the best day to do laundry

According to Houdini’s conservative estimate, my cats haven’t eaten in about 10,000 years.

Since Sunday, pretty much everything not related to Pannir Selvam Pranthaman has slipped out of my mind. Amid the panicked rush, I forgot that the pet feeder can only auto-feed and not auto-fill. Thinking back, they probably only missed out on two feeding times before I realised—and Calum fed them plenty of treats during that time so it was hardly like they truly starved—but that wasn’t how they saw it.

The situation has been rectified.

Apart from ending the Great Cat Famine of February 2025, I did some vacuuming this afternoon, sliding the hoover over the floor, under the sofa, desk and bed as the cats scuttled around to get out of the way of the hated loud sucky machine. On another part of the island, Pannir’s family were doing laundry.

These were boring tasks, the sort of thing I’d usually be tempted to put off. But today it felt comforting to do something so ordinary. Less than 24 hours ago, I’d expected my Thursday to be heartbreakingly horrible, steeped in sorrow. I’d been bracing myself for Pannir’s execution and the grief and rage that would follow. But Pannir lives today, and instead of mourning, his sister has clothes to wash and I have floors to vacuum. What a blessing.

My joy and relief is tempered—there are still two executions scheduled for next week, and a stay doesn’t mean that Pannir is really saved. Parts of me are holding back from complete jubilation; I’ve been doing this long enough to have learnt, in so many painful ways, that we’re still struggling against time and that there can, and will, be more cruelties to witness and experience. But last night’s news was a big deal; it was the very thing I hadn’t dared to hope for.

I don’t think I’ve entirely figured out how to process everything that’s happened. (I don’t even know if I need to figure it out, to be honest.) It’s a big weight that’s lifted a little bit, albeit not completely. As much as it’s a relief to be doing mundane things today instead of attending a funeral, it also feels surreal to have to switch back to ‘normal life’ mode after the adrenaline and desperation of the past few days.

Still, the hope that seemed so faint before—so much so that it even seemed illusory—shines through a little brighter today. Things are possible.

It’s an amazing thing to be learning from a man in a condemned cell. Pannir had every reason to despair, get depressed and choose to opt out of an immensely difficult fight. There would have been no shame or judgment if he had. But he didn’t: he just kept going and going, reading, studying, preparing. Concrete walls, metal bars and panes of glass weren’t enough to trap that spirit; last night, after they’d received the good news, Pannir’s sister Sangkari said that his positive energy reached their family, too, so everyone grew stronger together.

This is something more than just grit; it’s also courage, trust and the belief in one’s own ability to act and fight. It’s about agency—about choosing to press on no matter what happens rather than being tossed about and swallowed up by life’s twists and turns.

Recently in therapy I talked about how I would like to live more ‘lightly’. I don’t mean I want to take everything lightly, as if nothing matters. Instead, I want to live like what another death row prisoner, Masoud, wrote in one of his letters: to “let go of how we think things should be, and become flexible, to move with the breeze of Allah’s decree”.

I’m not religious, but I do want to live a life in which I’m able to move with the breeze. To not feel like I’m constantly weighed down or trying to swim against the current, forever beleaguered and struggling. It’s not about going with the flow and not taking a stand; it’s about being open to change and possibility, and being able to navigate life with presence and clarity rather than feeling anxious about muddling along.

Today I’m thinking about, and feeling the strength and wisdom of, these two men—one whose life has already been taken by the state, the other still alive today. These are the connections, the ways in which we touch one another’s lives, that remind me that the cruelties and oppressions of the systems we live under will never succeed in stamping out all that is good, beautiful and powerful about us.