Over a year ago, when India first locked down in response to the pandemic, I got in touch with a friend who lived on his own. The “stranges...
Over a year ago, when India first locked down in response to the pandemic, I got in touch with a friend who lived on his own. The “strangest of times” we called them then, often we said “unprecedented”. As I asked him about how he was coping, he slowly revealed to me that he had begun to rely increasingly on a childhood toy, a teddy bear that had been with him for nearly three decades. It had moved with him from home to home, placed on a shelf or at the back of a cupboard, like any memento. But now he had begun to have conversations with it. In the absence of any other constant presence, it brought him a measure of comfort. He could endow it with a personality, make of it a patient, kindly creature who would share that small, boxed in life.
I was surprised at his honest revelations but did not make too much of them. It seemed like a harmless coping mechanism, drawing on a bit of fantasy and imagination. We were all trying to get by in different ways. To think back now to that time, when many had already suffered great trauma while we were...
