My weekly Slice of Life are my letters to my Doddamma. She is my father’s elder brother’s wife. Doddamma literally means ‘elder mother’. She is 89 years old. She cannot hear properly if I telephone to talk to her. So, I have been writing letters to her since October 2017. I enjoy writing letters and she is happy to read them. They are only about the everyday moments in my life. Since the last week of March I am sending my letters by e mail to my cousin’s wife. She is reading them to my Doddamma.
25-05-2020
Today we read in the papers that our country is in the top ten infected countries. Everywhere cases are increasing, I wonder where it will end. I was reading in the papers about tests being done on mice, then on monkeys before being tested on humans. I wonder who gave us the right to experiment on other animals?
We are reading about swarms of locusts moving across many states in the northern part of our country. They are destroying all crops and other vegetation on the way. Then there was the devastation caused by the super cyclone to the eastern part of our country. It was heart breaking to read about the problems faced by the differently abled during the lockdown. I don’t think anyone will forget 2020. But acts of kindness and wisdom give us hope. It was nice to read about villagers cleaning a river and others digging wells and desilting ponds for rain water harvesting.
When I read about the troubles everywhere, our everyday life seems so trouble free. So many questions keep coming to mind and there are no answers to them. There is a mango tree very near our roof and there are a lot of dry leaves there. My husband cleaned the roof because once the rains start the water will not flow down easily. We had thought there were only two jackfruits in our tree but we saw four more. They are high up so we will have to be careful while plucking when the time comes to pluck them. Yesterday my husband plucked the banana cluster from the banana plant. We use the stem of the plant too in some dishes.
My father-in-law passed away on March 24th. Every month we have to offer prayers on a date told by our family priest till the first anniversary of his passing away. On the 22nd we offered prayers, we invited one close friend for lunch. It is a tradition to offer food to a guest on such occasions. I wore a sari after two months 😊. This was gifted by my younger brother and sister-in-law in December. It is a cotton sari, beautiful and comfortable.
Today morning I stitched a cover for my son’s chair using the patchwork pieces my mother had joined. It looks bright and nice. Outside too the world is hot and bright. We are waiting for the monsoon season which will hopefully begin in the next two weeks.
I was talking to my cousin yesterday evening. She lives near New Jersey. Life is the same everywhere. Things that happened last year seem to have happened aeons ago. Life is so different now. Nature has put a very big brake on human activities.
“A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feeling as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”
― Albert Einstein
https://www.deccanherald.com/opinion/panorama/invisible-minority-in-tatters-839623.html
Mukhamani 
Comments are welcome :)