Letter from Natasha Sharma
Dear
readers,
Hello from the fullest, largest and fastest city in India - Mumbai. It feels
anything but this at the moment though. The streets are bare so it certainly
doesn’t look the ‘fullest’. I never leave my building that I live in, so the
city doesn’t feel like the largest and no one is going anywhere for it to be
called the ‘fastest’!
My home is my world now. When I thought of this
phrase the other day, I decided to hold onto this thought because it made me
feel a warm and fuzzy sort of happy. It’s full of family and while there are
times when we might not want to see each other for a bit, I’ve never had my
children here to hug, anytime I feel like it. (I’ve even sneaked into their
room and given them a mid-morning online class hug.) This is particularly
important when the children are now teenagers towering over me and I have fewer
opportunities to do this in their regular day.
I’ve never cooked so much in my life and while
there are days I get all grumpy about it, I’ve also never tried so many new
recipes, which makes every day quite an adventure. The butter paneer masala and
naans were a big thumbs up. The rasmalai exploded into tiny bits of rubbery
paneer floating in gloopy milk, a definite thumbs down, but we ate it all the
same since anything sweet is hard to come by. I’ve found that the trick for me
is to look for the happier side of the coin (do coins have happy sides?).
As most writers do, I tend to have my antennae always up to pick up ideas and
thoughts. I see things that people usually walk past, like I’m living in a
parallel universe. That seems to have gone into overdrive because everything
has slowed down around me. So here are my top two observations for this week.
Observation 1: My bougainvillea plant has a favourite corner. I’m sure of it. I
moved it a few months ago to another corner of my balcony and it shriveled up
and looked really sad and droopy. And then, in a moment of frustration, I moved
it back to where it had been. Voila! It’s flowering again and looks perkier
than ever before. So plants have favourite spots.
Observation 2: This came about when I was admiring the bougainvillea. I have a
rather annoying bunch of crows in the vicinity. They are fearless and can steal
a biscuit or a toast off an unattended plate lying in the balcony in the blink
of an eye. This crow turned up while I was sitting outside having my tea and
cooing at my now flowering bougainvillea. This meant I was multi-tasking,
something I am not very good at - shielding my biscuit and cooing at the
bougainvillea. That’s when the crow swooped in on my dear plant, grabbed a twig
in its beak, gave it a solid tug to break it and was off with it. All this in a
matter of seconds while I sat there gaping with my mouth open till I finally
chomped on the biscuit I had saved, while losing a precious bougainvillea twig.
Since this unfortunate loss of a twig, I’ve been
walking around looking up at the sky (just to clear things here – this is still
a part of Observation 2). And what I’ve seen is this: almost every other crow
(Mumbai has been taken over by crows) and a few kites as well, all seem to be
flying around with beaks overloaded with twigs, dry grass, an occasional wire
and sometimes, even a colourful string. And then I began to notice the fuzzy
shapes of nests in the trees outside my building. In all these years, I’ve
never seen the crows building their nests in such a frenzy. It’s like a giant
construction site up overhead!
So here’s what I’ve decided for myself and perhaps
you’ll find something in this that you’d like to try.
Just like my bougainvillea, I definitely have a
favourite corner in the house. For me, it’s my study and particularly my
writing table. I go to it often since it makes me happy. Often I just sit there
and don’t write a word. I get particularly grumpy when I can’t get some time to
myself there. So find your happy spot and curl up with a book, perhaps? Also,
it is okay to be grumpy and grouchy at times!
And just like the giant construction site in nature
outside, I must build things of my own because to sit without doing anything
would be as unnatural as nature coming to a stop. You could use anything to
create. Words for a story, images, lines, paint for an art piece, music notes
for a song, pictures on your phone into a family collage, sheets and chairs to
build a tent or ingredients in the kitchen, even if it results in exploding
rasmalai.
And give
each other hugs (if you are a teenage reading this, no, you don’t have to do
social distancing with your parents.)
Stay safe, stay busy, stay curled up with a book.
With love and wishes for days when you can go outside and run to your heart’s content.
Natasha
With love and wishes for days when you can go outside and run to your heart’s content.
Natasha
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