I have been home for a while.
My last travel was in October and that was quite a road trip – a trail from Gwalior to Satna through Chanderi, Orchha, Khajuraho, Panna and Rewa. An immersive, intensive experience of northern Madhya Pradesh. Simply fabulous.
My last travel was in October and that was quite a road trip – a trail from Gwalior to Satna through Chanderi, Orchha, Khajuraho, Panna and Rewa. An immersive, intensive experience of northern Madhya Pradesh. Simply fabulous.
Since then, I've just been home, writing up the stories and... simply being home. Domesticity is a never ending job and I find that the concerns of the domestic life are what you might call choranaptyxic in nature – able to grow or shrink in order to fit available (mind)space. They diminish when I have 'bigger' things on my mind, but grow fairly demanding otherwise. I have taken care of a pile of leaves in the corner of the garden, hosed down a termite mound that was predating on the jasmine climber and I have made plans for the beetroot that are a week old and sitting heavily on my conscience. I am ahead of the curve.
Just the time for this quotidian observation from the Lucknow poet Sushma A. Singh.
winter chill
I press harder
on the rolling pin
I press harder
on the rolling pin
A feminine slice of life.
About the little things.
A small detail, a small blip in the pattern with an activity that is repeated perhaps every single day.
It is colder. Even if you have mixed the atta with a little tepid water, the dough is hard. Rolling out the rotis calls for a little extra.
4 comments:
Damn useful exercise really, to see the mindscape shrink and expand the world, and see that it is the mindscape either way.
That is true! The stubbornly persistent illusion.
choranaptyxic: I had to re-read a few times to wrap my head around this word! Yet, makes perfect sense. Looking forward to reading your MP stories!
Vimla
Hi Vimla! So nice to hear from you.
I loved that word! Did you look it up? Made up, I learnt, by the ever-adventurous JK Rowling, and I was really taken with the beautiful choranaptyxic occamies in Fantastic Beasts .
The MP stories will be up on Outlook Traveller's Responsible Tourism website. I'll link to them, or at least a few of them when they're up.
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