June 16, 2019
For the past few years every time I travelled to a hill station: to rivers in the north east, in the gravel grounds and through the sea green Psangong lake of Leh, the green in Kashmir, I’ve wondered what we are trading in our big urban clogged up cities. I’ve dreamt living a life in a town dreams are made of.
It was only until the recent trip to my maternal grandparents house that I realised what the temptation was all about. When I saw my mother unite with her two sisters, one elder another younger, at the midnight between the elder’s birthday the past day and my mother’s that day, all present by the absolute token of coincidence and some persistence with their husbands, cake smudged on their faces, some deservedly, others forcefully and for the symmetry, I caught, as I clicked pictures, the deep rooted reason. Between working their lives to make their parents proud and never let their children see what they had to, and watching their lives take disparate tangents along the process, they were stealing a moment. Stealing a moment between past’s unsynchronisation and future’s uncertainty.
Travelling in the bus, squeezed, watching a documentary on Netflix, as the internet goes down, I look up and right, outside the nearest window, to gauge the green paddy fields and a light drizzle. Instantaneously amongst serious facial lines, a smile appeared, almost reflexivily and involuntarily. I realised this was a moment I stole.
Watching an episode of Friends when you have deadlines to meet; sneaking out of your home, picking your best friend along the way and going to your favourite stall on the street when you have an important test coming up; a casual walk in the park; stopping to look at a baby with bubbly eyes for 5 minutes straight; helping an acquaintance out; laughing on something stupid; a 3 hour ‘power nap’; these are the little moments that make life life.