Unusual things I worry about these days

I worry about unusual things these days. Endlessly.

This morning I was worried about our milkman. In his late sixties, still driving an old Bajaj scooter, loaded with barrels of freshly squeezed milk. He rides door to door serving people their daily portion of wellbeing. He seemed a little more frail than usual. My mind raced to think about his wife and his children and who, after him, will carry on his legacy of saying warm hellos and genuine goodbyes? Every time he pours the milk, he does so by placing his other hand under the elbow of the one he is serving from. A cultural gesture of respect and abundance. I worry about the fading away of this grace when he no longer takes the morning run.

I think about the kids in Afghanistan stuck at the airport, trapped between the possibility of a bright future, just one flight away and the reality of the violence breathing down their neck. I agonise over the bookseller in Kabul, who spent years storing prized journals, collectible magazines, foreign books with the finest of translation. He must be burying them somewhere deep, away from the hands of literacy that calls them illegitimate. Or worse, I imagine him burning them.

My mind travels, several kilometres away, to the dense pine forests right before the Pindhari Glacier starts. As they encircle Khati, the village I stayed in and painted the walls of, with my loving team. I think of that one old woman, who was married at age 10, taken from Tehri Garhwal to Kumaon. And has never had, since then, a chance to visit her maternal home.

I get steamed up thinking about tears strolling down her cheeks worrying about the constant landslides in the state, worrying if they harmed those of her kins left behind. She teared up while telling me this. I am convinced she sobs often when no one is looking or listening.

The other day, I was anxious watching a young man, paddling in the pouring rain, trying to sell mango pickle. I was gut-wrenched with his desperation. He wouldn’t take shade under a roof, wait for the rain to subside. He was on a mission. Perhaps, to feed the hungry bellies of his family. I dared to stop him, in the hope of buying some. But the thunder drowned my calls to him. I was overcome with more remorse that I couldn’t do anything to bring him to ease. My mouth is tasting sour ever since.

I dwell upon the wrinkles of my studio gardener. They seem to get more detailed with every passing season, as if someone is meticulously sketching them to perfection. Monsoon is the busiest on his schedule. The unwanted grass grows faster than his skill to weed it out.

Heavy rainfall has devoured the seeds he had lovingly sown past summer. Yellowing of the Taro leaf blades matches with the pale yellow of his skin. Some mornings, he pauses the swing of his hand trowel , just to fill me in on the latest incident that is fanning the gossip in his village; and the fear of missing out, in him.

I fret about friends who are miles apart and are now buying homes in far off cities. Of course, I am happy for their progress and stability but also concerned that when we are too old to travel, who will pay a visit to whom? I pray in whispers, hoping, that we all can buy a cul de sac or build a hostel or a township; and live together in the distant future. I whisper because I don’t want to hear myself confess aloud that it isn’t possible. That we will have to train our hearts to love and survive amid the constraints of geographies and the luxuries of high definition screens.

I brood about the restaurant down the road that has changed twice since COVID entered our lives. I agonise over the migrant labourers. The grandparents who are yet to hold their grandchildren in their arms. About the influencer who lost both his parents and must be navigating a way back into work because grief must be moulded into tools of survival. I worry about my own parents and the claws of age lurking, smirking in the face of mortality rate. About migratory birds, they said in the news, who couldn’t return home because of the wild fires in South America.

And then, I worry about myself; unsettled with the distress for others. But somehow, it seems the only fair thing to do these days. I am not apologetic. Yes, the work demands an astute presence, the family whats app group share memes to ingest joy, friends chat into late nights even if it’s way past their bedtime. But somehow, the capacity to mourn, the depth of grief, the unknowing of the world news keeps expanding. It demands our attention not ignorance.

Therefore I, too, demand, borrow and steal whatever moment I get to keep my concern pulsating. It reminds me of the good days that I have seen and somehow, hopeful for the good days that will show up. There is no promise. Yet, I believe there is a reason we learnt in our school English textbook, “When winter arrives can spring be far behind?” I await a spring for the girls in Kabul, the man selling pickle in the pouring rain, another family holiday for my parents before age gets the better of them, for my old school teacher learning to live without her husband, for shops long shut, for the farmers protesting and at last, for myself intertwined with their thought.

Sometimes, I bury people’s pain deep within myself. Somehow, it’s the only way I know how to keep the memory of their joy alive, safely.

Until spring arrives.