Grounded

It is a different kind of happiness to see your home after a gap, even if it means the house is a mess and needs two days of hardwork to bring it back to shape. And as it happens with me, when I woke up after an hour's drugged-like sleep, I just couldn't make out where I was and I finally went back to bed not caring in whose house I slept, so tired I was!

Just when I was beginning to worry that I was becoming a laptop-addict, we went to P's place and I don't feel like entering the office tomorrow. These two places have nothing in common between them and both cast their charm on me and get me frustrated at times as well. But after a decade, I'm beginning to believe that I can really make my life in P's place, in a small corner somewhere in that wast farmland, if only it remains that way.

Rounding Up

One week has vanished and I'm almost done with my visits to...what shall I say...old connections? It's not that I'm averse to meeting them but if I have five days of holidays and I end up spending each evening visiting people, that too at the cost of feeling unhappy at leaving others, it's a bit unfair. But my mother narrates their kindness to me in my childhood and successfully makes me feel guilty enough to drive me to try and repay it. Anyway, this time it's been pretty satisfying that way - I met more or less everybody I thought of.

Never form your opinion of a lady by overhearing two other ladies' conversation involving her, you know what I mean? You'll be baffled to hear one of them speak an entirely opposite thing to another lady another time!!

Enlarged Past

Every time I go out these days, my worry is that I may end up meeting some brother of my old classmates. When I do, I'm mostly embarrassed, first by confusion as to if and how I should be knowing them and next, by the fact that they remember my name. But sometimes, I don't think it's my fault either; I have more or less retained my thin structure whereas they would've added many layers to their frame since they left the childhood. So when the image that I have is of a thin boy in shorts, it's a paradigm shift to adjust and recognise the healthy, goggle-clad smart person in front of me and I fail more often than not.

In fact, I don't think there was any fat kid in the entire school of more than thousand children while I was studying! Just comparing that to what I see in my son's school...

P.B.Srinivas passed away today. One of the most melodious voices I've ever known.

Archaic

I sometimes think it's not a bad idea to keep women out of work for three days a month the way they used to in old days. If only it didn't make the women and their situation so conspicuous to outsiders and if only they didn't have the 'untouchable' rule, I would endorse it any day, especially today....

Loss of Memories...

We went to my old school yesterday. I was actually looking inside the place after a long time because there would be usually badminton players around but yesterday there were none. But there was not much remaining to be seen anyway. Except for the old stage that was also my balawadi and 1st 'A', my 6th and 7th standards, all other rooms are gone, concrete ground slowly inching towards the remaining. Even what is left looked like a carpenter's workshop only and I was trying hard to go back to the bustling days where I spent nine years of my life, the longest for me in any institution away from home. Each of those filled with memories, some fresh like yesterday and some only awakened when someone reminds me. Looking around those sorry rooms, it was as if I had lost the pegs to hang my memories on....

I have to visit two houses tomorrow. One on a happy occasion - to see a newborn - and the other, very difficult for me - to call on Baby Auntie. May be I'll visit Baby Auntie day after tomorrow....what will I say?

I sometimes wonder how Auntie feels after leaving the comfortable and peaceful DRDO area where she lived for 30 years and moving to an area which is totally unlike that.

Wishful Thinking

If wishes were horses, I would tie mine up somewhere lest they invoke longings in me which I cannot fulfill.

I've been telling some stories from Phantoms in the Brain to my mother and she asked me if I could translate the book to Kannada. I said I would see how to go about it.

I'm all set to embark on a series of journeys for the next two weeks and am a bundle of anxiety as usual. Hope to see the good old beach this time. Wish Bangalore had one too! Though I can imagine it to be damn crowded, it's worth it I guess.

Sweating it out...

Why can't it rain everyday?

Random Thought

Isn't self-esteem really out of what you think of yourself rather than what others do? Then why does one attach so much importance to others' approval and appreciation?

Graffiti...

...everywhere!!