the physical reality

from family life by akhil sharma

"it is also hard to remember how frugal we were. we saved the cotton that comes inside pill bottles. our mothers used it to make wicks. this frugality meant that we were sensitive to the physical reality of our world in a way most people no longer are. when my mother bought a box of matches, she had my brother sit at a table and use a razor to split the matches in half. when we had to light several things, we would use the match to set a twist of paper on fire and then walk around the apartment lighting the stove, the incense stick, the mosquito coil. this close engagement with things meant that we were conscious that the wood of a match is soft, that a bit of spit on paper slows down how it burns."