Last year, in the spring, I couldn’t get out of bed for a month; post COVID, a real slump, no appetite, no movement, no life. Outside my room in Matheran, where I was recuperating, birds sang—the sky an immersive blue, the forest a jewel of wisdom. Meanwhile, I felt like death. Specialists I’d met in Mumbai hospitals prescribed medicines that felt toxic, far worse than my ailment. In the peculiar, educative isolation of a long sickness—when you feel like you’re a bull in a holding pen—I knew I had to clean myself out, rinse my cells, while assessing the  fraying bits.

One afternoon, I lay on the forest floor, ready, finally, to submit.