common-uncommon
heatwave in North India, thirsty birds, the king of short stories, baby squirrels, homes in Kerala, uphill climb, and books
Dear Reader,
Thank you for being here. I hope your weekend was fun, and is perhaps still ongoing.
I have been at my parent’s home in North India for about two months. The heatwave is real. Temperatures soar to forty-five degree Celsius. I stay indoors, only getting down into the garden early morning or late evening.
Still, I fell sick, stuck by the hot winds barging in the house through the windows and doors we are not used to shut. I also made a mistake of working in a sun-scorched room and wandering down into the garden at 5 pm when it was still hot. Mom said, “The Loo got you.” In here, Loo means the hot winds prevailing in the summer that can sicken even the healthiest. Discussions happened about what I could have eaten or done which upset my stomach so much it didn’t get better for three days. Different theories were proposed. Many food items and their combinations were blamed. Cucumber with buttermilk at lunch. Cold mixed fruit juice or lemon water right after coming from the scorched garden or the heated room. I got fever too. It went away in a day.
For three to four days, I lay on bed, sleeping, trying to sleep, dreaming, daydreaming, thinking, worrying, letting go, smiling, smelling, hurting, listening, seeing, and not much else. I couldn’t look at the laptop. Didn’t pick up my phone. Didn’t read. Didn’t publish or edit. Not even tried to write in my journal.
Perhaps it was all just for the much needed rest I wasn’t allowing myself. My parents, of course, were worried and breathed with relief when I got up from the bed and started moving about as usual.
Now my mother sends me back from the verandah whenever I stand there watching squirrels, eagles, crows, cuckoos, purple sunbird, and other birds that flock to our garden.
“It’s really hot here. Go inside. You’ll fall sick.”
I distract her with the olive green tailor bird who hops up the branch of Indian blackberry (we call it jamun) picking bugs in her tiny beak. “How quick is she! I saw her with a twig in her beak.”
“Really? Must be making a nest somewhere. Here her nest has been broken by monkeys so many times. Perhaps she has made it somewhere else.” My mother has watched these birds for decades.
Meanwhile the bulbuls who already have a nest on the Chandni plant that blooms with delicious white flowers come to sit right on the blackberry branches above our heads. The big jamun tree that is fruiting now stands face to face with our home.
“Birds’re telling us to move. They’re worried because we’re here.” My mother lifts up her palms resting on the parapet and shows signs of leaving.
Before my mother realises, I have been standing on the verandah for ten-fifteen minutes already. Then I come inside. I pour a glass of lime water from the jug in the fridge and walk into my bedroom. The bedroom is now my new work room. I had to move out of the sunny guava-fronting room of which I shared pictures in the previous newsletters. Now here I work and sleep and rest. It’s not that much fun to be in a closed room, but, at least, I am not falling sick, rushing out with a heavy head, feeling as if I had been sitting in a hot, airless oven.
I have a roof above my head. Think how many are homeless right now. Without the shade of a tree under which to sit for a moment. Think how many are dying in this heat. We, meanwhile, still cut trees, buy groceries in single-use plastic, use all kinds of chemicals, waste water, waste solar energy, waste fuel, clear up forests for construction, dig up mountains for roads and tunnels, and blame the animals when they come out of their limited habitat looking for food.
Climate Change is here, and it’s real.
In the last eighteen days when I couldn’t send the newsletter, I thought about writing it many times.
Several things pushed me to write, publish, send.
On May 18, I saw the headline: Alice Munro, Nobel Laureate and Master of the Short Story, Dies at 92. It’s not the news I needed or wanted. But it was there. Alice Munro, the writer I admired and learned from, whose stories and the people in them lived in my head days after I closed the book, who felt like a close friend, was already gone for four days.
No more stories from Alice Munro. That was all I could think.
I wrote in my journal,
***
I am thinking of the girl who ran away from home with an old man she worked for and then she is running away again with someone else. I am thinking of the woman who writes a horrible story about her Aunt and is estranged from her, but in the process she becomes a writer. I am thinking of girls who write fake letters and change the lives of people around them.
I am thinking of Alice munro, who gave us all so much to think, laugh, and feel about. She made all our lives better. Her work is out there for everyone to read, ponder upon, and entertain.
I learned so much from her.
I hope she didn’t leave in pain.
My eyes are glossy, the world would never be the same again.
***
I’ve not read enough of Munro to criticise her work. But I’ve read enough to feel a part of her world and to believe that she would have understood mine too.
If by some miracle you haven’t read Alice Munro, I recommend some free short stories you can devour right now: Boys and Girls, Queenie, Runaway (on NewYorker so you may have limited free stories), Chance, Soon, in fact here is all her work on New Yorker, Red Dress, Train, To Reach Japan, Gravel, Dear Life, Fiction, and Voices.
Munro wrote about common lives such that one could see how uncommon and extraordinary is each one of them. Delight yourself with these stories, to begin with.
The other thing that made me really want to sit tight and write were the three squirrel babies that fell down from their nest into my parent’s garden and all three of whom I spotted in three different places at different times. With the eagle and all around, we couldn’t just leave the little babies out in the open. My mother and I ran behind them, she with a cloth in her hand and I in tow, and we grabbed each one of them up, leaving them in a bucket for a while for the Mommy squirrel to retrieve them, when she didn’t, we transferred them into a cardboard box we stuffed with cotton, in which we made holes for air, whose one corner we cut open for the Mommy to go in, and then we kept this box up on the gate near the nest in the wall from where they had fallen.
I didn’t take any pictures of the little squirrels. It didn’t feel right. I didn’t even think of photographing them. There wasn’t time. I was running behind them in flower beds, lifting branches, thinking how to keep them safe, wondering why didn’t the Mommy squirrel pick them up from the bucket in her mouth like squirrels do, and then checking on them to see they were being fed and accepted back into the family.
By the end of the next day, one baby was running in and out of the box, happy and at ease in his new home.
My mother said our efforts were worth it.
Not of the baby squirrels, but I have many pictures of the garden and its many living beings.
For your pleasure.
.
Are the animals around you doing okay?
For this week’s letter,
Some of my writing,
quotes I love,
things to read,
things to watch,
and
travel tips.
Article of the Week,
Two on a Trail: Day 4, Episode 4
I farewell the home in the coffee village in Wayanad (Kerala) and the poetess who quickly became a friend. But, first, an afternoon walk and banana chips.
Read the full story now. Or Pocket the narrative for later.
Previous stories in the series:
Day 1, Episode 1: Finding a Home in a Village in Wayanad (Kerala)
Day 2, Episode 2: Life in a Tea, Coffee, and Betel Nut Village in Wayanad (Kerala)
Day 3, Episode 3: A Happy Poetess From a Village of Wayanad (Kerala)
From Homeless to a Forested Stilt Home in Wayanad (Kerala)
From homeless to sipping wine in a forested and private stilt home in a little village—this is my story of finding accommodation in Wayanad, Kerala.
Read the travelogue now. Or Pocket it for later.
Quotes I Love
Because they were not hurt or insulted, they were not defensive or combative. Because their dignity was intact, they had no need to be overbearing, and because the Cooper boys had never heard that they were inferior, their minds could grow to their true limits.
John Steinbeck. Travels with Charley in Search of America
You have to decide who you are and force the world to deal with you, not with its idea of you.
James Baldwin.
From tiny experiences we build cathedrals.
Orhan Pamuk.
The sensitive suffer more; but they love more, and dream more.
Augusto Cury
Life should always be an uphill climb.
Yours Truly
What I’ve Been Reading
I’ve been reading short stories, books, articles, and so much more. I can’t possibly list all what I have read in the past week so I’m putting down the things I found most relevant and worthwhile.
A Starburst of Colour and the Quest for a Nest by Neha Sinha—A story of survival, of the writer and of two little birds who make her money plant vine their home.
The tiny sunbirds were bigger, and braver, than me.
Neha Sinha
Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown— A nice, little children’s book I discovered just in time. The pictures are brilliant, the rhymes are enough to get me sleepy, and the feeling of resting like the little bunny in my own bed after a hard day at work is irreplaceable.
Goodnight noises everywhere.
The Enduring Wisdom of ‘Goodnight Moon’ by Elisabeth Egan— For those who grapple with the question that why the Goodnight Moon book is so popular, this article on the hidden depths and wisdom of the book would be helpful.
I have been finishing pending books that I’ve already shared here. Some books I am reading now are: The Girl Who Ate Books by Nilanjana Roy, The Tiger Ladies a Memoir of Kashmir by Sudha Koul, The Penguin Book of Indian Writing on Food by Nilanjana Roy, The Greatest Bengali Stories Ever Told By Arunava Sinha, Wind, Sand, and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, and the Art of Memoir by Mary Karr amongst others.
I have started re-reading How Emotions Are Made by the neuroscientist Lisa Feldman Barrett, one of my all-time, life-changing book. The facts in the book altered how I see life, humans, and my own self and those around me. It forms the basis of my article: You Aren’t the Emotional Fool You Think You Are. Highly recommended.
What I’ve Been Watching/Listening
that’s worth mentioning
I have only seen eagles, bulbuls, tailorbirds, doves, squirrels in action all day long. So that’s it for now.
And for all adventure lovers!
one last photo for today.
Thank you for reading!
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I hope you have some squirrels around you too :-)
Let me know what you think about this letter. Press reply.
Yours,
Priyanka
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