I have been looking for an activity mindless enough to occupy my hands while letting me be free to think – but not think so much that it makes space for boredom or anxiety. Embroidery was an easy pick since the bar wasn’t set too high by Candy Crush. Knitting requires more commitment than I can bodily muster. It came with the added advantage of getting to relive that enthusiastic childhood summer when my aunt taught me to embroider lines on a rag. But the real winner was having dadi volunteer to teach me. So dadi and I plan to spend afternoons making flowers on a discarded cloth.
Today I noticed that she gets so lost in the doing of a stitch that she forgets to teach. While embroidering, she talks about the time when she did this for a living. She transforms into her younger self: un-pained by the recent heart operation, able to thread a needle with a 69-year-old’s eyes. In a while, she starts talking about the time more, the stitching less. While making the green leaf to the right, she told me about the chaos that the coming of telegram into India caused. They called it ‘tar’ which is also what a wire is called (Anthropology!) She said getting a telegram was a bad omen; it only meant that bad news was on the way. People would start crying even before the message was deciphered. Superstitions arose, she tells me while working on the other leaf, that people would be declared one dead if they saw a male and female crow together.
People learned new words (she starts the red petals) her sister learned to call water “water” and the temple pandit thought she was asking for meat. She laughs her toothless laugh which is full of pastness. Her grandfather would call ‘college’ ‘kaleji’ which means liver. She finishes the flower while simultaneously finishing a narrow circle of the conversation, telling me she is proud of the work I do, making a loop, and pulling to close the stitch. I live for such warm afternoons.