A window into a screen-less day

I didn't pick up my phone and the world unravelled

This flash essay is part of a collaborative, constrained-writing challenge undertaken by some members of the Bangalore Substack Writers Group. This month, we used the prompt, ‘A Window Into…’. At the bottom of this snippet, you’ll find links to other essays by fellow writers.

I get a phantom itch in my thumb from the muscle memory of scrolling, and the moment I decide not to scratch it, the world unravels in front of me. My window into the life that is mine, on unborrowed time.

I sit from across my son and realise just how much more there is to his childhood than the squeals I hear in the background while typing away into a lifeless device. I actually see the way he holds his breath when he’s concentrating, the way his small hands are learning the physics of gravity with his blocks, all the failures before he shows me the finished stack tower.

I see the way his brow furrows in a perfect imitation of his father’s, and it warms me up the same way as the January sun blazing through my windows.

When you aren’t rushing for a notification, you let the light in for a little longer. I noticed today that the sun has started to rise a little more to the east than it did in the dead of winter. It now illuminates a corner of the balcony that reveals a cluster of spiders nesting peacefully above my AC vents — a tiny, busy civilisation I would have mindlessly swept away otherwise.

In the dining hall, this shift in the light now hits the dining table at an angle that exposes every scratch and water ring in the wood, creating a map of every meal we’ve shared over the past day or maybe year, and forgotten. Forgotten, along with the dust settling on the fan above it. Along with the chest of drawers with a box hanging slightly open, just enough to be unremembered. As my gaze shifts to it, I realise how, when we don’t remember, we don’t repair.

Past the window, the Red silk-cotton tree nests the largest eagle I have ever set my eyes on. It sits there, ancient and still. Seeing it reminds me of their near-extinction, which reminds me of the role we play in it. It’s uncomfortable to realise that when we are distracted, we are also indifferent. When we notice, we are more accountable. We are more human.

It’s a strange thing how the phone makes the world feel small but solid, but the moment you put it down, the world becomes vast and fragile.

It’s the same way our hearts shifted as we became parents this past year. Growing vast enough to hold a whole new love between us, yet fragile enough to let our old selves break to make room for something more beautiful.

I look at my husband now, expecting to see a face worn thin by the sleepless night we’ve just survived. But he catches my eye and smiles, and instead of looking back at a screen, I let myself be pulled into him.

Without the phone, the “in-between” moments stop being things to kill and start being things to inhabit.

I notice the way my mother puts her makeup on now, more like an aged woman than an ageing one, and it breaks my heart, but also reminds me that I am lucky to be a witness to it, to share the intimacy of the years that have softened her.

I notice that my own hands look older than I remember them. The skin is a bit more in need of a moisturiser than last year, a bit more like my mother’s. The room begins to fill up with quiet, rather loudly.

In the moment, I notice the hum of the refrigerator, a mechanical pulse you can feel through the soles of your feet, a steady, electric heartbeat for a house that is finally quiet enough to be heard. I start walking towards it just when the last floorboard in the bedroom creaks. A house is settling into its own bones. Finally being seen.

As is the old woman, standing on the balcony opposite ours, wearing a crinkled cotton saree in the most beautiful shade of a crushed jamun. I watch her make the most of the afternoon, as her fingers move with a practised patience and untangle the knots in her hair before straightening them out leisurely with her wooden comb.

There is no rush to get to the next thing. For both her and, inadvertently, also me.

The window into a screen-less world really requires you to be here for it.

I’ve been putting these words down from my heart, not knowing who they might find. That they’ve found you feels like a quiet kind of luck. Thank you for reading.

Between diaper changes and half-done drafts, I write about love and the ways it shapes us. Coffee helps me make it to both.

If you enjoyed reading, you can fuel my next piece with a cup:

Here are other essays by fellow Bangalore Substack writers:

The window that looks back, by Vaibhav Gupta, Thorough and Unkempt

A window into the vegetable market by Rakhi Kurup , Rakhi’s Substack

A window Into Permission: The FIRE Number by Shruti Soumya, Same Here

A window into the fixity and flux by Amit Charles

A window into a person who shivers on stage by Mihir Chate, Mihir’s Substack

A window into a life on a sabbatical by Ritika Arora, Ritika Arora – Medium

A window into bendy morals by Amit Kumar, EarlyNotes

A window into Kalimpong by Karthik Ballu, Reading This World by Karthik

A window into what makes a great Quiz Question by Rajat Gururaj, I came, I saw, I floundered

Still Looking By Spandana, Spandana’s Substack

Three Windows in a Week By Nidhi, General In Her Labyrinth