Walking around the streets of London this crispy cold afternoon, all I could see were bobble hats. They were everywhere! A variety of bobbles sat on hats with stripy, plain and cabled knits. Some were clearly lovingly hand-knitted. There was a bright pink one with a sharply contrasting black pom-pom on top and jet black silky straight hair pouring out of both sides of a pretty little face underneath it. Some had lovely curls flowing out of them and some surely provided cover to bare scalps. The bobble hat has obviously made a place on the heads and in the hearts of men, women and kids this winter. Ears snugly tucked inside the hats must feel warm and deeply comforting. Some bobbles smoothly went past me on bicycles, some walked in pairs and others moved around in families! They were everywhere! The more I thought I was imagining it, the more real it became. After about half an hour of this, it got quite entertaining and became a kind of game – ‘Spot the Bobble’.

This evening as I browsed through some of Saagar’s pictures, I found one of him as a toddler wearing one. The bobble is only partially visible but I remember my mum made it for him.

He looked so cute wearing a tonne of clothes, standing in the snow. This is the day he saw snow for the first time. To my amazement, years later he remembered that I had stopped him from eating the snow that day.

“To love. To be loved.
To never forget your own insignificance.
To never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity of life around you.
To seek joy in the saddest places.
To pursue beauty to its lair.
To never simplify what is complicated or complicate what is simple.
To respect strength, never power.
Above all, to watch. To try and understand.
To never look away.
And never, never to forget.”
― Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living