One more year. And it has been tough. The highs have been plenty too, but as ever, the best part has been learning once more how to take friendships for granted, how to fall back and feel safe.
The toughest parts this year has been saying goodbyes. Didn't know I was this good at letting go, or this bad either.
For now, I will mark the end of the year by saying goodbye to this blog. A new city, a new job and some old friendships await. Maybe one or two that are changing shades -- pretty ones, too. Let's see.
Happy birthday to me. :)

restless. too much of this eat pray love bug going around. the frikkin' festive season sucks the life blood out of me.
and life feels like i'm painting a multi-coloured picture for blind people.

some days we think of a god. a very old god, blind and deaf, his grasp on his faculties slipping. he can't hear the pleas for mercy, he can't see how people prostate themselves, selling their souls to the altar of religion.
some days god thinks of us. he worries about what he can't see, can't hear. he scrabbles around a and picks up a handful of grace to throw it at a direction he thinks is right.
some days we feel parts of it descending on us.
some days we trample right over it.
some days there is a god.
some days there is nothing.

it is a rainy afternoon, as i sit typing, listening to noises, to voices, familiar and reassuring, thinking how grateful i should be that i inhabit this world.
this world, where affection is uncomplicated. where people give and receive without seeking meaning, where there's grace and laughter, where anger recedes, bitterness can be set aside, where people matter.
and then there's another - where everything is measured. neat yardsticks, did you read the label? did you not read the label? has this been said? has this been unsaid? where silences are hostile, an extended arm is vicious. a scrap of colour in an otherwise drab room unexpected, unwelcome. you take a step, you intrude. you retreat. you intrude even more.
but then i have this world too. where colours abound. some imagined, some shared.

it's a dark stairwell. you hear muffled voices, a slim bar of light through one of the doors. you sit, try not to be scared. you're not too scared, somebody will let you in. but what if the dog climbs upstairs before they do let you in? every shuffle on the stairs begin to assume a bigger magnitude, you try to think if sitting on the banisters will help, but what if it gets your legs? then they let you in. they give you a lizard made with dough to play with. you sit in a corner. grateful. secure.

you get nightmares. you wake up. careful. you can see them sleeping on either side. but the nightmares can't see them. they keep chasing. you get out and go searching. then you wake up, safe and dry.

you don't know the way home. but the person who does takes you home. you clown around for strangers in a store, in a street corner, sitting next to parked cars, knowing there's someone who will take you back.

a house becomes your home, people become family - you learn how it is. how it should be. but you need to be told. they tell you, in their own way, they do. it's like a lens. you relate through them. you don't know any other way.

one person holds the keys to a lot of rooms - safety, warmth, acceptance, strength. an adult shouldn't need security blankets, right? an adult shouldn't be so needy. an adult should calculate emotions. adults need a logical life. where pieces fit in.

didi passed away last week. i don't know how to deal with it. i am not dealing with it. for now, i am running around knocking doors, begging people to take me in for a night, so i can sleep one more night without wondering if i can find my way back. the nightmares still come. but now i know better than to talk about it. what if they never let me back?

not that the blog has been done away with. i haven't been able to gather my thoughts for some time, is all.

my dad's 80th birthday party was celebrated four months belateldly - on his insistence - only with his close friends who incidentally could have filled up a smallish village or at least a hamlet. they each had written a page or two on him and my mum made it into a book and gave it to him. there was much love, much laughter. it truly was a celebration.

later that day he told me i'd probably not be able to think of getting to that age, a lifetime and two thirds of another one away. i couldn't.

then R told me of the old man who begs on the station -- his family has turned him out. he begs on that station and doesn't go away since he gets to steal glimpses of his grandson. his life passes on uncelebrated. in a weird voyeuristic way, i could start thinking of that distant far away age and life. we fought our demons talking about our commune -- adult diapers by the bulk, shotguns and whiskey, dentures and hidden electric fences for people looking to water the walls. (maybe we should invite more of such by inscribing commit no nuisance and watch the sparks fly.)

but when i go away, i will not peek into what's left of my life. i'll walk till i can walk no more. but i won't look back. maybe this is why they left for vanaprastha. they sought a new way.

sometimes the entire point of growing up can be summed up by the act of/ ability to buy(ing) a zinger burger and a box of hot wings by yourself, with your own money, no explanations to anyone.