Rishi and I went out yesterday. Shopped and walked like that after more than a year. Such times are going to be rare now. The possibility that he will leave the house soon is hanging in the air now.
It's common to see Puneeth Rajkumar's cutouts in Bangalore and it's equally common to see obituaries hanging in the streets. Now both have merged and it's taking time to digest that.
It's Dasara and most people in the office are in festive mood. Pooja, shopping... And I feel like a pest, calling them on their phones and trying to get updates from them, detached from all the celebrations. But tomorrow is another day.
P says I'm ageing backwards, in more than one ways. Some of that is flattery, some of it backhanded compliment but it's also true in some ways. I have summoned more energy in the past few months than I ever have but I wish I could rub it off on P too. When you slog alone day in and out, there are odd times when you feel taken advantage of.
D's mother passed away yesterday. He'd written about her once and there was pride in it. Must be hurting badly now. For some reason, I was thinking of his parents yesterday. Now it's a strange thing, not to be able to say more than a sentence to him yet wanting to say so much and at home carry on as if nothing has happened.
Right now thinking of his father.
Life is the sound of wind chimes right now. And a growing feeling that something is going to happen to disturb it.
Pal calls to wish me more than a month after my birthday and as usual rains some topics on me before hanging up. P considers her a wild thing(Did I make him think that?). After I finish talking, he tells me (don't know if he means it!) that I shouldn't talk to her so much, lest she spoil me. And I, who Pal calls a wild thing, feel a pang of guilt towards Pal and him both, which I bury in a fit of laughter. Life is surreal right now.
Sometimes when I prepare something different from usual, I wonder if the kids will remember its taste years down the line. Will Anu suddenly get the taste of the wheat cake in her mouth just like I get Aayi's Avalakki Manohara in mine?
I told Aayi the other day that I now marvel at the energy she would've had to summon to make almost every breakfast special like that. I really do, especially when Rishi threatens to go hungry if he doesn't like what's made. I guess she wasn't expecting this after all these years and I could sense her voice thicken.
It annoys Razia that I go for morning walks despite my reasonable size. Everytime she sees me walking, I'm sure to get a sermon on why I need nothing of that sort because I work enough at home. As if to dissuade me further, she points to my neighbour double my size. I laugh at that and tell her that both of us need it because we've hit the forties. Razia is not convinced.
The last one month has been trying, to say the least. I suddenly developed sciatica and I don't think even my recovery from c-section deliveries was this bad. At one point, it felt as if I would never be able to wear my pyjamas without wincing. Just when I was rejoicing at having proven it wrong so quickly, I fell and hurt my chin. Two stitches and a ear that hurt like a stone was grinding it, when I ate or yawned. It was funny, being back on the bed resting. But something I've learnt through these days is that with some bit of support from me in the form of intermittent rest, my body can bounce back very well. So now I've hit the walking track with renewed energy and for some reason, my legs seem to be doing better than before.
I need to sleep better. It's almost six months now. I'm sure D doesn't have any such problems. He seems to have it sorted so well, irritates me sometimes.
One of our onsite guys passed away today, in his early forties. Had come to Delhi to oversee his father's surgery. He was one of D's boys, don't know how he's taking it. The team here is in gloom.
The water filter and I are overworking right now. It feels like exhaustion could kill.
So there it is. My husband has lost his sense of smell today. I have a mild cough, kids have cough, cold and mild fever. Our neighbours on either side have tested positive and we had a mass testing in the building today. Results awaited. The question now is how many of us will turn out to be positive and what we should do if it's not all. My mind has kind of stopped showing me the way, I want that report quickly.
All of us telling each other to be careful but suddenly not sure of the definition. So many people wondering how they got infected at all.
I have a book that I need to return to the library but I'm loathe to step into that place now. Just twenty days ago, I would've been skipping there. A matter of another ten days, hopefully. Life is almost like what it was last April. Kids have been banned from playing outside, domestic helps have been asked to stay off and we've been advised not to use the lifts because there are cases on almost every floor now. Anu is moving listlessly, waiting for one of us to get free to give her company and frankly, playing with her keeps me going. Rishi is back to sweeping the house and also churning out statistics. I'm getting fatigued with these numbers already, though this time a lot more people I know are a part of these figures.
And yes, our neighboring elderly couple is back to their bickering best.
One should learn from me the art of breaking oneself to pieces shamelessly and mercilessly. Of convincing oneself that it's all worth it, while not at all convinced what it's worth. If only the shame I feel right now could be converted into anger, I would've been happy and proud of myself but all it does is becoming a simmering desperation. I marvel at this self of mine, how I could allow anyone to make me come to this shape. This cannot be me.
I have a slew of leaves in the team - someone with a headache, another consulting a doctor for a sore throat, someone whose friend's mother passed away. The virus seems much more real this time. I don't dare tell anyone not to worry about the sore throat.
Rishi was telling me about the miseries doctors are having to go through this season. We're being criminal in allowing Kumbh Melas and things to happen in such times. What incentive is it for anyone to pursue medicine?
Around my in-laws' place things have become chaotic. People are testing positive in huge numbers, young and old are dying, there are serpentine queues at testing centres and brawls by people in panic.
So we've managed to get a hospital bed for my mother-in-law. But without ventilator. And the struggle for Remdesivir is real. P had got some for his friend only two days ago through his contacts but today it's out-of-stock.
And the whole thing happened because my in-laws attended a religious gathering for a week. Without any caution. With the kind of psychological pressure people come under when it comes to religion, it's obvious that such gatherings should be banned in the first place.
Had a good time at Lalbagh yesterday. On the way, we crossed my Tech. Park and I told Anu that it had been years since I visited it. It was an exaggeration but it sounded so believable.
The virus has entered the family again. My eldest co-sister is down with it and so may be my mother-in-law. Situation in their village and around is very serious this time. It's obviously a different ball game. The next few days will be filled with tension.
We're going to Lalbagh today. Today because we want to avoid possible weekend crowd. Because we don't know when we can go next. It's been more than a year already.
My grandmother is recovering from surgery, don't know how my mother is doing, my sister-in-law and her husband, my brother-in-law and his wife are Covid positive, my sister's mother-in-law has undergone biopsy for a suspected malignancy in her uterus, my best friend is depressed and another is MIA. If I think of all this, a bowl of gulab jamuns looks weird, dosa seems tasteless and Lalbagh colourless. But then I guess there's all the more reason to do all these things now, with urgency. And yes, my mother-in-law has tested negative :-)
Maybe barring the first few months of the virus, construction activities have never stopped here. I've hardly had a quiet day in the last six months. As if it's a compulsion to keep constructing something or the other.
Temperatures are soaring. I can only reminisce about the good old summer showers of Bangalore.
No TV for the foreseeable future, early morning walks(the sun is too sharp by 8 anyway) and no under-eye pouches.
Is forties the time when you think almost everything tasted better before but you're not really sure anymore how that 'before' tasted?
Besieged by Begum Akhtar's Ab Ke Sawan Ghar Aaja right now. I feel young, foolish, restless and happy.
What's with husbands and washing the dishes? As if that's the only chore worth doing. Run the house at least for a day, no?
Bangalore has bloomed but I have a terrible urge to return to hometown.
Anu went to play with her gang today, after a full year. All these days she'd been saying she wouldn't, even after things returned to normalcy. But at the first glimpse of her friends in the play area, she just forgot all that and went, saying she would just 'check it out'. It ended up like old days, my having to call her home. It was a relief.
L has returned to India for good(hopefully). Arrived yesterday. We've agreed that we will have the morning walks together. Things cannot get any better on that front. But I'm still feeling uneasy about her. She recently discovered high BP and is trying to overcome the shock. I hope these months' break will do good to her and she can finally settle down here. She needs it. I want to be there for her.
And D has been suddenly incommunicado since Monday. All he could say was that unfortunately things weren't good at his end. The guy is crazy and he exasperates me and I really don't know why I want to hear from him at all yet I end up saying that. I am crazy myself, no doubt.
Rishi's KVPY results didn't turn out so good. The first disappointment in a while but he seems to have swallowed it. Right now he's enjoying life and I hope he can continue to do that.
I wonder how he knows the meaning of some of the adult lingo. Everytime I discover that he knows them, I try to recollect how and when I figured them. Of course it's futile.
Just like mutations, even a new kind of mask takes getting used to. Irrespective of its thickness. But I'm getting sick of masks now, maybe because I'm staring at another onslaught of new infections in the city.
I think the trip to hometown spoilt me. V and I discarded the masks after the second day, we travelled in a crowded bus(yes!! Though that was with the mask and a lot of misgivings afterwards), we travelled in the city, trekked, shopped, walked and it felt like normal life after so so long. Now to come back and think of that as an aberration is becoming very difficult.
I'm buying a piece of our beloved gudde. I had(as had all of us around) feared for the future of that hill and when I saw a broken rock nearby, the decision came quickly. Of course it helped that Auntie and Maama have bought the piece next to it already. Aayi was inexplicably upset about it the first day but now she's upbeat about it. And the bonus has been our neighbour N thanking me for saving the rock. I don't remember chatting with him so much in years.
You get a new obsession, you put yourself headlong into it and when you someday decide it's not worth it and want to get yourself out of it, you realize you've kinda forgotten what life was like before. Days start having holes and you wonder what you used to fill those with. You actually know what but none of them seems worthwhile anymore. I dread the coming days of restlessness.
Rishi is finally taking my book recommendations seriously. He's hooked to Wodehouses now and is rummaging through my old bookbox for more of them, making me very happy.
I suddenly missed being alone. It's been a year now. I don't know when it will happen again either. I was envious of P, who spent a week without us. On an impulse I asked him when he was going to Hyderabad, to finish some pending work. He intends to get it done through some contacts there. I know I'm going to have this craving for some time.
Either I'm getting Chalees or I'm spending too much time on WhatsApp or both, my eyes are hurting. And sleep, which used to be my dear companion, is eluding me. And today I have a headache and feeling of onset of fever. The last thing I was looking for before going home.
I go home next Wednesday. After the longest gap of 14 months and what's more, V is coming with me. I don't remember the last time we stayed at home together. V is still sceptical about moving around so I don't know what all we'll do but I'm so looking forward to the days. I'll miss some things, though. Hope not entirely.
I'm going to miss travelling by buses to Mangalore, surely. Hopefully next time.
My cousin G got married and I couldn't attend, neither did V. A few days later my cousin S called to complain about it, saying he went there only to meet V and I and was disappointed by our absence.
S is my father's cousin's last son. Eight years younger than me and had earned quite a reputation in his childhood. He was a kleptomaniac and kept both his parents and hosts wary whenever he visited someone. My grandmother blamed loss of any of her cutlery on him, with total disregard to the timelines. His father was very short-tempered and his mother had made him live with various relatives, both to try and get him out of the habit and to save him from his father's wrath.
So it was in 1995 that he came to live with us for a school year. His mother, my father's cousin, was hopeful that he would be able to make a difference. The idea didn't appeal to me at all. I was in 12th and to be mindful of this nuisance in my room was going to be troublesome. Besides, he was a brash child unlike his second brother, with who I had a great rapport. But my mother had decided we were going to help my aunt and so S came home that summer with us, with a small bag of shirts and shorts.
For some reason Pappa didn't enroll S in V's school, which was at a walking distance. Instead, he went to a school a few kms away, whose headmaster was our friend. I think this Maama used to drive him on his bike daily and I guess he'd been requested to keep an eye on S. I don't recollect that he was much of a trouble in school.
At home I think he had some trouble, though I hardly remember much of it. I think Pappa hit him once too but he didn't cry. The neighborhood boys liked him well enough. He loved to talk. I remember getting very annoyed with him once because he teased me with Usha Auntie's son. I guess the fact that a boy that small could talk like that annoyed me more, my friends never did that.
I don't know if my parents had any plans to extend his stay but S put them to rest by stealing my coin collection when he went home during holidays. I remember crying like crazy over it. My aunt of course was sad and she made sure that the coins were restored. S didn't return and I think we were all relieved and I went on to college and hostel and forgot about S for the next few years. The neighborhood boys missed him.
S since then has gone on to do better. We reconnected much later and are on very good terms. He works as a clerk in a bank in hometown and takes care of his parents. I don't know what memories he holds from that year in our house.
I attended Maha's wedding today, after much dilly-dallying. She was one of my favorites when she was a colleague and I wasn't sure if I would meet her ever again otherwise. So I went with some trepidation, to be with a crowd after so long. Of course I have reasons to worry now; nobody wore a mask there and I had to reluctantly remove mine after a while with no distancing to speak of. But I'm glad I went. I like her even more now for the kind of simple wedding she had.
I never knew it could be true. I'm annoyed thoroughly and when I am, I let the annoying person know. And the annoying person, in his characteristic style, dismisses it and annoys me even more. Exasperatingly cool. Like my father. So here I am, already at the crossroads I had foreseen. Gosh, March seems so far away!
It's strange that I've never met D, despite the opportunities. Many around me have. But who knows, maybe we did cross paths in Mumbai during those five months in 2001, in Lokhandwala complex or SEEPZ...
I don't like the way we are going about with the new products. Here's a golden chance to set some things right and we're not grabbing it, just being frustratingly short-sighted.
I've never been this distracted before. That it should be because of one who would've hated it otherwise is ironic and embarrassing. I should pull myself up.
L wrote me a postal letter that reached me today. It was her sudden idea that we start corresponding this way, just for old times' sake. I read it and it's sweet but for some reason I thought it would contain some kind of confession. I don't know what kind. Was it because it would've made it easier for me? It's my turn to write now.
L says she's moving back for good in May. I couldn't be more thrilled but P is upset. The comments are downright insulting.
L and I have been close friends for 23 years now and have gone through divergent lives. I hope we can have many common memories to make again, once she's here. I don't know what she'll say about the new turn in my life. I want to tell her about it but then it seems too early and unreal at the moment. When will I know if it'll ever become real?
It is, it is, it is. It's too much to keep it all inside, really. But I'd better.
Someone I talk to regularly, have never met but have seen in a couple of photos and videos - my dream threw up an entirely different picture. Not at all satisfactory.
