entanglements of familiarity that creep in. But, all these loves, bound and unfettered give texture and colour to our days. And 10th February 2022 was a dazzling array of many lives, beginning with a virtual meeting with friends and ending with a late night walk with the youngling.
pleated stories 