I miss……so I wish!

On a lethargic afternoon as I snuggled into my sofa with the latest edition of the India today magazine, a very lazy thought drifted into my mind before I could connect with the articles I was planning to read.

Oft lately, I have been thinking thoughts which do not classify as melancholy but thoughtfully structured to dissect the general ‘emotional-viral’ I have been experiencing lately, much like the wide-spread medical viral prevalent in my city, in the past weeks.

And fortunately, there’s no one thing or person which has contributed to this scepticism. Those who know me, would heave a sigh of relief and whisper as they read this line – Thank goodness!

As the afternoon progressed and the clock sluggishly tick-tocked away, I wished for a million things…..

I wished the weather was predictable and winter gave way to a small spring and a strong summer and the rains came on time and stayed for several months before they bought in the ‘gulabi’ (rose-petal like) winters which gave way to the severe ones.

I wished the sun did not give me photodermatitis when I went out in it, two days continuously and I did not have to apply steroidal medicine to contain the inflammation.

I wished the milk still came in glass bottles with foil caps and wire baskets and not in plastic bags.

I wished we did not have to think whether our vegetables were full of pesticides or organic and then end up spending a bomb on the latter because the scare was real.

I wished our fruits & vegetables were always available according to the season and not an apple throughout the year or a lady’s finger even in winter.

I wished all our fruits which we grew up with were still found in abundance – the ‘nabshai’ grapes of the Deccan plateau, the oranges of Nagpur, the sugar cane of western Uttar Pradesh, the Dussheri mango of the summer season, the Amari apples of Kashmir, the fresh apricots of Himachal.

I wished that food made at home was still the most preferred and our kids needn’t have to study one semester abroad to love their Mom’s cooking.

I wished that our straightforward lifestyles, followed by most households, which followed a routine would not be found in fancy bestsellers.

I wished that to be happy and to be able to deal with everything including failures we would not have to go to posh & ornate gatherings and shell out large monies to understand something which being with family and standing in for each other would have been taken care off, free of cost.

I wished that teaching would have remained something which was done by choice and with the heart for the children, with them and because of them rather than for ratings and awards and commercial success.

I wished success would have been left to mean what it did when we grew up – something which gave us happiness and kept us grounded and allowed time for those things which mattered in life.

I wished for more greener spaces which were clean so that a walk & a jog could be done under the blue sky with fresh oxygen rather than on an elevated machine with a contraption cooling air, something we cannot live without these days.

I wished for more real friends who meant what they said and said what they meant.

I wished that the highest one got hurt was because of someone who did not sit with us or did not talk with us because we got a prize or someone more chic joined school as a new student & everyone wanted to be friends with just them.

I wished family functions and weddings were occasions to reconnect and relive childhood memories rather a one-upmanship about the spending behind the décor, the huge variety of food, most of which is not even consumed, the drapes on the body, on the necks and the wrists rather than the meeting of the minds and families.

I wished neighbours knew each other more intimately and more than a greeting in the lift, each morning or evening.

I wished that appreciation given had more heart and less mind and was given as before when someone touched our lives in ways we did not expect.

I wished we would be bounteous and selfless in our relationships of all kinds, looking at them without putting on the mercenary goggles.

A terrible rumbling of the thunder outside on a mid-October day shook me out of my reverie and I knew not what to do with my wish list.

A Blog seemed the only way to save my thoughts for posterity, for when will I be a grandma and whenever I’d be, would the beyond millennium generation want to listen to tales from an old woman?

I doubt. But yet! I wished, again.