I DID IT!!

Yes yes I did it! I completed one whole month of blogging daily, successfully. Without. Missing. A. Day. Yayyyyy!

*Punches fist in the air*

Ok ok.. I may have written mostly rubbish, just whatever came to my mind. But write I did, without fail. And that’s a huge achievement considering the number of times I have attempted similar daily blogging challenges in the past 7 years of my blogging life, only to give up midway. This time though, I didn’t have the heart to give up. There were times when I did, almost. There were times when I didn’t have anything much to say and yet managed to say something in the nick of time!

Has it been easy? Well, not really. I have struggled to cook up new things to say everyday! But it hasn’t been as difficult as I had thought it would be either. Probably because I started out without expecting much. I hadn’t expected to stick around till the end, for one. Secondly, I didn’t expect anyone would come around to read me because I wasn’t around much to stay on in the readers’ minds. So there was no scope of getting disappointed and demoralized about not having any readers come over to read what I shared. There wasn’t any external pressure of blog hopping or readership to bog me down. This time I purely wrote to let my thoughts that had got clogged over the months, flow free, without worrying much about anything else.

And in the process I earned some returning readers and some new readers, who all kept me going. So a BIG thank you going out to all of you for coming over and leaving your comments. You all have no idea how motivating your words have been 🙂

I posed this challenge to myself hoping to learn a thing or two while going about living it up. One of the things that I learned was to believe in myself. Also stay true to myself, which I have tried to be. But the biggest learning to come out it has been, to never quit. And quit I did not, I’m glad!

Tomorrow a new month begins. The last of this year. But the best, if you ask me, in terms of the spirit and hope that it brings along for the next year.

So till I see you all again, eat, drink, and be merry! Here’s to a wonderful month up ahead!

Cheers 🙂

So Where is Home for Me?

The cliched answer would be..home is where my heart is.

And I have my heart very much safe and alive in Delhi. So to me Delhi is home. India, to say it in a larger scheme of the term. Despite her misgivings. Despite her shortcomings. Despite the fact that I left my country about 13 years ago along with my husband in pursuit of a better life. Despite all that that is home for me because I was born and raised there, earned and learned a major chunk of who I am from there, and more importantly I am a citizen of my country.

Because.. all said and done, no matter how much I may have gained from here in the Middle East, how so ever much this region may have done and may be doing to make us feel accepted, it will never accept me as its own, as its citizen. That status, that honour, that privilege I will always from the country I was born in, and belong to.  And that makes a lot of difference in the way I perceive the definition of home. Which is why there’s still the hope and resolve to go back to her for good again one day.

Now in the last decade plus that I have been away, we have moved places many times, each time making the city we moved to, our own little home away from home. Its not as if we have ever felt unwelcome in any of the places the we have lived, we have perfectly been able to warm up to them and vice versa. Yet, there has been a conscious effort to keep the flame of our intention to go back, burning . We have never had a long term plan to live in this region ever. In fact when we left Delhi in 2002, to come to the Middle East, we had told ourselves that we will go back in 2 years. Its a different thing that its been 13 years here! Yet the region is a wee bit away from being a home in the truest sense. Its probably because the lever of the 25 years of my life in India is still heavier than the 13 years that I have been here. So the sense of belonging is still more towards my home country than the adapted one.

I do not know what life has in store for me and my family. Where we will be in the next 5 years, so to speak. I am not sure whether my views or my definition of home will undergo a change ever. What I do know is that I am immensely grateful for the way life has shaped up so far. And I hope I continue to be, wherever my family and I are.

Can I get extra two minutes of sleep, please..pwetty please?

The one thing that I absolutely dislike about mornings is waking up early. I  am just not a morning person. I have always been a night owl. I can stay awake till the wee hours. But can never willingly wake up early

Yes I love sunrises, early morning blooms, even enjoy listening to birds chirping and chattering. I love love love my morning tea.

But. But. But.

I do not love the one process that leads up to the things that I love. Yes, the process of waking up

I have an alarm pre-set to go off every morning at 5. And every morning, off it goes making me cringe and moan and press my face deep into my pillow. Then I just mumble in mind that 15 minutes of extra snooze wouldn’t harm me or disrupt my schedule, and I toss myself back down in bed. 15 minutes later, much as I wish to give myself some more extra minutes of sleep, the impending morning rush that awaits me makes me push the wish in the back burner.

Even while I was a kid, I used to hate getting up in the morning. Especially in the winters. Delhi winters to be more precise. Where I used to get one of the best sleeps in the world under my razai all snuggled up! I remember how I would get furious, with an inexplicable amount of jealousy mixed into it as masala,  with Achan, whenever I had to wake up super early for school while he enjoyed the luxury of waking up a little later than me!

Anyway, its this love for sleep that makes me dislike waking Namnam up early too. When I see her in blissful calm and serenity, I find so really hard to break the slumber. There are times when I find her is deep in sleep, tired and exhausted too, thats when I ask her if she would like to have a few more minutes nap. The joyous smile that she gives in her sleep, at having earned that extra time is just hard to miss.

The weekend is here, which means 2 days of no early waking! And I’m going to make the most of it. So off I go Zzzzzzzzzz!

Goodnight!

Not So Long ago, in an Antland Not So Far Away

Disclaimer:

A) A looooong post!

B) ***Purely my thoughts, my views on the topic(s) covered. Please don’t look for any hidden implication or outrage to feel outraged about**

A carnival was under way in the Antland. There were ants from all corners, some from Ms Deeps’ sink, some from Ms Smita’s shelf, some from Mr Hitchy’s tree, some from Ms Pixie’s land even, all the way from the US of A, gathered to celebrate.

What were they celebrating?

Well, they were generally celebrating life. Their life. Their freedom to live. Howsoever short that might be. It’s not as if they had found some elixir of life on one of their sojourns to Ms D’s house recently. Well they did manage to drag in back a few flakes of the carrot halwa that she had made and some crumbs of the choco-chip cookies from the box that her daughter Ms N had left open for them.

They did have plans to extend their holiday there just so they could thank Ms N when she would come looking for the cookie jar though, you know. But that could wait as they realized it was not so safe to go back to the region where Ms D was now planning a terrorizing attack on them.

Moreover they were sick and tired of being vulnerable to getting stamped and crushed by the human feet! They deserved to enjoy some time off the worry.

So there they were, some singing along to Let it Go in the karaoke station, some playing Ring a Ring o’ Roses in the field nearby, some even sipping a cuppa and having a good chat around the tree-cafe.

That’s when the sneaky Ms.D overheard this conversation

Ant A (raising her elephant-mug): So guys, aren’t we all happy that we are alive today! Cheers to us!

The ants gathered around the cafe, raising their mugs, squeaked out a thankful “Aye Aye” in unison.

Ant B: BTW, did you hear about Ant X? She got to taste some beef when she went clubbing in Mr. Rocky’s bar, the other day. Not to mention the wine that she got to taste too. Some guts I must say.

The ants all exclaim a WOW!

Ant K: Her religion doesn’t allow her to try any of that,right?

Ant B: Yeah! Yet she went ahead and tasted it anyway. Isn’t that great! What was even more amazing? That the priest of the ant-shrine that she visited to confess was so cool about it. Mr Ant-priest didnt care two hoots in fact! As per him, neither did our God.

Ant K: The priest is so right. Why would our God object? And why should we as fellow ants? X did what she desired to do, took that liberty, followed her heart. That’t it. That’s what we all should, right? Use our freedom as long as we don’t harm our fellow beings, violently or otherwise.

Ant A: That’s so true! Life is short, in our case its minuscule, so we need to make the most of it by living freely. How difficult is it to understand that? Oh I am so proud of Ant X. Of our entire clan!

And L: Absolutely! I think the humans can learn a thing or two from us. A similar incident like this happened in their world and it turned so awfully ugly, from what I read in one of the newspaper-tracks I went jogging on. And now there’s a famous actor who’s raking up a lot of flak from his own fellows, for speaking his mind, for expressing his views, personal views mind you and there’s a whole lot of idiots hounding him for that. 

Ant A: These humans I tell you! They talk about being tolerant and all. They can’t even tolerate us being around, or even those cockroaches for that matter. We don’t even harm them, do we? Ok ok, we do creep up on them, and try to nibble at them but we just do it for fun, for ant-sakes! We can be friendly too you see! And how do they react? As if we are Dracula-reincarnated! 🙄

Ant K: I know! The just don’t get us. Oh and have you seen some of those girls screaming their lungs out when they spot a lizard? Gosh height of over-reaction! They say they are scared of the lizard, but do they really know how much more frightening their own shrieks are? The poor lizard ends up getting scared and runs for its life! I have invited some lizards and cockroaches and their families too to join us in the fun. C’mon, they deserve a chance to let their hair and tails down too, you see.

Ant B: Of course they do! I’m glad you invited them, K. These humans, they fail me! Going by the way they go up in arms against their own lot for expressing their views or exercising their basic right to expression, wonder what they would do and where they would hide if and when we were to become intolerant and bloat up to attack them for invading into our right to existence!

Ant J: Hey hey,hold your horses, B. Did you know that Ms Deeps was in serious consultation with Ms Smita on how to drive us away! What nerve I tell ya! I even heard Ms S suggesting some flour as a remedy! And as if it wasn’t enough, Ms D was seen zooming off to the nearest store to get a poisonous ant-killer to spray at us. She couldn’t afford to leave any ant-corner unturned it seems. So while it’s laugh-worthy, their intention to wipe us off the face of this earth, let’s not get carried away. Let’s not behave like them. They know in their heart of hearts that we are just as significant to this world as them. So let us celebrate while we can for the life we have.

On that note they all got up to shake a leg or two on the dance floor near the lake.

As for sneaky Ms D. She was seen walking back  home meekly, feeling a little ashamed of herself for wishing those ants’ end.

She switches on the comp to log in to her space, and right there she spots him jaunting through her keyboard as though he was in Switzerland….