Day 11 of 108

 Today was an interesting day. Here are a few things that I am grateful for:

1. Papa is well. Spoke to him.

2. Cook made an interesting dessert with Greek yogurt, cocoa powder, berries, and Stevia.

3. Enjoyed going to Bandstand with a friend.

4. It was really nice and chilly! On the promenade my friend decided to goad a couple of little boys into a race. So cutely, they started running readily! That was precious...to see their happy, shiny, smiling faces.

5. Started reading another book. It's non-fiction. But...will stay the course.

6. Enjoyed writing about the last book I read. 

7. Managed to overcome laziness and go to the gym. 

First Impressions: So late in the day by Claire Keegan

In an acceptance speech, Barbara Streisand was once talking about how she realized what it felt to be in the movies. (I now summarize this part.) She talked of her memories in the cinemas and how she remembered her favorite films – what was wearing, who she was with, whether it rained gently or snowed heavily that day – that experience of watching a movie that was special was more than an event – it bookmarked your life.

I feel the same way about finding an author you like or reading a book that alters you forever. Like I remember the empty office past midnight in my second job. I came across ‘Catcher in the Rye’, printed out the story, read it, and dropped it off at my boss’s table with a note suggesting that he read it. I also remember the pink box pleat skirt I wore in college when I first got my hands on Mario Puzo’s ‘The Godfather’ and read it on a rickety bench at Bandra station. Or the printed blue quilt in my room that I would clutch to help with the tide of emotions when I read Alex Hailey’s ‘Roots’. Or the swirl of grey and lavender above buildings when I first started reading Salman Rushdie’s ‘Shame’.

Yes. You remember.

And I honestly didn’t think I would come across a writer that would make a memory so vivid until I came across Claire Keegan.

So late in the day is a short story/ vignette about a man who is reminiscing about the woman who has broken up with him.  We follow him on a regular day as he gets to work, avoids chatty colleagues has strange memories triggered off unsuspecting cues, and the story ends on a note that makes you want to hold his hand and lie to him that it will get better.

There is such a tender twist to this story that you don’t even realize how much it tugs at your heart until you have closed the book and gone about your week – and then one Sunday night, as you brew your tea, you think of something that you trace back to the novel and nod. For me, it is these two lines and the general foreshadowing around it:

“Then a line from something he’d read somewhere came to him, to do with endings: about how, if things have not ended badly, that they have not ended.” And

“You know what is at the heart of misogyny? When it comes down to it?’

‘So I’m a misogynist now?’

‘It’s simply about not giving,’ she said.”

The character’s misogyny (actual or perceived) may be at the center of things – but it also a compass to how we label, how we may sometimes just call a man a ‘jerk’ and move on but ay never be aware that maybe if someone had just given him another chance with a stronger, more open heart, he might have changed.

But for now, it’ll be sadness and solitude for the character.

So, what was I doing when I met Claire Keegan? (And isn’t finding an author you can connect with the same as meeting them?)

I’d just traveled back from town by train. It was a reasonably peaceful ride home and the evening sky was just getting that shade of metallic blue with a few stars peeping out. Autos were hard to come by and I decided to walk home. Thought I’d pick up some grilled sandwich on the way.

I saw this bookstore I had heard a lot about: Fictionary. Entered it. Towards the back, there was a small coffee shop. There were lots of books – and none of them were management books. Mostly fiction and narrative non-fiction. I was supremely heartened by that. Then I perused a few books. There was a beautiful edition of Dante and something else by Hume. And then, I came across this slim little book.

Claire Keegan is an Irish writer. The only other female Irish writer I had read in college was Edna O’Brien. Her memoir of growing up in Irish countryside – the innocence and viciousness of simple living – was outstanding. There’s a story in there about Brien going to church after a particularly rough day, when she doesn’t quite know how much longer she could endure it. The nun (or priest, I forget) tells her this: “Trust Him when thy have dark doubts. Trust Him when thy faith is small. Trust Him when simply to trust in Him…is the hardest thing of all.”  (This is why I read fiction – it’s like panhandling for gold. You find thigs you can save up for a rainy day when life has dried up.)

Getting back to factionary – I associated Keegan with Brien in my head. I pulled the book out, sat at the café, and read it through. It’s a short book but it nestles in you – the grief, the pain, the silence, the requiem for joy…

But one remains grateful for discovering an author you think you’re going to love. They remind you that you can still…feel.

Day 10 of 108

Been feeling down today. Sleepy and wasted. But here are all the things that I am grateful for:

1. Papa is well.

2. Cook had made really nice pasta and stir fry today. The trick to soft and tender tofu is to boil it in salted water. It really helps with the texture.

3. Call got cancelled.

4. Got a go ahead on another assignment.

5. Wore my skin tight dress from H&M. I think I looked good.

Day 9 of 108

 Today was a heart-heavy day. Carrying some grief around. It hurts now. But even so, a few good things happened.

1. Papa is well. He came over today. That was a good surprise.

2. Had broccoli and paneer today. Some hefty protein intake there.

3. Had a good banana shake.

4. Gave some mulberries and protein bread to Papa. He looked happy, if not a little sceptical.

5. Some work that I was expecting to come my way hasn't. Important to give thanks for things that don't live up to expectations either. Maybe then there will be equanimity.

Day 8 of 108

 It was a peaceful, happy, hummingbirdy day.

Here are all the things I am grateful for today:

1. Papa is well.

2. Went to a friend's house for coffee where I saw a little bit of this series, "Queen of the South." The woman playing the lead has an interesting, stern face. White granite...it reminded me of.

3. Had tasty food. Cook had made a nice pulao today and I treated myself to some yummy baked and flaky savouries. 

4. Enjoyed some kombucha with my neighbours.

5. Went for a walk up Pali Hill tonight and traipsed up to Carter Road. It is such a beautiful, luscious experience! I love this place so, so much!

There's serenity. There's sophistication. There's music. There's conception of something. There's completion of everything. Pali Hill is where my heart melts in love and peace. 

Day 7 of 108

 I took it easy today and that means that tomorrow might be tight and tough. Or it could easy-peasy, oh-so-breezy.

I wish I could take this month off - it is so sweet and dulcet and lush.

Anyway, here are all the things that I am grateful for:

1. Papa is well. Did not speak with him but no urgent calls from home. So am assuming that is okay.

2. Cook had made really tasty aaloo sabzi today.

3. V took me for a ride on his new bike. It's really good-looking - like something Batman would ride. It was tough for me to get on and off though. I hit my ankle and it hurts now - but it was lovely going for a round at Bandstand and getting a coffee at Barista.

4. Neighbor got me really yummy gaajar ka halwa.

5. Made some headway in my reading.

6. Went for a lovely walk to Carter Road and then ricked it to Mount Mary again at night to light a candle. I love the Mount. 

7. Bandra is just such a pretty beautiful place. I love it so much! 

(Picture courtesy - From pexels)

First Impressions: Ms Ice andwich by Mieko Kawakami

 

I’ve noticed how so many of the contemporary Japanese stories have a diaristic-feel to them. Sure – there are plots (sometimes very grave and outlandish ones), there are characters you love or abhor, settings that draw you in, details and contexts that set up the foundation for your flight of fancy so essential in fiction – but there is the quiet feeling I get of not really being important or necessary to the equation. The writer would have written about this world and that person, would have rhapsodized about this season or mulled over this sorrow, whether I (the reader) was there or not.

MS Ice Sandwich is a lot like that but it is written with such measured grace that you know that it was written for a reader.

The novella is narrated by a young boy (unnamed in the story). He lives with his mother and grandmother (dad’s mom). His father died when he was only four years old. Mum runs a salon and also does some divination enterprise off and on. Granny is unwell and lays sleeping in a room. But our narrator is very fond of her. His school friends include a young girl, Tutti, who whops him on the head whenever she sees a crow. (The rules of the ‘game’ are that you can bop the head of the person in front of you when you see a crow. It so happens that this little girl always does this when she sees our narrator.)

One day, at the supermarket, our boy sees a young woman selling sandwiches and is captivated. She looks unusual and wears dramatic blue eye shadow. Something about her face is not quite symmetrical but she is so calm and confident as if she deserves to be regarded as the stunning cool goddess she imagines herself to be. This is the boy’s reading of her. (“Ms Ice Sandwich’s eyelids are always painted with a thick layer of a kind of electric blue, exactly the same colour as those hard ice lollies that have been sitting in our freezer since last summer. There’s one more awesome thing about her – if you watch when she looks down, there’s a sharp dark line above her eyes, as if when she closed her eyes, someone started to draw on two extra eyes with a felt-tip pen but stopped halfway.” Elsewhere in the book, as the boy mentally serenades Ms Ice Sandwich for actually packing an egg sandwich with perfect, ballet-like motions, we get another description of her. Ms Ice Sandwich has really short hair, her head looks just like an onigiri rice ball with a sheet of nori wrapped tightly around it.”)

The boy is smitten. Her peaceful anchorage in a sense of self seems to contrast with our young narrator’s jumbled adolescent identity. (There’s a description of how he feels when he’s looking at Ms Ice Sandwich: “I’ve never seen the middle of the ocean or the edge of the sky, but maybe the kind of breeze that blows in those places now comes blowing in out of nowhere and I feel it wrapped around me.”)

Then one day, the boy encounters a fight between a patron and Ms Ice Sandwich where the patron calls her ugly, smug, and accuses her of ‘doing something to her face’. The boy is young and does not really know about plastic surgery or the like. The patron then storms off after yelling that Ms Ice Sandwich will never get married.

Then it so happens that the boy stops going to the store and later he finds out that Ms Ice Sandwich has left working there.

It’s not a big story. It’s not even a particularly deep one. But it is so gentle and caring – like someone turning you down with kindness. There’s a part in the book where this boy (who counts his steps to go to the store to see Ms Ice, now has to come home straight from school skipping his store visit). He sits and sketches Ms Ice Sandwich on the kotatsu table in his grandmum’s room and tells her about his love, even though she is sleeping. Sometimes he looks up and wonders about her grandmother’s mortality. He observes the hierarchy of the fifth and sixth graders in school. He listens to his mum as she explains the ‘spirit levels’ of human beings. We meet him and Tutti on a movie night at her place where she introduces our boy to Hollywood through the movie ‘Heat’. He tells Tutti and Ms Ice and how besotted he is with her. He doesn’t understand the catch in Tutti’s throat when she later says ‘goodbye’. Only we know that someone’s heart is just a little bit broken.

We see a young boy in an ordinary world trying to make sense of it through the central pivot of an extraordinary character he has encountered – one with blue eye shadow.

The book is not tragic but it does leave you with some wistfulness. With all kind of understanding, there is a bit of trade-off of innocence.

It’s like that line in a series called ‘Wonder Years’, where the protagonist – also a young boy – ends an episode with this line, “We don’t blame each other for getting older. We forgive ourselves for growing up.”

Day 6 of 108

Veni, Vidi, Vici...softly

Photo by Lisa from Pexels: https://www.pexels.com/photo/macro-shot-photography-of-tea-candles-1652109/ 

Okay I am writing this quickly so that I can get on to my other reading and writing.

1. Papa is well. I did not talk to him today but there were no urgent calls. So that is good.

2. Cook made very tasty sweet potato fry today. I tossed it with some chill flakes and red salt. Very yummy.

3. My Christmas tree is looking so lovely! Touchwood! I feel blessed and blissed out.

4. Got immersed in a great book. I really can't wait to get back to it.

5. Enjoyed kombucha - the natural/ original flavor from Atmosphere - along with some zero calorie lemonade.

6. Enjoyed a super game with some fellow instructional designers. It was a word association game called Codename. That was fun. And my team won! Both times!

7. I made tea. It is so, so good! 

8. Someone shared this poem with me on WhatsApp...

I met the moon for coffee

It was Friday night I think

When she watched me hardly sleeping

And invited me for drinks

We found ourselves a table

In the middle of the night 

And the constellations twinkled

Like a thousand fairy lights

She asked me how I’d been

As she poured coffee from a pot

For she said she’d watched me

Waking up at midnight quite a lot

I said my brain was far too full

My mind was always on

And when I woke it felt as if

I was the only one

The only one who lay awake 

Whilst I sat on my bed

With thoughts that raced at lightning speed

Around my busy head

The only one who watched the clock

Tick one and two and three

Who laid awake and worried

Whilst the world was fast asleep

My thoughts were stuck in orbit

And I couldn’t pull them back

As they preferred to swim against

A sky so vast and black

The moon said simply nothing

But she opened up a book

And I saw it was a diary

So I took a closer look

And listed there were names of people

All around the world

And all the thoughts and worries

That the moon had overheard

Just then, my eyes were drawn towards

The name that was my own

And that was when the moon said 

“See, you shouldn’t feel alone”

And then she pulled me close

Using the night sky as a blanket

And said “I know you sometimes feel

So lonely on this planet

But when you cannot sleep, 

Get up and watch me from your room

And you’ll see so many others

Having coffee with the moon

- Poem by Becky Hemsley 

Day 5 of 108

 So much is changing. Or rather, brimming with change. I am thinking of doing some or one of those meditation exercises from No Bad Parts where you have to connect and talk to your difficult parts. Today I am feeling triggered by someone or rather something. Maybe I will sit in the glow of my Christmas lights and do this from tomorrow. 

I would like three ot four days of luscious peace with some friends just coming over once in a while...and reading, writing,, eating, etc.

I think I need to figure out a way to live without constantly bracing myself for imminent disappointment. Will get there soon enough.

Here are all the things I am grateful for:

1. Papa is well.

2. Managed to go to Vashi and visit the temple.

3. Read some stuff.

4. Worked out even though I was feeling lazy.

5. Enjoyed Bruno Mars, "I think I want to marry you."

6. Heard some news that makes me grateful for being here and now. That realisation is truly a blessing.

7. Cook had made yummy soyabean cutlets and greek yogurt with thinly sliced strawberries. 

8. Took a really cute picture of this building near my house. It looks like a cabin in an enchanted forest. You do stumble upon magic sometimes.

Day 4 of 108

 I put up my Christmas tree today with the help of my friend. It was such a precious, beautiful day. I got out some stuff from last year and bought some lights today and even though I have to be careful with my resources, I did this. It did feel like a bit of a splurge but am grateful...so grateful that I had this experience. 

Here are all the things that I am grateful for:

1. Papa is well.

2. Cook had made really tasty tomato soup today.

3. The besan chilla and namak ajwain parath were also good. 

4. Managed to go to the gym today.

5. Survived the day. 

Day 3 of 108

 Such a beautiful full moon today!

Here are all the things I am grateful for:

1. Papa is well.

2. Went to meet a friend in his shop.

3. Had a good day at work. Completed an assignment and shared it with the client.

4. Passed on a lead to a friend.

5. Ate the whole large packet of jalebi tonight. Have been eating a lot. Could be disregulated sleep. But still, grateful that I had it. 

6. Enjoyed a cup of Americano at Tim Hortons.

7. Help turned up today.