Apathetically yours, yet foes forever

Talk of taking your own sweet time, of paying no heed (actually quite ignoring it) to the calendar! Yes, here I speak of the very late setting in of the much-awaited Delhi winter.

- RENEE RANCHAN

Till last Sunday, people had not shed their Tshirts and thin cottons, and air-conditioners remained at full-blast—a rather dispiriting feeling considering half of November was quite over. Yes, and so have been in the grips of the fish-outof-water feeling. Would we be skipping winter and heading straight to another prolonged oven-hot summer?! With all this going on in my head, and with my deliciously warm winter wear staring back at me when I’d open my wardrobe, I had not for over the past many days been able to gather my thoughts, or rather collect thoughts of any kind, to sit down with pen in hand to fill up this space. And then, yesterday morning while thankfully being able to plug in the electric chimney in the drawing room—the one that showcases orangered flames I knew exactly what my pen wanted to fill up on the blank white sheet. (Before letting this pen, raring to go, must mention how lovely it would be to have a real fireplace to toast one’s hands instead of this outand-out artificial one!) Now say we at last get started… Sibling rivalry has, I guess been there, to sound clichétic, since time immemorial and it exists, even thrives, in cataclysmic dimensions but then now the contention has been compounded with sibling indifference! Now don’t even begin to wonder how apathy and envy can go hand-in-hand! Dried out sponges, that couldn’t care a rat’s tail if the brother on the bunk above is coughing himself hoarse or didn’t have the time of the day to ask the sister why she was contemplating a divorce… Emotional dehydration, an off-shoot of being on social media—Insta, Snapchat, X and all other possible platforms. It’s a common sight— phone in hand, gormlessly walking while uploading “stories of one’s life” heading straight into a railing—