467 of 534

 I think I have been through an emotional wringer today. Still, some softness emerges on sharp days too. So here are a few things that I am grateful for:

1. Papa is well.

2. Met a few friends at Phoenix Mall today and had a really good time. A friend and I reminisced hard about freshly baked brun-pav, maskaa, and bread pudding, slightly burned Karachi biscuits baked on tin traya with tutti-frutti, etc. These are things you get from local Muslim bakeries. My friend is a bit of a snob and thinks that you get the best brun pavs in Mazgaon and Muhammad Ali Road. I argue that Zam Zam, Lucky, and some local bakeries near Bandra talao are just as good. Good brun pavs are hard and crusty on the outside but dense and soft on the inside. The mix of hard and soft is what makes it perfect. It's like brun-pav is like the equivalent of a loving but toughened heart.

3. I got good transport to and from the mall easily. Happy stuff. Ride was fab and smooth. Monsoon winds in Bombay were wet, strong, and full-bodied. It was the perfect Mumbai monsoon postcard weather.

4. A friend took me for a ride to Bandstand today. We had pani puri from my regular person there. I love pani puris... especially at that spot near Mount Mary. I feel like the act of eating Pani Puri - where you are not looking at a phone, looking at some sports channel on a TV (like in a pub), is like a meditation. You stand there with only one agenda...to eat the puri. You stand humbly with a paper bowl and the bhaiya will give you puris and you accept them with faith and gratitude. I love that. You don't take a half-eaten puri and give it back to the bhaiyya. You eat that and wait for the next one. And each one is a little bit magical and maybe even perfection...just the way you wanted it. Anyway, my friend treated me to the pani puris and then we went and sat by the sea. The waves, windswept palm trees, lights from flats that glowed like honeycombs... everything just spelled wholesomeness. May have been the wind or the rain or the sea...that my heart just felt so heavy and broken that I shared a few things. Someone had said something a couple of days earlier and I thought it was uncouth. But the fact that it had hit so hard and cut so deep led me to question a few other things. And I realised that there were a few things that for me were still open wounds and I had left them unattended. Who knows when or if everything will heal. But for whatever it is worth, this was a start. Start of what, I don't know. But...there will always be pani puri to sustain us with magical delight until prayers are answered. 

5. My friend's daughter sent me a photo of her wearing her gold medal. She looked so happy! That was a lovely picture!

These are the pictures from today. To remind me that even though nothing can save you, something will soothe you.