2022 couldn’t have begun on a grimmer note. A fresh surge of Covid-19 meant Delhi was put under a partial lockdown. To add to the misery, the sky cracked open and peppered the city with sinister winter rains for days.
As the mercury plunged, so did my spirits.
I would wake up early and listless, but drained of any will to leave my bed, go to the washroom on the other side of the terrace in my barsati and get on with the day.
Then the flowers bloomed. First, it was a dash of the marigolds’ yellow, then a burst of the chrysanthemum’s lavender. The delicate purple of the calendulas followed, soon to be joined by the explosion of the dahlia’s red. The calm pink of the bouganville swept through the terrace, now drenched in colours that made the patter of the rain melodic and the cold bearable.
The sun came out soon enough too. The lockdown eased. Friends came over. We sat on second-hand cane chairs by the flowers, ate oranges, drank punch, and smiled again.
As the year progressed, most of them wilted, some of them eaten whole by a marauding pack of monkeys who still find it difficult to believe that I don’t live rent-free in what was their home once.
As another year begins under the shadow of a fresh threat of the virus, a new batch of colours are gingerly starting to peer out the buds once again. The monkeys have set their sights on them – but I hope some will survive and make me smile each time I step out of my room on the roof.
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