Monday, December 28, 2015

And its a WRAP : Year End Saga IV

I don't think that I'll be writing anytime soon. At least not till the year has turned again. I remember the year before, as December 31 was approaching, my heart was in my throat. We were planning a retirement party. We had just come back from an epic holiday, and while I was not looking forward to the year in general, I was at the back of my head anticipating some adventures.

I made the mistakes of anticipating adventures, and had the biggest one I could have ever imagined. Just as the year drew to a close, we moved to Delhi. I lost my grandmother within days of us moving to Delhi (the family thinks that Dadi was waiting to ensure that I was around, I of course feel that I wish she had helped in raising my kids (whenever that would have been)).
I learnt that despite giving clear instructions, when packers and movers come, you are always in a mess, and it is VERY important to separate the stuff of your landlord from your own.

I am in all honestly not in a celebratory mode. I miss my grandmother, who is gone, but mostly I miss my Husband who despite being around is just not there. So I have nothing really to look forward to in 2016. I am still in a bad job. There is no career movement at all from where I stand, and if things remain the way they are, I'll be thrown out soon as well. Yes, the year is not ending on a high. It is mostly ending on a note that is leaving me with way too much to desire and dreams that seem nothing but a mirage. Nevertheless, patience and perseverance they say pay. Eventually. One can hope.

So here is wishing you all the best in the coming year.


Tentative Steps: Year End Saga III

We are all victims of our own doings. Of the decisions that we take, and the repercussions of those decisions. Honestly, there is no one to blame.

This is one of the major lessons that I have learnt in this year. That there is NO one to blame, but your own self for the decisions that you take.

It was my own decision to not curb on my spending (s) when for two years we were in a house where we had to pay no rent. It would have been an easy (at least 10k a month, which would have translated into a substantial saving over the two years); but, to be really honest, I lost the plot. I do not know where all the money that I earned during the "rent free" period went. I do definitely remember getting a second job to "make the ends meet". Also, sometimes I feel that, some financial decisions could have been taken with more information. Like for example, as I write this, I just remembered that a certain personal loan was taken by the Husband at the time of the wedding, and instead of handing over the cheque of all the monetary gifts that we received during the wedding to the FIL, we could have paid off a part of the Personal Loan (or maybe not/ or we could have just put away that money in a bank account from where the loan money was being paid, so that we could have started out debt free? I don't know, but thinking about it in retrospect is a bad thing- messes with my brain). From each outing (whether its the dinners or outstation travels) to god only knows what, I know that those two years have been lost, and this year, all we did was to make the ends meet.
It is DAMN important to be able to rid yourself of debt crisis, and it weights you down to the extent of drowning. So, yeah, I have learnt the hard-way about the money. About the responsibility of each penny that is being spent.

I have learnt about procrastination. About, how good am I at putting everything off for the next day. I have learnt that I do not have the conviction to do many things. I don't feel the urge. I don't feel the need, and above all I think I have lost the passion to live. When you are trying to just get by life, you lose your willingness to actually strive. I am doing a job that pays. Something. It was my own decision to leave the law firm where I was working and struggle with in house positions, hence messing up with my career. I have become, untouchable in the job market, and when that is the case, you don't have passion, you just live by. One of the primary reasons for my leaving my secure law firm job was the travelling bit, the bit about not being able to give family time, without realizing the fact that I am not the only one who has to focus on the "family" thing. In any case, the Husband has always been more apt in the "family matters". I am neither apt. Nor good enough. Just because.

I have learnt about keeping shut, shoving things under the carpet and to look at bigger pictures. I have learnt about pretending that my eyes have something in it, when I tear up in office (because of something that has gone out of hand because of things that I say or do). I have learnt that I mostly do not make any sense, and that therefore, I am always mostly wrong.

I have learnt that each and every word, each and every action has a reaction, has a consequence. It just pushes you beyond your measure of being. I have learnt that neither anger nor tears help, but putting aside something that you felt was wrong, and always remembering the good over the bad helps in keeping things in semblance. And, I have come to realise that there are some problems that just cannot be solved. Sometimes it is your own self stepping back, letting go and shelving fights that are important to keep things and relationships intact. I have realised, and am learning the art of finding happiness by keeping the rest happy. 

Friday, December 11, 2015

The Saga of Death: Year End Saga (II)

I just did not want to write another post about death.
Death is about loss, something that I had experienced a lot (losing my loved ones, one after the other) and I had hoped that it would be a long time before this happened again.

To be fair, it was more than 10 years. It has been me who has been trying to hold time, and hoping that time doesn't affect me.

My grandmother (Dadi), the glue of my family left us for heavenly abode last week. It has been a tremendous loss to our family and while we know and understand that she was almost 85, that she had seen and lived her life fully, the emptiness of not having her around to constantly remind us to have breakfast, or to wake up, or in general being snarky is going to take a lot of time to get used to.

While we were just getting out of this shock, we received the news of my father's childhood friend just collapsing while on a walk. He was in Australia and he was not very old.

While we cope with our loss, we are also made to think, and made to realise how precious life is, that how important it is to let go of our egos and hold on to the things that just make us angry.

It is so important that we think about what is it that we would want in our life, whether it is accumulation of wealth or accumulation of loving relationships, with family and friends that would last us beyond our days of partying and drinking.

Dadi has left behind a family that is cohesive but also pretty fragile. Our inner strengths and power plays are going to be tested, and eventually (mostly willfully) some of us would have to compromise on the behaviour of the other. It is a long road ahead, and all of us can only hope.

The lessons in life, often, are not restricted to life alone. Even in death the wise leave behind the lessons that we most hold on to. 

Tuesday, December 1, 2015

Winter is Coming: The Year End Saga

This Saga Starts again.
After a hiatus of about an year, I re start the report on the year that has gone by.

This year has been extremely interesting.
I have travelled, from one end of Mumbai to the other. With the amount of travelling that constituted each of my day (on an average 60 kms a day), I would have probably seen more of the world than the slums of Mumbai.

I have learnt several other hard lessons this year. The most important being the ones related to making the wrong career decisions, about money (or the lack of it), about loving my Dog, and missing my husband, about learning to enjoy personal walks in a city where the personal space is no bigger than where the peak of your nose is.

This year has been about a lot of churning. About how time waits for none, and about, how you think and perceive about the time that has gone by.

This year has also made me learn about Friends and Friendships. And that thing about "out of sight is out of mind". I learnt about, how good friends just move. Move away, and then they are different. And even though we will pick up from where we left, there are very few friendships that stick by you despite the distance.
I found a friend and a confidant in the most unexpected person ever. And, though he is Husband's BFF, the discovery of our ease with each other now ensures that I disturb him at the most in appropriate times.

There were other revelations as well, like, how I always felt that my parents need to really grow up and let go, and how I had thought that post marriage, they had.. well that is not true. Parents, are always that. And surprisingly, while my Dad is becoming rigid in terms of change, it has been my Mother, who is slowly learning to let go. Slowly being the key word. [She has accepted the Dog in the house, albeit only under strict supervision and guidelines, but they are a few meters apart, and are in peace with each other.. or so I hope]. There is a thirst of adventure that has taken over my Mom, and the fact that she wants to live the grand life through us is slightly unnerving, but then I need to show her things, refine her taste, and maybe in the whole scheme of things get her satisfaction quotient up a bit more.

The lessons in love and marriage never cease. It is amazing that even when you live with someone day in and day out you find something new about your partner, on an average in about every 2 odd days. For husband and me, it has been almost 11 years of being together, and he still doesn't take the hints. He still doesn't realise that I am on my phone most of the time, after I see that he is more interested in his! Or for that matter, the fun of watching a TV Series for me is watching it together with him, and for him it is, watching it as soon as it is out. So, yeah, finding the new things..


If there is a reason as why things happen, and so on and so forth, then I really hope to God, that three years after the first round of over haul, when we are back to the NCR, things change for the better for us. No, they were not bad in Mumbai. But yes, they can be better. Career-wise for both us, family wise, and of course general happiness wise.

As, I end this post, in anticipation to the next few ones about the year that flew by us, it has just rained outside, and while I know a certain friend of mine who also moved back to Delhi after a hiatus is going to curse the spell of rain, I see that the Winter is Coming! 

Political Musings

There was a long debate on a Firstpost Article that the Husband had shared on his FB feed, which unlike the rest of the media made a little bit more sense about the "intolerance" remark.

For all that it is worth, the whole initial debate which started with SRK saying that we are becoming intolerant, followed by Aamir saying the same. Somewhere during the statements that were made by these two celebrities, their were the others from the community of actors, producers, writers, scholars, and other intelligentsia who decided that they would return the state honours that have been given to them as a mark of protest against the rising tempers and "intolerance" in the country.

As soon as the intelligentsia opened their mouth to protect their own integrity as the people of art and their own interest, it sparked an outrage. An outrage that was uncalled for, an outrage that questioned the nationality and patriotism of the actors and the other award givers.

Can someone, anyone, please explain to me, how is this being "tolerant". How is it that the Government decides to use these very celebrities to spread the messages of awareness in the public, and when these celebrities say something which actually means something, the public in general instead of really applying their minds, just start trolling.

And this is why we end up having morons as our leaders.

We are a country that gets swayed by wherever the tides pull us. Oh, this man, who is a Muslim by religion, says that there is intolerance in the country automatically means that he is talking about the hindutva sect (chor ki daadi me tinka)..!!

Did anyone of the silly people re-tweeting and re sharing the anti Aamir Khan messages and posts, sit back and think that if a man, who has all the money that he can get and any kind of security that he desires, and who can choose to turn his face away from everything, instead chooses to talk about it to the world, then there is something seriously wrong with the world that we are living in.

We have become the generation which has such an overwhelming amount of information at our disposal, that we have forgotten how sift the wheat from the chaff, how to process the information, and respond to the musings and action of the intelligentsia. We react.

There are factions in the society, amongst us, and people like the Husband and my self, who have stopped reacting to the outrage of the people, and the outrageous comments that they make. We have become numb to the happenings of intolerance that are happening around us.

I for once can't stop wondering that why are people not reacting to the poison in the Air that we are breathing every single day of our lives, or reacting to the bad infrastructure that the politicians refuse to do anything about.
The Politicians give the most nonsensical reasons to the society at large to react about (religious and casts and love jihad) and make us all forget about the real reasons why they were put on the seat of power, as the representative of the people in the first place.