And I am Back…..

It’s now nearly 3 months since Dad passed away and at times I still feel like I am living in some suspended reality! The Lockdown and total change of life as we know across geographies has added more to this sense of unreal or living in parallel universe, but the fact is, this is the new normal and we all have to adapt to it.

Sometimes it feels like there is gaping hole in my remembrances of 2020; like March and April never happened, like I did not lose both my parents in a gap of 4 years; like I am not grappling with medical bills longer than a restaurant menu; like I have not really stepped outside my apartment for 3 months and more! And yet like I said all of this did happen and is still happening!

“Impression, Sunrise,” Claude Monet, 1872

I guess I just needed some time away to truly understand the twists in the tale that life is constantly throwing up at me. There were days when I just got up from the bed, opened my laptop; completed my work and then went back to bed. I was not reading and there were times that I do not recollect really what I was doing – there was an inertia which felt like all the activities were being forced on me, even the ones that I loved the most like reading and cooking and I just did not want anything. But whoever said Time does heal, was truly right and slowly things again started falling into place. My work though crazy as always, started making sense, I started cooking again and finally I returned to books with a new found love. And then there were people old and new, who showered me with love and attention and suddenly life was making sense again! It was but natural that I would come back to blogging sooner than later and then suddenly I realized that it was time to start again. 2019-2020 has not been kind and there were terrible heartaches; but there is always hope of the future and with that, one has to, one must move on! So here I am back again and it feels so good to bang away the keyboard with all the force writing whatever comes to the mind, knowing I do not need to hold back. I am finally free….

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The one year old….

Happy blogoversary to me!!!!!

I did it…I scrapped and grind my teeth and grumbled many a times, but I managed to complete one year of blogging!

I know I was not always regular and I know my initial resolution of blogging every day came down to blogging only on the weekends, but somehow I managed to survive and get here!

A big yay to me…..but more importantly to all my readers who not only took the time out to read my nonsense, but also comment, like and in some cases follow. You have no idea how encouraging it was to see the star/comment icon highlighted on the stats page every time I accessed the site. Thank you for helping me get on, especially during the very low phases of my writing adventures. (Like when your work has been rejected by the 1845^th publisher!)  It an honor and privilege to be read by all of you.

And while I am at it – I would also like to take a moment and thank three absolutely brilliant, talented and inspirational bloggers whose writing/reading/cooking adventures have entertained me, made me read more and basically put me in complete awe of them…..I write relatively diligently, because, they stand out like shining examples!

A huge round of thank you to –

Eggton

Stefanie

12kilroy

And because this is a time to celebrate and be thankful and feel victorious (Yes! I know I am being vain!), I for once take a back seat (which means I shut up!) and let one of the most brilliant poets of all time, describe what I feel…..

‘Tis so much joy! ‘Tis so much joy! by Emily Dickinson

‘Tis so much joy! ‘Tis so much joy!
If I should fail, what poverty!
And yet, as poor as I,
Have ventured all upon a throw!
Have gained! Yes! Hesitated so —
This side the Victory!

Life is but Life! And Death, but Death!
Bliss is, but Bliss, and Breath but Breath!
And if indeed I fail,
At least, to know the worst, is sweet!
Defeat means nothing but Defeat,
No drearier, can befall!

And if I gain! Oh Gun at Sea!
Oh Bells, that in the Steeples be!
At first, repeat it slow!
For Heaven is a different thing,
Conjectured, and waked sudden in —
And might extinguish me!

All the Single Ladies – Guest Blog by mentallynailbiting

So. My flatmate who suffers from OCWD (Obsessive Compulsive Writing disorder) is majorly into blogging these days apart from undergoing labour exercises for the one-thousand-page family saga that she’s struggling to bring forth to the world. Her ministrations have generated enough enthusiasm among those frequenting WordPress, which has eventually inspired me enough to pull my turtle self out of her shell to share a guest blog with her. Incidentally, I happen to be the wacky flatmate she keeps mentioning in most of her blogs, and true to my wacky self, I demanded a chunk out of her own blogging page to write my first blog rather than opening a blog site of my own.

What really was the deciding factor was one of her stray comments about another friend/flatmate combo we happen to know. It went something like this: Why would any of them want to get married? They are having such fun together! And I thought: Boy, that’s so true for us too! In all of the eleven years we’ve been together, we’ve had so much fun it is almost sinful–so much so that to not reminiscence on at least some of that seems doubly sinful, even criminal. So here I am, inspired by the kaleidoscopic visions of the colourful past, present and future we’ve spent together, trying to portray a bit of the most awesome rollercoaster ride we’ve had over the years.

Being single, and sharing your single space with a fellow-quirk is an eye-opener in itself. It involves several one-of-the kind treaties being made within our shared-yet-personalized space. Terms of such a treaty involves anything from deciding who is going to cook THIS weekend, to deciding with doing away with cooking altogether and getting a cooking help instead. It involves handling each individual set of moping parents who have given up any hopes of their daughter getting married and solely blames THE OTHER WOMAN for this departure off the marital track. It involves trying to snag guys for each other and inevitably picking the wrongest one up out there. It involves laughing at the other one’s taste in men, and then inevitably picking up a weirder version oneself. It involves battling off constant ‘lesbian’ suspicions (or sometimes being too tired/intelligent to bother to refute such). It involves a constant temporariness of not ‘settling down’ in terms of contemplating possession of ‘permanent’ life items–a house, a car, a spouse. But then, there is more to it than that.

There are moments of bonding as two hardworking, deserving, intelligent women striving to make something out of their identities in a professional world with very visible glass ceilings (and often, failing to do so), moments of desperately trying to hide from office colleagues over the weekends, moments of keeping the high intellectual musings apart and sharing crass girlie jokes over an impossibly huge late breakfast, moments of pure happiness marred by a stab of an almost physical fear while contemplating the loneliness if the other one gets married or gets into a relationship tomorrow, and moments of blowing all the cares to the wind through leisurely smoke rings/ alcohol binges when none of the parents are visiting (or, more importantly, have just left after an extended period of visiting). There are occasions to celebrate when one manages to smell a book deal happening and the other gets two hundred plus views on her sole travel blog, moments of comparing notes about ‘Is is just us? or is the world downside up?’ Moments of painstakingly crafted, long-awaited travel trips taken throughout the year at the cost of gaping holes in our finances and exponentially elongated facial features of the boss at each request of a ‘combined vacation’ (‘Both of you going out? Just not feasible, how do you expect me to work this out? No. One of you can take a leave this weekend, maybe, and you can go the last weekend of the month….But Sir, we’re planning this trip together!)

All this, and more. I know several couples would identify (and add to) all that I have written above. But what is it that tells me that all these are not just my experiences alone, that a lot of this goes into making all the single ladies out there? it is not just about getting him to put a ring on it. The world functions alright, with and without rings.