The Dusty Alleyway: The Delights of Ordinary No. 1

The dusty alleyway and old smell of nostalgia. When all these memories do not just fill your nostrils but even your veins and sinew. I was at my home last week and touched every aroma with my senses as if all was as fresh and new as it used to be.

After my mother’s passing away we seldom lived in this house. Because the home lost its charm and the brick house remained. My father wishes to be around his children. He misses Mom and I guess being around his children is his masculine way of reminiscing over his lady love who is no more in this physical realm.

That is why I missed sending my letters to you. I chose not to write and it was a mindful choice of cutting my ties temporarily from my work and internet and everything that exists digitally. I was present to make my connections with life and with people that are still around me and who have the same ability to breathe and pump blood just I do.

We chased monkeys who always mess in our garden, dusted the rooms, and made beds along with cheerful waves of laughter and deeper conversations.

We giggled with the children. Forgot to speak like an adult. Staring at the starry multitude in the sky with the same child-like glisten in our eyes. Tanned our feet in the sun and did not bother about our sunscreens.

The family gatherings make gluttony effortless, so much so, that sometimes sins can be justified as simple acts of love.

We made so many memories that I forgot to take many pictures. I forgot all the smartphone stuff that I had learned from the world. I was home and I was silly and that’s all matters.

And now as I am back in the busy big city and it takes over my routine with all the essential threats of it, I found Covid showing its teeth once again in my huge city. Covid has had so much paranoia in the past that I do care not much about it this time.

In my small city, Covid holds not much power. It is mainly about mere ordinary hugs, love, and ample spare time for naps, ordinary evening teas and togetherness.

So how would you tap into the ordinary?
Rumi says, “Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”

Cook it for yourself or for your loved ones: Take a break, make some bread with AirPods on and dance along in silence. Sometimes being clumsy is the new clean. Hang out with life, slow down! When we all were locked inside our homes I baked essentially every type of bread and I am not kidding, I am hooked to bake bread ever since. I have spoiled many batches and let YouTube overwork to show bread-recipe videos that would work for me.

Have a look:

What a marvellous story of the magic of baking bread. Even if you don’t intend to bake bread, still watch this video because it is essentially a story about life craftily baked along with the bread to make it flavorful. Do not skip!

Try new things. Just to start have fun with what AI can do with poems. Google AI experiment “PoemPortraits is a distraction project and I was in awe of how brilliant and genius people to create a robot that could write poems! At Poem Portraits you “donate” a word to them and the AI will create a two-line verse, from the word bank of over 20 million words of 19th-century poetries. This way you add this new poem to the machine’s vocabulary and let the machine learn. I donated many words and kept on playing with them.

Sharing this one picture verse that Google AI came up with. I donated the word ‘delight.’

Listen Up: If you are fed up with straining your eyes, then close them once and listen to the silence. I have made every effort to do it. Yet, mostly we are all hustling and bustling to only hear noises around. Unhurried Everyday Thing is my playlist on Spotify which I have created for times like this. You put on your earpods and snuggle in with yourself – when in the subway or metro, or bus or a cab, or driving yourself, or when you are in your bed. That, retiring for the day is a worship to the creator and a way to thank Him for what the day has had.

Till I write to you again,

Hugs

Anugrah from Paint My Word.