this is what happened -

i was on the swing in the backyard and he was playing with his colorful chalks, drawing rainbows and something that he called rattle snake and flags of some countries. while he was at it, he saw a bug passing by. his first reaction was panicky, followed by curiosity, followed by some play.

he made a circle around the bug with an orange chalk. the bug tried navigating around it, going through the entire circle in circles. multiple times.

and i have this grand and cliched epiphany, maybe this is what it is. we’re all going in circles, like that bug. in an illusion, thinking that there’s no way out. that this is life. it’s like this.

and then the bug goes out, after i think 3ish rounds. and nothing else could’ve made me happier! and we both squealed like a child. well, he is one. and i was too in that moment. that victory of the bug just outside that little circle felt personal.

now my nephew had this whole game in his mind. kids being kids. he started following the bug, making more circles, lines, and semi-circles and sometimes even making solid shapes by rubbing the chalk over and over and filling up the circles.

the bug would take some time to figure it out and leave the boundaries. and it kept doing that. and i kept feeling better and better.

until my nephew looked around and said, “urghhh, is there any other bug? i’ve had enough of this now.”, exasperation clear in his 6-yo voice, wonder how! he’s a kind and sweet kid, but he’s just a kid, learning.

and that’s when this epiphany i mentioned above just became a whole metaphor, which was already taking shape in my head all along when the little guy was at it with his chalks and shapes.

THIS IS HOW IT IS!

IS THIS HOW IT IS?

that there’s this creator, this God, this energy, the Universe, call whatever you may, and they do these random picks and decide that this is what they want to do with your life today. and when they’ve had enough of one, they go and pick on someone else. at random.

so that everyone gets their share of pickings and pullings.

so that nobody is spared.

so that there are never just happy endings alone.

so that there are stories to tell through Pixar and even with some imagination and a lot of luck, Disney.

there’s someone out there, and we are all mere puppets thinking we have a will and there’s a way. when it’s all just a case of match fixing.

is it so?

it felt so, with this kid and his chalk game and that bug.

we’re the bugs in the grand scheme of things here. all of us.

also, that whole bug thing made me question, “why do we say - don’t bug me?”

why is a bug used that way?

which brings me to another incident with my nephew, this one happened yesterday, again in the backyard. me on the swing and him just randomly spreading himself across the space, wherever his little will took him. we were seeing butterflies. rather just one, which kept coming and going. in the butterfly bush, in the roses, and over the neighbours’ backyards and again at ours. he had drawn something for me (me with a flower and my name on top of the drawing - Me2) and he asked me what else i want him to draw and i told maybe you could do a butterfly. and he did. and then he asked, “why is it called a butterfly? because it steals butter?”

and i found it so ridiculously funny, things only kids could come up with. but i took out my phone and Googled it. and the kid was right!

well, only partly.

because one of the reasons, a folklore theory has it pinned down as this -

‘Medieval folklore linked the creatures to superstition.

People believed that witches turned into butterflies at night to steal milk, cream, or fresh butter left uncovered.’

(placed verbatim from Google Search)

i wish we could all think like kids, we’d have less wars and there’d be butter cookies everywhere, and chocolate milk and ice creams for dinner.

this one was not going to be about the little guy and his ingenuity.

it was supposed to be another rant on me and my life and how it sucks and how i feel stuck and how i’m so lost and how nothing is changing or going anywhere and that same brainrot.

i’m glad it turned out to be about bugs and butterflies though.

i hope this doesn’t butterfly you :P

all that said and done, i also want to put it here that i’ve been feeling like a failure, more and more number of times than i ever remember and i’ve been questioning my decisions - be it about work or people i let go without a proper fight and what the hell i am even doing here?

and a dear friend just said very simple words which got me to the ground again - “everyday that you wake up you’re a Winner, Mitla” it’s cliched and very self-help bookish and very coach-ish. but it worked in that one moment when i needed it, when i needed a log to hang onto atop this shipwreck that’s life right now.

and i’m grateful that no matter how bad things go, no matter how hard life is and seems to be, no matter all this brokenness of hearts and hands and pockets, i’d always keep my eyes open for the beauty of this world. and i’d always want to be a questioning kid and have my imagination run wild, like this little guy of ours.

- flaky sends the curiosity pool that you dive into when you’re in the company of kids

come, sit down, it’s really pleasant here. the sun is at an angle and we the clouds hanging about in the sky that feels endless in this summer and these chairs feel really comfortable.

come sit down, the wind is magical, cool but not cold, to let our hairs come in the way of our mouths every once in a while as we try biting off our chocolate chip cookies and take sips of the hot enough London Fog.

come, sit down because i want to talk. i want to talk this unfiltered and much overwhelmed talk about nothing and everything in a go.

doesn’t make sense, right?

i know. but what do i do? life feels like that right now, has been feeling that way for a long time now. days turned to weeks and becoming years and as i sit here and look back to tell you things, all these things, it feels i’ve already lived that life and now i’m sitting in somebody else’s life here. although this face looks more or less the same as it did 3 years back and the body has grown in places and the clothes are now more colorful to compensate for the colors that have faded from years of living.

see, i know now that life is not all sunflowers, that it’s quite a garden of rose. with suffering and joy always at bay, as much fragrance as thorns and bugs and rains and weeds and whatnots. still, a lot of beauty in it. but, i need a break, okay?

and the pace at which things around me are changing, it seems i am time travelling in my life. things are familiar, yet vague and too distant for me to reach out.

do you ever feel that?

have you felt that, too?

let me put on some songs, wait. something to sip our stories without getting lost in it. no, i promise, i won’t be distracted.

see, i told you, we don’t understand French, so we’re safe.

now, where was i?

yes, overwhelmed.

there are so many things in me that want to let themselves out, include myself.

i want to get out of my head and start living. life was so easy when that was the case a few years ago. well, i know how we tend to romanticize and exaggerate the past, but trust me, it doesn’t make sense, this life that’s presented to us by the endless and omnipresent devices, everyone is famous and thriving and traveling and creating and living the good life. everyone is doing everything (same things?!) and i know i sound like a cynical and unfulfilled brat, but that’s who is talking right now, okay?

are you getting it?

anyway, how’s life?

how’s your life? how are you taking it?

are you tired too, like me, without doing anything much in your day?

or maybe you are not, maybe you’ve already accepted and are running along with the world no? because that’s expected out of all of us? this walking hand-in-hand with the world and if you don’t then you are outcasted or you are socially awkward or you might have hit your head several times as a kid and the symptoms are now coming out, aye?

drink up your tea, you. it’s getting cold now. the breeze is only good on our faces, not for our teas. let’s finish the rest of our tea in silence.

did i finish my unfiltered and overwhelmed?

no.

do i want to keep talking more in loops, the same things over and over and over…?

also no.

so now what?

well, let’s just sit like i said and finish our tea in silence and see all these people walk by and the sun setting on us behind those trees. and oh, let’s just watch those swaying trees. they look so lovely today.

- flaky sends the pleasantness of a Sunday Afternoon spent sitting outside on a porch, having tea and watching people going on in their lives

P.S. the title of this was written yesterday morning in a state of not being able to understand what’s going on, why i am so cynical right now, why am i afraid of growing and why am i unemployed by choice and all the made up miseries of my mind. and then i had such a peaceful and pleasant afternoon + evening alone and later with a friend followed by a night of being lost and lonely. but today came with a different mood, a new day with same old thoughts but a different way to let it out and do something about it. so, here i am taking you to a little cafe by the side of a not-busy road facing a university and here we talk it out and then just sit and be - not overwhelmed, not unfiltered; we just be by sipping from our cups and watching from our chairs and smile every once in a while at how beautiful it all is. and let that never-ending grief of suffering and this one life take a seat with us too.

the lakes here are overambitious. they dreamt of becoming huge, an ocean. and they almost are. with their lakeshores, such clean waters, variety of shore structures, and all things wave-y.

people have beach (lake) facing houses and they’d spend their summers here. many families would’ve been coming for generations now.

something like this has only happened to me in a book or a movie earlier. before it all happened for real for 5 days and 4 nights. a house by the beach, waking up and walking along the shore, breathing in the no-sea-salt but freshness of the sun over a lake that has yet to form the ripples.

and so on the morning after our arrival there, i woke up at 7.20 AM and headed out to the boardwalk. first the sand and pebbles and some cool water on an empty shore. then came the walk. and after a few nods and mornings wished back and forth along the walk, i read something. on a bench.

in the loving memory of…

i kept seeing such benches every now and then and i kept reading the dedications. i started taking pictures after reading a few of them already, eyes moist, heart filled with something so warm and distant.

and that epiphany bringing you back to your body that with everything going on all around the world, for all these years, generations after generations, people after people, and life after life, there’s been LOVE always. with other constants like injustice, wars, protests, slavery, disasters. there’s been so much love in our world, always.

and that’s when there was this beautiful feeling inside my whole body, that you have no name for and so you call it - a feel good feeling.

you start feeling good. not great, not best, GOOD.

i wanted to put all of those bench memorials here, to call out to all those people who shared this space once upon a time and are just around another corner now. but i am going to be a little bit reasonable and not put them all here. i will add a few that hit me the most.

and here they go

by the time i reached a few photos, Substack popped up a blue line saying the message would be truncated. so, i went all reasonable even in my folders of reasonables.

before i started sorting these photos to see which ones to keep and which to exclude, me and this friend and earlier flatmate i am visiting currently, we went on talking about death and all things left. and so, for a couple of hours (5-6), we just talked, sitting across each other. then she stood up to do her chores and i realised i’ve been talking so much after weeks and i am hungry and tired and sleepy.

so i ate. and then tried taking a nap, but didn’t sleep and picked up the laptop and started writing. rather uploading these pictures.

i don’t know why death has kept coming up again and again, especially in the books i’ve been reading. maybe my life is trying to send me signals of living it more and living it well and none are being received, poor strength, you see.

i read this friend one of the bench marks that said this -

Death is only a horizon.

A horizon is nothing save the limit of our sight.

- James & Helen Dwyer

and it was then that i remembered something i was trying to remember ever since i read that horizon thing on the bench, something i’d heard in a movie. Goodbye.

here’s the part about turning that right corner and walking on.

i’ve thought about the ones who’re left behind when i lost my Kaka in 2025. and then today talking about all these people who leave us in these dimensions, who then keep sending us signals from somewhere through dreams or fire flies, i revised that belief in believing in something that exists beyond our knowing and our limitations.

but no amount of reading about death or losing people in your family and the ones close to you can make you want to learn to live again. you only think that getting this closer to death would make you want to live and live it all. but, you’ve already forgotten that habit somewhere in all these days passing by.

forgotten living, how to learn and live again? it’s possible though. all you need to give is time. sometimes you have it, sometimes you don’t. and in all unfairness, there’s one thing as constant as death itself, all the love that you feel and all the love that you have got.

no matter the wars, no matter all the injustice and foolishness of the ways of our human world, there will always be someone who’d write beauty for you if not on benches then on sand that is taken off by the waves but never taken away from their hearts.

we live on, through memories, dreams, and love.

just the way the light of the dead stars keep reaching us, even after being light years dead. we keep living on through this love.

- flaky sends the collective mourning that you feel when you read loving memorials on beach benches and fresh flowers on gravestones.

things like being able to move one step forward hanging on the monkey bar.

sliding down a pole, jumping from the highest place on the little wooden logs in the park, throwing his ball almost a notch closer to the basket, missing it.

he’d want to show these stuff to me, his excitement, smile making the eyes disappear in that little face.

he’s not alone though, in doing that. because don’t we all want a witness?

somebody who could see us doing and making things, achieving, believing, that simple act of breathing?

we want to be seen, felt by a few people; feeling out of place when we’re not understood, when our intentions are misplaced, actions in vain.

are you even there if nobody sees you?

that act of having witnesses to our lives.

most people have that in family and a few friends, later on partners and kids too. for people like me, the universe magically sends a whole army of witnesses to make up for all the loss over the years. i should feel grateful.

and yet, right now, all i want is just to be let to my own device. i am lonely but i also want to stay alone because that’s such a comfort zone i know how to occupy.

these days, they are just passing, it’s like me living my own version of 50 First Dates, without any date to be there, of course. passing through the same routine, every day. things not happening, wanting to do things and not getting to filling up that huge gap with bridges upon bridges of anxiety.

at micro level, every day is different than the next one, but seeing from the grand above, it’s all just an iteration of the same human functions - wake up, do chores, eat, more chores, eat, chores, sit and think, think a lot, thinking always on, walks some days muting the thoughts, chores, eat, chores, sleep. NEXT!

too much misery no, in the mundane?

this desire to be a writer feels like a curse you know, sometimes. well, many times.

let’s take a walk, you and me, shall we?

we’re going to pass by little oaks and two little ponds, watch out for birds and little bunnies too. here, this side, walk this side, it’s more comfortable, keep your eyes open, i’ll keep talking, also don’t forget to smoke up on the fragrances of this day after a night of rains. hmmm. shall i start my monologue or wait up for us to reach by the bench overlooking the river?

let me just start. hmmmm.

it’s difficult. it’s getting difficult. this thing called living.

waking up to nothing more than that routine i mentioned above. wanting to write and fearing so much to even manage a single tap of a key.

being numb, apathetic, hardly functioning as a person would - holding a job, making a living, finding someone, making a family out of it, a home, a life.

this whole thing is so fucking difficult. and nobody told me that, i didn’t get that waiver or any disclaimer.

i just kept reading to get good grades, make my way out of the survival crises we had growing up, to have a well-paid job only to snap out of it, quitting, being a good girl, not coming terms to my the woman in me, missing my past self and glorifying it, thinking why i would do something, put my everything in it only to give up and make a U-turn before it reaches somewhere? and before i knew it, before i even grasp it by the collars, it seems i’m making a U-turn in life too.

too much no? you were not looking for such heavy stuff on this beautiful sunny day with the blackbirds singing here and there?

i know. ohhhhh, ohhh, look there! it’s a butterfly!!!! i thought it was mushrooms taking over this dead tree.

and one more, here, you see, that’s not a decayed leaf, i am a fool to mistake it for that!

these are beautiful, oh God, these are beautiful!

you know, maybe i’ll tell myself to wake up each day to look out for these butterflies. hmmm. sounds like a good plan.

we’re here! let’s sit. here, have some water.

let’s not talk now. i just want to be here and let the river and these birds and trees and insects do the talking.

- flaky sends the freedom of inhaling fresh air after being inside her head for far too long `

at one point, as i was walking, i could see my shadow walking besides me, to my right, on the grass, changing shapes - shrinking and expanding to whatever space light got for me there. and then there came that little pond, and the shadow disappeared and i thought woah! see, shadow is always going to be there, but to see myself, i need to go deeper, i need to see in deeper and then i’ll be able to see the reflection.

you see? a writer’s mind is always making stuff up, even when it’s crying in agony, that thought would flash across her mind to use that scene of her crying and walking, her screams muted by the aeroplane in the sky. to give that scene to one of her characters’ in any upcoming stories.

such is a writer.

i wasn’t feeling the usual heat that i feel at that time of almost waking up. the room i sleep in is in the East. you could see the scarlet start filling up around 6ish and the lights filtering in through the little spaces of the blind around almost 5.

today is gonna be cloudy probably.

how wrong was i!

i would realize that after some time. almost an hour for the facts to meet my instincts.

i went downstairs still not hearing Yugi’s voice and thought that he’d have slept again (unlikely). and i put on the kettle for my regular 2 glasses of warm water in morning while unloading the dishwasher. i looked at the light outside, still feeling its cloudy today, the tint was closer to a cool palate. then i took my glass outside to have it from the jhulla in the backyard but what hit my nose like a quick lightening bolt was a smell. that of something on fire. i looked around, seeing for hints in someone’s backyard for last night’s barbecue. my eyes came back with none of the scenes to match the smell that kept on getting from my nose to my head. instant. quite unusual to the daily freshness even on warmest of days. the light feeling now different as it had the knowledge of the nose too now.

i closed the door and headed straight for the front door to look outside. i saw the sun behind a layer. still thinking it’s sparse clouds. still smelling the not-everyday-air of morning.

sat on the sofa, had my glasses of water. felt haywire with posting something on IG as a dinosaur generation now. and then had my breakfast. couldn’t resist the urge to go out and check the backyard once again to see what’s different today. the light now tuning from the cool tones to slightly warm.

it’s 11.49 AM right now and the light outside is as if a filter of warm is spread all over the field of vision, as if that creator has used his pen, selected that filter and put it across this region.

back to what was then 10.00 AM and after smelling more fire and burnt wires and carrying that through my nose to the upstairs, i went to ask my jiju about there being any fire anywhere.

he asked me, “yes. guess where?”

just to answer his question without a thought i said is it the trail?

“it’s almost a thousand km from here.”

and i went wooooooooooooooooooah!

he told me it’s in Northern Ontario, even northern to Thunder Bay. i asked if there’s any casualty. and he said the place was mostly uninhabited, expect for a few Natives living there who were told to evacuate yesterday. and i thanked internally for that.

and i told him, just yesterday night, i started a movie - And the Birds Rained Down (30 mins watched so far) which was a photographer documenting an earlier wildfire and its survivors.

and then he showed me a video that went viral on X taken from a train. and we discussed this a bit - the whys and hows and whatnots of it. of what’s happening on Earth and what we normally keep ignoring or avoiding. things like us living on a ball of fire now. things like us having made a beautiful haven into a ball of fire.

the color tone kept changing outside. Yug woke up and it’s then that i asked jiju if he had woken up and slept again but it was just my dream. and i kept looking out at the sky. the sun not behind clouds but layers of smoke.

alone.

there.

too powerless behind a shroud of smoke.

i tried remembering if i’ve seen the sun like that before? i have, but those were clouds, it was a yellowish and not this orange/scarlet-ish.

i clicked pictures. front yard, back yard. at one moment the sun was so orange, i called everyone here at home and took them outside to see the sun and then told Yugi to go inside. my sister told something about not breathing this air.

i went for shower after that. had thoughts of all the trees, those wild animals, birds, insects who have gone. just gone, no funerals, not making it to news. nobody shedding tears for them.

i stepped out of the shower and on a habit, turned on the light and then turned it off again. i wanted the fire filtered light to pour in and i dried myself in that light.

right now, it’s looking like big muskmelon, not too ripe, covering the whole sky. that’s the shade of it.

that’s how the houses around are appearing. and i can smell the smoke even sitting inside. it might just be my imagination, like that dream of Yugi waking up early which felt so real, his voice so real out on the stairs.

campfires. this side of the world is a campfire. a campfire nobody wants, a campfire too warm. a campfire that’s a wildfire.

just now, Yug came upstairs and he told me that the sky is yellow and i said yes baby, i am seeing it. and then he told me an idea of creating a little dinosaurs book and stickers. and then he was surprises/shocked - whaattt?

there are some construction guys still doing construction outside?

and i said yes kuku, not everyone gets to stay at home right? there are many people who have to work outside, breath in this air. they don’t have that luxury to say, come, let’s go inside, this air is not good for us.

prayers. hope. solidarity.

i kept staring at the little blue plastic globe in front of me, on my sister’s desk, as i just stared at it but not into it. and then i began writing. what do i write about?

do i write about how much i want to write and how i am aching with the desires and dreads for writing as much as i can, all i can - just like that all you can eat meals?

or do i write about kindness and my encounters with it?

or do i write about this digital age and all i don’t like about it but all i wouldn’t be able to do about it?

or do i write about going home and getting to write?

or do i just write?

this thing, this feeling of writing and feeling so wretched when you can’t do that, is it same as being boiled potato inside a cooker which keeps on being on the gas for a long time because somebody forgot to turn off the gas?

or is it that wait that happens for someone who is not coming back?

you hold on to that hope even though your hands are now bruised.

this job of being a writer or for that matter, any artist, is that of the song Aur Ho.

there’s no bayan to the bebasi that we feel. it inly releases on two occasions - when you do that thing or when you die. but we don’t really know what happens when we die, so we don’t know if death is that fulfilment or not. we’d like to believe so though.

like other things we like to believe in and hold on to.

things like our world getting better.

all these politicians being sane.

wars ending. people being travellers and not immigrants.

of love staying. and of life thriving.

just like this belief of mine in me writing it all out. being able to.

there are days when i feel grateful and fortunate for this ability to express. at least in writing. in music.

my sister asked me a few days back when we were returning from some day trip, if i ever get tired, my throat hurts, from singing (she said she gets tired from even speaking too much some days).

my answer - i wish i could say everything through singing, that i wouldn’t have to talk another word. i love singing, hate talking.

is that possible? to sing all the time?

all our miseries would be melody then.

what am i doing in life right?

i wouldn’t answer the way Bunny did in YJHD. he was watching it pass. time.

i am waiting for this time to pass.

so that i can get home and get going on my books. all the things i want to write. get it done with finish it. not have it in me, all the time.

i feel like that seed which has been dug in by some squirrel as her winter bounty but she forget to get it and so now, i am waiting for Spring to spring me up, bring me out of the shell, let me grow out, and grow above, and tower over, spread out, into the sky, with all my limbs and legs and leaves and flares.

yeah, let’s see.

wait, it’s funny, if that squirrel had been a God. and they forgot about me?

you see the paradox? or is it a contradiction?

you see? one needs to be seen and another is happy in the hiding. both wanting to seen and grow.

so am i waiting for a God or a squirrel?

well, right now, i don’t know about a God, but i sure do know there are squirrels. so i’ll but my money on that and wait it out, wait it out for Spring to come and then i will take that space.

- flaky sends the pinks and purples and grey-blues of a setting sky

now on to the matters of what to write here, i will see what all comes to my mind.

let’s start by giving you where i am writing this so that you feel the feels too.

it’s around noon. the sky is a good mixture of blues and the whites of puffy clouds and some streaks too. i am sitting here at a desk in the library closest to where i am staying with my sister and her family <3

the temperature inside the library is good today - not too hot and not way too cold like the usual days. and i am flanked by fictions on one side and mangas and super hero series on the other side. and imagine my reserve in not standing up every now and then to see all the books on the shelves around :D

summer is finally here and i am coming to the library everyday to get some writing done for my first novel (my eyes, my eyes!)

i keep developing the story in bits and pieces, i am mostly reading a lot these days - some knick-knacks of themes - almost a menagerie/cocktail/whateves you want to call it - rom-com, a book on good writing, a book where a writer (70 yr) is taking a walk with another writer (101 yo) here in Canada, another on Twin Photographer sisters in the 1930’s and onward, and one more, wait - the one on the notes of Agatha Christie curated and annotated by another writer (this one is weeeeeeeeee big!)

i realized when i ended the above sentence at how profusely i’ve used the ‘-’

huh!

writing this story.

its much fun and daunting at the same time. i keep keeping the characters in my head all the time. i take them everywhere i go. and they’ve got me back to reading rom-coms although mine is not entirely a rom-com but there are parts of romance. after all, i am at the end of any day - a hopeless romantic and a sucker for all the romanticism life has to offer.

i told the story to two of my very close friends they are quite happy with it making me believe that at least two people are going to read it :P

let me reveal a little thing - just the name of the protagonist - Kavya Mehta - woahhhhh!

it’s out here, now i can’t back out of writing this novel. i am holding me against myself here.

now imagine that we are going to a nice park in this super nice weather, there’s cool breeze (not cold), our hairs flipping against our face, but not as much as to make them go wild and unruly, just the right amount of flipping, you know what i mean?

and every once in a while we look up and around at all these traveling clouds and we keep smiling and talking and laughing and looking at how it all feels so light and fresh and alive and all things bright and beautiful :)

and, this is where i get started on life.

on life been okay lately. quite on an autopilot. no rush, yet somewhere to go.

good sleep. food slightly not sorted from this week onward as i started coming to library. this 33-yo just marvelling at trees going from blank twigs to full-fledged green show in a matter of a few days, good scenting flowers all around and a routine that takes from day-break to night-fall.

i really have nothing to say it seems because i am just blabbering and rattling out here. but, i still want to write, so i am writing and writing.

i have been a regular at my self-given writing exercise of opening up a file on my desktop named ‘stream of consciousness’ to write 3 pages in it. fill it in with 3 pages. just anything that fancied me. the first two days went in me wondering out loud on each page about when these 3 pages will get over because i didn’t really have anything of substance to write down there. and then as days flipped to 3rd and 4th, i did find out that i had a few things to say (write) after all, so i didn’t come to know when the 3rd page came and i had to pull a full stop to the exercise.

we went out for dinner yesterday and it was a different sort of clouding then. 8.30 - 8.45 ish PM and we were seeing streaks of purple, pink, yellow, orange, scarlet, blue variations of all kinds written all over the horizon.

and in some time, my nephew called out, “look Mi2, a pink cloud!'“

we both were so happy watching it against a washed out blue sky and patches of greens appearing as our car drove past trees after trees. and i kept clicking pictures intermittently.

'“Mi2, you’re always clicking pictures of trees.” - my nephew said smiling.

and i said yes that’s because i love trees. they’re my friends.

he gave out a chuckle and i added and also books, because they are my friends too.

and he kept looking at me going between smiling and laughing and calling me silly Mi2.

well, these are the friends who are always there you know - trees and books and they’ve always been quite a respite - be it during childhood and all the helplessness or adulthood and its heartbreaks.

and on that note, let me give you some respite from my monologue on nothing in particular, because we’ve arrived at our destination. a little park bench and we are going to sit here and keep looking in and around us and share this silence and the soundscape of rustling leaves and dancing trees and geese and water flowing and the sun shinning gently on the little ripples creating by all the swimming inside it and the caressing of wind on its surface.

- flaky sends the calm and cool of a nice sunny afternoon where clouds make you feel the joy of being a kid again

the first MIA Friday was when i was throat-deep and drowning in my hardly packed bags for a 7-month stint in Canada and the next one went in arriving oceans apart from home and the next one probably came and went and it kept going on till this Friday, despite deciding hardcore to make it to this space, i still couldn’t. almost like inertia or almost the fear of what to write or how will i even write with a head full of things to write and a heart full of things it lived and lived through.

while curating my Book-2 which is comprised of essays written here, most of these one-side dialogues circled around writing or wanting to write and ending up not doing that and then while reading through them finally as i compile, feeling that WHY AM I NOT WRITING?

and, in the meantime, as i read this book Walking with Beth, i see the first page read this -

and i immediately take a screenshot and share it with a dear friend, Saif whom i met this Sunday because his words “my life would be a waste if i don’t write” reverberated through my head. how his earnest eyes reflected the agony of not having written anything or much or of substance in the last 3 or so years. and i also go back to my own little comment besides one of these Substack essays that i’m putting in a Google Doc in which i was comparing my desire to write with that desire of seeing your beau.

this desire to write is so immense on days that i feel i could go without food or sleep but not without the feeling of having written. and at the same time, not writing and just feeling this urge to write occupies all that space in my head, just like it’d be filled with that above-mentioned memories of all the right touches of your lover on your body. it’s as sadistic as hedonist i think. do you think that, too?

writing, reading, and making people read for a living, selling flowers and coffee and some cookies and muffins and khari and nankhatai, isn’t that the perfect way to spend time here? our time that most of us are now scrolling through the day and not flipping and dragging through it?

i wish i had a bookstore.

and i wish the only job i had was to read as much as i can and talk and write about it and make people fall in love with reading books.

time. it’s already 36 days to coming here. i didn’t even realize a month has gone by and only 6 are left.

time = light < blink of an eye

a few days back my papa was asking me on call, “what do you do whole day? how are you passing your time?”

and i said, papa, “time j kya chhe?” (who has time?)

whole day comes and goes in a swoooooooopppppphhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

and when another person asked me what they can do for me, i told them to extend my day to more than 24 hours so that i can get back to my writing and reading and repeat that and i also get time to do nothing at all, because as much as i enjoy doing things, i also enjoy not doing things and just lying there, like a cloud? floating?

yeah, more or less. like a puffy puffy cotton candy white cloud.

in my current visit to Canada which is for 7 months this time (now only 6 left), i had decided that i’d travel because i hadn’t during my last time here as i was working my ass off doing 8-8 hours shift at the Home Depot. i totally enjoyed my time there, no complains. but because of that last time, i wanted this time to be spent outdoors and not making paint for people’s homes.

but you know what? life has to be life and that reality of having money strikes you like lightening to bring you back to your life on Earth where you need money for everything. even to make your travels possible. despite deciding that i’d not be taking up work at any retail stores, my anxiety for having some money at hand made me apply to any and all kinds of odd jobs. and just like the last time, i haven’t heard from even the retailers yet. is the job market that sad or it’s just that they would rather have waiting customers over having people from a particular ethnicity? i don’t know. i am still hopeful that i'll have something to put in my pockets.

why i say it? because no matter how much you try not wanting to be a part of this race you didn’t sign up for, you still end up finding yourself on the race track on even days.

something will happen, i am sure of that.

and oh, i applied to a position in a library too. fingers crossed!

what a heaven of a work place it’d be, no?

we’ll see :)

rounding myself up to writing now - we’re done with Book 2 compilation too. YAYYYYY!

Book - 1 is a compilation of all the captions, snippets, and vignettes i’ve written so far from 2017 into a breathable, holdable, lovely book <3

my editor is already on it and together we’re trying to make a book out of it. and every few days, this doubt in me would rise up from somewhere within - can it really be turned to a book? and that’s when thankfully, bless this girl, we’d talk and my editor would leave traces of confidence and hope in me that it is indeed a BOOK!

and Book - 2 is a compilation of everything i’ve written here so far. and hand-written essays too. although i’m still thinking whether i should be adding the hand-written ones to the compilation or not. still thinking…

but, my real life and all my bets right now are piggy-banking behind this novel i want to write. the characters are out there already, doing their thing in that story and yet here i am, writing about how i want to write so much and keep writing and i’d dread like the weakest branch, shivering as she stares at the document with a few words scattered on it - not doing what she wants to do so badly, putting one word after the other.

anyway, let’s put a ‘.’

- flaky sends the ambitions of her first novel and the dread of staring at that document

“who tells a story like this?”

that’s what my friend said when i was sharing some incident from our past life as me, his wife, and him sat on the floor in his home being comfortable with each other and our lives feeling liveable for that time.

“me. i tell stories that way, because i don’t know how to tell/talk.”

coming from a writer, the above sentence would seem bizarre to many, no?

but, that’s the truth. at least my truth. i’ve always sucked at telling verbally, what i’m telling or want to and i’d be all over a story and leave my listeners to make sense of my rambling. i’m glad that they have, made sense of it, when i hardly knew what i was saying or knew how to say it with words.

or so was i, because of late, i have this nagging sense growing within that i’m misunderstood. i’m misunderstood by the people so close to me and if they can misunderstand me to this extent, how about the rest of the world?

i don’t put this sense or feeling of being misunderstood on them. there was a time when i’d have. but, i know that it lies in me, this incapacity to explain/express myself.

i wonder why?

because i keep shifting as a person?

because i don’t always realize what the full intent of what i want to say?

because i don’t know how to live and be a person and make sense of any of this life?

a few days back, me and a friend of mine were sitting my my cousin and her kid who’s 20. and, we had ordered desserts. me and this friend, our orders with this ice cream brand are fixed - him with his KitKat shake and me with my Chocolate Brownie. but, this outlet we were sitting at, they probably didn’t know how we take our shakes! (with brand consistency?)

and, we cribbing about the shakes been too sweet and not made the right way as they always are at the other outlets we have gone to. and, then this friend asked my cousin, “don’t you find it sweet, too?” and then he realized - Oh!!! she wouldn’t have any reference because she hasn’t had this fixed order with this brand.

references!

that’s what he said that me and another friend of his are the ones who taught him about references and how we are supposed to compare things not in absolutes. and as i drove home that night, with the friend sitting behind me on my Flaktiva, i thought to myself - how i know this person through his daily life and routine because i see him almost everyday and how his GF who’s so close to him and how they have so much love for each other would not know these details or things or his everyday life because they’re in long distance, but will know his core and would predict his behavior even without having any AI algorithm to feed the details into to get a model.

how we know different people differently and all of these things and version of this person would be right, from where we see it.

and, just like Earth Sets and sides of the moon not seen yet, there’d be so much about a person that we’d know with time and with more/different resources.

and just like that, all these versions of me that i know of so far, when they’re all trying to co-exist, there would be collisions and emissions of all kinds for all the things we’d be trying to make sense of. made me think - how could we ever be lonely if there’s so many of us living inside us? makes me want to question how lonely does our Earth feel, having so much of life within and yet floating alone in this dark, endless, and even (meaningless?) vastness. is this why it’s blue? it this why 70% of it is filled with water? is that earth’s loneliness crying out for some belonging?

and is that why it’s creating all this beauty so that it feels belongingness?

just this thought makes me want to live to create beauty and belonging for myself and everyone who’s looking out.

for everyone who’s Earth-setting and Moon-joying (which is all of us?)

i think from now on, i’ll replace my enjoys with moonjoys :)

with all the archiving on Substack i’ve been up to these past few weeks to get down my curations and collections for my ‘coming soon’ books, i realized how i have always felt a tinge of optimism even in the bleakest of times.

probably that’s my Moon. that optimism. just like our Earth would be feeling having its Moon going about it. and that’s where Earth would have its beauty and belonging and meaning and mission in all this empty vastness of life.

- flaky sends the feeling of speechlessness and effervescence of the 4 people who just had a fly and float back home :)

P.S. i want to keep writing about my late bloomings and wanderings - homecomings, but maybe i’m quite speechless after writing all of the above and so ending it on speechlessness would be an absolute for now.

but, it turns out, life had other plans. hence, the title.

and here comes the reason for this title.

i met an old colleague and friend a few days back while i was picking up another friend and had taken her for breakfast. he has a little daughter just over a year old now. i saw all three of them - him, his wife, and the little kiddo. and, eventually i told him that i’ll come and play with the little one.

i went today after making the plan and rain-checking it several times due to one or the other reason.

and, you know what?

the little kid played with me as if she plays with me every day.

there were just a few seconds of hesitation followed by a whole lot of familiarity and comfort, as if she’s always known me, as if i was a presence she was used to.

i didn’t know this, of course! the mother told me. she also told how relaxed she felt today because of the little one playing with me. when it was time for me to leave them and say goodbye, the munchkin wanted to tag along, she came to me and her parents said this never happens! they were quite surprised to see her playing table on my back because that’s something she does only with the two of them, not even her grandparents or aunts. it broke my heart to see her cry when i her mother took her away from me as i stepped onto my Flaktiva :(

this is not the first instance of something like this happening.

i think it started with my nephew probably. the first one, who happened almost 20 years back, the comfort that he felt with me and my younger brother, the comfort he still feels with me after all these years, now all grown up and asking me about how did i find her new GF.

then it was one nephew and niece after the other.

later on, friends’ babies came into the picture.

i have a friend whose kiddo is such an introvert; rather a kid with marvellous boundaries, clear choices, and a hell lot of assertiveness. he’ll turn 3 yo soon. he has been so comfortable with me that he initiated a hug. his mom was shocked and told me that he never hugs anyone but his parents, mostly his mom only. and, he would play with me so well, every time i’ve met him (3 times so far).

once, we all had to leave their house, they had a train and i had a get-together to go to. we were playing in the balcony and after a while he got all cranky. his mother was running in and out of the different rooms while packing and she told the dad (the dad is my friend, but over the years, the mom became a good friend too) to bring the kiddo to the dinning table for lunch because we were getting late. the dad said, he’s already at the table and the mom told me, please come with us, i’ve never seen him being this easy with anyone else. and when it was time to leave, he wanted to me go with them. his mother had to make some stuff up so that he’d let me go because my uber ride had arrived.

my nephew (5 yo) still remembers me (long distance), and everything else that his dad says about me (all the teasing that he does) overrides (he is his dad’s son!!!! but also mine :P)

i love that!

i love how no one can turn him against me, even though i don’t talk with him for days and have hardly seen him in person for more than a year now.

another nephew of mine (8 yo), the one elder to this youngest one would tell her mom to let him talk with me and he’d tell me his stories and share his paintings and sketches with me. he was visiting us the last weekend and he played dholak! the kid is gifted, we all enjoyed his show till over 1.00 AM. he has no formal training, i’d sing, he’d listen and start playing, that’s it. i told him, i am proud of you and his smile at that :) was millions!

i attended my brother’s friend’s wedding in Feb and yesterday, i had to go for the memorial of that friend’s uncle who died recently. there was a boy who smiled at me. he was the same boy who had asked me during the wedding “where are you from?” and i’d told him, “i’m from Mars.”

i didn’t know i was good with kids. i haven’t known i am good with kids.

after today, i will start saying that it’s a God Gift.

i’m good with kids and i know it.

no, i don’t have any motherly instincts. but i think i know what’s happening here.

i’m always in the present with everyone i am with, everyone i am meeting, sitting with, standing with, on call, everywhere. because that’s how i am. i’d be in the present moment, with you. it took me time to realise that people feel very comfortable with me, and most readily, without efforts. i’ve taken that as if that happens with everybody, there’s nothing different or new in that. but, i realized that’s not the case always.

so i think, my ability to make everyone feel at home would make me that familiar and always-known presence that these kiddos would be feeling. and, i touched wood thrice and thanked all the gods for this gift. because it’s indeed a gift. these are kids, they are pure, they know one thing from the other, they know a person from the other. even though we think they are just kids. it’s a gift kids have, of intuition and knowing. they just know. it’s this adulting that leads to us not knowing these most basic things as we let all this logic override what we know, what we’ve always known, in our hearts.

it’s an achievement and a great gift.

to make these little people feel at home in me.

to have them pat my back with their little hands and have them hug me without asking for it.

i wouldn’t trade this gift for anything tangible. i am not going to not know about this gift anymore and take it for granted. i’m not a mother, nor do i feel like one.

i’m just a person who makes everyone feel at home with me, in me.

its almost an irony, how with all my anxieties and this chaotic mess that i carry always like a shadow, people have still felt so peaceful with me. i’ve always questioned that too. why peace? why with me, despite all my mess?

but, i now know the answer. i’m there. all i do is just be there, in the present continuous with them.

to have these little life place their faith in me is more than what money could ever bring me.

but that said, i need money, badly now. i think i’d be doing a crowd funding soon to pay the fees for my editor for my first book. but, that i’ll keep for another dispatch.

for now, i just want to savor being all these kiddos’ favorite and fun aunt (Rachel!)

the next time i’d be interviewed for a job or project, this is what i’m getting down in my answer - that i’m loved by kids and kids KNOW!

- flaky sends the innocence and purity you feel around kids

i’m very protective sharing kids’ photos/videos, etc. that’s why i’ve only added names of my 2 nephews and not those of the kids of my friends. i am sharing these pictures with my nephews with a whole lot of nazar na lage out there in the universe :) <3

and of course an entire constellation of love.

i wrote it quite a bit when it started off. the pain.

that old friend paid a visit along with some dizziness and fainting sensations and some palpitations. so, i had to get off the desk and also that thought train of feeling alienated when you are an artist.

i have come to terms with that term, that i am. i am an artist.

i feel and i express that feeling in different ways. so, i am an artist, i have to be. because i don’t know how to be a person, in all honesty.

and yesterday’s feelings were about being an artist and feeling alienated about it even with the people you love, because they don’t see the colors of sunset the way you do or they don’t occupy their minds with the ideas of trees be-ing a being.

those thoughts and feelings now lie in the drafts here as i start off today on a different train.

the train of pain and patience and all that i could try to tell in the simplest of ways.

i have been resting since yesterday, clutched to my bed, with a heating pad on top, legs and arms straight, as if already in a grave.

(do people get to turn in their graves? they do turn, no? they turn to dust.)

and i finished watching Virgin River and marvelling at the complications that we humans have. i couldn’t sleep, despite wanting to. couldn’t eat.

and in the evening when the pain was unbearable, i dialled a number before my fingers hovered and lingered over another name. the friend picked up and from that first greeting itself i’d know what kind of call we’re going to have. yesterday, his hello told me that the call won’t last more than a minute. because he was leaving his office and so i said okay, bye. but, i was crying. i was crying a little, because that’s all that happens now. i can’t cry rivers. trust me, i want to. there’s an ocean worth of stock my eyes are carrying.

and then he asked a few questions to try and be there his way, for whatever time he could be. but i don’t like being a bother to people, even those close to me and even those on whom i could have that birthright of being a bother. i couldn’t keep up the call. i thought of ordering myself some ice cream because my stomach burned equal parts of hunger and pain. then i texted an apology to this friend telling him that usually talking to him makes me feel better, NORMAL. that’s why i’d called. i’d called to be comforted. probably even pampered?

you know what i did next?

i called that name over which my fingers had lingered and then my hand had hovered. i didn’t want to, but i just did.

the voice sounded occupied as i knew it would. and, within just a minute, that voice was okay in saying bye. no call back, no text asking how am i? i was expecting, yes. because that voice knows what i go through. maybe, the voice would have wanted to, but that mind would have denied the voice. or maybe not. i don’t want to go there right now. the hovering hand is no more going for that hello now. that’s all i promise myself in this moment.

pain. and, pain killers.

i ordered myself a chocolate brownie shake to feel whatever it would make me feel, what i was looking for in that voice, i’d be switching it for an ice cream, because that ice cream would come, even when the voice doesn’t.

i hardly talked in yes-s and no-s yesterday.

around 9.00 PM, i was already on my way to sleep, but sleep and pain don’t share a bed, you know?

after much twists and turns and pleas and patience and a whole lot of pain and moans, i decided i’m going to pop a pill if the pain still persists. i kept waking up every 1-2 hours. finally at around 2.15 AM, i woke up with the intent to take a pill, ended up having just water instead. i decided to keep more patience.

and, today after waking up, i’d been at the heating pad since morning. the only difference being my phone played a documentary i was supposed to check out a while back.

Frida.

i watched it till lunch. i couldn’t eat much. then continued watching the documentary again. and, Frida’s life and her pain and her passion for painting made me write so many notes in my phone and in my notepad whenever i could sit up a bit.

i wrote and wrote and wrote.

and then i wrote something on IG as a way to let out my pain in front of an audience.

pain needs audience.

patience doesn’t.

after a while, i tried sitting at my desk to write notes from the documentary, things that stayed with me from Frida.

i share an intimate relationship with pain.

pain lets me feel the parts of my body which i’d otherwise have never known, unless i were to be a doctor.

i once observed during one such painful sleep-outs of mine that we feel our bodies in so many different ways.

the most common being sexual experiences. followed by exercises and dancing.

i’ve felt my body even while singing. when i sing, i feel my body melt, i don’t quite know how that is, but i feel very fluid, i feel atomic.

and, then there’s meditation. i’ve felt that too. through Vipassana. that threadbare existence of ours through just a breath.

but, there’s something else too, that i realised that day.

pain.

pain takes you to the places of your body like the one that sits in the pocket between your diaphragm between your stomach and rib on the left side. you don’t know it through a name, you just know its existence through a spasm, a ticking pain.

or that one that runs from the middle of your left foot to your upper hip. just the left side.

pain, it lets you feel your body in ways that’s so you.

i am not romanticising this. this one shouldn’t be the way to feel your body. i wish this upon no one.

i am merely sharing an observation.

NORMAL.

something i feel only on a few days, roughly a week each month. because the rest of the days of the month, there’s a close and constant companion. pain. in different magnitudes and frequencies. i try to do whatever i can in those days. be it writing, sitting at the desk and looking for jobs or any random thing that i fancy. i’d dance at night or go for cycling in the evening. and, i’d do those things whole-heartedly knowing that i’d not be able to do them in a few days.

i have been tired of answering “how are you? how’s your health now?”

because i can’t explain these things to people. that i’m always angry and irritated. always penduluming between extremes. and, i have stopped finding that solace in telling somehow. i am more comfortable in writing it out. writing is my friend. writing is a companion i can rely on. writing is like crying without those tears that are too stubborn to leave.

i don’t even know what i’ve told you here honestly because i lost the track of which train i’m on right now.

i know how Frida would have felt. trapped in a body.

trapped in a body wanting to do so much and yet summing up to not a lot.

and despite all that, she still painted. she painted because painting brought her immense pleasure.

and we live for pleasure. don’t we?

talking of artists, i came across a beautiful pianist on my random YouTube shuffle as i was dancing to Ólafur and some Ludovico - Dustin O’Halloran. i’m listening to his live performance right now as i write this. but, his creations are beauty.

and beauty brings me to

how despite all this pain and suffering there’s so much beauty in our world and our lives.

i know in just 2 days, when i’d be able to sitting, and taking bath, and going about my day as usual, i’d take my rides, i’d end up feeling the freedom that the open roads offer.

because that’s life.

i couldn’t write last week. i think that’s my first miss this year so far (in my weekly writings here)

- flaky sends the coolness and freshness you feel after a long and good cold bath

but, i didn’t come here on Friday or Saturday or Sunday. i wanted to, i thought i would, but then i ended up not coming. instead, i would try my best to catch up on sleep, visit my friend and her family in the hospital, watch India’s matches with Pa and then final with Masi coming over and giving us a surprise (i was at the hospital, so there was no surprise for me, only a phone call), we ate food, tried keeping our spirits high, we cheered for India, i tried escaping my wandering mind by watching over Schitt’s Creek, tried catching up on my reading, but couldn’t; finished a non-fiction essay book which was a collection of 4 speeches by an Indigenous Leader from Brazil (Ailton Krenak), got a whole different lens of looking at life, colonialism, consumerism, civilization, earth and our relation to ourselves - inside out, and started reading another essay by Bruce Gilley - The Case of Colonialism, only a few paragraphs down and i’m already filled with some anger, i’m yet to read it in its entirety.

so why all this?

reading The Case of Colonialism was the exact opposite of the ideas presented in the Book - Ideas to Postpone the End of the World

and that’s exactly what i want right now.

for quite some time i have this sense that my learning has stopped, that i am reading very similar kinds of things, that i am feeling the same emotions the same way i was 3 years back, that my writing hasn’t evolved, that my thoughts are still stuck in existentialism and whatnot going on in the world.

i needed a new way to look at things, i needed my reality to be broken, shattered, reformed, reshaped, whatever but not the current one.

i needed a different way to feel my feelings, think my thoughts, and write about it all.

so, i had started reading random stuff, without knowing that it might be connected in some ways or that i’d find connections in some ways,

all of the above was written for the last week’s life mosaic (written Monday night and almost Tuesday morning - very trivial and useless details for you, but a memory fragment for me)

i will continue in the same line of thought though, the line being not a straight line, this life of ours.

and i will add all the things on my mind right now, right this Friday.

couple of things in my head from a lot of it;

i started watching a show called Long Story Short by the creator of BoJack (which I’ve loved and related to a lot, although it added to the craters i already had within me when i’d started watching it which was around 2020-21, when nihilism in me was at its max capacity; but it also made me feel seen somehow because there’s someone out there feeling the same things and making a show out of it, and such a show!)

back to Long Story Short. 2 episodes down and i felt that i’ve seen this somewhere. but, where?

This Is Us.

that’s where i could find the pieces of familiarities. it was during the same time i mentioned above that i’d started watching This Is Us. and i left it at episode 9 of season 1, because i was empty of all the emotions which the show needed, which that show deserved.

my body, mind, and soul was tuned to the numbness that BoJack was streaming onto. all the existentialism, the meaninglessness of this one true life.

and, so i ran some Google search and found that there are people who have drawn parallels of the two shows i mentioned. Long Story Short is an adult animation (of course, brilliantly done) and This Is Us is a normal human show, most human show, but the core remains the same for these stories, these families, these siblings.

i don’t know if the creator was inspired from This Is Us and i’m yet to see the remaining episodes for both these shows, but see how my brain makes an instant connection!!!!!!

i realized i have used a whole lot of exclamations today. don’t know why!

and i don’t know why i tell you this utterly trivial detail for you again. but, i tell you.

so much has happened in the past 15 days since i wrote anything. as much within me as around.

every day felt like a whole year, and if you look at it, the time really was just a matter of a few days. 2 weeks, 15 days. from being 50 days away to my departure from this familiarity to now around 30 days to that event of stepping into fresh air and a blink of spring.

time is a weird concept, don’t you think?

it just shrinks when you want it to go on, and when you want it gone, it hardly ever goes away.

count downs taking a whole while than just 10 secs and these seven months that i am going to be away from her and going off far away would only feel like seven days.

it’s funny and almost ironic. almost. how this time works.

i want to tell so much about how i am an artist and not a creator. i am more into living and then writing, singing, dancing all of that in this living. how it’s not content for me, what i read, write, watch, and feel and express. i want to shout out my frustrations about people making everything into content. even relationships are now content? is it?

i want to talk about how we’re just over analyzing and idealizing boundaries and IG-influenced therapy sessions over our very human feelings and reactions, and above all our most humanly instincts which it feels we’re loosing in this journey we call healing or self-care or whatever. it has it’s goods and bads, of course. you can be assertive and still feel your feelings. how we are laying out ground rules through what we’ve learnt on social media and how we are all following a rule book with guidelines created by a ChatGPT that just patronizes you over and over and over…

i don’t know if what i’ve told here makes sense to you.

i don’t know about anything anymore honestly.

most of the times i feel i’m forgetting what it is like to be me, and that there would be moments, little ones here and there which will give me a blink of a reminder of my ghost.

i am wadding into waters too shallow, seemingly dangerous and there’s always the fear of being drowned, being sucked into that quicksand.

everything seems to be moving too fast, without letting me take a mental picture, perceive any reality of it all, it’s no longer a marathon. somehow it has all turned into some race i never signed up for.

but, i keep up with my own ground rules every now and then, i make my own competition against this race everyone drags you into one way or the other, either through the right job or client or the right partner or the right home or place to live or the right way to life.

instead, i float, i put on my hat and glasses, lie down on my back wearing my defiance for sunscreen, put on some good music and i refuse to be a part of all this pace. i fight, i fight even against myself sometimes when it feels easier to be a part of the race than all this floating around. i keep fighting.

the title doesn’t make sense anymore. but, it’s there. it stays there.

just like i exist, and i am here.

i am here and i float into this not so straight stream of life.

- flaky sends all the light reflected from the gold of the farms flanked with wheat as the afternoon sun eases off to evening.

“Always.”

this is something i’ve always romanticised. in fact, who hasn’t?

isn’t this the dream of one and all? to have such a love? that one true love?

and, isn’t it even true for a majority of us who have loved?

seeing them, on the most ordinary of a day, years after that love in you was ignited, and finding yourself just THERE?

in love, very much, so very much in that moment?

feeling all the sparks and sparkles,

the whats and what ifs,

those i wishes of all your wishes with them,

just like that, in the most extraordinary way on an ordinary day, as you see their laugh filling up the space that you share with the rest of the world.

and, so you have this question - “Is the Time wrong or should Love always need a Tragedy to be right?”

the suddenness of such experiences which set a reminder of your always also brings me to another kind of suddenness. that of life.

yours, mine, my neighbour’s, a friend’s dad’s, a random person crossing me on the road, my parents, your loved ones, all of us, who’ve got a life. who are all breathing right now, without ever being fully conscious of what’s life, taking it for granted most of the times, all the times, often times, in the most humanely, ordinary way.

i’ve never thought i’d be caught up and that my time would be up. the thought has never crossed my mind when i drive to the speeds not permissible by my parents and loved ones that i could face a head-on-collision, something that’s not just limited to a Physics lesson anymore and might become a part of my physical reality.

the thought never crosses my mind that the train i am taking or the auto i am sitting into or the plane i’d be boarding in a few weeks from now, all of these, any of these might face some sort of tragedy. never crosses.

i never feel, at risk.

i am always living, always having some fucks to give and some feelings to feel.

and yet, there are moments that make you realise, these sudden moments that the greatest tragedies might not be of love, but of life. of not having a life, at all.

rather, of losing a life. just like that, to the suddenness of time, to the wrong time.

we take it all for granted, we take ourselves for granted, we take these people we love and those who love us back for granted, we take it all as if we’re always going to have one more day, every day, for the rest of our days here.

and we keep going on, making our plans, writing our to-dos the night before, buying a ticket to a concert, promising a meet to your beau, waiting for your favorite show to air, looking forward to seeing the World Cup Finale with your Papa, and what not.

and just as i write it out loud, i realise how it’s all a contradiction, this very act of living is a contradiction.

we’re all living, only to die, one day.

for those who believe in destinies, isn’t mine and yours the same after all?

it’s 1.09 AM on Mar 1, 2026. almost 50 days left to me leaving this room and this home and this city and this country and these people to a different and distant room and home and people and city and country. i am not able to pick up on the thoughts that i’m thinking right now, i’m not able to say hi to the feelings that are going on in this brain on my, i am hardly aware of what i am writing out loud here today.

i am tired, dizzy, sleepy, and yet want to be with someone who could keep me some company. not feeling lonely, hardly that. still need someone to keep me company, join me in my silence and almost-thoughtlessness. someone who will then give me a hug after some of this silence satisfies me and tell me that it’s all going to be alright, that we’ve all got this. all of us. and, although i know this so very much, i’d still like that someone to tell me these words that i know by heart so that i can believe in their belief.

- flaky sends the strength you keep even when your every nerve has given up, that solid, silent, and resilient of strengths.

that not remembering is forgetting.

i wrote the title and the above two lines on Fri, opened this yesterday to get back to it, and then opened it again today.

right now, i mourn, downright mourning to forgetting whatever i wanted to say here. i forgot a good line here, a decent paragraph there, and a golden page at that spot. and, maybe, that’s what this is going to be about.

forgetting lines, forgetting your cues.

messing up and mixing up mocktails of memories.

missing your older self and not missing your close friends.

mattering and not mattering. muttering under your breath, all the things you want to care for and then not finding the energy needed into shouting at the top of your lungs.

superficial, shallow, shadow. these are just synonyms now, out of a dictionary and into our lives.

i told a friend about leaving India in April and all i got was try to meet before that, if you can.

there’s no expectations. there’s no force. there’s no “you MUST come and visit and meet us.”

another friend first told that, “oh you’re leaving”, and then he right away changed it to something that was on the lines of - it doesn’t matter much, because now we hardly meet and we always get to talk on call. and i was numbly sad, when he voiced my feelings and thoughts about not missing people anymore.

everyday is just a text/call away, even when they are far away.

we almost know things, superficially about people in our lives through social media, even though we don’t know how they exactly are feeling in life, what’s keeping them awake at night or what wakes them up with a start at 2.37 AM, but we’d know which hotel they checked into.

we are all performing for a life, for an audience.

and, we’re all trying to live our lives, for ourselves.

i have chopped-off anger, salty sadness, dried out tears, and empty heart and hands.

even with all this information out there, all the generative AIs to make ourselves smarter and better each day, help us live THE DREAM LIFE, are we able to make sense of any of it?

it all feels like being in a Russian Novel.

this sadness that has no reason, this rage that has no source.

i want to tell so much about how everybody just wants to build, create. not being left out of this, whatever menagerie we have put up here.

and this one was not going to be about all this, and yet, i can’t remember what it was going to be about?

i woke up today remembering my Sunday from school days. how mummy would give us all a head-bath, classic mummy-style, we’d smell of cheap lifebuoy and clinic plus.

how my papa would then cut our nails, sitting outside the railway colony quarters, in sun. how we then went on to play our cricket and then a hearty meal of vaghareli khichadi with the whole family. how then everybody would sleep and the siblings and cousins would be putting up a show for play and how when the evening would come, the doors would be open again to go out and simply play.

empty pockets, filled hearts.

i don’t mind my friends not feeling sad about me leaving, but i mind very much, when i know how that feeling is so mutual. how i don’t feel i’m going to miss anything. how i’d just be back in some time. and how things are going to continue going on, as if i never left. or my presence didn’t matter at all.

all that matter is after all, matter. just that.

you,

me,

these stars burning up inside,

this universe.

what i’ve written feels too shallow for what i have in mind and what i feel inside. but, for now, this shall do. this shall have to do.

- flaky sends that old feeling that’s now a distant, blurred memory of how it used to feel before all of this, before any of this.

P,S. shouldn’t the real title now be - it’s all matter, after all!

i hope the next change is not now algorithms and do this or that to grow and all the blah. anyway, even if it comes down to that, who’d stop?

have we been able to stop IG or any other such platform?

user behavior is guided by platforms rather than the other way around.

no, i don’t want to be all bitchy around platforms.

i was supposed to write this on Fri, but i was travelling.

Fri turned to Sat, i was travelling again and then Sun i was busy in the last day of Maha Shivratri mela in my hometown, can’t miss that energy.

so, here i am, on a. Monday and writing this because i want to write here once a week, and to compensate for the last week, i’d be writing today, which will make it twice a week. i’ll come out of my self-talk now.

experiences.

now, just a little bit of heads-up, i might seem slightly (or a lot) cynical when i talk about this now. but, i do want to let it out.

how did we define experiences earlier? before the internet?

before the ever-expanding and ever-present hypnosis of social media?

we did things for doing those things.

we spent time with our family, friends.

we laughed and joked and played games without making a huge deal out of it every time we did those things.

we lived through those experiences rather than wanting to save it later for the memory.

what good is a memory if that moment was only done for that memory?

is that what we are doing with these experiences we are living now?

a concert.

a gathering.

a meet-up, a family wedding.

is it all now a mere form of “content”?

is life a content?

shouldn’t it be a verb in our life, rather than a noun?

why i write about this?

because i feel so tired and sick of everybody calling everything content these days.

“Netflix has released good content.”

“There’s no new content on YouTube.”

“Areeee! Content mil gaya bhaiiiii!”

what?

can’t a song be a song?

can’t a film be just that?

can’t you for once take a photograph and not have it labeled as content?

and i write about this also because yesterday i saw Ravedi in the Maha Shivratri mela in Junagadh, my home town.

the first time i saw it was 2018, when i was working with the media and with my reintroduction to my home town. i was supposed to cover the event.

there were fewer people with camera. even fewer with a phone clung to a tripod and no people taking retakes for a reel.

and yesterday?

yesterday, every Akhada (the groups of sadhus, they gave their own origins - consider Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin; but in a Sanatan Dharma context - Juna Akhada, Ahavaan Akhada, Pancheshwar Akhada, Kinnar Akhada, etc) had their own set of film-makers, photographer, even vloggers, people who constantly had their phones out. Sadhus who smiled without rage, without needing consent, for the camera (not necessarily, always for people - i might be wrong here)

but, in 2018, i saw how these sadhus didn’t allow even the press to come closer when they took out their procession for Shiv ji.

and now, they’d tell you openly to take their picture.

how can we be so used to being watched?

how can we be so used to smiling always for the camera, no matter how we are feeling inside?

am i being too cynical here?

i feel sad at these things. i know even my anger is sadness in disguise, even hopelessness.

there were so many people who came to Junagadh seeing reels on IG.

there are these people too, coming from surrounding villages to enjoy the festivities. they used to be the prime participants all these years.

social media gave access to the education class too.

not in the least out of faith, out of fame.

and even those people from villages, now had their phones out and were shooting, showing in video calls, and all of that.

earlier, you had to pray to get down to see things like these. you had to pray, you waited for the blessings of the Gods to align your stars right for you to visit the gathering. now, all you need is a ticket, some clothes, and a phone.

you don’t need a pass or a connection if you have a camera.

that’s your entry point to just about anything.

where will our always-on camera take us?

where will this content end?

- flaky sends the old school feeling of feeling blissed and having blessings to be able to see the festivities of Mahadev which just money can’t buy

for a friend who is finding a gift for his girlfriend and needs help.

i’ve been at close quarters WRT their relationship. felt their love, their heartbreaks, the frustration of their long distance, the misunderstandings, the all-of-it. both of them are my friends. very close ones at that.

so, only naturally, i’d be feeling the excitement of their celebrations.

he’d told me that we’re going to checkout today morning, so i dropped him a reminder for that. then i went for my shower and had this thought - if what i did yesterday was window-shopping, does it make me feeling their relationship a window-shopping of feelings?

or do i call it second-hand feelings?

i’ll give you another instance.

i was proxy-standing for my brother’s best friend’s wedding. and there are things i noticed in his group that shouldn’t have happened if they called themselves a group. i was pissed, judgemental even, all on his behalf. giving him updates (gossips actually) about the behind the scenes of the wedding, who felt what, and what i saw, even what my mother saw.

it’s not my group breaking up, it’s not my people leaving me out.

then why the rage? why the fuss?

window-shopping or second-handling?

i’ll give you one more, escaping?

escaping my own feelings or thoughts or decisions to be taken?

as long as i have other people’s matters to fuss about and on, i better not get down to my own mess. is that so?

i don’t know.

all i know is, it’s so satisfying to gossip with your brother :P

i will go on to telling out loud what was going on in my head yesterday when i went to see my Dada (grandfather).

i’ve never seen him this frail. he was fearful.

to see his fearful frame declining into frailty is not what i thought i’d ever see. his eyes closed, opened only for an instance, as he was almost disappearing into the chair he sat. not scolding me for coming and seeing him after more than a month, not calling my name, not telling me not to call him with the name that only people from his village use for him. nothing. a blank space. a dead end. a space, occupied with death, almost around the corner, almost leaping.

he’s 93, and he’s lived his life. he’s had his share of goods and bads and uglies, and he’s done so much for so many people, people who are not family or friend. sometimes only strangers or a distant known person.

settled disputes in our village concerning crores of land and properties. married the kids of the kids of his friends and relatives. financed the education for all of the siblings (~10) and more, contributed to the home-buying and home-making of our family. he hasn’t bought new clothes after 2005, when our house saw to the first wedding of his third generation.

all this contribution and i see him suffering at 93. and, i can’t do anything about it. none of us can do anything about it. because life and death, they have their own will, they come their own way.

the experiences he’s had and the people he’d have helped, i can’t even begin to think of reaching there in whatever life’s left in me.

Dada <3

i have one prayer, and i want you to have that one prayer when you think of me, or when you read this, let he be done with his suffering.

all of the above was written yesterday, on Friday. some in morning and then i had a call from my cousin to go and get tiffin for them, since he was in hospital and wouldn’t be able to and then later when i sat down, i had a text from a friend about a thing we were planning to do for quite some time, i didn’t want to bail out on that, so i stopped writing. now, i put on Metamorphosis by Philip Glass and write.

i’m tired.

i’m now tired of having to think for the nth time of how to earn my living. where will the money come from. not wanting to compromise my time, effort, and mind for something boring and something that drains my life.

and, come to think of it, by thinking about what to do with my life, am i not draining it this way?

i was reading Austin Kleon’s Show Your Work, random pick from Libby. and it was in there that he had mentioned sabbaticals. and my mind automatically counted my numbers. my years. i started working in this marketing/advertising/branding/media industry in late 2017 - early 2018. that makes 2025, my year for a sabbatical. and, when i left for Canada in 2023, i’d told myself that these two years 23-25 are going to be a break. just don’t think what next, what to do with life and all that story.

i haven’t done any work in 2025. just sat home, read, watched movies and shows, and went out, i spent good time with my best friend, an international trip i never thought i’d take that way and a trip to Pune and then a short stint at her home. i enjoyed Navratri, i made some new friends, at this point, as an adult it feels like cheating if i call just anybody a friend. but, these people, i know they’d be around, there wouldn’t be constant effort or contact needed and they’d be there. i was the only lady (i was about to write girl, but i’m no longer that) among a group of some 7-10 guys. they’d play some games on their phone, smoke up, and we’d all sit at a place where there are only males around, we’d pass comments, we’d discuss business ideas, we’d think of life, and why women are they way they are and men are the way they are and who’s happy with their jobs and who’s not, and what to do!

and i would laugh. i could laugh easily. and people, well, men around would watch. would watch a lady sitting with guys smoking, questioning whatever they’d be questioning and i’d not be bothered.

what i’d be bothered with is, what am i doing with my life?!

the guy at whose place we sat for tea is 19 years old! he has his little tapri. he is at that tapri at least 15 hrs each day. he goes back to his rented place, rests and then he’s back again. to the grind. all of us, we were shocked that he was this young. he’d be earning a good living.

and all this while, i was on a break. and i was under the obsession of what to do next with my life.

back to Austin Kleon and sabbaticals, i tried tricking my mind into being okay with sitting and doing nothing in 2025 with the thought of being on a sabbatical.

aren’t we all tricking?

ourselves, our loved ones too?

first it was education, then work, then the checklist that the society hands us all down in the form of marriage, a house, kids, a happy life?

i’d decided very early on that i’d not be a part of this charade. and so i went on and tried walking my own road. i read something on IG around this. let me share.

i was all super charged at all the ideas and all the things i’ve planned in doing here in India when i came face to face with the decision to go to Canada again. the initial days were filled with energy and enthusiasm, but then reality got the nervousness and anxiety too. of what i will do there? i don’t have a job, i have to again take a temporary break from my life here where i am trying to build something. all that drill. i have been feeling here and there since a week now and a friend sensed it and asked what could he do for me?

what can anybody do for anybody?

they can’t decide for you.

they can’t do the things for you.

they can’t travel to Canada on your behalf and work from India as well.

can they?

no matter how much a person loves you, you go back to home within yourself.

so, it is our first duty and a lifelong responsibility to be madly in love with our own selves first.

because nobody has the power or capacity to love you out of your tiredness from yourself.

nobody can bring you back from the brinks of the blows that you are facing within yourself.

nobody knows how it feels. they understand, they can sympathize, even empathize to certain extent, but they most humanely can’t feel you.

and they have to go back to their own life, some day. because aren’t they obliged to that responsibility i told above?

funny how life works. i consider fireflies symbolic to a message from the Universe in letting me stay on here. 2 days back, as i kept writing in the dark just my hand dancing on the paper, letting words meet their destiny wherever they fell, i had written about fireflies. i had told how i need to see my fireflies to keep on having my faith.

they’ve mysteriously appeared every time i felt like i’d had enough. be it on the afternoon of shutting off my phone and sleeping to get that feeling off back in 2022 or when i thought i wouldn’t be able to climb Girnar after a 1000 steps and they just woooshed past my eyes in that moment as i had prayed all the gods to get me going.

i guess it was this day of me texting how i am tired of myself.

and you know what happened yesterday?

this friend of mine, he is not much of a sender, but out of nowhere comes this IG share

a firefly?

i realised a firefly doesn’t have to be just that always.

it can sometimes come as a photo shared on Instagram by someone with whom you don’t have a daily conversation, whom you’re not meeting frequently and yet their presence is there in your life. not an anchor, but a lighthouse.

then who would be your anchor?

remember lifelong responsibilities? till death do us part?

that’s you. that’s your doing.

you say I do, to yourself, no matter what. no matter how you’re going to keep up with that promise, but you have to. and, you’ll keep having such lighthouses, wind, compasses, and shores to guide you along the way, make the sailing bearable, if not easier or smooth.

- flaky sends the fragrance of morning dhoop mixed with ghee on bhakhri as your mother goes from mandir to kitchen to prepare breakfast

also, we visited our school after 2018 when Rajvi was here for her visit from her now home, those States. it was Annual Function after COVID, the first one they did in all these years. we were visiting because otherwise we wouldn’t go (maybe).

we walked out and away from the car and on to the ground and further into the premises, and as we were all looking around, probably remembering or trying to of a version of us that existed there, Bhavik said, “Mitu no aa dispatch ma hase school nu.” (Mitu’s next dispatch will have things from this). i don’t remember verbatim, just the idea of what he said. and, i was no where near that thought, not even in inception.

not even remotely at the borders.

but, because he said so and because Rajvi also said how i don’t write about them and because Bhavik felt that when i was scammed of 27k, 2 months back and i went to sit with him but there was no mention of him despite that - all of this in a light banter, this dispatch had to be about these two. who adopted the introvert that i am with school folks into the group that they had, right from when we were kids and that has followed well into our adulthood and probably continue to do so as our kids would be adults and beyond. hopefully.

because the way Rajan, another friend saw and showed the little one of Bhavik to his wife on a video call was something i will not forget. to have grown from kids going to school, L.K.G., being a part of school events and outside the classes in all the loves and triangles that happened, being a part of each other’s families and work routines thereafter, being a part of each other’s weddings and now the families we are to create of our own, that’s something no less than magic, something that goes beyond mere coincidences, something that just efforts can’t make up for. such love and such brotherhood can exist only when it’s destined. but, also when people like Bhavik and Rajvi adopt people like me who were not in their radar for over 7 years and all it takes is just one phone call and a lunch invite for me to be inducted to that group.

i have only few regrets in life. deaths of two loved ones and the death of my childhood. i wish i was a little mischievous in school, i wish i could be a kid, for all of the world’s sake, for my adult sake, i wish i’d been just a kid, playing around, messing around, making mistakes, and getting scolded with incomplete homework and average grades. i wish i was just a kid who had to come to school without agendas, to be with people she could call friends, to have those friends invite her to their birthday parties so that when the sister of one of these friends tell them all in a gathering after 20 years about these folks now gathered to celebrate the son that’s born, that kid that was Mitali could have some memory that the rest of them shared.

is it memory though?

or does it become history, when it’s shared?

i was not feeling much or anything at all, or would have been just processing and i told them so when we were talking later and Bhavlo said that, “su vat kare Mitu, me to potane tya ground ma ramto joi lidho to.” (Mitu, i could see myself playing in that ground).

and i envy that kind of memory, because what i could remember seeing the assembly and the class at the end was not the froth from a check-dam nearby that they saw while classes were going on and that they reminisced about. what flashed through my head was how i was made to sit outside the class during our final exams when i was in 8th standard because my father didn’t pay the fees he was supposed to pay for the third consecutive year. how that teen could see pity mixed with plight in her favourite teacher’s eyes, how she wanted to cry and scream and just shrink and disappear, all in just one thought and wish in that moment.

so how this 33-yo wilfully willed against remembering anything at all. not the goods, not the bads. and that’s why she couldn’t picture herself in that space, when the rest were already playing football, volleyball, sitting by the end of the classroom and eating out of their lunchboxes.

despite that, as reason would have it and as defence mechanisms would have it, it was a pleasant visit to see a few familiar faces even after all these years. to see those faces reflect happiness not recognitions, because you need recognitions only when you forget.

it was a good visit.

i always felt like an outsider, a misfit in that space, with those people. no matter how much Rajvi would have tried or wanted to get me there, i guess i felt i don’t fit into the family that they’d chosen.

despite that, i get calls on Diwalis i am in Junagadh to go on the group ritual they have for years now, first the temple, then having a glass of juice. then pictures.

the last year, i got looped into the group chat that had a Diwali Party. i was not left out of receiving that broadcast, and i am glad i went. i enjoyed myself and i got to know about what their lives were when we were kids. i was happy for them, for their childhoods, because not everyone was left out of being a child.

the reason why i love fiction would also be this, it’d have given me hope and an escape, the escape out of the childhood that never came, out of a life that only happened in the stories that everyone had to share after a Summer Vacation, of going to Mahabaleshwar, having strawberries, of families existing without fights that was my everyday, of parents being parents, coming to the bus stop, holding the hands of their kids, holding their bags, holding all the wight that they could hold to protect their kids, holding that weight so that the kid could be just a kid and didn’t need any storybooks to escape that childhood that didn’t let her be.

fuckkkkk.

this was supposed to be a happy one.

i’ll circle back to that happy note.

Rajvi and Bhavik are the friends i’d always be grateful for, because they not only made me a part of their childhood, but are also making me a part of their life now. i’m still a shy kid there, they don’t know much about the lives that i’ve lived so far, they might probably not be able to conceive the mischiefs i could do or the morales i no longer hold. i’m grateful that i get that call for Diwalis even though i don’t always checkup on them. i am grateful that Bhavlo would call me when they went to Bhavnath, when another friend Jash was in town. i am grateful i was invited to the party where i got to know the backstory of Bhavik, and many other stories of the group. where i was not longer at the border, or an earful away from the broadcast. i’m grateful that when the story of that Diwali party is told, i’d be a character in it. no longer someone reading it to escape her life.

some people, people like them, and a few others, they’re not always a part of your narrative. that’s because they matter a lot. and, it’s also because they are a part of the narrative that you have been either hiding or not wanting to face because you are not yet in terms with it. because you don’t know what would happen to years of walls behind which those flashes in your flesh that you couldn’t understand, that you didn’t want to be put out, left bare, that was a secret you wanted to just never be dug up and the one that you wanted to be dug into your grave.

but there are times when you have to try and remember the good things, having those good things sit with the bad ones too and see yourself as a kid in two ponytails, long hairs, dimpled cheeks, cheeks that these very friends pulled at in your class,

times when you have to see how much your teachers loved you, how much these people tried to be your friends,

times when you can’t bring that time back when you. could’ve told that kid that it’s okay if her secret was out, that nobody from these people she could call her friends would point fingers at her for having a family of alcoholics,

times when she could’ve let her socks that she put rubber bands around because they were so old and would run down till her ankles if she wouldn’t put the bands that announced their marks when she arrived to a home where she didn’t quite feel like a kid, or maybe she did, but she was so. confused with the rest of the things she could read at her home.

times when she could have had their history, her memory too.

and, made it to history.

it’s time to tell her that she’s a part of their history. and, it’s because of these people, right here, these two primarily, because of whom she now has a history there.

- flaky sends the joy school friends feel when they see the first-born of their childhood best friend, and the overwhelm they can only hold with them, as they hold that little bundle of love

i was telling my cousin when she came inside the room (in her house where i’m visiting her right now) as she made a questioning face, wanting me to leave my laptop and go sit with her and talk - i will write for a while. then i told her about this dispatch, how i’d started this in 2022, and had written every single Friday without missing even on occasions when i couldn’t do it. i told her the reason why i started writing here (because telling what was going on inside me didn’t feel enough, and there were still things i couldn’t tell)

she’d not understand much of it, but she’d still listen to what i had to say.

she is one of my mothers. one of those women in my life who makes it their duty to be that mother to me. we’re only 7-8ish years apart, but she’s a mother alright. she’s been there through every one of my ultrasounds, every six months right from when i was 23-yo to my surgery that happened 2 years back.

you know you’re lucky this way, when you feel at home at more places than where your parents are staying.

when you have these women (at least 3 for now) who are an almost mother to you.

when these people are your friends, your cousins, your friend’s mother. your own mother.

we went to have pani puri. there’s a guy who is stationed closer to her house here whose limbu-masala puri is something i totally dig into (yum!)

but, we didn’t go there today as she wanted to have the garam-thandi puri (ragda one). we kept waiting for our turn and she asked the bhaiyya, “aaje chaa nathi pidhi ke su?” (you haven’t had tea today?)

and, she added more, “aje bhabhi e chaa nahi paayi? hath nthi chalta tamara jadapthi.”

(today bhabhi hasn’t made tea for you? your hands are not quick today)

and he said, “bhabhi ne hu chai pivdavine aavu chhu”

(i am the one who serves her tea)

and, everybody there shared that laugh. they kept on talking for a bit more, two more women joined in who’d have been regulars.

he is the classic bhaiyya we see selling pani puri here in Gujarat. might be from UP or Bihar, and i don’t know how long he’d have been here, but he talked decent Gujarati. he told yeah yeah to me when i said i want garam-thanda masala mixed, and then added that he had an order from London yesterday.

his communication skills, the way he was talking with his regulars, and the way he made the one waiting for their turn feel, all of it shows how you don’t need to join any school (always) to be good at communication, business, client retention, client relations.

these people fit in a strange land where they’ve migrated and are away from their families and familiarities by being human and using one thing they know, being intuitive.

he made over 1000 in just 10-15 mins. clean.

and, the way my sister was having a conversation with him made me feel how she could be a good business person too. she’s been telling me to find something for her, as in something she can work and earn. she is not much educated. but, she has a good heart and she has the right spirit. we’re figuring out what she can do with her mid-life crisis.

that brings me to my early mid life crisis. something i now want to just get over with and just get down to work. i was in metro yesterday going to a friend’s b’day dinner and i saw people jumping in from work, people well into their late 50s, men, women, swarms of them. i had lipstick on, loops in my ears, a shirt unbutton, perfumed presence. an uncle who had a bag of tools, hands as grey as the hairs on his head, sat besides me, almost apologetic, not leaning all the way at the back. i figured he’d be mindful of my new clothes. so, i shifted a bit to the opposite side, and told him to lean back and have a relaxed seat.

and, here’s me. going to a party. having travelled in an AC Chair Car, after she saw that 2000 was more than what she could pay for a one-way cab from Anand to Ahmedabad. i don’t even know what that kind of money can do for him. i don’t know what that kind of money can do for all the people i was sharing that air with.

i just kept looking at all the faces who were staring back with their tired eyes at this big looped and lipstick clad unfairness called life.

i had wanted to work in a farm, as a farm labor since 2021-22. reason?

not having the luxury to think.

the more physical work you do, the more tired your body feels, and rest assured for a good night’s sleep.

i tried, but due to some reasons, i couldn’t make it then. i couldn’t get any such type of work in India.

when i got to Canada, i got a chance to live on an hourly paycheque paid out bi-weekly. i got to feel how you have to wake up at 4.30 AM and show up for work even though you’ve barely had any sleep the last night, with your tired body that has worked 8 hours straight, walked over 12 km within the store, talked with more than 50 customers each day, lifting 4-4 kgs in each hand.

i got to know how to appreciate a day’s break of work or a different shift time when you could be home at decent hours and have your meals on time and if time permits, have a call or two to your dear ones.

that not having the luxury to think does good to a tired mind.

that having to work so hard that your body aches does good to a mind that can’t rest.

- flaky sends that feeling of winter disappearing slowly into early spring, that late evening reddish-pink sky, that strong breeze, that hazy day break, the smell of something between rain and dew

i came back last year on Jan 22 to see Cold Play and other private reasons. and, since then, except my brother, the other bunch has been calling consistently to ask me my return to that house (asking - when are you coming back to our house, they still consider it mine too, even though i’ve not stayed there in a year now)

that bunch is visiting India right now. my brother had gone to drop them off at the airport. and, when he returned, he binged on the last few episodes he had left of Little Sheldon, he shared a video with the words - “i miss you a little bit more today”

the background had the dialogues and something else too.

his sobbing.

i asked him to make sure, if i’d heard it right and he said yes, the last 3 episodes were quite emotional. we had a call and he told me how it felt to return to an empty house, although that would have been something he’d have looked forward to all this while, to have himself some space.

and, this is what he did when they all left for the airport, he left the light on, in the house.

to return back to an empty house with lights on.

so that darkness doesn’t feel too dark, and the light blinds emptiness of that space, till the eyes adjust to it, waiting for that heart-dip.

we talked for quite a bit that day. we don’t normally have calls unless it’s work or some slight teasing when our moods permit. but, we talked quite a bit that day. almost 45ish mins.

him telling me of leaving the light on in that house reminded me of Phil in the last episode of Modern Family that i finished watching on Dec 31, 2025. i wrote that 2025 deliberately to remind myself that it is gone, in the past now.

Phil became my favourite character as the seasons kept progressing. the right amount of love, care, fun, family, personal thingy going on. that whole package. and, his dialogue of leaving the porch light on became the last scene of that show.

everybody is leaving. for their future, for their present, for themselves, for their kids.

and Claire sadly asks Phil what they would do now? to which he says, "What people have always done - leave the porch light on.”

i do the same here where i am alone most of the day, almost the entire day. when i go out for my walk, i leave that one entrance light on. not because of the darkness, but because of that emptiness of the house.

and, when i come inside, i tell the house - “Home, i’m home.’

of course, it’s more for myself than for the house. the house doesn’t care. but, i get the feeling of a filled space by calling it out. my own presence. the fragrances from the things i would have cooked for lunch or breakfast. sometime whiffs from the flats below. that presence of the house being stayed in. not empty.

would our bodies feel that way?

empty and not empty depending on how our minds treat them, a function of its mood and all those swings?

i’ve been reading a book on Psychedelics. and, i feel my mind is already on them. i see patterns and textures and can feel time very differently than people i have around me. i can have patience with kids even when they are not listening and are being mean or cranky. i see trees as my friends. and, just today i felt that the day was longer already, that winter is almost at the door now, and will soon leave.

i feel closer and connected to nature (than with people)

and, i am now too sleepy to write straight.

should i call it a day?

wasn’t the day longer today?

let me call it a night for now.

goodnight.

- flaky sends the scent of these last remaining winter nights.

this Wednesday, i turned yet another leaf of my life as i turned 33. can’t even believe this. soon, i’d be selecting 35 - 45 in that age-range thingy in forms and whatnots.

out of so many youth communities and scholarships and fellowships.

and yet, i don’t quite feel that old.

is it because of being single? not married, not having a family of my own yet, a kid, in-laws and a whole different set of relatives? parents meeting to be at, and lunches to be packed?

is that why i still don’t feel THAT old?

or is it because i constantly feel that i’m seeking something, looking out often into that space to get a glimpse of something new, anything, looking out for answers to questions i have now almost forgotten?

or is it that i still feel so much energy, more than my younger cousins and friends?

what is it that doesn’t make me feel old, although the slight wrinkles on my wintery hands and the light lines on my throat tell a different story?

or it is because despite turning 33, i had 8 people call me at that Cinderella hour?

i’d never thought that you’d still have people calling you before the clock stuck at that midnight moment because they didn’t want to miss that chance of being the ones to wish you when you turned the leaf.

and so, i thought of being grateful.

mind you, i didn’t feel grateful, i just had these thoughts of gratitude. and, i’m not taking any of this for granted.

i’m not taking it for granted that my mother who’d been tired from her days running around the house and making sure everything is in order, would stay up till 12.00 just so as she could sing me Happy Birthday to you as my father danced with his weak legs, hands in the air, and a young, unbothered heart in the video call.

i’m not taking it for granted that my cousin who would always call me at just that hour and we’d our ritual set-up for years now, broke that record to sleep, having turned off that alarm toggle when the hour struck straight because he was tired and sleeping. i still know how much he’d have wanted to be the first one to wish me.

i’m not taking for granted that two of those friends despite being tired and worn out from work and reading were waiting for that moment to wish me. one of them sending me an astronaut to light up my b’day party and having me open up that gift right there.

i’m not taking it for granted that my brother miles away called me at my time, not his time zone.

i’m not taking those 11 calls at midnight for granted.

despite that, i still couldn’t feel grateful.

i did think gratitude, though.

the calls continued well into the second day, videos and audios, friends and family.

and you know, blessed is such a small word for what all that attention and remembering and care was.

i’d always be excited for my b’days. always. right from school.

that has been the only day i looked forward to whole year because that was the only day i could afford that attention, at least my nervous system could afford that attention, now come to think of it.

we had a ritual at home. my father would buy a new dress, our once a year ritual. new cloth every b’day. and, my elder cousin told me, once i liked the dress i got so much that i wore it for 3 days straight till my b’day, would deny bath too. anything that would get me out of that dress was a crime. i had bitten her and another cousin of mine when they dared. i was a kid.

another dress that i liked much was a black dress my mama got me. it had a makeshift shinny, diamondy necklace-like neck on velvet black. that dress might as well be the reason for me to dig into anything that’s velvet and black.

i didn’t have real diamonds then. not that i have them now. but, back then, i had that dress.

i loved that dress.

having chocolates to distribute in the class, and then to other classes, accompanied by one other person, who’d usually be your best friend, was another highlight of that so sought-after day. having all those eyes of school-uniform dressed kids on a new dress dressed kid, who got to skip a class so she could give chocolates was something that was valuable to kids back in those days.

going to the principal’s office and getting recognised was another highlight.

getting a flower from your favourite teacher just added cherry to your imaginary cake, since you never knew what a birthday cake was until you were well into your 20s.

birthdays.

they’ve been something!

i have dimples on both cheeks, and on my b’day my smile was something that got the most attention. and, i liked that. i liked that smile so very much. most of all, i liked those two holes in my cheeks. i didn’t know how i got them, i just knew they made me look at the mirror when no one was seeing at home, when no one would be around and smile, smile such that those holes would come up to the surface.

never knew that looking at holes would become such a practice that i’ll continue to dig up holes well into existence, and would keep staring at them, time and again.

i’ve wondered sometimes, are stars a part of this sky that we think and make up, or are they just holes of light?

huh! b’days. i’d be excited right from Dec 7, the year before that year ends, one month to my day. and, then i’d play scenarios of surprises and gifts and all expectations.

from the past 2-3 years, i’d been shopping something for myself (dress only), to mark that tradition my father had.

this year, started more or less the same way (or rather last year). but it didn’t continue that way. the excitement was no where to be seen and no scenarios playing out. i went on a few dress hunts and then gave up when i didn’t fall in love at first sight with any dress i saw.

but, then the day before came and i did settle for a dress.

and, bday came. drunk texts and drunk calls followed.

no harm done, no hurt gathered.

just plain old folding of days and dates into years.

and just like that, the b’day ended.

technicolor lights, tipsy eyes, beery breath, a call to a distant friend who once was someone to me. a song that told an old lover to just come back, be it in resentment.

just like that.

i went to my college 2 days after that for a session with the younger kids, and one of them came to me after it ended and said, “Ma’am, I love your energy.”

and, it was in that moment, i said out loud - “God! I still can’t believe I’m 33.”

what’s age?

what’s time?

what’s a b’day?

if you seek to be new everyday, isn’t every day a new birth?

if you are continuously disintegrating within, isn’t it a rebirth?

counter to that, isn’t it just another day?

your b’day, is it just another day though?

the people in your life will make you feel that it’s not.

and, even though you don’t feel grateful, you know you think you are grateful.

so very much.

it’s these people that make you young. that keep the spark alive, and alight.

they don’t let you go old, give up or lose up that you within you.

and, it’s also you. that does all of that and much more, to keep yourself at the centre of your limited universe. not just on one day, but every day of every year for years to come.

- flaky sends the bliss and blessings of how it feels when there are 11 people calling at midnight to wish you b’day as if you were a teenager when you turn 33.

P.S. i’d promised myself i am going to write here once a week, and i am too close to that deadline for this week. i include Sunday in the old week by that standards.

see you next Friday with more stories and thoughts and hopefully feelings to feel.