Expect The Unexpected!

Dear Readers,

This week saw Mumbai enveloped in a cold embrace, with the mercury plummeting to the season’s lowest – hitting 13.2 degrees Celsius at the start of the week. While some welcomed this chilly change, others preferred to stay huddled in their baugs and homes, as the India Meteorological Department (IMD) reasoned the sudden dip as a combination of factors, including a cyclonic circulation over North-West India.

A couple of days before the cold set in, several parts of the city received unseasonal rains – an unexpected and surprising occurrence that took place even in the recent past months of November and December! Then again, if there’s one lesson that’s been ingrained in us irrevocably, over the last two years, it’s to expect the unexpected. Starting with this shocker of a pandemic, and then continuing ad nauseum, into a never-ending string of scary mutations – the latest star of this two-years-and-going-strong sordid saga being the Omicron, which is unexpectedly contagious!

Rightly has it been said – sometimes we let life guide us, and at other times, we take charge of the steering wheel and we take life by the horns. Even so, one fact stands crystal clear – no matter how organized we are, or how well we plan and prepare, we can always expect the unexpected.

But whether it’s the chill in the air or the cold curve of covid that we’ve been trying to navigate, let’s ensure to keep our hearts ever warm, with gratitude for all that we have going for us during these times – be it a steaming cuppa hot chocolate on a cold, cold day or the laughter and cackle of loved ones during humanity’s coldest, most isolating phase ever – with all the confining, social distancing and quarantines. We may never know what life could suddenly pop up next to freeze our sensibilities, but we know the cure to even the most unexpected malady lies within a warm heart. After all, like Albert Camus put it, “In the depth of winter I finally learned that there was in me an invincible summer.”

Have a good weekend!

– Anahita