Chupke Chupke...Shhhh..

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...