This Saturday, my sister drives up from Hartford, Connecticut, scoops me up and drives us back to her beautiful home.

Bins wants a full report. “It’s amazing,” I say. “I wake up to the sounds of many voices! And they’re not just in my head!” He says, “That’s it? That’s the only thing that’s different between being completely alone versus surrounded by other humans?” Of course not, I tell him. My sister’s daughter, son-in-law and two lively grandchildren live with her in her multi-level home. On account of Covid-19, everyone’s at home all the time.

“The biggest difference is the sense of being seen by others,” I say, after thinking about it for a few minutes. “When I’m alone, I don’t think about what I look like, because there’s no one to see me.” My home in Elsewhere has just one mirror and it’s on the cabinet in the bathroom. Unless I’m in there, I don’t see myself and even then, only from the shoulders up. “Now, suddenly, I have to remember that there’s more to me than just head and neck!”

Bins says, “Huh. Okay. I have Bambi to remind me that I exist.” Bambi is my nickname for the young guy who cooks and goes grocery-shopping for Bins. He’s from the hills and has an air of unspoiled innocence about him. Hence the name. “But it’s not just Bambi,” says Bins. “There’s the house next door, which is still under construction and the workers there wave to me now and then. There’s the garbage-collection guy who comes once a week. There’s the crazy doctor next door. They all say ‘hi!’ when they see me.”

By contrast, I hardly ever see anyone in the six-unit old building in which I live, and no one sees me. Now, suddenly, all that’s changed! I go downstairs in the morning and two pairs of eyes swivel in my direction. “Hi Auntie Manjula!” say the little owners of the eyes, adding, “Nice pyjamas!” Wow. I look down at myself in surprise. Really? They’re from Anokhi, light cotton with a pretty all-over leafy print. True enough, they ARE rather nice!

“Uh-oh,” says Bins. “Don’t let it go to your head. The kids are just grateful to see someone new in their house.” I tell him, so long as I’ve got him to talk to on a daily basis, there’s no chance I’ll ever suffer from a swollen head. “But it’s also wonderful to be able to step outside,” I say. There’s a deck at the back, covered with flowering plants, with a vista of trees, other homes and shrubbery. “There’s a new bird feeder,” I say, always very active, with gold finches, house finches and sparrows squabbling over the perches. “You would love it,” I say to him.

“That sounds nice,” he says, a little wistfully. I send him a video, from the other side of the planet, of pretty, fluttering birds. “Thanks,” he says, sounding far away.

Manjula Padmanabhan, author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

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