season's greetings

Every year without fail, for the past five or so years anyway, the year end has been a flurry of activity.

It starts in September with m's birthday, when I re-establish fading contact with friends. The process leading to the big party is preceded by a flurry of house cleaning where old, lost and given up for bermuda triangle objects resurface, adding to the celebratory mood. The usually good fun party is followed by plans to meet up with the rediscovered friends. Also by much head-shaking about how we should have done this way sooner...

Then October rolls along with little n's birthday. When family visits en masse for a chaotic week or so. Multiple shopping trips, multiple cake cutting evenings, and enough grandparents to make the head spin. Presents, presents as far as the eye can see...

Then in November, there's Divali. Our one and only family tradition, our one time of joining in the festivities. Ropes of flashing lights twisted on to the balcony railing, diya candles at the doorstep, traditional mithai both Bong and Tam. And we discover our neighbours. Togged out in saree and tiny Fabindia kurta respectively, we visit people who've thus far been nodding aquaintances, people we exchange pleasantries with in the lift. And discover they're actually pretty nice. Yet again, we should have done this a long time ago...

And then, in December, Christmas of course, but the highlight is the new Year's Eve party with m's closest friends who happen to be my relatives, and are now little n's 'bestest friends'. There's usually a bit of a sad tinge to it all - who knows where we will all be next year at this time, this might be the last one all together like this...

And sure enough, come January, we're all packed up. relocating to another city. But the same cycle repeats. The more things change, the more we try to create a sense of sameness. A sense of home.

rukaavat ke liye khed hai....

Long blogging break. Not because of a dearth of things to say, or even a planned hiatus. Just.

I guess I haven't been online for long enough at a time for thoughts to flow. My best reflective spells, i find, are often when I'm en route somewhere. The auto rattles along too loudly for any conversation, the journey takes me across town and the thoughts dance around like so much gravel along the potholed roads.

Words, words in glittering array and nowhere to write them. And it's not so much subject ideas that can be jotted down n a notepad for future contemplation and regard; it's fully thought out, edit as i go along sentences, phrases and aphorisms, whose original perfection I know with regret will be lost to me by the time I'm anywhere close to my trusty keyboard.

Strangely enough though, the regret isn't quite as weighty as i expected it to be. The satisfaction of writing, polishing and reflecting is still there even when the exercise was only in my head. The same muscles I guess are flexed even when no typing or publishing has actually taken place. Strange, because till just now, I thought my kick was having someone read my words and react. I always thought the writing itself was painful chore to get through. Huh. Self discovery. Just when I thought I knew myself.... blogging zindabad.

In the meantime, books keep me company and provide fodder for thought. Red Carpet - short stories set in Bangalore that made me achingly nostalgic, and Shantaram - an amazing novel that showed me Bombay through a prism of startling intimacy. Super stuff, and unexpectedly so.