Tea & Dark Chocolate

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...

The past couple of weeks have been a mess. I screwed up a major holiday plan, because oh well, I was over-confident about my planning ability. I realized the f**k-up on the day we were supposed to have travelled, and so we cancelled the tickets. I thought I'd cry, because I had wasted a ton of money, and called the husband in the hope that he'd yell at me, and I can then cry. I wanted to cry. No, he didn’t yell. And I laughed about the screw-up with a bunch of good friends over some rum, and life was good. But I realized I hadn't cried at all. Not a single tear, at what was otherwise a very anticipated, and could've been a great holiday. I also didn’t cry over the money I lost, and at around midnight, in the middle of all the laughing I started crying. Or an attempt to cry. Again, no tears. That’s when a friend pointed out that the reason I wasn’t able to cry, probably was because the husband was being supportive, and hasn’t yelled at me even once! The minute I realized...

Let me just start with a disclaimer that I am not a sentimental person. For a very short while in my early twenties, I thought I was but I can now safely say that those days are behind me. I don’t know what label you can give to a person like me now, but I am now someone who enjoys the moment in the Now without wanting to do anything else with it. Every relationship I get into, I take it with a pinch of detachment, yet being attached to it. I work on it with a full heart, but I know that nothing is permanent, or I keep telling myself that, so I don’t fall in love with the moment. I have stopped falling in love with ‘things’. Am trying to not be in love with people also, but then, we all know that never happens. Self-preservation or cynicism, call it whatever you want! That said, the above two objects mean a lot to me. They both remind me of two once-very-important people, both of whom I don’t talk to anymore. I have not lost a lot of friends over these years, in fact very few. Most o...

I once read somewhere that if you want to sound intelligent , just quote David Foster Wallace. :-) I haven’t read Infinite Jest, and so I do not know his real literary prowess. And I think its slightly pretentious to quote him, but then we all know that I have a bad judgmental side to me. More on that later in this post. Its well known that the guy is a literary genius, and people have lamented at his sudden self-inflicted death. As a side note, what's it with very brilliant people being totally sanki , aka screwed up? Before I completely digress, let me get back to David Foster Wallace, one of those authors I’ve been quoting a lot lately. So yeah, people have said that he is literary genius. And by people, I mean Maria Popova of BrainPickings.Org whom I totally admire. Not only is the lady awesome, her writing and her recommendations are awesome too! Image Courtesy – Transparent Cities

Did you read the book by Jack Kerouac? Supposed to be a classic, so read it! :-) Though it is not supposed to remind me of happy things, this book, especially the title makes me fondly think of long drives, on dusty roads with no other human in sight. The book, in spite of all the grimness it has makes me think of intimacy, adventure and a lifetime of experience! This picture sums it all up greatly for me. Picture Courtesy – Pinterest