October 8, 2022
I’m sitting in the green-pink balcony munching spicy khakras. It is a moist grey morning. It’s been raining since yesterday afternoon. Evening dojo with Sensei Mistry got cancelled because of the rain and I sat at home sipping cold vodka and luxuriating in Annie Ernaux, whom I discovered after hearing she had won the Nobel Literature prize.
Rain in a Bombay October is unusual for me, but my sis says it rains almost until Diwali now. We tried to plan this trip to avoid rain because it sometimes scuttles plans when low-lying roads flood. But I am glad of this, for me, unexpected rain, as it is a special pleasure to witness Bombay thunderstorms.
Several social plans also were called off this trip. One because I messed up the time and it clashed with a work appointment, but the others dropped by the other side. A friend got a stomach bug, another fell ill with covid, and another’s father-in-law went into hospital. At first the suddenly empty hours unnerved me as I felt like since the structure of the day that was holding me together fell apart I might too, but then I accepted it as some ‘wise force’ trying to get me to slow down. I still think in this irrational way sometimes.
Initially I felt a resistance to occupy this slow mental space as it brings up anxieties that have been camouflaged under busyness. The deeper space though also allows these worries to become less threatening. Once it felt like an outside force was saying slow down, be alone even if it is hard, I found myself wanting not to re-schedule or make new social plans. This led to a strange guilt that I don’t know how to name. Like I shouldn’t be wasting this time in Bombay, which I could use to connect with people I don’t normally get to?
It’s been long now that the pace of my life had slowed this much. I read three books here and now I am only five books behind my Goodreads goal of fifty a year. One was a book of exquisite short stories, another a book with articles on racism and whiteness, and the last the Annie Ernaux last evening.
But mostly I watched the trees around my home, fresh and vibrant, in this rain. Though there is a lot more built up around this house, my great-grandfather built, which was once the sole one on this hill, the area has remained dense with trees. I watched them sway in the mild or strong winds, I watched leaves flutter and swish. I watched squirrels scampering the green lawns, particularly in the mornings. I felt joy seeing this. I watched the birds that populate these trees and skies—crows, sparrows, mynah’s, pigeons, parrots, and kites.
There is a tree with yellow flowers and leaves the green of Bombay parrots. The parrots like to hide in it. I stare for hours trying to spot and photograph them, but often I only know their presence when they fly off. There are flocks scurrying across the sky together as if on an important errand and then suddenly turning around as if they forgot something. There are kites and eagles, circling and gliding, mostly at dusk—finding the wind currents they can coast on. Most often I watch two kites protect a nest that I discovered one morning when I saw one of the birds fly repeatedly into the same tree. The nest is high in a tree, that seems to be some kind of fir, and the two birds are often either hidden in the branches of the tree next to it or sometimes on the tip of one of the surrounding ones. They seem extra vigilant at dawn and dusk. They also sat there through the hours of evening and night rain—I looked for them until I fell asleep a little past midnight, and saw they hadn’t moved, and when I woke in the morning they were in the same spot—and only now that it is slightly dry, they have flown off perhaps to find food.
I think I needed to re-acquaint myself with the beauty and silence of this slow mind. There is no desire to do, to catch up with someone else, or with where I imagine I should be. Maybe this is what might heal some of the distress and lostness I have been feeling for a while now. Maybe it won’t, but it is good to be in this space.
