cats, trees and a lonesome us

at the risk of shocking some of you, here's how the abyss looks like, seen from the window of my room. we have currently been adopted by these feline rascals who do not like being touched AT ALL. it perturbs me no end, especially when they are sat there in my balcony, are peering at me through that slightly ajar door, gaping at me. as if mocking me wordlessly. we never hear even the slightest meow from them. not a single whimper, to sometimes make us realise their presence, or just that they have arrived and that we should open the door. the two babies are too young to have even developed a proper voice, but their mother is a proper north Indian matriarch. she does not let her kids wander too far, is almost too alert, never even comes close to the threshold if she sees either of us around.

always extremely poised, her grandeur has slightly diminished in the last few weeks since she started taking the kids away from us. i was just beginning to pet one of the kids, and he was beginning to graze against my leg (just once a day though), but she took them away. the fam ended up spending a lot more time away from us, in the wilderness that is the behind of our house and its precincts. anyway, over the weekend the weather took a turn. it rained a bit, not cats and dogs (oh how wish i could ever use that phrase in Delhi's context), but yes, quite a bit.

saturday and sunday it drizzled for hours. a thin drain of rain that is audible but barely visible streamed down as we spent our time doing nothing. soon, it was night and i happened to be in the drawing room. outside the window, on the balcony's sill sat one of them. i opened the door and she started complaining in loud, long meows. i heard her out, and for those brief 20 seconds, i felt a rush of love for her. i felt like picking her up and snuggling with her inside my mom's old shawl. but she was far away. too cautious, but whining still, her fur soaked, standing to its end.

i fed her that night, thinking of ways i could get her to feel warm. but she was gone even before i could finish this chain of thought....

snuggled, these three are a universe unto themselves. never speaking, always staring. always upto something, anything, nothing. i sometimes try to understand what goes on in their heads as they do ridiculously self-protective things. those ears when they sit and warm themselves in the sun glisten, casting a charm on me. the eyes with a touch of gold, the nose looking more rosey than it actually is. i just sit from a distance, staring, wanting to just small-ly pet them, but trying to be content with staring...

piled on top another, this extended family has my heart and all my attention. lest they might be hungry, do they need anything else? should i pour some more cat food into their bowl? as i type these words, i can suddenly out of nowhere smell their soft, moist furs. the care with which they lick it, love it, and keep licking it. oh the licking. its endlessness and vastness can only come be compared with the enormous space of time i spend on twitter. their shared leisure, this comfort brings me immense comfort and solace. their company making me feel a little bit noticed, needed and understood. at times, unable to stop myself, i try to reach out. but they prance, freak out, and run away. i heave a sigh of relief only when they return albeit a couple of hours later.

this cold, damp, stingy weather is beautiful for the moment. i'm loving the squalor i see on my walks. the comfort in seeing scattered leaves, droopy petals and moist tree barks. i'm almost always tempted to reach out and touch, but the thought of the virus takes a hold of me.

today it got misty, as i believe the rains began to recede. the nip in the air remained, but its going to get colder now. i love how the leaves don't scrunch under my feet any, how there seem to be fewer masks on the roads, and how there's small trickles of water flowing by the roadsides. soon, it'll be too cold for me to take my walks. and i will stay in, waiting for the cats to drop by...

mosquitoes buzzing in and out of my ears as my fingertips start getting cold now. after eight in the evening, as it starts getting colder, i sense an unseen osmosis around. a kind of an invisible tighten its presence and knitting us all with it. it seems to me that these cats in my balcony, the trees in my backyard, these mosquitoes in my room, the lizard on my window, are all a in fungal form of partnership. crocheted deeply, albeit invisibly, i discern a threadlike biosphere envelop and fuse with all forms of life, helping them extract helpful nourishment in exchange for some kind of a negligible nothing. this kind of imagination takes a hold of me, as my stomach starts to gurgle, rich in emptiness as the trees outside venture into deep slumber.

this web of roots and the way it perfectly blends not just with soil but anything that comes under it, has always been a sight i have loved to behold. its a way of nature telling us to be gentle, like water. to be flexible and forgiving. this also connects to plants, but i've never been too free around them to take note. however inane these associations might read, they feel utterly important to my mind.

this snatch from an NYT article comes to mind:

Carbon, water, nutrients, alarm signals and hormones can pass from tree to tree through these subterranean circuits. Resources tend to flow from the oldest and biggest trees to the youngest and smallest. Chemical alarm signals generated by one tree prepare nearby trees for danger. Seedlings severed from the forest’s underground lifelines are much more likely to die than their networked counterparts. And if a tree is on the brink of death, it sometimes bequeaths a substantial share of its carbon to its neighbors.

on that abrupt, as usual, note, here are some shares for this month, starting with articles i loved reading:
- https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/02/magazine/tree-communication-mycorrhiza.html
- https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v43/n01/james-wood/a-great-deaf-bear


here are essays of mine that came out in the last month:
- https://brevity.wordpress.com/2020/12/11/writing-nonfiction-as-an-indian-woman/
- https://lifestyle.livemint.com/relationships/it-s-complicated/finding-music-in-the-mundane-on-the-balcony-111607826150284.html
- http://blog.lareviewofbooks.org/essays/chai-stories-pandemic/
- https://lifestyle.livemint.com/relationships/it-s-complicated/my-year-of-reconnecting-with-reality-tv-111608897907403.html


music i've lived and clichedly loved:
- kishori amonkar's saheliya https://youtu.be/6UrHzt0qyd4 (listening to hindustani classical on rainy days and nights is a proverbial distinct territory unto its own)
- lots of bee gees
- abba in heaps


books i'm trying to walk through:
- taran khan's shadow city
- fatimah asghar's poems in if they come for us
- nowhere, Nitesh Mohanty's photobook


you can and should follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/anandi010
and more importantly, you should and must wear masks and adhere to home isolation

PS: say hello to that lizard behind your bed. drink lots of water and hydrate him as well :)