By Anushka Narula
A feeling of…Warmth? Safety?
I am not sure if it serves any purpose to define an adjective using other nouns . I am not sure it makes sense to even define this word in the first place. It’s a feeling. But before that it’s a funny looking word too. Almost incomplete looking. And yet, it is that feeling you get when you feel whole. Under that fuzzy old blanket maybe, wrapped like a burrito. Or that nice long cuddle with your partner. Or that room with curtains drawn and the filtered light that enters makes the room appear like it would had you painted it with one those Instagram filters. New York, perhaps. Do you recognise the filter? I also call it the Prateek Kuhad filter at times, his instagram stories with pictures of a still fan or a huge plant in the corner of a room, lining up the plain white wall with its green and brown shades, make for a cool aesthetic. Am I drawing a convincing picture of cozy? I realise that I am also millennialising it in the process but I promise I am headed somewhere with it.
You see, I believe that in this day and age of aesthetics, ‘Instagram aesthetics’ if you will, ‘cozy’ is first constructed and then felt. I remember sitting alone at home one day and feeling not so cozy. So I drew the curtains, put on some soft music, arranged the pillows on my sofa in a way that made the sofa feel fluffy and fleshy and made myself a cup of iced coffee. And after all this, I sat back and sighed. That’s when ‘cozy’ happened.
It feels good to have constructed your own ‘cozy’. But it’s not too cozy a feeling to know the temporariness and the artificiality of it.
Check out the piece by Anushka last month here!