The birds know before we do.
A few warm sunny days appear between the rains, and suddenly the compound walls become crowded again. There is hopping and fluttering and endless discussion taking place among leaves that are still drying from yesterday’s shower. Ants return to their routes with the seriousness of government departments reopening after a long holiday. Dry leaves gather under trees while beautiful fallen branches lie about with such elegance that moving them almost feels rude. Somewhere along the road comes the peek peek sound of tiny shoes taking important little steps towards equally important little destinations.
These days feel nostalgic to me.
The earth still smells faintly of rain, but the sunlight has already forgotten about it.
It is not the weather for a cool shower or for a warm sweater.
Breezy evenings make one reach out for a shawl almost absent-mindedly, and find exactly the one that belongs to evenings like these. Those charming ones with roses and yellow and blue borders. Silky browns that refuse to stay folded and slip through the fingers as though they have a personality of their own.
And perhaps because the mind wanders strangely on evenings like these, those borders and embroideries remind me of the beautiful fabrics spread over altars and prayer tables in Japanese and Chinese homes.
I have often wondered about them.
Where do they find such beautiful cloth?
They look so sacred and so beautiful…
A lamp sits differently upon such a fabric. A flower seems more intentional. A bell suddenly looks as though it has stories to tell. Beauty catches the eye. Sacredness persuades it to stay.
I believe that sacred spaces around a home are grounding and protectors in ways we probably understand without ever needing to explain them.
Not merely pooja rooms and altars. I mean the little places that quietly become important.
The vase that always belongs near a particular window. The corner of a table that somehow attracts beautiful things. The chair that slowly becomes the reading chair. The lamp next to it announces evening.
Little places where beauty is allowed to linger for no practical reason at all. Not everything sacred lives in a shrine. Some things seem happier near windows. Some prefer bookshelves. Some live beside doorways or settle into forgotten corners and quietly become part of the house itself.
Perhaps homes enjoy these small pauses scattered through them.
Where the house stops being merely a place we live in and becomes a place that lives with us.
Perhaps that is why some things never quite make it back into drawers.
They linger.
They migrate from shelf to windowsill and from table to bedside, and somehow survive every grand decluttering mission.
Not because they are useful or expensive.
Simply because they have become part of the geography of the home.
Perhaps every house has these little residents.
Little keepers of stories and holders of attention.
Tokens, perhaps.
And if they are tokens, perhaps they deserve their own little stage from time to time.
Which brings me to a delightful question.
If a token had a home, would it live in a Tokonoma?
Wait.
What exactly is a Tokonoma anyway?