Tea & Dark Chocolate

Time for some Resolutions to follow in the New Year, right? TBH, IMO, you don’t have to set any resolution - we all must grow every day. But if you want to, might I offer one suggestion? Just one. Do not set a big bang resolution. For example, don’t say you’ll lose x kgs this year. Say what you’ll do to lose those? Start small. Maybe say, you’ll eat two healthier meals in a day. Give yourself some room to fail and get back up quickly. Don’t say, I’ll go to the gym regularly. Maybe say,  I’ll increase my average active time by X mins every week. This is my fitness story - I woke up on Jan 1, 2019 and felt immediately down coz I HAD a make a resolution and I knew the one I was averting - that I must get to the gym. Maybe it was the general interest in outdoors that started as part of exploring the parks in HK back in 2010. Or the series of hikes we went on, in Greece in 2013, for which I had to get fitter - but I’d been working out off & on for years.  Snap to 2016-...

What an year 2020 has been, right? We spent the entire time sitting at home, like everyone else, and realized in the first month that whining about not being able to travel is nothing but a sign of our privilege, when millions others were struggling for their daily meal. So with whining quickly out of the door as one of the options to spend time sitting at home, like everyone else, I had to look for ways to cope with the enormous bandwidth that was now mine. Work Work was busy, but with the added dimension of making it work across large teams driving decisions and making progress while everyone was remote and dealing with their own challenges. I got a lot of learning this year, both from the work perspective and from an internal dialogue on what I'd rather spend my time with. I still love the team I work with, people continue to be as awesome as they always were, and I still learn a lot from them. I think I have been fairly successful in working between 930AM-6PM on most days even ...

As usual, this was a good year too! I had loads of fun doing everything I did – work, friends, travel, photography, reading etc. Yes, absolutely no complaints at all. Travel - This was a great year for  me. We kicked off the year with a trip to Puri in February which turned out to be a trip for just shooting pics. I got to shoot such brilliant photos of the 12th, 13th and 14th century temples. There was a 10-day Vipasana trip I did in June to Dharamshala. Stayed there for 13 days, including the time spent in Vipasana course. Loved the course duration, but was disappointed by Dharamshala as a place in itself. There was this short trip to Maldives in July , and all the husband and I did here was laze out in our cottage in the resort during the day and walk by the clear waters in the evenings. And then there was this Europe trip with a girl-friend. A short trip to Goa in October proved to us that no matter what we did, we’d always make at least one trip to Goa eve...

As a teenager, I used to LOVE key chains. God alone knows how much pocket money I spent on buying silly key chains in various shapes and sizes ... that the money I spent on books, but the latter is something that gives me joy even today. The key chains, well, they don't... they make me realize the follies of youth. Those Chuimui-si-tum-teddy bear key chains, the ones that stick to the shirt, the shoe-shaped ones and what not... :) This love , I noticed, didn't entirely go away. Instead, there is a transformation in it now. I now carry items that remind me of happy times and sometimes people in my key ring at all times... and this morning, as I was sorting stuff in my handbag, I noticed that the bag was heavy only because of the heavy key ring, and just how many charms I carry on me! Presenting to you, the contents of my key ring...

  One week ago I had a long conversation with a group, an educated , seemingly sensible group of people, all of them extremely close to me. About how what women wear do not define them. About how even nuns , 6 year old children and 80 year old women get raped. About how what I wear is never an invitation, and is always subjective, like how a salwar-kameez is acceptable in most places but isn’t enough in many other places on this globe, about how I have to probably cover my ankles and head to not be lynched or jailed in some countries and how its all about freedom. About how women do not invite just because they are out at 9 PM, and how sometimes work might take them out too. About how it is important to raise our sons well , to teach them to respect women irrespective of what they are wearing. About how its not important that a woman should feel like a mother or a sister for a man to be able to not pass lewd remarks on her and that the fact that she is a human being is enough for ...

Its become almost a tradition, I noticed, me writing my year in review post towards the end of the year. And yes, I kinda like it, though I intend to change the documentary-ish tone I’ve used in the old posts. :-) I’ve stopped saying if it was a good year or a bad one, because its all about perspective. I definitely had fun, loads of it in this year too. Some new friends and some old have made the year very eventful, and as usual, I am grateful for having met them - each one of them, even if I don’t talk to them as often as I want, or the ones that I see almost every weekend. I guess I’ve stuck to the mantra – Always have a non-work-related-side-project , pretty seriously. There hasn’t been a time in this year in which I didn’t have a side-project I wasn’t pursuing. There is a blackboard in the house that I log these in, to serve as reminders on what I should be doing if I ever tell myself that I am getting bored. And no, I haven’t been bored in a while, thank God, for that! So the...

A couple of days ago, a friend told me that she was flying to Bangkok for just the weekend. I knew that this was her first trip out of the country, so I was confused on why would she do that for just a weekend? There was so much to Bangkok, that even after having spent 3 days just in that place, I left with a feeling that I should go back there again, which am going to do for sure, in future. Her reasons were justified, she couldn’t plan one by herself and wanted to follow her friends when they were going. This didn’t reduce the confusion I had - How ON EARTH can you experience a place in just a weekend, especially if you keep yourself busy throughout the time there? Bangkok was my first non-Indian-city to visit too. I was excited at my first international trip. I was 26, and chided myself at having gone anywhere out before - everyone I knew had traveled to a different country before. I was nervous as I boarded the flight by myself at the Hyd airport, was glad to find someo...

This is one of those happy, peaceful, contented Sundays. For all the impatience I have in wanting to get out of the kitchen and hence having to finish up early, there is something very nice about a bustling kitchen, even if the food being cooked is just for the two of us. Bread pudding is being tried, some of which will be treated to office friends, there is sabudana khichdi for breakfast and some karela fry stuffed with yummy nutty paste is being attempted to by the cook, and am sitting on the table in my place, reading some obscure stuff. I hid the the wine bottles that were on the table to not scandalise anyone. These was supposed to be made into sangria  by the husband, who being the busybody  that he is on some weekends is taking an interview in the study, and was supposed to be taken to a friend's place where we are brunching !

I think nesting is in our genes. We, as women, are genetically inclined to nest. To create a nice, cozy home where we can fuss around with our family and friends. There is something incredibly relaxing about returning home and putting your feet up on your couch. It is extremely fulfilling to whip up meals for your near and dear amidst friendly banter. And it is contentment you feel as you relax in your favorite spot with a book in hand or sit in your balcony with a cup of tea or a drink in hand. The mere fact that I feel all the above makes me feel that I am indeed a woman. I like all the above things. I like my space to be all the above. And that’s when it becomes home for me. And home is the most comfortable place for me. It is one of the primal needs for a human, according to me. Food, Sex and Home are the most important things that drive many of our behaviors and it’s the way its evolution intended it to be. Good so far. It’s the rest of the stuff that comes with nesting that...

Oh, what a joy it is to finish reading a book you've loved. And yet, what a pain it causes in your heart at having finished it. A deep, numbing pain, and a wish that the book has a sequel . Or may be there are some pages of it left unread somewhere. And the hope you have as you are nearing the end, hoping it doesn’t end, hoping all goes well with the characters you've so grown to love and hoping that there is some more, just a little more. Yes, I am still in the hangover of this feeling. I just finished reading a book I thoroughly enjoyed and felt, and as I hit the 100% mark, I felt the longing and the wish that there was some more of the book. I wanted to share it somewhere. The husband understands perfectly how I feel , the passionate reader that he is, but I wanted it to be some place more permanent. And that’s when I realized I have a blog, a place I love yet something I've neglected a lot in the past few months. A place which I've stopped visiting myself because I ...

It has been a good year, all in all. Can’t complain on any front since life’s been good. Did a couple of things, some personal achievements, some holidays and a lot of activity. And am thankful to Providence for each of these things! For starters, we did what I never thought we would. We sold the apartment which I initially thought was our dream house, and had never intended to leave for anything in the world. Turns out our feelings weren't strong enough, and we fell out of love with the house , sold it , and moved on from it physically , emotionally and mentally, all in no time at all. The pretext was to buy a bigger apartment, which we didn’t in the end, but I guess we were both ready to move on from that old apartment. One of the most impulsive yet very well turned out decision of our lives, I must say! I thought I’d be insecure without my own house, but the bigger realization was that we were both nomads deep inside, and the obligation of not paying an EMI made us realize that...

Yep, only when you have to make them do you realize that you are indeed a grown-up. And that life is not how it was when you were Daddy’s little girl, you’d run to Daddy and tell him the problem and expect it to be solved in the next minute. Or pick up the phone and talk it out with Mommy, and expect her to solve it for you. Well, when you grow up, more often than not, you discover you cannot even discuss many of your dilemmas with your parents. That’s the downside of being a grown-up, I feel. I will take a slight digression and mull on how much watching Gilmore Girls again made me miss my Mommy. And how many times in the middle of an episode, I would pick up the phone and talk some random stuff with Mom, not the usual, how are you doing, did you take your meds, no, I cannot visit you this weekend etc. Yeah, I realized that watching the show made me grow closer to my Mom, reminisce all the moments I spent talking to Mom when I was staying at home, and how we are still close, except th...

  Needless to say, books impact our lives a lot. I also believe that books shape us, our characters and a lot on how we think about many aspects around us. That is why being well-read was a very important trait for me. The ONE thing I was particular about my life-partner even as a young girl was that the boy I would marry would be well-read and should be able to talk and hold conversations on books. If not anything else, we’d at least never run out of topics to talk about.. :) I am a huge fan of Haruki Murakami, his books, his style of writing (with due credit to his translator)  and the world he weaves in his stories. I’ve learned a lot and read up a lot after finishing each of his books because of the many references he gives to many topics in his books, all those that he likes or he draws his inspirations from. So when his 1Q84 was due for release last year, there were a lot of articles on him, his living, his books and his inspiration for 1Q84 itself and the various thi...

Ideally, that is how I would like to introduce myself when anyone asks me where I am from. I generally resort to saying am from Karnataka or from Mangalore depending on whether am in a mood for a deeper conversation on that day. And then I smile and listen to how the other person says I don’t look like a South Indian at all. If it is someone who is familiar with how women from Konkan region look like, they will then admit that I look like someone they know, someone from Mangalore or Belgaum. But more often than not, people immediately say, I look like a Punjabi , because of my loud voice. Or a Gujarati because of the name. Or a Telugu, because of the surname. And then cringe in my mind. Why? Why don’t I look like a South Indian? Each of these attributes are because I am a Mangalorean. To be precise, a Shivalli Brahmin . Well, not many have even heard of this community. Am missing home. And by home, I don’t mean my parent’s place or my own place here in Hyderabad. I am definitely missi...