Warmth

 Have you ever felt the satisfaction of doing something you like?

Like reading a book under a mesmerizing sunset while sipping a hot cup of coffee, and the main character builds up their courage to finally confesses their undying love to their loved one, or like when the singer group you have been supporting for ages finally decides to hold a concert in your town and you get your hands on the barricade ticket? Well! That is my type of happiness.

Maybe your happiness will look like breaking free from the social norms and being yourself or watching your favorite show with your loved ones or starting to redo things you discontinued and finding out that it still feels like home, that it still feels like your thing to do. The satisfaction may differ based on the circumstances. But we all can agree that at least once in our lifetime, we are enthusiastic about several things.

Do you know what else we get this happiness and satisfaction from? By reminiscing our childhood days, those were precious parts of our life where whatever happened was forgotten the next day, leaving a trail for a new day. Whenever I, you, or anyone talks about their childhood we can all feel the traces of our grandparents present in every story. They were always there, in the background, in the shadows always feeling contempt from our mere presence.

Grandparents were always been our crime in partner. I can still remember the days when my grandma snuck chocolates in her saree for me because my mum refused to give me one. I still remember myself sulking in a corner and my grandma trying to console me. When I finally calmed myself, my grandma said "Ta Daaa!" and gave all those toffees to me.

Did I feel like a queen of the world at that moment? Well, you might have guessed right, I was so smug on that day, that I almost exposed my Grandma. She is the sweetest person I can think of.

I love mangoes and my grandma loves it too. I recall all those times I visited her, we would sit on the bench near the pond and eat mangoes talking about everything and nothing. This is our thing, we never took any other siblings of mine or even my mom with us. I will tell her about every friend of mine and she will tell me either spiritual stories or stories of her childhood days.

Every sibling and cousin of mine has a hate relationship with greens and I don't think any of you would like the spinaches and greens as a child either. Well, I am no exception. I hated greens too. But once, my grandma cooked it for me, I wanted to give it a try because of two reasons.

Reason Number One, obviously since I am Grandma's favorite (she said so) and I don't want to hurt her feelings.

Reason Number Two is because my Grandma was angry at me. After all, I misbehaved and I want to console her.

But the spinach is not disgusting when I ate it. It was not bitter at all, in fact, I liked it too much that I ate a half bowl. I can still remember her toothless grin when I said her cooking is my favorite. Sometimes she is strict with me, sometimes I feel angry at her but we always find our back to each other with stolen toffees and mangoes.

My grandma is an expert when it comes to making sweets, no one can ever compete with her. Not even my mom. Don't tell my mom about it though. I still vividly remember this one memory of mine where we are sitting in the kitchen and I was helping my grandma to make Somaesa, a sweet delicate that I particularly enjoy.

My grandma sitting near the window where the light is seeping from the window adorning her face and making her shine more than the golden ornaments she is wearing. Her voice echoes through the house as she sang me my favorite rhymes. And her eyes carefully intaking whether the sweet is turning out as she thought it would be. Her earrings dangling in the air as she swayed her head left and right mimicking me dramatically. This is one of my core memory that I want to cherish forever. 

When life seems so void and nothing felt right anymore, she made me realize how to find happiness from the small things. She showed me a world where everything does not have to be sad and we can still have hope. She made me the woman I am today. Even though our ideologies clashed with each other, she never forced her ways onto me and always will try to listen to me.

Not every good memory has to be exciting, it can be simple, it can be a calm moment and it can be anything. It was great walking down the memory pathway. It is like looking at an old collection of yours reminiscing each story behind it. I am going to end this letter with a quote from my day,

"When you are having a bad day and your mind is filled with negative thoughts, you will forget to enjoy all the small happy things out there. Don't think about anything too much. Just go with the flow."