Verve People
Text by Akshaya Pillai. Illustration by Aishwaryashree
I wheel my chair away from my writing table and sit there for a second, detached, debating whether to shut the window. I have been listening to the 10-year-old who lives in the adjoining house mugging up a poem for the past 15 minutes. It is the urge to go on an endless rant about rote learning that takes me back to a conversation with Geetu Mohandas that took place over refills of Pepsi, a few months before the pandemic.
**********
In the 7th-floor apartment that opens its windows out to Kochi’s expanding cityscape, we sit on adjacent sofas and fidget with our devices, attempting to wrap our brains around the digital advancements meant to make life easier. “What milkshake would you like?” she asks, looking up from her phone, which, a few weeks after the release of her third…