It is ironic how a broken pair of spectacles opened my eyes to see the beauty (once again) in stepping out and doing little chores, like visiting a decades-old optician in an old-town centre lane instead of using some app-based, convenient service to schedule a doorstep pickup to fix my broken glasses. The person who greets me at the optician is kind and helpful, he promises that he will sort out the issue as soon as possible and gives me an estimated waiting time of around 15-20 minutes. That is how long he thinks it will actually take to fix the issue and not because he is trying to sell me some cheap labour exploitation as “efficiency”. He offers me some chai and water while I wait. As I politely decline and sit down on a bench, it suddenly hits me that it had been years since I was last spontaneously offered chai at a shop while I waited. I wonder what would have happened if I hadn’t decided to go in-person to the optician that day and wasn’t reminded of one of these previously-ubiquitous-and-now-suddenly-absent basic daily human experiences – how long before I eventually lost all memory of experiencing these very normal things. These are things I would do and experience regularly as a child and teenager. Another recent encounter, with what feels like artificially-engineered reminiscence (because it doesn’t seem natural for human experiences that were normal only a few years ago to turn into a cobweb in a dark corner behind the cupboard so quickly), reunited me with the feeling of unscheduled excitement derived from the smallest of things. Walking down a street one day, I discover an old paper mart and turn around and stop to excitedly ask the sweet, old uncle if they had a particular edition of a magazine. The next thing I know, he is chatting me up and asking me if I’d like to see and sift through his entire Tinkle collection. In return, I ask him about the cat that is sleeping on a table outside his store.Illustration: Pariplab ChakrabortyThe cat lying there as a centre piece is surrounded by the neatly stacked piles of different newspapers, like an altar to the god of ‘everyday little things’. Overwhelmed, I ponder that cats may have nine lives but I only have the one so I need to do more, read more, learn more (and not from reels), and I immediately proceed to buy the latest issues of Caravan and Frontline magazines.I vow to make a more concerted effort to turn this into a regular activity. The next time I go on my quest for finding this lost jewel – the joy of little things – I have an additional side quest of getting a printout. While I wait at the small roadside printout stall, I see a man, holding a ten-rupee note in his hand, walk purposefully to the stall and in a smooth motion, hand the note to the shop lady. He enquires if his newspaper of choice is available and upon receiving an affirmative nod from her, he picks up the said newspaper copy and walks away – all in less than 5 seconds. I know it seems like such an inanely normal thing, but that day, just like that, I knew the current cost of a newspaper copy. An information that had been made completely redundant to me sometime over the last decade, without me even realising it. It was not life altering information, rather life affirming because it tethers one to the reality that otherwise feels so distant when experienced from screens and curated silos. I get instant flashbacks of the times when this was all perfectly routine, when I would be the one who knew the exact costs of random things.As I come to an end of that day’s walk, I head to a sugarcane juice stall. I have made it a habit to end these ‘get-myself-to-step-out-and-experience-normal-everyday-things’ walks by treating myself with an ice cream or vada pav or cutlet from a roadside stall as a well-deserved reward for curating my own screen-free dopamine boost.Before I finally stop droning on, I would like to mention that I also use the delivery apps for ordering groceries or dinner, and there is nothing wrong with responsibly using the apps for necessary things. The point I am trying to make here, however, possibly only to myself, is that we need to try and break the pattern of dependence on screens and apps for everything – for it comes at the cost of forgetting the very real world outside. Basically, less Jio de Vivre, more Joie de Vivre. Less time captcha-ing to prove that you’re human, more time being a human capturing moments and memories of the sights, sounds, smells and people around you.Uday Deshwal is a freelance copyeditor and researcher, and a full-time peak millennial.We’ve grown up hearing that “it’s the small things” that matter. That’s true, of course, but it’s also not – there are Big Things that we know matter, and that we shouldn’t take our eyes, minds or hearts off of. As journalists, we spend most of our time looking at those Big Things, trying to understand them, break them down, and bring them to you.And now we’re looking to you to also think about the small things – the joy that comes from a strangers’ kindness, incidents that leave you feeling warm, an unexpected conversation that made you happy, finding spaces of solidarity. Write to us about your small things at thewiresmallthings@gmail.com in 800 words or less, and we will publish selected submissions. We look forward to reading about your experiences, because even small things can bring big joys.Read the series here.