Of meltdowns that come without warning

I wrote this post back in May, towards the end of one of the most terrifying periods of my life. I wrote it, decided not to post it, and life went on.

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In my last year of college, there was this day I was supposed to present to the class on something. I can't remember what the topic was, but I remember the room, and the visual of my classmates sitting in one row, my favourite professor in her wheelchair, and me standing off on the side, holding my notes in my hand. For some reason, before I was to begin, the professor had started talking about the day her father died. And as she spoke, in her trademark matter of fact way,  every single girl in the room started sobbing, except me. I stood there, wondering I wasn't crying like everyone else.

She finally turned to me, rolled her eyes, and complimented me for not crying like everyone else. And indicated I should begin. I started speaking, stopped, took a deep breath, started again, and then turned around, faced the wall, and sobbed my heart out, while my professor clucked exasperatedly behind me.

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Four years ago, the day after the garage incident, I walked into work, and went straight to a conference room to join my work BFF for our weekly call with our counterparts from a partner organization. The call had already started when I entered, so I gave a cheery "Hi!" as I sat down. Someone asked me a question, I started speaking, stopped, took a deep breath, started again, and somehow kept going. The call ended, and as I started gathering my things, my BFF looked at me and said, "ok, what's wrong?"

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That morning in May, a few months ago, we had a call with a team I hadn't spoken with in a few weeks. I listed out my agenda, and then before we could dive into the first issue, one of my coworkers piped up saying - before we start, just one other thing. Is your family okay? 

I'd been living a nightmare for close to a month at that point, waking up every morning in terror, wondering what new names I'd hear that day. The weekends were the hardest, because there wasn't even work to distract me from my constant doomscrolling.

And at some point in the previous two weeks, a memo had gone out across America - check in on your Indian friends and coworkers. But somehow, this was the first time someone had done it on a public forum like this. So far, I'd gotten texts or messages, or been asked during one-on-one calls, all of which was appreciated and relatively easier to handle. But being asked on a call like this, while still appreciated, was just a bit startling. But I gave what had become my standard response to all of these inquiries, and kept going.

And then that afternoon, I had about ten minutes between calls, and decided to use it to glance at twitter a bit. I had consciously not looked at worldometers all day, due to some Big. Meetings. in the morning. But since I had ten minutes, I opened twitter, and this was the first tweet I saw.

BREAKING: India has reported over 414,433 new coronavirus cases, the highest of any country since the pandemic began, and 3,920 new deaths.

— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) May 6, 2021

414,000 new cases. Almost 4,000 new deaths. And you know those numbers were woefully, and criminally, undercounted and underreported.

I saw this tweet, and dialed into my call, which was going to be my boss, her peers, and their boss. Started saying I was going to share my screen for the discussion, at which point it was helpfully pointed out I was on mute. I managed to unmute, share my screen, and started laying out what we needed to accomplish. And then it happened.

I started speaking, stopped, took a deep breath, started again, and the tears came gushing out. I kept presenting, speaking over everyone who was trying to say something, pretending like there's nothing strange whatsoever about a woman talking about aligning on a baseline forecast while she has tears streaming down her face. My coworkers on the call, bless them, realised I wanted to just get through it, and let me. I got IMs, some during, some after the call. Every single one of them telling to stop apologising for my meltdown.

I stopped apologising, but I really wished my brain would give me some indication of a forthcoming meltdown going forward.

***************

Things got better after that. They got much worse first, but they got better. The one person I was most terrified for during that period thankfully got through the summer, and is now mom to the cutest baby in the world. We all know there's another wave coming, but no one knows when. 

I don't know why I'm finally posting this now, but for whoever is reading this, I do hope you and your loved ones are safe, and getting through this crazy time in history as best as you can.

What do you say? - Part 2

Several years ago, I had written about how uncomfortable I get with having offer condolences to people who have lost someone. My point back then was that me telling someone how sorry I am for their loss is invariably about me, not them.

My grandmother died four days ago. We had known this was coming, we're all so relieved her suffering is at an end, and we're all grieving. And in the midst of Lockdown 4.0, we're grieving from a distance, since we can't travel to Kolkata to participate in the rituals that come with the death of a loved one.

All week, my mother has been on the phone - informing relatives, talking to her brother and sister-in-law about what rituals we have to carry out, and receiving condolences from sundry friends and family. And invariably, as I hear her have these conversations, it seems to me like she ends up consoling the other person more than the other way around.

It's easier for me - my friends all know me well enough not to call. I texted some friends about the news, and they all texted back, asking me to call or tell them if I feel like talking. I haven't, because I don't know what to say, and they get that. But my mother, who is much nicer than me, picks up the phone, or returns calls that she hasn't been able to pick up, and talks to each and every person who wants to tell her how sorry they are for her loss. 

And I don't know how she does it.

On the fear of loss

If I think about my favourite Bollywood movies from the last several years, there are two that stand out - Piku and Kapoor & Sons.

I've only watched Kapoor & Sons once, in the theatre, with friends. And I'm fairly certain I sobbed through a good chunk of the second half. I've never gone back to watch it a second time, for some reason, despite loving it so much. I've watched clips a few times, and it's on my watchlist on Amazon, but I've never gone back to it.

Piku, on the other hand, I watch at least twice a year, if not more. Once, when I need something playing on Netflix as I potter around the apartment, at least once when my parents come to visit and we can't agree on anything else to watch together, and potentially again, a day or two later so my mother can see the second half because she fell asleep halfway through the previous time.

There's a scene in Kapoor and Sons where one of the protagonists sulkily tells his brother that their parents have always loved him more, seen him as perfect, while he himself can do ever do anything right in their eyes. His brother tells him not to be silly, all parents love their children equally. This line is followed by a beat of silence where the two look at each other, and both burst out laughing, because you know that's just not true.

There's a scene in Piku where a get together of family and friends is taking place, to honour a woman who dies before the movie begins. The protagonist places a bottle of ghee on the table, Jharna ghee to be precise. The first time I saw this movie, the week after it released, in a theatre full of Bengalis who had all flocked to take advantage of the 50% discount offered by that theatre for Indian movies on Wednesdays, the lady in front of me and I simultaneously exclaimed out loud during this scene, "Jharna ghee!"

There's another scene in Kapoor & Sons that is described far more eloquently by Raja Sen in his review of the movie - the family drama that goes on while in the backdrop a plumber works diligently to try and fix the pipes. [UPDATE: Shakun Batra, the director of the movie, did this delightful video that was shared with me after I published this post, on how this scene was constructed.]

Years ago, when my parents were building their first home, they would... disagree on how certain things should look. It took them a while to realize that when the contractor would excuse himself for a cigarette break every few minutes he would time it just when he could sense a storm brewing, and would step out so my parents could come to a decision before he returned.

The protagonist of Piku spends half the movie yelling at her father, out of sheer concern and exasperation at his behaviour. But minutes after squabbling with him, she laughs and starts singing a Bengali song with him.

A while ago, when my parents were visiting, we were driving home one evening, and my mother was munching on the snacks I keep in the car for my evening commute. I found myself turning to her at one point, and saying exasperatedly, "Will you stop eating so much? You won't be able to eat dinner if you snack so much now."

After watching Piku, as we walked out of the theatre, I was commenting that almost every character in the movie reminded me of someone I know. There are pieces of people I know and love in almost every character in the movie. A friend, who at the time was months away from his wedding, to a Bengali girl, sheepishly admitted his future father-in-law was quite similar to the father in the movie.

Both Kapoor & Sons and Piku struck chords with me, more than any other movies in recent years that I can think of. There are daily lives and tiny anecdotes that shine through these movies and remind me of episodes from my family in the past. There are moments that make you smile, then sniffle, and then potentially start sobbing your heart out, but only because you know someone who's gone through something similar.

And both movies showcase the fear, and the reality, of losing a parent.

This is one of those posts that has been sitting in my Drafts for a few years now. Every few months, I pull it open, reread it, tweak it a bit, save it, and then close it again.

When I first started writing this, a couple of articles had gone viral on my timeline. Rohit Brijnath had written a heart wrenching piece on parents' mortality, and the constant fear those of us who live a world away from our parents learn to live with. And then Jai Arjun Singh had responded with a piece that reminded me it's not that much easier to watch it happen in front of you, either.

A few weeks ago, someone shared a website called See Your Folks, that asks you to enter your parents' ages, and how often you see them a year. It then throws up a stark number on just how many times you have left in this lifetime to see them. I may or may not reacted somewhat... emotionally to this site, and ended up doing a bit of a twitter rant about it.

https://t.co/sb0Y8eWU3e

This has got to be the most absurd and depressing site I've come across in a long time.

— a traveller (@a_traveller) October 30, 2019

The last tweet in that rant was posted almost four hours later, after a two hour marathon call with the parents. They weren't told about this site, but given at least one of them stalks me on Twitter and follows this blog, it's possible she knew, or will know when she wakes up in a few hours.

(Chill, Ma, I'm not stressing. I'm just rambling. And trying to distract myself from these impeachment hearings I've been watching for the past week (and mayyyybe from some of the daughterly stress I've felt after the last couple of This is Us episodes).)

But to end this post on a sufficiently emotional note, here are two songs I had on loop after I spiraled about that stoopid site, for your listening pleasure.

Movie watching thoughts: Crazy Rich Asians

I'm trying to figure out if I'm just being small-minded and inward looking with my mixed feelings about Crazy Rich Asians, or if the fact that I went to see it with some very "woke" people who loved the movie meant I couldn't really articulate my feelings about it at the time.


I liked the movie. It was fun, the performances were brilliant, and Nick's single minded approach to trying all the food possible on his first night back in Singapore was completely understandable. Also, it was very Bollywood. The basic difference between Crazy Rich Asians and every ridiculous rich people movie I saw growing up in the 90s and early 2000s, was that, unlike Karan Johan and Sooraj Barjatya, Jon Chu made a really good movie. Also the prospective bahu stood up to her prospective mother-in-law a lot more than anyone in K3G ever did.


Here's what bothered me. Before the movie started, they were doing clips showcasing the actors for the movie, and then did a slidereel of the history of Asian actors in Hollywood. And somewhere in the mix Indian American actors like Kal Penn were shown, as well as clips from The Namesake. And then, at the end of the slide reel, they put up a caption remind us that this is the first movie since 1993 to have movie with a majority Asian cast in a contemporary setting. To which I say, then what was The Namesake?


And I get it. I get how important this movie is to the Asian American community, and why this matters. But I've always struggled with the fact that India, and the South Asian subcontinent, gets called Asian when it's convenient, and gets tossed to the side when it's not. If we're making the point that this is the first movie in 25 years with an Asian cast, and we're excluding The Namesake from that narrative, then don't toss it into the slide reel either, right?


And granted, I have only visited Singapore for three days, almost 15 years ago, but I'm very sure there were more South Asians there at the time then movie showed. Which, again, is fine, because maybe they weren't part of the setting this movie showcased. But. BUT. How is it that every guard of a fancy hotel or mansion that the movie showed somehow managed to be a Sardar?


Look, I loved the movie. There's so much even I could identify with. The guilt tripping laid on kids by their parents. The love for family and food back home. How good it is to go back home every time you do, the catching up with old friends and families. The little throwaway lines that showed that people really are the same, everywhere.


And a lot of the movie brought back the feelings I've also always had, of being a probashi Bangali, growing up in Delhi, only visiting Kolkata occasionally for a few days during school vacations. My cousins made fun of how terrible my Bengali is, how my accent is "so Delhi". I felt out of place with my Delhi friends at times, but even more out of place with most Bengalis I knew. Those feelings span cultures - anyone who has grown up in a place that is different from the place their parents belong to struggle with that a bit, I think. And watching Rachel's character navigate Singapore, and reading the reactions of Asian Americans to watching that, brought a lot of those feelings back.


But, let's just decide if Indians count as Asians or not, 'kay?

On podcasts and a year of listening to them

A year ago, I had no idea how to listen to a podcast. I knew they were a thing, and that I should probably figure out how to listen to them on my Android devices, but since my Googling skills suck, I never quite got around to it.

Then, The West Wing Weekly started. And I had to listen to that. So exactly one year ago yesterday (as FB reminded me) I sent out a plaintive request for help out on social media, and friend of the blog* @tantanoo figured it out for me. So I downloaded PocketCast (the only app I've ever paid for in my life) and started listening to TWWW. And I really, really enjoyed it. It also helped me actually stop rewatching The West Wing nonstop. Instead, I would watch only one episode a week - after listening to the podcast episode, so that I could also make sure to notice the little things they'd mention.

At some point the folks on TWWW recommended The Bugle, and that got added to my queue. Then the Pod Save America folks came on some late night show I was watching - I think it was Seth Meyers - to plug the podcast they were about to start, I decided to check out, and that got added to the queue. They started more podcasts, and some of those added to the queue too.

Then, having dinner with friends some months ago, podcasts came up, and my friend's husband suggested the Slate Political Gabfest, saying I'd enjoy it given my "political inclinations." When I mentioned them on Twitter, someone else suggested Slate's Trumpcast podcast, and that got added to the queue as well.

After a while, I felt my podcast queue was just too full of US politics, so I again turned to social media to ask for recommendations for some Indian podcasts. After trying out multiple ones, I have eventually settled on the ones from Newslaundry, and the Mint podcast.

Somewhere along the way, I stopped watching The West Wing, and listening to TWWW completely. Life in the real world got so damn depressing, that it got harder and harder to watch this idealist dream, and then come back to reality. But even with that, suddenly I found myself with a queue of three hours' worth of podcast on any given day.

I learned very quickly that I can't focus on podcasts if I'm doing anything else. So the only times I really have when listening is a possibility is on my daily commute - which is just twenty minutes long. In weeks when I'm travelling, the flights are an excellent time to listen. Sometimes when I'm cleaning up around the apartment, or cooking, I'll try and do some listening then too, but somehow it doesn't seem to sit right. On the very rare occasion I go to the gym or for a walk, I get some listening in then too.

But all of this has meant I had to prioritize what I will listen to. And since I very clearly like/pay attention to more the podcasts that are discussing the news, and as a friend put it, have "banter" in them, the sequence became this:

• Pod Save America - yes, they're three white dudes, but they acknowledge that, which I guess is something. I usually agree with their opinions, except when they don't push back on something their guest says.
• Slate Political Gabfest - I think of this as a grownup version of Pod Save America, frankly. But my favourite thing about this podcast is Emily Bazelon, her passion and her articulateness, and the very clear way in which the men on this podcast defer to her as the legal expert. That is refreshing simply because no other podcast I listen to does that.
• The Bugle - no, John Oliver is no longer a co-host, but Andy Zaltzman is fantastic even so. And his choice of getting a rotating panel of co-hosts from around the world works very well I think. Anuvab Pal, who I had never really heard before this, and Nish Kumar, are the ones I enjoy the most, for perhaps obvious reasons. And I really, really like Alice Fraser too.
• Lovett or Leave it - purely for the laughs. There's really nothing else to say on it.
• The Mint Editor's podcast - a weekly, 15 minute podcast that recaps and pontificates on business, and occasionally other, news of the past week. I like it because it's a good way to keep up with things back home, and it's short enough for a one-way commute. Also I like R Sukumar, the editor of Livemint. What I really don't like about this one though is the format - it usually has one other person, who is there to purely bring up a topic and then say "hmm" in varying tones and lengths as R Sukumar speaks. Also their ads are weird.
• Newslaundry Hafta - the one I have the most mixed feelings about. First of all, it's a pain to listen to. Even though I did end up subscribing to NL, their app is terrible, so I don't like using that. I did figure out a way to download their episodes and add them to PocketCast, so that helped. Each episode is also close to two hours long, which gets painful. Having said that, this podcast is also my way of keeping up with what's going on in India, which is something I've struggled with for the past few years. Their panels, deliberately so, have a range of views, and so there are some I agree with almost all the time, and there are some I disagree with almost all the time. Manisha Pande very often sounds like the only person who knows what she's talking about, while the rest are expressing views, but sadly she seems to get talked over more often than not. There is one particular person on the panel who has been increasingly irritating me over the past several weeks, but the other panelists have for the most part yelled back at him, so I still haven't sent in that rant-filled email I mentally compose every time he speaks.
• Newslaundry Awesome and Awful Entertainment Wrap - my main source for what Hindi movies I should or should not watch. Unfortunately, one of their co-hosts left a few months after I started listening. I did like the banter between the remaining co-host and the replacement co-host, but then both of them decided to not continue, so it seems to have gone on an indefinite hiatus.

Those are the ones I listen to every week. Then come Pod Save the World, Trumpcast, NL's sport podcast (which I listen to only if they're discussing cricket), the Late Night with Seth Meyers podcast, Pod Save the People, NY Times' The Daily, and With Friends like These - all of these are listened to if I have any time and if the topic they're discussing is still relevant by the time I get to it. Because that's how crazy the news is these days. I have two Pod Save the World episodes half listened to from last week, when North Korea was being talked about** by everyone, and then Charlottesville happened, and I simply haven't gone back.

What a year of listening to podcasts has done most for me though is two things. One, my interest in watching TV and staying caught up on shows has somehow gone down dramatically. I am now far more interested in staying caught up on podcasts. Even if I'm not really listening to podcasts when I'm home, the TV isn't always on like it used to be. I think part of why this has happened is that I also watch late night shows regularly (my friend's offhand comment about banter was a lot truer than he or I realised at the time, I think), and so all other shows have taken a backseat.

Two, the biggest sufferers in my yearlong obsession with podcasts are very clearly the parents. My drive to work used to be my time to call them, every few days. Now, with my podcast queue constantly growing longer, my calls to them have become more and more infrequent. And that is something I definitely need to fix.

* Yes, I stole that phrase from one of the podcasts I listen to. Shoo now.

** I was about to write North Korea was blowing up, and decided to rephrase because I realised that may have been a bit too much on the nose.

On distractions

The mother is a strong believer in the power of distraction. When the brother and I would start squabbling in the back of a car as kids, she would suddenly say excitedly:

Look at all those trees! Let's count how many we go past!

Or:

Why don't we count how many Maruti 800s we pass on the road?!

Quite a few, as it turns out, when you were driving in Delhi in the 1990s. So by the time we got bored of counting, we would have forgotten what we were fighting about, or even that we were fighting at all.

The brother and the sister-in-law visited me this past weekend, and at some point the three of us got into a heated debate over something while waiting for our desi Chinese takeout to be prepared. I can't remember what we were arguing over, but it was quite clear the three of us were not going to agree anytime soon. And suddenly my brother turns to his wife and exclaims:

Look at all those red lights! Let's count them!

His wife stared at him utterly confounded, as I burst out laughing. By the time she understood what her husband had been trying to do, an entirely different argument looked likely to erupt.

Luckily for my brother's life and marriage, our food was pronounced ready at that very opportune moment.

On how the news hits you

One of the continuing arguments I have with my mother is that she refuses to stop worrying about her children. When the brother and I travel, and now the sister-in-law too, she wants to know when we take off and we land. I'm very sure she has news alerts set up for whatever city or country we're in at any given time, because she usually finds out about any shooting or tornado warning or any possible type of calamity within, I don't know, a 1000 miles of me before I do.

Case in point, this Sunday morning. I received a text asking how bad the shooting in Orlando was. I had no idea, because between getting up late, realizing I had to wash my hair, and rushing out of the apartment to meet people on time, I hadn't really glanced at the news, twitter, or Facebook. But just as I typed that text back, saying I hadn't seen the news yet, I caught sight of a TV screen playing CNN. And stopped dead in my tracks.

I could go on and on about how the news these days makes me feel sick to my stomach. The Stanford rape case, the Orlando shooting, the US Presidential elections - none of it is pretty. And I can't blame my mother for worrying about me when I've written in the past about going crazy with irrational worry when anything happens back in India.

A few weeks ago, after yet another exasperatingly frantic call asking about my safety, I had snapped at her, "do you realize, if something had happened to me, calling or texting me would be useless, because I wouldn't exactly be able to respond if I was dead?" After a second of pin drop silence, I was witheringly told never to say anything like that ever again. The fact that I was already feeling the pangs of guilt for having snapped didn't count.


This afternoon, one of the tweets making the rounds about the Orlando massacre that hit a little too close to home was this screen grab of someone's post:

"as investigators are inside the nightclub, where many of the bodies are still where they fell, they have to tune out the nightmarish sound of all of the deceased phones' ringing constantly as loved ones try to reach them."

Shudder, indeed.

March musings

The parents left to go back home yesterday, after visiting me for a month.

That first evening alone, walking into an empty apartment, always feels the weirdest. And the hardest, even though you've spent a month rolling your eyes, complaining you can't find anything in your kitchen, and generally wanting just 30 seconds of me-time.

I'm never going to be able to live with anyone again, ever.

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Does it feel, after a point, that your parents kind of turn into your kids?

I mean, don't get me wrong, I was pampered for a month, being woken up with a cup of tea every morning, having oil applied to my hair, etc. But when you find yourself exasperatedly glancing back while driving home in the evening, and hear yourself saying "don't eat any more chips, you won't be able to have dinner otherwise!" it kind of makes you wonder when the tables turned.

**************

Just once I would like to be able to complain out loud that the mother is turning into the grandmother without the father or brother promptly pointing out, very helpfully, that I am turning into the mother.

**************

A couple of years ago, I wrote about, among other things, how I love flying, and love looking out of the window of an airplane. A month ago, I sent the father a link to an article I came across linking a certain medicine given to patients of epilepsy with birth defects when those patients become parents.

I sent the article to the father because I had epilepsy, as a child. And was on medication from the age of 8 to the age of 13. And while my medication was changed several times over the years, I faintly remembered being on the aforementioned medicine for some time at least.

I received a note from the father after I sent him this article, which said, among other things, the following:

I was in an airport. Hong Kong. Returning from a PRC trip - my first. And I got the news that the doc has finally stopped the medication. Glad I had a window seat. And always love flying out of that airport..... One of those positive memories... there are some things always, to be thankful for....

**************

I was going through old posts, trying to find the one where I talked about my love of window seats, and found an older post, from four years ago. Where talk about the things I don't like about flying.

And given my current life, and the fact that I travel by myself every other weekend these days, I find that post so very ironic on so many levels.

Oh, if we knew then what we know now...

Of a slightly haphazard timeline

I pulled out a pair of trousers to wear to work this morning, and couldn't, because it's two sizes too big for me, and I don't have the right kind of belt to wear with it.


Two weeks ago, I wore a pair of green trousers I had bought on a whim three years ago, and not worn in two years, because it now fits.


Two weeks before that, I checked my weight in the morning, and saw that for the first time in more than almost three years, my weight was finally - finally - in the normal BMI range.


Over the past six months, I've lost more than twenty pounds - or ten kgs. I'm still at the edge of what would be a normal BMI range for me though, especially since I'm a short, short person. I have to lose another ten pounds, or just under 5 kgs, to be what is the ideal weight for me.


I wish I could tell you this is a story of great determination that they can make an Oscar-winning movie about. It's really not.


For years, the family's been trying to nudge me towards a more healthy lifestyle - be it in terms of what I eat, how active I am, or anything. I resisted all efforts, because pooh, your family will always think you're fat, especially since they're the kind of people who never put on weight no matter how much they eat, and think anyone who weighs more than them (which is 75% of the world) is overweight. And since most of my friends are the super supportive kind of people who always tell me I'm fine, obviously I chose to believe the folks who were saying what I wanted to hear.


Didn't really matter what my weighing scales, my clothes, or blood tests were saying.

A year ago, when the brother announced (formally) he was getting married, I vaguely promised myself I'd lose weight by the wedding. Ten months ago, when the wedding timeline moved up by a year or so, I thought of the promise and told myself I should do something about it. Seven months ago, when I went home and bought most of my outfits for the wedding in two days, I told our utterly unreliable darzi that he'd hopefully have to alter everything in two days when I came back for the wedding.

So when I came back to the US, I talked to a couple of friends, and we kinda sorta got going on getting me to lose weight. I started going for walks at lunch a couple of times a week. I didn't really change anything else in my life, but told myself this was a good first step.


Then, six months ago, I finally found a doctor to go to in the area, and get a routine checkup done. She asked me to get blood tests done, and when the results came back, I was told have diabetes. Borderline, but there it is.


The family reacted in fairly predictable ways: the father started looking up links and sending them to me as reading material, the mother wanted to know what she could do, and started forwarding whatsapp forwards on how to deal with diabetes that I would delete without reading (anything that comes via Whatsapp and is longer than my screen, I'm not reading), and the brother said, and I quote, "Oh? Well, maybe this will make you take your health more seriously." I could feel the love, you guys.


And it kinda, sorta did. A friend and I joined the gym at work. And when I say we joined a gym, I mean we'd go twice a week, I'd put on a show on Hulu on my tablet, and I'd walk on the treadmill for the 45 minutes it would take me to watch the show.


So between the walking at lunch, the walking on the treadmill, and the medication I was put on, I began to lose weight. A lot of it. And even when all this walking pretty much came to a stop three months ago because things got a little crazy all round, I still continued to lose something like half a pound a week because that medicine I'm on is a magical medicine.


As a result, when I showed up for the wedding six weeks ago, I was looking pretty awesome. And I did have to run around getting half my outfits altered. So I suppose you could say that I kept my promise to lose weight by the wedding.


Since coming back, I haven't gone for any walks, and I've been to the gym twice. My diet never really changed, and it continues to be the same. But I've still lost another two pounds, although it seems to be holding steady there. So if I want to lose those last ten pounds, effort will be required. And the diet definitely needs to be brought under control (Sidebar: Parents, I am eating fine, I just need to start measuring, don't start commenting or whatsapping me as soon as you read this. Shuye poro. End sidebar.).


I'm to see my doctor again next month, and get a blood test done too, so we'll see where we actually are healthwise. And weightwise, well, I guess I'll see where we are there as well.


(I just re-read this entire post, and this is the worst constructed timeline possible. Uff.)

Where The Flash reminds me of The West Wing

A dozen posts have been written in the past few weeks - all in my head, of course. And as expected, none of them made to the interwebs.

And before we proceed, allow me to say there are perhaps spoilers ahead, so proceed with caution.

So. I'm watching this week's episode of The Flash, and there's a scene where Joe West gives the watch his father gave him to Barry Allen, saying he always wanted to give it to his son. Now, Joe has a daughter, and as it now turns out, a son as well. But the watch his father gave him must be given to the boy he brought up as a son.

And this episode reminds me of an episode from one of my favorite shows - The West Wing. I love that show, and I watch it over and over. That show is why my list of new shows to watch keeps growing longer and longer, because I just keep going back to that show.

But just because I love The West Wing doesn't mean I'm blind to its flaws. Like just how chauvinistic it is. The brother sent me an article about the show several months ago, and my response was this:

I don't see why the word secretly is in there. Anyone who doesn't admit Aaron Sorkin is an asshole and a sexist and an utter douchebag is an idiot. 

That article is spot on about everything, by the way. Especially the fact that CJ Cregg would never have become Chief of Staff if Aaron Sorkin hadn't left the show after the fourth season.

AnyWAY. Why this episode of The Flash reminded me of The West Wing. There is an episode in the second season, I think. It's Thanksgiving, and Bartlet has Charlie running around trying to find the perfect carving knife. After several rounds of this, Charlie discovers Bartlet already has a knife and exasperatedly asks why he needs another. And Bartlet says it's because he's giving it away - to Charlie. Now, this knife - a Paul Revere knife, which apparently means something - has been handed down the generations in the Bartlet family.

Now, here's my thing. Joe West has a daughter, but in all fairness, he brought up Barry, and so calling him his son who deserves this watch his father gave him is... okay. Sorta.

But. Bartlet. The man has THREE daughters. THREE. And, at this point in the show, has known Charlie for just about one year. ONE. Compared to TWO DECADES of having three daughters.

Tell me Sorkin isn't an asshat.

Parental conversations, Part 2

This post is a complete cop out because I realised we're almost at the end of October and I haven't posted anything this month. Having said that, these gems have been collected here over the past year or so, just waiting to shared with the world. Characters, my parents are.

The father, on whatsapp, on being sent photos of wounded hand compared to the previous week:
"Looking much healthier.
Letting the nail polish show itself now."

************

Conversation between me and the parents before the mother came to stay with me for two months:
Me: Can Mamma's phone be fixed so it logs into her Skype account and not Baba's?
Mother: Arre we are ek jaan since 1983.
Me: Yes but if you're here and trying to call him on Skype you'll end up calling yourself na.
Father: Now that is a good example of a closed loop as used in circuit designing and programming languages. :D
Father: And. i will not be able to call M on Skype because... :(

I don't even know what the man means half the time. And he uses way too many emoticons.

************

The mother, seeing me the morning of her day of departure after a two-month stay with me:
"Are you dressing up so much today because I'm leaving?"

************

Mother: Listen, when you land for the wedding, there'll be just a week to go. You're not going to insist on going to China Bowl for dinner, are you? There'll be a lot of work to do.
Me: Yeah, but we'll still have to eat, won't we?

************

Late night Skype calls on wedding outfits:
Mother: For the sangeet toh I am going to buy.
Me: Everything else you're going to rent or what?

************

Over whatsapp:
Me: Look at these amazingly comfortable linen pants I bought. They're perfect for summers, do you want a pair?
Mother: No, I have plenty.

Two days later, on the phone:
Mother: I have to tell you what I did. I didn't want to spend money on new pants, so I got all my pants shortened and made them into capris.
Me: Well, what are you going to do in the winter then?
Mother: ....oh.
Me: Sigh.
Mother: Achha, I hope you know that when I said no to those pants I was just being polite.

************

Mother: Have you talked to your brother lately? Why is he losing so much weight?
Me: I *just* told you how much weight I've lost. Why do I not get asked that in such a tone of concern?

(In all fairness, the brother has always been a stick who just doesn't put on weight, the lucky schmuck. And I'm... not like that.)

************

Me: Next time you call me on Skype at 6.30 am on a Sunday to watch a puja the entire khandaan is present at, can I get a 5 minute heads up so I'm dressed a little more appropriately? I had to wriggle off camera before I let anyone see me.
Father: I noticed.

The master of understatement, this man is.

Where by we, we mean I

Let us get announcements out of the way first. There is a wedding in the family this winter. It is not ours, so shoo. We are tremendously excited about it, and so we are willing to indulge people who talk about nothing else on the phone and therefore don't even ask people about what might be happening in their lives. Not that we are complaining or anything.

We might be talking like this a bit because we have been reading Anuja Chauhan's latest book recently.

So anyway, we were in Delhi last week. Mainly for wedding related gatherings, and of course wedding shopping, but also extremely important things like mangoes and bhutta and hair spas. Now six days in Delhi is never ever enough, and when those six days are spent shopping for wedding outfits during the day and working during the night because we have no vacation days and have to beg for time off, it is all very exhausting. Nonetheless, Delhi is Delhi after all. It is... home. Y'know?

Now wedding shopping in Delhi is... interesting. I mean, first of all, let us be clear. Delhi fashions were, are, and always will be way too jhataak for us. So the first line uttered in every shop we entered was invariably:

"bhaiyya shaadi ke suit dikha do, par zara kam jhataak ho toh."

Now the other problem is current fashions. We have been made to understand that Pakistani serials have become very popular in India. Which we are okay with because we gather they are a little less insane than the Indian ones. But as a result, Pakistani styles are the current fashion in India. Which is all well and good, because they're really gorgeous, but can we please agree that anarkalis and shararas and whatnots do not suit every body type? Therefore, the most common conversation we had in this entire shopping process was this:

"Bhaiyya salwar ya churidar ke saath nahi hain?"
"Aaj kal yahi fashion mein hain."
"Aaj kal jo fashion mein hain woh nahi pasand na."

Ufff.

However. The mother and I are extremely efficient, with the result that between Karol Bagh and CP and GK-I, we are done with the wedding shopping, barring one outfit. We did not have the time or energy to go to Chandni Chowk, and Shahpur Jat was wayyyyyyy too jhataak for us - except for one shop that was wayyyyyyy out of our budget. We are a little sad we didn't end up making it to South Extension, because it has been too long since we had the juice and bhel puri there, but the friend who has said she could meet us in South Ex came home the next day, so what is there.

The one outfit that is left is also not completely worrisome, because we know what we want, and the mother will have it done by the time we land back this winter. Accessories need to be picked up locally, and we need to try and find someone who can do some tailoring for us locally, because there was no time to get blouses made for the saris one has chosen, but that and all can be figured out I think.

So, productive week. Even though we didn't get to eat enough foods or meet enough people.

And now we will run to our next meeting.

Where we react to that episode of that TV show

I just watched that episode of Grey's Anatomy. The one from a few weeks ago, the one that everyone who knows the show exists knew about within minutes of it happening, because this is not a fandom that is able to contain its spoilers.

I've been catching up on this season of the show over the past ten days or so, and have had a lot of thoughts that I wanted to blog about once I was done with the season. But now that I've gotten through this episode, I need to react to this episode in isolation, separate from the rest of it.

There's always that one episode of Grey's Anatomy that gets to me every season, and makes me beak down and bawl like an idiot. In its 11th season, this one was it. The last ten minutes of the episode were it.

The episode reminded me of this conversation.

The episode reminded me of a moment that took place in college. I was presenting in class. What I was presenting on, I can't remember. But I remember the room we were in, and where I was standing. I remember my professor telling us about her father, and how she had to take the decision to end his suffering, because her mother couldn't. I remember standing, facing my classmates, and watching each and everyone of them sobbing at my professor's matter of fact narration. I remember wondering why I wasn't sobbing. I remember my professor rolling her eyes and turning to me, saying "chalo, at least you're still the sensible one. Let's carry on now." I remember beginning my presentation, and having to stop because my voice broke. I remember taking a deep breath and starting again, only to break down completely. I remember turning around to face the wall, taking long and deep breaths and trying to get it together. I remember turning back, mouthing sorry to my professor as she looked at me exasperatedly, and continuing with my presentation.

I remember thinking if just the thought of having to take such a decision could shatter me like this, how had my professor survived it. And I remember thinking I wanted to be like her when I grew up.

The episode reminded me of a decision my family took two summers ago. I remember us spending weeks, trying to put off the inevitable. I remember us looking at each other, knowing we had to, but looking for reasons not to. I remember each of us, one by one, finally saying yes. I remember my brother asking for three days. I remember spending those three days, trying to pile in every moment we possibly could. I remember wondering once or twice why we were were prolonging the agony. I remember taking her for a walk with my brother. I remember coming back from the walk and seeing her refuse to enter the house. I remember her lying down in our driveway, and refusing to move from there, as if she knew what was about to happen. I remember the vet arriving, and all of us sitting around her while he did what he had to do. I remember the scream I let out when it happened.

And anyone who tells me I can't, or shouldn't, compare that memory with the loss of losing a parent, a spouse, or a child, can go fly a kite.

This damn show. It just gets to you, man.

That is all.

Of recipes and memories

My mother has a bookshelf in her kitchen that has a number of cookbooks on it. Most of them are bought, but among them is a blue diary**, with yellow pages that are falling apart, holding a number of loose sheets of paper shoved in within its pages.

This diary has my Thamma's handwriting all over it. I'm not sure how my mother, the youngest bahu, ended up with it, but for most of my childhood, I remember that being the go-to book that would be spread open in the kitchen any time my mother was making carrot cake, or baked vegetables, or one of several other recipes.

I don't remember seeing it being used all that often in recent years - partially, I suspect, because I paid less attention, but also I suppose because some of those recipes have probably been used often enough to make referring to the actual recipe unnecessary.

I am not, by any stretch of the imagination, a good cook. I like the idea of cooking, and do it from time to time. But it doesn't come instinctively to me, and that frustrates me. When someone rattles off a recipe on the phone to me, it's pointless because I won't remember any of it. And when anyone tells me to add something "andaaze se", it makes me want to tear my hair out. I need to see a recipe to make anything, and I need to be told exactly how much to put in of every single item I'm adding.

I own one cookbook, and I have a number of recipes saved in my email or my browser favorites. But a few weekends ago, I found an unused notebook I had bought impulsively a couple of years ago (hello, cute puppy on cover of diary. come home with me, yes?), and never used more than two pages of. One of those pages was a to-do list, and the other page was a recipe. And just like that, without really thinking it through, I found myself spending the next hour painstakingly writing down the recipes for the ten or fifteen recipes I use on a regular basis, along with a few that I want to try at some point.

This notebook is now sitting in my kitchen, and has been referred to twice or thrice in the past few weeks. I'm hoping it gets used more often, and that it gets added to more often, and that eventually, I won't really need to refer to it that often, but that it will still sit there, waiting to be opened up and looked at.



** Update: The mother has emailed me to point out that I have my diaries all mixed up. Apparently the one with Thamma's cake recipes is a brown leather bound diary, while the blue one is something she herself used to save and scribble recipes in, and was originally given to her by her father-in-law so she could learn to read and write Bengali.

I was a kid, okay. But the point is the same, really.

Parental conversations

Conversations with and about my parents over the past few months.

The mother: Why are you coming now if I can visit you in a few months?
Me: Umm, you do realize you're not the only reason I like to come to India?
*offended silence*
Me: There are other people and places in my life, you know...
The mother: I got it after the first line, you know.

************

Me: So I renewed my lease for a year.
The mother: But... what if you finally meet someone?
The father: One of them can always sublease or something.

************

Me: It's really sad how awful my Hindi and Bengali is. Even the brother speaks better Hindi than me now.
The father: All of that may be true, but you have the best understanding of lyrics to Bollywood songs out of anyone in this family.

I felt so proud and validated.

************

The brother: What are you getting Baba for his birthday?
Me: He sent me his usual email of what he wants.
The brother: I didn't get this. What was on it? Was it for everyone?
Me: No, I get one every time I visit home. Things to work on - my health, my temperament, my ambition, the way I talk to people...
The brother: Oh. Are you doing any of that yet?

************

The father: You've been silent these past few days.
Me: Umm no, I Skyped with your wife almost every night.
The father: Oh. I wasn't informed.
[less than an hour later]
The mother: You can call your father, but not reply to my whatsapp message?

Competition nahi hain, bhai.

************

The father: So my eye surgery's on the 14th...
Me: Oh good, you finally got around to scheduling it.
The father: Yeah... but I need to talk to the doctor if it makes sense.
Me: If what makes sense?
The father: If I should have eye surgery after I've been up all night watching the World Cup final.

Of the month that was

There are times when so many things happen in such a short span that when you look back you wonder what the universe was even thinking. April was one of those months. Lovely, lovely things happened, but utterly annoying things also happened. And I wouldn't normally dedicate a whole post to such happenings, but my reminder for the second post of April has been going off every time I open my home laptop and who knew if you hit snooze often enough you come to the end of the month without that post getting written?

April involved travel - I was out three weekends in a row, and while they were all for nice reasons, things kept happening while I was traveling that interfered with fully enjoying said travel. On the other hand, I've gotten pretty darn good at packing lightly for a weekend. Also ability to be impulsive is improving.

The godfather visited Amreeka, and I got to see him this time, unlike the last time when stoopid ice storms cancelled all flights to and from Dallas. A friend got married, a friend got a job, a friend got evicted. The first elections back home I wasn't able to vote in, and a part of me was kinda relieved I didn't have to make that choice.

The mother decided she wanted to come visit me in May, so I first freaked out, then started planning Mother's Day. But then the father's eyes started acting up, and we said let's wait and see. Then, when I called them from San Francisco ten days ago (which in itself is rare, because I usually don't call them when I'm travelling) I was informed that all the meds he was on led to him collapsing, he had been rushed to the ER and was in hospital, and that the brother was flying down to Delhi. Okay then. As the friend I was staying with described it, "I came out of the room and she was crying on the phone, and then when I came out again she was yelling at her mother, so I knew it couldn't be too serious."

Tell me, it's perfectly normal for parents to take smiling photos of themselves in hospital rooms and send them to a daughter who's on the other side of the world, yes?

Anyway, he got better, and discharged within a day, but clearly the mother's trip is off. So I can put off that much-needed apartment cleaning even further.

I went back to school, for our one-year reunion, and I can't begin to describe to you how good it was to be back and see everyone. I have very mixed feelings in retrospect about my decision to go to business school, and the two years I spent there, but this weekend brought out everything I loved about those two years. So much happiness.

Unfortunately, on the Thursday of reunion weekend, I managed to sprain my back while lifting my suitcase, and the next 48 hours were excruciatingly painful. By Saturday I was better, because I had found just the right mix of ibuprofen, bengay, and heating patches that would help me get through the night, but then on Sunday I managed to slip and fall in the shower, and banged my elbow, and bruised myself in multiple spots, and basically gave myself another week of excruciating pain which is not helped in any way by the mother whatsapping every twelve hours asking "Hw nw?"

There are also multiple news items related to the brother that make me all squeee. I'm not allowed to talk about them in public but they make me feel all warm and fuzzy on the inside because good things lie ahead. FINGERS ARE CROSSED OKAY?

Oh and I think I got the H1B visa lottery but I'm not entirely sure because the email and website confuses me so I'm just going to take the word of my friends and colleagues and assume I got it.

So yeah, that was April. I liked you, but I also kinda didn't. I'm glad you're over.

Of names and reactions

The parents have always been Mamma and Baba. When relatives protested with things like "Ma is more respectful" or "Mamma sounds like Mama*", they were firmly, but politely, informed that this is what they preferred her to be called. I had other names for them from time to time - Mother & Father, Mommy & Dad, Mumsie & Babs, the mother and the father in all online references - and these are still used from time to time, usually when I'm trying to, but failing to, cajole them into something. But Mamma and Baba will always endure.

A few years ago, I started called her Ma. There were two reasons for this. One, I'm called Ra by loved ones. So when there would be a plaintive "Raaaaa" yelled from some corner of the house, bellowing back "hain, Maaaaaa?" rhymed and therefore seemed like a lot of fun. Two, and more importantly, she hated it. I mean, hated it. It made her feel old, it seems. The quickest way to irritate her was to call her Ma. I was always astonished she didn't get whiplash from the speed with which she would turn to glare at you with a look Medusa would envy.

It started out as fun, but somewhere along the way, it became natural to call her that. There's a sweetness to the word Ma that just felt... right. Unfortunately, she didn't - and doesn't - see it the same way. And it wasn't till when I was home this summer, and happened to call her Ma in the middle of a conversation. Both the parents grimaced, and when I rolled my eyes, it was the father who suddenly commented, "when you're used to hearing something for so many years, it hurts our ears to suddenly hear something else." Which drove home the point a lot better than their glares and grimaces over the past few years had.

So I'm trying to get unused to calling her Ma. It's not as easy as it should be, for some reason, but I'm trying. I would like to point out, however, that calling my mother Ma instead of Mamma is darn sight better than their son calling his elder sister Duddo instead of Didi**.

*maternal uncle in Hindi and Bengali, for the uninitiated
** elder sister in Hindi and Bengali, also for the uninitiated

Picking a date

Pick a date, the brother says. Just pick a damn date, and I'll agree to it.

Pick a date, I said a week ago. Don't keep telling me we have to take a decision and we have to fix a date. Just do it.

Pick a date, the mother says. I need to know what we're thinking.

We need to pick a date, the father says.

Tuesday morning. The very last time my foot was used as a pillow.

We were all agreed we needed to pick a date. But no one would do it. How do you? How do you say this is the day we say goodbye to our golden retriever, the dog who's been part of our family for eleven years?

I was a month short of 17, the brother 12, when she came to us. Since then, every family decision has included her. We should go for the movie at this time, because we can give her evening meal and take a her for a walk before going. I can't spend the night with friends because she'll be all alone; come to Gurgaon so I can come back and feed her. Let's drive to Kasauli/Jaipur and find a hotel that allows dogs so she can come with us. Tell the boarding facility her likes and dislikes so she doesn't miss home. The boarding facility gave her too much chicken, and now she won't eat ghar ka khana, so now what do we do? Make the brother talk to her on the phone so she won't vomit again because he left.

In keeping with all the family discussions and decisions she provoked over the last 11 years, this one, the biggest of them all, was also done as a family. And so it was decided that yesterday was the day Kyra, my darling princess, would leave us to go to whatever doggy heaven there is out there.

The day after my last post, Kyra stopped eating altogether, and had to be put on daily drip. We cancelled our tickets to Kolkata, and for the next ten days, my only excursions from the house were to her clinic and back. Her blood was tested every few days, and the results were terrifying to say the least. At least twice we went through evenings convinced this was her last day with us, mentally preparing ourselves, only to find out the idiot was improving. In the words of her vet of ten years, she is - was - a miracle dog.

But even though some - all - of us desperately wanted to believe that these improvements meant a new lease of life for her, it was also clear that not only was this just borrowed time, but she would also be completely dependent on drip and medicines for sustenance and food. And so, after intense debate, and a great deal of tears being shed, the decision was taken on Saturday. And Tuesday - yesterday - was set as the date.

We spent her last few days with us the way she liked it best, sitting with her, taking her for drives and walks, taking lots of photos - although she was no longer as enthusiastic about modelling as she to used to be, and just being with her as a family. The brother and I took to sleeping on the floor on the parents' room at night; she managed to climb onto our mattresses a few times.

There were moments when I got incredibly frustrated by the waiting; we had taken the decision, why prolong the agony? But in the end, it was worth it, because we gave her some of her best days. When she went, on Tuesday evening, she was surrounded by all four of us, the way she loved it to be, but hadn't got enough of in the past few years.

We spent a large part of the evening reminiscing, of the good times and the more painful times. We smiled and laughed while talking of her antics, we cried - all four of us cried. Her doctor called late at night to ask how we were doing, and to remind us it had been the right decision. We knew that, but I suppose we - I - did need to be reminded, because the guilt that we may have let go too early is there, no matter how much you rationalize it.

The mother said something a few days ago that I keep going back to. Normally, when the brother and I visit home, we're off doing our own things. Going out, meeting friends, holing up in our own rooms busy with out laptops and phones. This time, this visit, we spent almost all our time in the lobby, with her, with the family. Kyra brought this family together all her life. In her last days, she did that more than ever before.

Go in peace, my lovely. May you get lots of gummy bears, chicken, photo shoots, and belly rubbing wherever you are. The house feels very empty without you.

Of ants, souls, and stories that stick

When I was a kid, we lived across from a park, and often walked through when returning home from friends' houses, or the market. There were a lot of ant hills in this park, and I don't quite remember what prompted this, but my mother once told me that these ant hills are the homes of ants, and if you knock any of them over, even by mistake, those ants will hunt you down, and destroy your house. I don't think my mother was quite as graphic as this, and I have never bothered to find out if this is a true fact, but even today, some 20+ years later, I choose not to step on any ant hills should I see one, thank you very much.

When my brother was a kid (and I therefore a somewhat older and wiser kid), we visited the Kali Mandir in C R Park (and while looking up its exact name, I discovered it has a Wikipedia page all of its own). The brother and I were bored while the parents did their chatting-with-God thing, so I told the brother that the stones which have names written on them (dedicated by families of people who have died) have the souls of said deceased individuals trapped inside them. And therefore, while we need to walk all around the temple while waiting for the parents, we need to make sure we don't step on any stone that has a name on it. And so we did.

Some ten-odd years later, with the brother now a teenager, we visited Kali Mandir again. A lot more stones had been dedicated by now, resulting in hardly any blank stones left. I watched my brother stand in one spot and try to figure out how to go anywhere in the temple complex without stepping on the souls of some poor departed-from-this-world individual.

Whenever I go home next, I want to drag him there and see what he does at the age of 23.

A very belated "ooh it's a new year" post

Well, if blogging more regularly was to have been a goal for 2013, we can just forget all about it, can't we? If it makes things any better, this one is only 26 (well, technically 27) days late, as opposed to last year's annual recap being an entire 31 days late. Although maybe I should have just done the 40 questions deal and be done with it.

Oh well, this post's been in the works for a while, so let's see how it turns out.

For the first time in a while, I'm writing my annual year-in-retrospect post knowing - sort of - what the year ahead holds for me, and where I'll be - vaguely - this time, next year.

2012 was... strange. It had parts that sucked, it had parts that were awesome, it had parts that were utterly stressful just like 2011 but which were manageable because other stresses from 2011 went away. I seem to have lost a few very precious people, formed friendships that have helped me survive the year, and learned more about myself in the process.

A large part of the year involved a fairly irritating job search. As mentioned several times previously, I suck at the whole networking nonsense that is a necessary evil in B-schools in the Yoo Ess. Ergo, getting a job I wanted was traumatic and tough. Add to that a fairly awful living situation, a friend circle that I had more fallen into than chosen, and getting used to the whole being away from everything that is loved and familiar, my first few months at B-school - and the last few months of 2011 - had been... difficult.

2012 changed that. Like I said in last year's annual flashback post, the mother's visit over winter break bought my two worlds together, and in a way reminded me of who I am, why I had chosen to move half a world away, and what was important to me.

It was easier, after that, to hang out with the people I liked and wanted to get to know better, rather than people I seemed to have fallen in with. To take the decision to make the most of a fairly horrendous living situation for the rest of my first year, but to look at living alone for the next year.

My apartment got robbed, in February. My poor luck with international travel isn't restricted to Europe, it seems. I visited India for two weeks on a school consulting project trip in March with a group of my classmates, and got to see the country very differently. Just two days at home is woefully short, though. I got an internship - eventually. It wasn't what I would have liked, ideally, or what I  thought I wanted to do full-time, but it was something I knew would give me valuable experience and help me make up my mind about a full-time role, and so I took it.

I think I truly began to enjoy school and life in the US once that internship was secured. That last term of six weeks - I had classes I was enjoying, I didn't have to network any more, I no longer gave a rat's ass about pretending to be someone I wasn't for people I didn't give two hoots about, and I had a whole month at home coming up. I found friends I cared about, and who cared about me, who offered help when I needed it the most, and who were just... incredible.

May. I came home. I spent nearly four weeks in India, packed in quite a bit of travel and eating and reading and watching TV shows, met up with people I loved, and discovered some people didn't want to meet me. A fabulous family holiday in gorgeous Kasauli.

And then Chicago. For three months. And less than a week into my time there, one of those it-can-only-happen-to-me type incidents happened, involving my passport, a very by-the-book HR person (no wonder people don't like HR), an extremely helpful Indian consulate, and a lot of trauma and drama. I kid you not. Maybe some day a blog post all about this incident will happen.

The summer was a lot of fun, teaching me a lot, about the work I don't want to do, the things I don't do well professionally, and the kind of people you can trust. Also what a good thing it is that I am a mix of utterly stingy and impulsively extravagant.

And then I came back to school. School this year was definitely about why I had come here. The job search stress was there, yes, but it was better this year because I put to good use the one big thing I learned during my internship - it's okay to ask for help, it's okay to reach out to people - and as a result did a better job of the whole networking thing.

I was a lot more social this year - even if it was with the same people mostly. That totally counts, despite what certain friends (and readers of this blog) might say. I got my freaking driving license. I first got wait-listed for going on exchange, and then managed to get signed up for London. I learned to live alone - which is SO perfect for an introvert like me, but SO terrible for trying to be more social.

I gained back all the weight I had lost when I first got to the US, and then some. I substantially improved my tolerance for alcohol. I bought a new laptop. I started wearing dresses, and even make-up. I went to Puerto Rico with friends over fall break and had the most fabulous time doing nothing but eat, drink, and lie on the beach. I got a freaking job, one I actually wanted.

I was home for the last two weeks in December (although more passport issues made that questionable for a while), and then two weeks into the new year. The new year was brought in like old times - at home with the parents, squabbling over what to watch on TV, with some chips and coke, and gummy bears for the princess. And for the first time since moving away from home, I left without knowing when I would be back.

Some relationships were renewed and strengthened, some ties of friendship loosened. Some loved ones died, some grew old and fragile. Friends got engaged. The princess began to feel her age.

I grew comfortable with myself this year, but impatient with my life. I gave up on some people who used to be very important to me, but refused to continue to entertain those who meant nothing to me. I made attempts to be more social - even hosting my first Diwali get-together ever - but stuck to staying in when I really wanted to.

All in all, it was a good year, 2012 was. And 2013 holds good things. Two months in London, two months back in school before graduation, a summer of who-knows-what, and then back to the working world.

Yes, good things lie ahead. Mostly. I think.