Bishan, stunned, yelled at me as if he had forgotten our son. We ran back to the temple as he grimly muttered that Nozy was impossible to find in such a large compound full of school-age children. We bought our tickets again, walked in out of breath, and there he was, wedged between two sandstone lions, patiently waiting to be rescued.
“How irresponsible can you be?” My sister said later.
I lost my right to bring stuffed animals on that trip. But as I stood there teary-eyed, clutching a small stuffed monkey, heart still beating, I understood that love can grow in the most unlikely places, and that there is no love worthwhile if you don’t feel vulnerable to it. lost.
In this time of covid, the fear of loss haunts us every day. The second wave in India hit us with bad news: friends and family getting sick, hospitals running out of oxygen, vaccine shortages. Every encounter with the outside world feels like a game of Russian roulette. The world of stuffed animals had seemed like innocent fun when we stumbled upon it with Chewie’s first post in 2016. Now it feels like a haven, a community that sticks together even when things fall apart around us.
In a world where social media is often a toxic competition, the world of stuffed animals celebrates a hundred followers with as much excitement as when they get a thousand. Humans take a backseat and rarely pose with their stuffed animals, referred to as “human,” “roommate,” “helper,” and sometimes “mom” or “dad,” but almost never by name.
There are mask skeptics, Black Lives Matter activists, anxious teens, and a grandmother of six, but in the end it’s all about Zuzu the meerkat and Azai the one-eyed dog. Biographical details, politics, and human skin color remain ambiguous, as if too much information could shatter this glowing world that is held up by a delicate suspension of disbelief, a floating iridescent soap bubble. On a golden afternoon
But above all, there is something deeply reassuring about knowing that on the gloomiest and most hopeless day there is a teddy you can hug. In a socially estranged world where we dare not hug, that is no small gift.
Sandip Roy is a radio host and writer living in Calcutta, India. He is the author of the novel Don’t Let Him Know.
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