Between hospital visits, my mother’s blood pressure had been abnormally high. For over two decades, she had already carried chronically low platelets like an unwanted inheritance. This time, the doctors spoke in an alarming tone. I felt on edge. They told me to admit her. My mother said they were robbers – they wanted to loot money, nothing else. “Don’t listen to them. I am fine.” My mother stays with me for six months and spends the other six with my siblings back home in Assam. She called them for their opinions too. Everyone spoke. But the ultimate decision had to be mine, because she was here with me.Amidst this, my kids had their own agendas and tantrums. My always-busy husband had no time for these peripheral issues. The world casually dismissed these things as errands, but this was the real machinery of a home powered by invisible labour.At the bottom of my heart, I was thankful to Virginia Woolf for writing A Room of One’s Own nearly a century ago.Illustration: Pariplab ChakrabortyI sat in the car after buying the medicines, and scrolled through social media to get a sense of the world, since nowadays all updates seem to come from there.Everywhere, Dhurandhar was in the news. It was making money like crazy. What a democratic country we were in. People were watching the movie as if they were going to vote – in queues, large groups. The halls were full.On the other hand, a movie like Homebound had only ten people in the hall. It is fate, obviously. Who, after all, wanted to watch movies about caste, gender, and COVID? These were dismissed as fantasy, human-created agendas to make our country “look bad”. The “real” issue, we were told, was to “hate Pakistan”. Whoever watched Dhurandhar was a nation lover; otherwise, you might as well be in Pakistan.We don’t make mistakes now. All mistakes were made in the past. So, we now make nationalist movies, earn money, and make the country proud. This is called patriotism, apparently. And then I remembered Guru Rabindranath Tagore warning that aggressive nationalism was a cruel epidemic sweeping across the human world. But what did he know? We are “modern Indians”. After all, it was only in 2014 that we got our real independence, as told by a Padma Shri actress-politician.Finally, with a quiet sigh of despair, I started the car and put Spotify on. When alone, I usually listen to Assamese songs. They carry soil, rain and memory. I started shuffling songs, and my heart skipped a beat at one of them. Such a peculiar voice, I thought. While driving, however, I just enjoyed it without trying to find who the singer was.“Moi kheali kobi, lekhu obhimanore kobita, mor batot ase, olex gojalore dolisa. (I am a restless poet; I write poems of wounded pride; on my path lie countless beds of nails).”It felt like someone had opened my chest quietly. I reached my apartment without realising, the song carrying me along. I parked the car, sat still for a while, and then took one deep breath before stepping back into the urgent non-urgent things. Got soaked and absorbed in those errands again. I forgot the song.The next morning, I tried to find it again. Gone. I remembered only fragments. I didn’t know the singer. I called my sisters in Assam and pulled them into the search, as if this was our collective task. I summoned ChatGPT. I harassed Google. All blank and unhelpful. I was left strangely heartbroken over those forgotten lines.Finally, I surrendered, keeping the warmth of that song somewhere in the corner of my heart. Life went on like all the battles we fight without armour. One such battle-filled day, I went for an evening walk to declutter my mind. Headphones on. Spotify shuffled. A breezy evening.And suddenly, I hear the same song.Sometimes art – music, painting, theatre, books – come and rescue us when we least expect it.I screamed with joy. Yes. That was my armour.I looked at the sky. A starry night. For the first time, I felt the moon was also smiling at me, as if the entire universe had conspired to bring a little joy to my cluttered mind. These small things, at times, make a big difference in our lives. Right?I now know the singer – Rajveer. I still don’t know much about him, apart from the fact that he is a wonderful singer. But I thank him. For that evening. For that quiet rescue.Bijita Sharma is a Hyderabad-based independent writer and artist.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.