I Cannot Help But Turn Toward You
On attention, sunflowers, and my uncle’s dog
There’s a specific kind of being whose neck moves before their mouth does.
You are mid-sentence, nothing particularly interesting has happened yet, and their head just tilts? Very slightly. Like it’s already decided you’re worth leaning toward.
I’ve been collecting them.
The people whose chai goes cold because they got busy asking about your interview, your paati, the seepage situation. They will likely also drink it cold without noticing. Lukewarm devotion. The best kind.
The ones who remember things you mentioned casually three Tuesdays ago (and likely forgot yourselves) and bring it up like a librarian retrieving the exact book you forgot you borrowed. You said it once, while tying your shoelace. They filed it under you.
The ones whose notebooks are mostly arrows and circles because every time they start writing something down they get distracted by someone else’s story. The to-do list is more a portrait gallery. Nothing ever gets done. Everyone feels seen.
The friend who says “and then what happened?” in a tone that suggests we might be here a while, and also that they brought snacks mentally, and they are completely fine with that.
The WhatsApp typing bubble that appears... disappears... appears again. Someone on the other end trying to find the right follow-up question. Not a reply. A question. There’s a difference and they know it.
The aunty at the wedding who keeps refilling your plate before you’ve finished, who has somehow memorised who is lactose intolerant and who eats garlic cheese naan when they’re sad, and who will feed you accordingly without ever saying a word about it.
Balcony plants that have contorted themselves into frankly concerning yoga poses just to reach a strip of sunlight that technically belongs to the neighbour. Phototropism, scientists call it. Yearning, I call it.
Indies who bring the same stick back, a little more confidently each time. First visit: tentative. Second: committed. Third: they’re placing it at your feet the way penguins place pebbles, which if you don’t know, is a proposal. No ring. No speech. Just: I found this, it’s my best thing, and I’m giving it to you. The expectation of yes is fully built in.
Sunflowers. The whole biography of a sunflower is just a head that cannot stop tilting. They do it so completely, so shamelessly, that scientists had to give it a name. Heliotropism. Just a fancy word for I cannot help but turn toward you.
Cats who slow-blink at you. Apparently this is the cat version of a hug. They’re not even touching you. They’re just looking at you softly, on purpose. The audacity of that kind of tenderness.
My uncle’s dog does this thing where she places one paw on your knee. Then another. Then a full forearm, slow and deliberate, like she’s staffing a hotel reception and service has been slow. You assume you’re doing her a favour. But the moment your hand finds that spot behind her ear and she goes completely boneless, you realise. She knew you needed this. She just made it look like her idea.
(The cat, for the record, would never be this obvious about it. The cat has simply decided to make eye contact until you figure it out yourself.)
Climbing plants. Ivy, jasmine, that one vine nobody planted that just appeared one day and now covers half the wall. They don’t grow upward so much as they reach, tendril by tendril, testing each surface, asking is this something I can hold onto? and moving on when it isn’t. Extremely relatable behaviour.
River bends. Rivers technically take the path of least resistance, which sounds lazy until you realise they’re just refusing to fight things bigger than them and finding the way around anyway. Every bend is just a river mid-tilt, saying fine, I’ll go around you. No fuss.
The way bread dough, when you poke it, slowly fills back in. Patient. Relentless. Holds the shape of your hand for a moment and then lets go.
Paths through grass that exist because someone kept going back to check something. Pure proof of return, worn into the earth by repetition.
Tree branches that grew around wires instead of starting a fight with them. Decades of negotiation that nobody witnessed. The wire just sits there now, given up, completely hugged.
The head tilt itself, when you pause mid-sentence and they lean in just slightly, like they’re gently holding the door open for the rest of the thought to walk through.
These people almost always know everyone else’s stories in alarming detail. The cousin’s bad job, the friend’s worse ex, the neighbour’s ongoing feud with a very specific pigeon.
Meanwhile their own stories take longer to arrive. Like the uncle at the stall who makes your bhel just how you like it without asking after the fourth visit, but only tells you his name after the fortieth.
Once you see it, you can’t stop.
It’s in the sunflower that burned its entire existence into the act of turning. The dog who tricked you into being comforted. The river that bent rather than broke.
Some things are just built to lean toward something.
So if you run into one today, ask them something first.
Watch what the neck does.
If you made it here, thank you for reading what was originally going to be a short observation about a dog and somehow became a nature documentary about devotion. This keeps happening and I have stopped being surprised.
The dog, for the record, got her scritches. And I, sheer joy. Unsurprisingly on both counts.
More of this, soon. Probably also longer than intended.