Some Yarn, a Bottle of Milk and the Crushing Weight of the Universe

Home is a lot of things - the cozy corner you sip your tea in, the people you spend your weekends with, the sunlight through your window lighting up the pictures on your wall, the self-cooked slightly-burnt comfort meal, the cat who swears to get you the next time around.

It’s familiarity.

Over the last 2 weeks, I have been crocheting. Obsessively. Like there is a limited supply of yarn and I will run out of clothes if I don’t make some, like the three sisters of fate spin thread just for me. In short, I have been crocheting a lot.

You would never see it coming, but turns out, if you use yarn to crochet, at some point you will run out of yarn. And I had 3 work-in-progress projects that needed yarn of specific colors, so off I went to the yarn store to look at yarn and be surrounded by yarn and see how long it takes before someone gets annoyed by my excessive usage of the word ‘yarn’. I had a list of what I needed. Making lists is great because that way you know exactly how many things you forgot from the list and exactly how many unnecessary things you ended up buying.

When I stepped out of the store, my backpack was full with 13 bundles of yarn. I justified it to myself by thinking of the numerous things I could create with them. A scarf, a shoulder bag, a backpack with a side pocket, a unicorn plushie, an assortment of cat themed things - skill issue was the only problem.

This is not about the yarn, however, so let me get back on track. After buying seemingly all the yarn in the world, I needed to buy milk. You see, in my hometown Bengaluru, stores are open until late in the evening. I could walk into a store at 10PM and find what I wanted. A privilege I certainly took for granted back then. Now I live in a little French town where everything closes by 7:30, so I can’t afford to lose track of time. Based on how fast I walk and how fast I run and the bus schedule, I would need a combination of all three and divine intervention to make it in time to my usual supermarket.

My options were skipping breakfast the next day (what am I without my morning coffee?) or meandering into unfamiliar territory. I found the nearest supermarket 2 minutes away. I stepped in and took one look. There was too much going on and my eyes did not know what to take in. ‘I felt overwhelmed’ is an understatement. It felt criminal to be overwhelmed in a supermarket in my own town - the town I’ve been living in for a year and a half, the place I now call home. I could read and understand the signs, I could ask for help in the local language. None of these logical explanations helped my overwhelmed brain. My eyes wandered very rapidly trying to take in all the unfamiliar brand names and unfamiliar products. Who decided that orange juice goes next to the ketchup bottles?

After doing 3 rounds of the supermarket and concluding that they had a poor selection of chocolates, I found the milk. I bought it, sighed a breath of relief and I wanted to leave immediately. I rushed to the exit and the sign caught my eye, ‘store closes at 8’. It was 7. I had an hour. After a complex internal debate, I decided to familiarize myself with the store. I did some more rounds of the store, found a nice multi-color multi-flower plant and fell in love immediately and bought it. It was strange to see cold coffee in the yogurt section, but it was nice that the blini and hummus were in the same refrigerator. They sold soil along with the plants but the plant supplements were with vitamin supplements. Who designed this store?

After picking up a few more things that I did not plan to buy, I was ready to leave. The next time my long lost childhood friend visits me, I could bring her here and answer all her questions about where to find what. I exited with 2 grocery bags in hand, mentally patting my own back for accomplishing the milk buying mission. Until I walked out and saw the bunch of people returning their shopping carts like it’s part of their daily routine.