A collection of endearing details:

1: I know someone who starts her phone calls with a laugh instead of ‘hello.’

2: Our cook would sing each time she made mutton curry. And sometimes I’d think that the recipe included browned onions, green chilli, ginger-garlic paste and half a Bangla song.

3: This man I like carries a neat, white handkerchief. And something about the continued presence of this little piece of cloth is reassuring to me.

4: When someone loud and voluble has a tiny, delicate sneeze? There’s something ridiculous about it, something vulnerable about it. No?

5: My grandmother who couldn’t read or write in English, learned to sign her name perfectly. And even when her hands got wobbly with age, her signature was careful, considered and precise.

6: The lady at the fish market has a blind cat and well…that’s the endearing detail.

7: My father would call my mother every night long distance, and repeat the same question each time, “All OK?”

8: You see this a lot in Bombay, where even the humblest of homes take care to repurpose Dalda jars and Pepsi bottles into homes for ferns and money plants.

9: Why do so many homeless people have pet dogs? It isn’t endearing exactly, it breaks my heart a little.

10: This aunty I know covers every table-seeming surface in cut work and crochet counterpanes, dressing up her furniture like little girls for going for Sunday Mass.

11: And how could I not mention an 85 year old lady who continues to match her nail polish colour to her sari colour.

12: And children who sign off their artworks with their names, ages and dates? Taking such pride in their work, that I find it terribly endearing.