Everyday Moments (# SOL- 2020)

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 last week I am sending my letters by e mail to my cousin’s wife. She is reading them to my Doddamma.

2-06-2020

Problems are increasing everywhere. What has happened in America brings home to us about the evils of inequality all over the world. Our country has become the 7^thhighest infected country in the world. In our place, cases are increasing and lockdown is being lifted. We read in the papers that the borders of our capital are being sealed. Life will be terrible for those countless people who have lost their jobs. Locusts have destroyed vegetation all along their path of flight. Not only locusts, we human beings too are destroying so much in our planet. It was sad to read that those in charge of looking after the environment have been surreptitiously approving long pending ‘developmental’ projects inside protected areas of our country. Will people ever learn?

We have been getting rains from the 31^st. But these rains are due to depression in the Arabian sea and a cyclone is to hit the coasts of Maharashtra and Gujarat to our northwest. Our monsoon season will start in a day or two as the south west monsoon has hit Kerala, to the south of us.  Nature has her own rules.

It feels there is no end to problems. In the midst of this we have to lead our everyday life.

I have been stitching a cover for our TV on cross stitch material. While stitching I listen to Sherlock Holmes on Audibles. These stories were written in a different time but they have not aged. They are as fascinating as ever. It is now 3.30 in the evening and it is raining heavily. The birds have taken shelter somewhere, otherwise at this time I hear them chattering loudly and exchanging news of the day 😊. Now I am hearing the sound of rain. That too is soothing in its way. We need these rains.

Last month I had stitched salwar kameez for myself. When we stitch our clothes, there is always enough material left to stitch something else. In the past few months I had been seeing ladies wearing kameez stitched by using different materials. I did this and now I have a kameez which I can wear with three different salwars 😊. It is satisfying to create something different.

On the 29^th the gas in our cylinder finished. We have two cylinders. We fixed the regulator to the new one and I was horrified to see that gas was leaking. I called our gas agency and they said they would send a replacement soon. Our neighbour was kind enough to give a cylinder. Afternoon when we got our cylinder we asked the delivery man to give the new cylinder there. Meanwhile the defective cylinder was replaced. How I wish problems could be fixed so easily. But, they are not.

Life is going on, the ordinary and the extraordinary. 

https://www.deccanherald.com/specials/insight/flood-of-approvals-by-wildlife-board-sets-the-stage-for-a-crisis-843791.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shalwar_kameez

https://www.indiatoday.in/india/story/cyclone-nisarga-path-tracker-landfall-rain…