Day 73 of 14,600

The day has ended now and I am in bed.

It was a good day. Mixed bag but mostly good.

Went out to a couple of offices. Got one invoice cleared. In the other office, submitted an invoice and heard about someone's beautiful trip to Tashkent. Saw a couple of really nice photos.

Waited for a friend while I sipped a jewel toned Raspberry soda.

Met a friend. We had a good time. She gifted me a packet of purple yam chips. She dropped me home. We used to go for frozen yogurt in Pune. She is a wonderful dog trainer and a super stylist. 

Came home. The cook told me of one summer where she found a lost white pigeon. Rather the white pigeon had found her. It flew in and perched on her shoulder as she cooked. The pigeon would poop on other people's hands or peck them if they approached it. But not my cook. It would flutter around her and hop along the length of her body to wake her up. 

One afternoon my cook had fallen asleep. "It felt like death", she described. She heard some flutter and urgent cooings but her eyes didn't open. She only vaguely saw the shadow of a cat on a roof.

Later when her husband was cleaning the drain and asked hertoh help, she saw the pigeon half-chewed and dead.

My cook cried hard and didn't eat for two days.

I feel like I build my days with the stories of other people.

Life feels like "mitti ka ghar."

528, 527

There was Bombay, you know? I went there on Saturday morning.  That same morning, I had sat in the car and cried hard because I was broken up with. The plusses of dating kind people is that they are polite and they will be mindful of your feelings. But I suppose all break-ups are ultimately an audit of why you are a little bit off and a little bit wrong. Anyway, I got dropped at the bus stop and took a bus going to Dadar. Even though I tried to figure out just what is so wrong with being 'too sensitive' and how one determines the right limit, I thought of Dadar. The colours, the noise,  the sound, the crowd, the  buzz, the hustle...it is such an uplifting place...or rather it was to me that moment. I reached Dadar and was confused. A guy helped me to get to the right platform. I reached Goregaon and took a rick to my friends place. The rick guy chased me down to hand me back the change I had forgotten about. I watched, tellingly, a film  called Tamasha (which I loved and which made me curious how Imtiaz Ali and Ranbir Kapoor knew me enough to model a character after me), my most affectionate friend treated me to dinner, helped me buy a phone, bought me make-up, and made me laugh. We walked at midnight on the roads of Malad until she flagged down a rick...around that time, I saw a text from him asking me if I would be okay? I guess despite it all, we just try our bit at being kind. I saw that. I sensed that. I said yes. I wished him well. I really really meant it. Because I was in Bombay. Because despite what it makes of other people, it brings out the best version of myself. Because it has the sea. And because the sea kind of makes no bones about being too sensitive. Because how else would I survive? Because how else would I be strong?

Because,  you see, there is Bombay. 

543

This is all a little bit funky. I don't know why I am feeling so distracted and overwhelmed and upset and weepy today when yesterday it was a little bit fine and it is all just so horrible. When does this exactly get easier? When does the stomach stop churning and when does the heart relax no matter what is happening all around? My phone is out of charge. I feel so scattered that I can barely manage to work. My parents are away and home seems to be on another planet. And I don't even have a kandeel tonight. The list of why I should be at home and sobbing is endless. Anyway, let's try to change things around a little bit:

1.) I had an idea to write a story. Which I will write now.

2.) I had some really nice food today from the canteen.

3.) A colleague treated me to a really tasty meal at McDonald's. I tried there paneer squares and the french fries with the piri-piri masala for the first time. It was gorgeous!

4.) I am reading Elizabeth Gilbert's 'Big Magic'. It is really well-written. I suggest you get it.

5.) I think I will wear my new blue dress from Zara tomorrow. That should be nice.

6.) My office looks so pretty with all the nice, sparkling twinkling lights.

7.) Some clarity on what needs to be done with respect to the next block of work that I will begin to tackle at midnight.

8.) Somewhere out there someone's love story is unfolding. A poem is being written or recited. Or a song is being sung or created. Or people are freefalling and feeling safe. Just to think that such things happen in a world with beef ban and visa regulations - it's enchanting.

The enchantment is the wealth. And it's Dhanteras today. May the goddess Lakshmi make us feel full. Really, happily, crazily, brilliantly, buoyantly full.

549

One part of being open about being sad is that along with the support, there comes the skepticism. One's own and the world's. Some days, it will be easier to deal with one over the other. But what can be done? Maybe just living one minute at a time. Maybe, every minute thinking only one thought and feeling that one feeling that the thought brings.

I think a lot of peace comes when one shifts to believing that 'one' is not inadequate. In relationships, in experience, in thoughts or feelings, about life. Which brings me to ask myself why am I besotted with multiple lives?

Skepticism. It comes. 

555: What my plants taught me today

I woke up feeling a little heart-broken. But I watered all my plants and spoke to them a little bit and yet again, marveled at how they bloomed.

Even when the going is tough, it helps if you can just do the minimum - provide water, talk a little bit, get out in the open, and use sunshine.

Must keep this mind. In broad strokes, this means some exercise every single day.

The role of relationships

I am taking a deep breath now. Somewhere is a tight knot in my stomach that has chosen to resurface after it was unspooled after a lot of tender talk. But something is dogged about holding on to slights.

Anyway, relationships are hard. You may think that you could have all the answers. You may think the territory starts making sense, the boundaries have been explained and understood - that's when the trouble starts. When the basics are brought up and shown to be floundering, when traces of unforgiveness start getting redder and more alarming...it doesn't matter what the relationship is or how old...what matters is that parts of it will not go as per plan and to be okay with it.

What do you trust then? When your own heart and judgment has shut shop?

I guess you exhale and breathe your turn.

560, 559, 558, 557, 556

There has come a point in my life now where the ideas burn. They burn incessantly and brightly like sharp, pickled fireflies lodged in a deep, long throat. And I have met some nice people. They are sweet and tender and helpful. The plants grow and the Indian rose bush has now given four full, precious ripe flowers where we had only tiny, preening buds forever.

It feels like vapour though. It feels like I can see through all this and I find, sometimes, a light. But sometimes nothing. Sometimes a fear that is clear and beautiful and fluid - that this too will go. And when that goes, what will remain will be hard. And when that goes, I will not be taken along.

But I saw Bridge of Spies the other day and loved it. Because in the movie, there's a character that tells a story of a man who was very unremarkable. The man was a very ordinary chap who did nothing and then one day, his virtue shone when some soldiers came in and started beating up the family. The soldiers beat him too. This man fell and then got back up again. The soldiers beat him more. He stood up again. Finally, the soldiers stopped because he would get up every time. They called him 'The Standing Man'.

Maybe some days, I think that's all I can do...just stand my ground.

571, 570

My body seems to be replicating my heat - in the amount it seems to be accepting and accommodating in it, and the amount of heaviness it is taking on. The hips and stomach seem to swell like continents and my calves and arms are getting soft. I have also noticed that I am hunching over and eating so fast to stop breathing altogether until the last morsel is consumed.

I am not unduly worried about it though. There seems to be a big change in the offing and I feel this is just my body's way of cushioning itself for the blow. People have started being, how shall I put it, snarky about the weight gain...but it's okay. Puts me in a foul mood but I think it would be interesting to just be curious about what's going on.

I think, in a sense, the body is just playing a wait-and-watch game to see what all is coming inside it and just how much pressure is being put on it to assimilate it.

Right now it seems to be in a phase of taking inventory.

573: The unbridled missing

For some unbridled missing...I miss Bombay. Out of nowhere, I miss Bombay today the way I haven't missed it in ages. I miss my home there, my friends there, my friendships there, my freedom there, my work there, my offices, my bosses, my colleagues, trains, cabs, buses, the busy-ness, the business, the life, the ennui, the living, the way I was, the acceptance, the non-labelling, the resilience, the oblivion on a platter, the sense of hope, the gritty broken truth behind every fragment of every façade the stories, the shifting endings of stories...I miss it so so so badly. I miss that I could meet people I'd understand and very little seemed to be fake and friendships, if hollow, seemed to be hollow, and if deep, lasted a long time and rode out many storms...not the fucking play-acting happening in Pune...with the endless scrutiny and the incessant labelling and the slow-poisoned judgment of whoever you are. (Having said that, very thankful Shaniwarwada, KP, and Bhandarkar Road. That was nice...and there's always the happy, charming Bangalore. Thank God for cities and the sweet escapes they represent.)

Maybe for the rest of my days in the city, will imbibe the lessons from Chitale Bandhu (who just struck me as the wisest people to have cracked the code for surviving Pune): For as long as you can manage, keep yourself closed and the keep those people out.