Unaudited Thoughts

Sunsets and Me. My parental house is in the old part of the city. An ancestral place where two previous generations before my father and uncle had lived and flourished. It was an independent home, not very lavish but spacious enough for us kids to play hopscotch, hide and seek and run around as little kids in the courtyard. A place bustling with people. Relatives and extended family who frequently visited. For me, it's a memory of a home full of happiness and sunshine. Yes, sunshine, literally. The house stood west-facing and was right opposite a lake, and every evening, I had a picturesque view of the sunset. Not that I took a chance and appreciated the ubiquitous sunset; mostly, I didn't. I was too busy to even notice it most of the days. In the scorching summers, late afternoons brought heat and glare directly into the rooms of the westward-facing home, and the onset of monsoons would mean the intrusion of insects and mosquitoes into our lake-facing home. The winter afternoo...

The Frangipani Ring. In the humdrum of day-to-day activities, we face an onslaught of little bruises from the world. We give and take harsh words, crack insensitive jokes, and face manipulations occasionally as we navigate through our lives. These little wounds impact us, and someday, this suppressed sadness explodes in anger or trickles down as tears at the slightest trigger. Yesterday was one such day.    I returned home yesterday evening with a cocktail of irritability, anger and sadness, immediately changed into gym wear, decided to hit the gym with a vengeance and release all the pent-up rage and energy. That, however, didn't mean I went to the gym. Instead, I spent an hour lazily lying on the couch watching mindless reels. Finally an hour later, I mustered enough courage and decided to go for walk downstairs in the garden. Armed with ear pods and Oprah's new podcast, I traipsed down the stairs with the goal of reaching 7000 steps.   The garden of our society bl...

 Day 1:                                                                           AAI. My aai has been anything but conventional. Born in a small village, she lost her mother at the age of 6. Living with a large extended family, slowly but surely, chartered her way through and moved to Nagpur. Ambitious and  determined, from an early age, she learnt to navigate her way and ultimately realised her dream of becoming a Doctor. In those days, when females married early and bore children, Aai took her own sweet time and married at the age of 26 ( I got married at 24 :P)! Two years post marriage, she completed her Post Graduation in Pediatrics with a toddler in tow.  Focused, dedicated, sincere, kind, loving, forthright and short tempered is how I woul...

Have your ever lost a dear one ? Oh ! Don't get me wrong, death doesn't make you lose a person. They stay safe in our hearts, alive in our memories.  Lost meaning, has someone just drifted away from your life. Someone who you thought was a your lover, a close friend, elders you looked up to, or siblings,  tied to you by blood. Have you lost them midway, navigating through life? All through our lives we form bonds, Platonic and romantic; beginning with parents, siblings, friends, co workers, to lovers, extended family and so on. These bonds help us connect with the world and sail through tough times. This complex web of interpersonal relationships shapes our personality and wellbeing. These are our goto people, support systems, 4 am friends  or whatever you would like to call them. We confide in them, tell them our deepest fears, dark secrets, sometimes our shameful deeds, our dreams, aspirations, likes, dislikes and so on. They become part of us, we rely on them for ...

A girl who hid under layers of makeup, for fear of her colour being mocked. A young man ridiculed for acting pansy, who laughed at himself to fit in. The artist who gave up his passion for singing, to sit at the cash counter of his Father's mithai store. The quiet simmering spouse in a marriage, dragging it along. The ambitious architect mother, who gave it up all; to fit in the domestic mould. The wannabe biologist who had to live with dead crunching numbers every day. We have heard such stories, read about them, and few of us have experienced it. That brings forth a point why do we do it? Not everywhere you fit in, is where you belong. Quite often, people force themselves to fit in where they  do not belong. Trying to fit in your square peg in a circle.  A majority of us live all through our lives doing things, we are reasonably good at, not necessarily we would like to do or want to do or are passionate about.Occasionally, you pull on a relationship (including non-romantic ...

I am, because he is. Baba has this need to know my location and most of his calls begin with, “where are you?”   It’s a chilly winter eve, Baba calls to ask if I have worn enough warm clothes, since I am prone to cough n cold. Corona Crisis. Baba calls to make sure, I am not going out without mask and have enough sanitizer stock at home. Sunday morning. He calls to ask if I need vegetables, since he is on his weekly shopping spree at the vegetable market. I buy something that is ridiculously expensive (by his standards) and he gives me an earful about the virtue of savings. Bought shirts for him and he is upset, since he doesn’t need them. Never heard him say he needs to buy something for himself. I am unwell with mild fever and cold. Baba comes home! I am 41, Baba is 70. In his mind though, he is 41 and I am 24. No, make that 14. The quintessential Marathi middleclass manoos. He raised me believing, the greatest virtue is kindness and intellectual growth...