Twinkle Khanna talks about daughter Nitara’s school concert at London church: ‘Already bored, I pulled out my phone…’

‘I had to put my phone away’

She spoke about too ‘much scrolling time’, and wrote, “Early this week, my younger one was playing in the school concert. I took my seat, and already bored, I pulled out my phone and automatically started obeying the God of minor distractions. Then, the timer I have recently started using to curb my screen time kicked in, and I had to put my phone away.”

Twinkle added, “The concert was in a Notting Hill church. While walking in, I noticed perfunctory details like its high ceiling and the central aisle. Now, I stared at the painting of The Last Supper behind the altar. I observed the stained-glass windows through which sunlight flickered like a malfunctioning tubelight. I watched the kids holding their violins horizontally and some even upside down. The music rising from the belly of the church to the gallery where I was sitting, euphonious, discordant, imperfectly marvellous, filled cavities inside me that I was unaware existed, like a high tide that floods seawater into sandy depressions.”

She went on to talk about how ‘even mundane activities like a train ride can become a memorable experience if we pay close attention’. Twinkle added that life has one finite resource — time — and therefore, we must find ways to ‘build fortresses where we allow information to flow in and pull up our drawbridge after we fulfil our requirements’.

More about Twinkle’s career as an author

Twinkle, who married actor Akshay Kumar in January 2001, pursued her Masters in Fiction Writing at the Goldsmiths, University of London in 2022. In 2015, Twinkle released her first non-fiction book, Mrs Funnybones. Her other books are The Legend of Lakshmi Prasad, Pyjamas Are Forgiving, and Welcome to Paradise.