Spring is here

Spring is here.

Over a year ago, a newly bought IKEA shelf in my balcony looked lonely in a corner with a few pots full of soil but no plants. Over the lockdown, I noticed how a tiny green vein started taking root in a white ceramic bowl. After tending to it over the summer and the winter, the little vein has grown into a long vine and started giving flowers and fruit. Little yellow flowers and a little tomato.

The tomatoes were an unexpected guest in an otherwise uneventful summer. The initial months of quarantine brought a weird sense of time to us all. Days turned into weeks. Weeks into months. Months into a year. A year that seems like a day. I remember some days but I remember so much else.

When I look back at the last year, I don’t particularly remember days. I remember a few moments. Around this time last year is when we stepped out into our balconies to clap our utensils in praise of the medics — something we could have done all through the year as the cases continued to rise.

I think back at the date announcement on the daily news podcast: “Today is … some date and here are the headlines.” I have missed hearing that. For over a year now, the podcast begins with “Today is … and the number of new cases and deaths recorded. Dates turned into statistical footnotes on the ever-rising logarithmic graph.

When I looked at my balcony before I clicked this photo, I realised that the only way I guess I could tell time has passed is by looking at these green beings. Sweet creatures who have survived a year when humans were locked in. I think of the nightingale who sang all summer and no traffic to silence her song. I think of the time I breathed in air not so toxic. I think of springtime that lasted all year to springtime again.

But now that spring is here, I cannot wait for the summer.