2 days ago, Dadi fell asleep while I was reading to her. It is one of the biggest accomplishments of my life because she does not sleep all night from the pain of 167 stitches, distributed evenly all over her body. But when she fell asleep, she apologized. She said it’s not the matter of the text or the reading of it, but the soothing blanket of being read to that is as close to a cuddle one gets without touching someone. I have read to people on calls. I have learned to love from a distance.
Mumma said I was born to be warm, like Farah from Dil Dhadakne Do was born to dance. She, at 2, wobbled to the speaker when her favorite song played and took care of a baby cousin when he cried. I like to hear the opinions of people who love you, about companies that rejected you, boys who broke your heart, and friends who ditched you. So biased and loving, also like virtual hugs.
R came home 2 days ago. I am not home right now, but she called & told me that she feels better. I picture her calling me from our balcony, where we planted flower plants, wearing papa’s t-shirt and socks. It comforts me to dress in her in-home clothes. She has been exempt from her responsibility of folding blankets and bathing. Her anxiety and distress have calmed down to only sadness now. Sadness, she knows disintegrates with time. She said this conversion happened more than a bath. Our bathroom at home has healing powers. There have been times I have walked out of it motivated to forgive people, to write in spite of everything, or with a burning insight about how to fix a broken heart.
These tiny spaces- comforting & ordinary, like tiny windows that the sun creeps in from, in which people dress in hand-me-downs, where they believe in the other and tell it, in which office going uncles try to catch a blossom falling from the tree & where grandmother’s fall sleep to a daughter’s reading- find themselves forgotten, unhappened. But one day I will retract them at will, pile them up, they will expand till they fill the room, I will make them last all the tiny forever they have. In the meantime there is much getting in the way, there is so much time to be endured. Be patient, dear heart.