Goldie limps when he walks but I see that he hasn’t lost his spirit. He still chases rocks with the same fervor. On our way back, there were moments at a stretch when I mistook Goldie’s limp for an upbeat skip in his gait. On this walk, we saw our flock of parrots fly over our pink-orange sky.
I made myself mushroom sandwiches, a mug of good coffee & read a book I painstakingly chose from the shortlist of the Booker prize. It is insightful & funny. Also heartbreaking, but mostly insightful. Food has always been a painful topic for me. So making & having food feels like discovering new territories & triumphing them. Like if I wake up one day & discover that I am an amazing bellydancer, who accidentally danced in front of Karan Johar & got cast for a slightly sexist movie but at least I am rich now.
I drank good gin & watched Jab We Met at night. I love that we were given a loud, knows-what-she-wants-and-gets-it girl who can say ‘main apni favorite hu’. Things that were not a part of people’s general vocabulary or self-esteem, now have catchy words looking for contexts to get used in.
Dadi saw the embroidery I am working on & seemed very impressed. She said I did a better job than she could have. She compared me to her sister & her skill. I embroidered a pond with fish & lotus leaves.
I found time to get bored, to do pointless embroidery & finally read a Dickens novel. But mostly, I found time to get bored. To sit on a chair & wonder what to do next. I thought of starting a blog ‘looking at my dadi learn new things’ or ‘things I heard on my dadi’s Facebook today’ or ‘Shit I didn’t know papa was up to’. Then I went on the internet & looked at all the free courses Coursera offers. I stood on my balcony & after I saw my family put bad in badminton, I noticed one of my plants had a weird, what I believe is a pest growing on it. So I took every leaf & cleaned it, one by one & remembered anew, though I had not forgotten, this feeling of calm joy.
