Humour by Rehana Munir: Small mercies

You don’t have to subscribe to ‘toxic positivity’ to revel in the little things, while we are caught in the second wave of the pandemic

It’s one of those summer days in the mountains that confuse my 100 per cent coastal heart. Afternoon rainclouds hover over the hills, dressed fashionably in black, and dissolve into a soft rain. By the evening, there’s a flashy display of thunder and lightning, all swag and bluster, like a high-visibility celeb war on Twitter. A verditer flycatcher has gently taken up its favourite spot on a parakeet-dominated tree, its soft blue feathers comically counterpointed by the Zorro-like mask around its eyes. Small mercies. They’re (still) everywhere.

Now that the bright future we were all racing towards has been (temporarily) obscured, there’s some time to ponder (Parth Garg)

SOPs from Siberia

Yes, even the dreary flat you never leave has distinct possibilities for this fleeting variety of joy. This despite your hellish building secretary issuing lockdown injunctions that resemble SOPs from a Siberian prison. Don’t get me wrong. I’m a lifelong opponent of what is now starting to be called ‘toxic positivity’– a strain of optimism that doesn’t allow for the tiniest speck of despair or dejection. I find homilies like ‘Everything happens for the best’ to be infuriating. No, the universe is not looking out for me; it’s merely indifferent. Far from being deflating, this submission to the un-laws of randomness has infinite uses, not least during this unrelenting pandemic.

Now that the bright future we were all racing towards has been (temporarily?) obscured, there’s some time to ponder. Before I too begin to sound like a life coach or an Insta prophet, let me quote from The Hours, the stunning 2002 film based on the Mrs. Dalloway-inspired novel by Michael Cunningham. “I remember one morning getting up at dawn. There was such a sense of possibility. You know, that feeling. And I... I remember thinking to myself: So this is the beginning of happiness, this is where it starts. And of course there will always be more... never occurred to me it wasn’t the beginning. It was happiness. It was the moment, right then.”

Is that a symptom?

So, yes. There is the pesky building secretary, making your blood boil with his injunctions around house help and the dangers of vagrant cats. There are the incessant requests for oxygen and hospitals and caregivers and support. And there’s the lurking symptom you’re not able to fully acknowledge or ignore, which could be anything from a vague tingling in your little toe to a near sneeze at 4pm every day. In between, you receive a barrage of memes that ranges from the sweetly distracting to the supremely dark. Absolutely necessary for survival. You try to give your days some semblance of shape, but it’s about as easy as lining a garbage can with a too-small bag. Or dusting that bookshelf you’ve been meaning to since March 2020. Or distancing yourself from your phone for even five minutes. Pro tip: Don’t even try.

What I am managing is to focus on small mercies. Only a few minutes ago, I successfully took the clothes off the washing line, moments before the previously-mentioned afternoon rain descended. I cannot rescue humanity from this biblical scourge, but there was some pleasure to be had from saving my drying clothes from a squall.

A toast to bread

Which brings me to my current obsession – bread and butter. I recently managed to lay my greedy hands on a few slices of a cranberry and walnut loaf, pushed them into a creaky toaster and slathered them with obscene amounts of butter. In her volume of autobiography, Curriculum Vitae, the brilliantly wicked novelist Muriel Spark, best known for The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, spends a significant number of early pages on the bread and butter of her childhood years in Scotland. I get the sentiment.

After living a rich and creative life, spanning literary feats that even floored stalwarts like Graham Greene; personal debacles like a disastrous first marriage that took her to Zimbabwe for a while; and political travails like her bizarre involvement in Britain’s WWII anti-Nazi effort, this is what still rises to the surface of her vivid imagination: the heavenly smell of bread wafting in from a rustic bakery. If you’re reading this while sipping on some adrak chai or aromatic coffee, do give that classic breakfast pairing a fresh chance as a stopgap response to the big, unsolvable questions of our times.

Follow @rehana_munir on Twitter and Instagram

From HT Brunch, May 16, 2021

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