Chupke Chupke...Shhhh..

So yesterday, there were many firsts that I was proud of and by the end of the day, my excitement was through the roof. I could hardly contain it in. I was jumping around like a little girl after I got back home. I was happy. I do not remember the last time that i felt like this, HAPPY. Not that i am not happy otherwise, just that this sense of peaceful, content happiness does not come as often. It is pure and has a touch of innocence to the emotion. Now the backstory that got me there. I cried at a movie, sobbed and sniffled and yet it was the best movie I had watched in a long time. How does this even relate to being happy ? Well, I took my father out for a movie, driving my car to a mall nearby. This was my first malayalam movie and my father was watching one after maybe 50 years. Since we reached 30 minutes sooner, took him around the different floors of the mall and we were whiling away time until we could enter the theatre. I felt a shift in our dynamics. I was not the child wi...

By nature, I am a DO IT NOW person. If I have a task in my To-Do list that has a future due date but can be done now, I will do it NOW. I ended up wanting my son to emulate this behaviour too. He would get his work done, but not at my pace or when I ask him to do it. This time, he had an activity that was due on Jan 21st and it was assigned in December before the vacation. Three times after asking him to work on it, i decided to do it on my own. Atleast as a prototype and also because it looked like a fun activity to take up to test my creativity too. So I sat and created the template and set everything ready. Kiddo just had to write the content and submit. At the time, it looked like the perfect thing to do. Instead of scolding him and nagging him to do it, I could finish most of the work and just make him do things that he absolutely needed to do. The plan was perfect. It was moving according to the schedule. An entire afternoon of cutting, research and drawing the template and I wa...

Disclaimer: This is not about cricket ! When I was in my teens, my Amma used to go for work and would take a pooled shuttle to her workplace. She made friends on the bus and one of them was older than Amma and just mentioned one day that she was looking to give away an old idly/dosa grinder. Amma jumped at the opportunity to get a good quality, second-hand grinder that could make her life easier. When I was young, I was surprised to see a grown up being excited about a kitchen gadget. I went with her to collect that huge and heavy set. The grinding stone was itself like one of those weights used by wrestlers to work out. I do not remember how we managed to bring it home, but it was love at first sight for Amma. From that day on, every weekend, she would soak the rice and dal and grind and grind and grind. It was hands free, so she could just let it do it's thing. Post grinding, she would have to remove all the batter by hand and then use a sponge to clean it post a load of wate...

I embarked on this arduous task of taking up diamond painting. The minute I saw the 10s of small packets with different colours and the tiny boxes with numbers labeled on it, I was 100% sure I would drop that midway and not complete it as intended. I stashed it away as my table could not handle all that while I was still working. It must wait until the holidays started officially. They remained in the shelf until 24th evening when I was wrapping up all tasks for the year and merely wishing everyone Happy Holidays! I packed up my laptop and charger in my office bag and cleared the table for this monstrous assignment that I was picking up. I started with one colour around the border. First picking up the "cement" and then cutting open a small sachet of the numbered coloured stones and laying them on the green tray to line them up for faster picking. The first 10 made me want to give up. Then I had some more time, so did a few more, and then some more. Opened up another pack...

Five years back, 2 months post my mother's passing, I went on a "vacation" with my husband, kid and in-laws. I wanted it because it was a tough to go through the week of disconnect from office without sitting and crying. It was a nice place, outside the city, aloof and with very few folks around. Remember this was around a time when there was still Covid around, so with two senior citizens and one toddler, it was only okay to get to a place by car and away from the city and with few people. The loss of a parent is never easy and there is no rule book for handling the loss. But one needs to do what they think they need to do to handle it and lessen the pain. And if going out of town and get away from the hustle and bustle does it, then so be it. It was distracting for a bit to dress up, cycle around, trek a bit and enjoy the buffet spreads 3 times a day. This was the new year's eve. Post midnight I get a message , "Now no Covid ? Happy New Year!" It was sup...

I definitely care enough for a person if I voluntarily choose to travel all the way from south bangalore, Kengeri to Whitefield on my day off, just to meet up with a friend for a couple of hours. If you are familiar with Bangalore, you will know that even with Metro, this is a good 1.5 to 2 hour commute. So why would I do that? I just wanted to have the whole day to myself and so I chose a place closer to my friend's home. That way only one of us had to commute a significant distance. I chose Metro purely because it was a holiday and I did not expect too many commuters - which usually would have thrown me off this option in the first place. Second, the distance made it automatically reasonable only to take the metro. So after cooking for my family, i got ready and off I went to the Kengeri station, bought a ticket and boarded the metro. It was one hour ride. I used that time to finish up "Never Lie" audiobook - just the last 20 minutes. Then I looked up and looked arou...