Hi everyone, like promised, I will start writing again. Please bear with me as I come back to my writing spree. In that time, I am sure that there will be blunders. What I realise is, it takes time to come to your natural way of writing. You keep clarifying your thoughts till you come to a place where you get the aha! moment.
Grandma left along with grandpa to our house in the city after the floods. (My parents live there) That also means that my food habits have changed.
Her presence is easily forgotten when she is here. You don’t have to think about making food when she is around. To feed bellies is something that comes to her naturally and she does it with utmost love and care. Anyone remembers their grandma? I am guessing that all grandmas are the same around the world.
Strangely though, I find myself more calm and peaceful. Maybe it was the constant chatting that I had to do when they were around. I don’t know what exactly it is, but it feels good. I am alone, sitting in the backyard for the past three days. Just my coffee, plants and breeze. What else does a man need? No, we need people, I don’t doubt that, but sometimes it's too much work. I figure that we hardly get any time to be silent - at least here in India we don’t. I know that in the west even in the urban centres here in India- where families are becoming nuclear - there’s always silence. You crave to be around someone, but here we have the opposite problem. There’s too many people to talk to.
I know now why the saints went astray and found the most remote places to build their dwelling. It’s nature and you and that’s it. No-one can disturb you there. Maybe this silence - and yes you have to accept that silence - brings you to a deeper connection with yourself. I have been feeling like myself for the first time in months. This internal dialogue was somewhere missing. I knew there was something wrong. This was it.
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So what do you do? You’d ask. I sit. I contemplate. I see the weather changing its colours. Every time the sun shines, the birds come out to find food. They go silent whenever it starts raining. I hear their sounds and it feels magical to just be and witness all this. We have forgotten to be silent. These screens push us into a space which never allows us to be here, in the moment. A monk once told me, “silence is constant - we speak because we don’t know how to sit in silence.” Today I realise what he meant.
I wake up. Get in and heat the milk that the milkman has delivered in a tiny bag. I pluck a papaya from the garden or from the neighbours garden, if there is none on ours. That is my breakfast. Once my coffee is done, I go to my neighbour to drink millet soup - which almost tastes like a salty porridge. Then I come in my backyard and sit in silence once again.
Yesterday I was invited by our neighbouring grandma, Savithri, to come have dinner with her. It is a blessing that this kind of love and affection still exists. I wonder then, how unnatural it is to not be kind? How ignorant it is to not be loving?
Sometimes I think we’ve overcomplicated what it means to live well. In chasing ambition, building futures, and proving ourselves, we’ve stepped too far from the basics. A warm plate of food made with care. A short walk under trees after it rains. A neighbour calling your name from over the fence. A cow looking at you like it understands everything. That’s life too. Maybe, that’s the real life.
Out here, sitting in silence with just the garden and the sky, I feel like I’m slowly coming back to myself. Not as a writer, or a farmer, or someone doing something “noble,” but just as a person. A simple human being—breathing, feeling, noticing. We don’t realise how fragmented we become when we don’t take time to just sit. Just be. No agenda. No screen. No curated self.
Writing again feels like I’m dusting off a part of myself that had quietly gone missing. But I’m not here to make noise. I’m here to listen more—to myself, to the world around me, to people like Savithri who still cook without needing a reason, and to the wind that keeps showing up uninvited, like an old friend.
I don’t know where this writing will take me. Maybe nowhere, and that’s fine too. Not everything has to lead somewhere. Maybe some things exist just to be experienced, and writing might be one of them. A kind of slow dance with thoughts. A slow exhale.
If you’re still reading, thank you for meeting me in this small corner of the world. This isn’t a newsletter, it’s more like a backyard we can sit in together. Quietly. Without expectations.
So, I’ll keep writing. Slowly, clumsily, lovingly. I’ll burn the milk once in a while. I’ll eat too many papayas. I’ll get carried away talking to birds. But I’ll also return here, to write, to reflect, to remember.
Until then, let’s be softer than we were yesterday.
Let’s live a little quieter, love a little louder.
And let’s not forget—this too is enough.
With love,
Ash
I know many read this and press escape, but if you really like what I do, then please go on to support me by donating or buying me a coffee. Substack doesn’t let me monetize my articles because I am based in India. Your payments give me the most important thing - time! That helps me to work on bringing joy to the rural community where I am based. Your donations will help me build this eco-commune faster. It will help me employ more people. Thanks!