Lockdown Reflections

 

Image by: Bipasha M

She comes and sits quietly at her usual perch. Sometimes she caws loudly to let me know that she’s there. But most often, she waits silently. I don’t know how or when our friendship started. But one day I noticed this crow sitting a foot away from me as I kept the food on balcony ledge. She started coming closer and would eat the food as soon as I would keep it. Then came a time when she would wait for me to make balls of cooked rice and place it only for her. Few days ago, she accepted food straight from my hand. She took it very gently to ensure that she didn’t hurt me with her beak. Unlike the bulbul, mynah, and the squirrel family, she doesn’t come every day and that’s okay with me.

I started actively feeding the birds since the lockdown. Initially, I would leave rice grains and forget about it. Slowly, I began noticing the birds that came at different times to either eat the food or take a dip in the water bowl. Now I have a family of mynah, a pair of bulbuls whose little one has flown the nest, some 15 odd crows, and two families of squirrels that I consciously leave food out for. When they allow me near them, I feel accepted and trusted. It’s a feeling that I have never felt before with fellow human beings.         

At the end of the year, I can say without an iota of doubt that this has been the most precious gift the year has given me. If the year hadn’t slowed us down, I wouldn’t have known my non-human friends so intimately or seen migratory birds fly right over my terrace or watch an exquisite delicate turquoise damselfly hover over the orange flowers.

I like the slow pace. Of life. Of work. Of my thoughts. And of my body. I don’t feel the regular restlessness that tends to creep in despite being at home for three-fourth of the year. In its place I feel a deep groundedness. My work is as much impacted as others, but I am not anxious about the future. I am enjoying the way my body has slowed downed with the onset of winter. I am happy when my periods coincide with either the full moon or the new moon, as if my body is trying to realign and find its way back to the moon. I want to play the flute, not learn how to play, because I feel the wind wants to speak to me. I am slowly learning to extend the concepts of consent and reciprocity to soil, land, Earth and the plants in my balcony garden. When I grow, it’s with the consent of the seeds and soil. When I take something, I leave a bit of my hair in return.

I do feel a different kind of restlessness though. A restlessness of presenting myself in the new world, of stepping into my true potential, of being my wild self, and of establishing a new narrative. There’s a world out there where people deeply trust each other, collaborate and cooperate, and only follow the language of the heart. I have seen glimpses of this world and felt its breathing growing presence.        

This year taught me for certain that the only true reality is being grounded to our beautiful home, Earth and being inherently connected with all beings nature. That when things fall apart all around you, when you fall apart, She is the only one, who is and will be there for you. And bring you home.

Lockdown Dairies:

There’s a sublime quality to the time in the hour before dawn-break. If there’s a slight breeze during that time, it has the capacity to transport you to a different realm. I tried to keep up with my routine of getting up before dawn, but have slipped back into a post dawn schedule. Autumn is right around the corner, and the nights are getting longer. Soon dawn and my waking up time will coincide once again. 

Mornings have become a packed time for me, a time which is solely for me and my care. A time for noticing new growths in my balcony garden and working on soil and compost with my hands, feeding the birds and squirrels on the terrace and refilling their water bowls, doing my rounds of walks around the terrace bare feet, lying down on a mat, sometimes in the sun, to just look up at the vast blue skies and clouds as they pass by at their own pace, slipping into a deeply meditative space, doing yoga, meditation, going for weekly morning walks, and making breakfast. 

Who is my body? What role do I play as a female of the human species? As a unique person like all else, what can I offer to the world? In what ways do I connect deeper with Earth and nature within a restricted environment? These are the questions arising in me since the time of the lockdown. The world is in turmoil which has now gone beyond the pandemic, and people are suffering deeply, especially the poor. But nothing changes without a crisis. You do not transform into your best selves until you go through a test of fire, a personal or collective ‘dark night of the soul’. Each one of us has contributed in some ways to the situation we are in today, and each of us has to do our bit to steer all of us out of it in future. Like many indigenous tribes say, either we look at a crisis with joy and as an opportunity, or we get bogged down and entangled in a web of fear and mayhem. 

My life right now is limited to my terrace and within one kilometer radius of my neighborhood. But then it gives me a chance to observe nature that much closely. It gives me time to observe over 30 species of birds and many more that I can hear but not yet identify, numerous dragon and damsel flies, bugs, spiders, house flies, bees, and butterflies. It gives me time to watch the male koel distract the crow while the female lays her egg in the crow’s nest and over months watch the juvenile koel hop around in the sesham tree as the mother crow shrieks her head off protectively if I even glance in her ‘baby’s’ direction. It gives me time to watch butterflies and bees flock the flowering sesham and mast trees and the arrival of bats as fruits begin to appear. It gives me the time to befriend a few crows and mynahs who sit very close to me when I put food out for them, catalog the never-similar sunsets and cloudscapes as spring turned to summer and subsequently the arrival and departure of monsoon clouds, and experience intimately the joys of sudden thunderstorms, lightning strikes, light breeze, intense heat, numerous rainbows and double rainbows, heavy rain, and brilliant full moons. And it also gives me the time to learn about wild plants that grow in my pots, parks, and sidewalks and include them in my diet and life with a lot of gratitude.

Cloudscape from my terrace

 

All my scattered energies are finally coming back into my body, helping me tune in to its own wisdom and deep-diving into its healing with food. I am trying to understand what I did to my body and spirit all this while by not accepting my periods as something intimate and wonderful but rather viewing it as a roadblock to my freedom and adventure. 

Time seems to have slowed down considerably, yet time is zipping away at a rate that seems faster than usual. While I live somewhere between these two spaces, I continue to enjoy my time with my work, books, art, long conversations with friends, and deep contemplation. For, when I finally step out into the ‘new’ world, it will be from a space of ‘I’, that is my spirit. For, there is no going back to the ways of an old fear-based world.