This morning after a blissful walk in a beautiful garden, I asked my sister Geetu Gidwani Verma - who is a busy corporate executive and also an avid food and health enthusiast to define ‘Magic' and what it meant to her. So while we were sitting and soaking in the sights and sounds of 'Mother Nature' - here is what Geetu had to say.
“For years - actually, as long as I can remember, taking a speedy shower after a workout and before rushing to work, has been the norm. I remember speaking to a dear friend recovering after a long chemotherapy and he told me about the magic of bathing with no help, feeling the cool shower on his arms and revelling in the joy of a leisurely, 'independent', refreshing bath.
My dear friend, Nina, my childhood buddy and I used to walk back from school and pass a muddy pond where buffaloes waded and bathed and stared unblinkingly at life passing by. Nina and I had a ritual. We would stop at our favourite spot where we could stare back at the buffaloes, uninterrupted by rushing traffic and we would narrate one of our favourite poems by William Henry Davies:
' What is this life if full of care, we have no time to stand and stare. No time to stand beneath the boughs and stare as long as sheep and cows. No time to see when woods we pass, where squirrels hide their nuts in grass......'.
And we would break into giggles and peals of laughter when passers-by stopped to stare at the mad two 12-year-olds standing upright and reciting with passion and eloquence to the buffaloes.
Weekends too are packed with checklists before the week begins - one of them being my hair wash and blow dry with my one and only favourite hair dresser for whom I travel from Bandra to Worli.
This week is chutti (Holidays) after frenetic last some months. I took a leisurely shower yesterday with my favourite Gulzar album playing in the background, felt the cool water on my skin, let my hair dry out in the few hours of sun that peeked through the monsoon shower and walked out of the home with my natural curls, after almost a lifetime. No stylised blow dry look! Unlikely, many have seen my naturally curly hair which my family would love when I was a child. And I felt free, child-like.
At a family party that evening - my aunts, uncles and cousins couldn't get over the fact that their little Geetu was back.
So to me, Magic is in the simple joys - here, now, in the moment. We just need to open our eyes.”
Like Geetu, I hope you have many such magical moments.