That Stranger in the opposite flat

when I cook I read stories

I wonder if the woman who is washing utensils and cooking knows whats in my mind when she sees me from her window.

She is the only other face which I get to see, apart from my family. Sometimes her friend is there too helping her with cooking or cleaning, sometimes I find him alone in the kitchen scrubbing the window.

Silent faces looking at each other from the kitchen window and lost in the meditative task of cooking, cleaning, chopping, scrubbing and infusing love in the ingredients simmering in the kitchen.

Her kitchen looks stocked up, I can see various sauces on her kitchen shelf maybe she can see the small spice bottles which litter my kitchen slab and sometimes she inhales the aroma of whole spices when they splutter, when cumin marries caramelised onion or a pinch of garam masala takes the fragrance afar.

Maybe sometimes she craves to eat that curry or hears me telling my son why he is lingering in the kitchen during study time. Maybe she knows there are three people in my home,weekends she must have seen him helping me with cooking.

Maybe she knows weekends my kitchen looks crowded and busy because weekends I spend more time cooking.

It’s been a month and we have become silent faces who are reading each other. She is that stranger who tells me it’s okay to be confined in our home and keep calm, she is that stranger whose name I don’t know but get to see each day.

Thanks to the kitchen window.