Balaka Basu's Blog, page 16

The Lost Joy of Letter Writing #MondayMusings

I loved old-fashioned letters written with a pen on paper, I loved the texture of the paper, the postage stamp, the envelope with the address of a street or lane from an unknown city, the handwriting of the sender, the fragrance, the stamps of post offices, everything. But, Alas!! Nobody writes such a letter these days. We no longer wait for the postman to deliver us a letter from a cousin living in a distant land or a friend from the same city. We have multiple Apps to message, chat, call, video call and collectively they have taken away the charm of letters.

In kindergarten, when I started learning to write, my mother insisted that I should start writing to my grandparents, uncles, and aunts who lived in Kolkata.  In those days my mom used to send inland letters to her family, and the last page used to be reserved for me, where I used to write something in an unskilled manner. The content used to be generally restricted to “how are you?”, “I am good”, “take my regards”, and “I miss you”. In June, when I was visiting my Kakima in Kolkata, I heard her narrating to my son, how I used to send her letters when I could even barely write. I noticed pride and nostalgia in her voice mixed with a tinge of sadness. I am sure she was also missing those days.

During my early childhood, most of the letters that I used to receive were usually written in Bengali, however, Lily Masi used to send me letters in English from London. I always found those letters to be exotic. The par avion airmail, the postage stamp with Queen Elizabeth, and impeccable English written in calligraphic handwriting always left me in awe. Every time the postman delivered a letter from her, it used to brighten up my day. Now, she doesn’t write me letter anymore, we speak over WhatsApp but honestly, there is no charm in WhatsApp.

I started independently (without any prompt or dictation from my parents) writing letters in class seven when our language teacher gave us holiday homework to write letters to our friends during summer vacation. I started writing letters to my best friend in school and made my father post them. My father had a tendency to forget posting letters, so I had to constantly keep reminding him.

I also made a few “pen-friends”. Millennials are not aware of this term. Pen-friends are friends with whom you connect only through letters. I had four such friends, I met them through the ‘pen friend’ section of a children’s magazine. One was Olga from Russia, the other was a girl(forgot her name) from Jamaica, the other two were Indians. With Olga, I exchanged letters for almost 4 years and then I lost touch after I shifted home.

After our class 12th, my friend Tanushree took up a job and moved to Goa. Letters became the only medium to stay in touch. Initially, the letters used to be short and crisp but gradually they turned into small booklets. Pages and pages of youthful exuberance started traveling from one part of India to the other.

Unlike emails, letter writing involved a tedious process. I used to go to Archies store or other good stationery shops to buy letter writing pads. For special occasions like Christmas, Diwali or birthdays I used to buy customized pads along with matching envelopes. In a few occasions, I even bought perfumed pads. Special pens were kept aside for letters. I used to write a rough draft in a normal paper and then after editing it used to copy it on the main paper. Choosing postal stamps were also important. I preferred to choose unique stamps to stick on overseas letters. Writing the address on top of the letter also required skill, and I often wrote them with the utmost care, one alphabet at a time, leaving the exact space and no overwriting. The final stage was walking to the red Post box and dropping it.

There were many more letters. How could one forget the “love letters” sent by adolescent boys? Let me confess, I never received any but always desired one. My classmates used to bring to school letters from their suitors and I never had anything to show them. The closest thing I had to a “love letter” was a math sum that a boy had once dropped on my verandah. He had solved it on my behalf and dropped it on my balcony.

Emails in a way killed the fun of handwritten letters. Who wants to wait for letters when you can receive an email in a second. Gradually, letters stopped coming. The postman knocked on our door infrequently only when he had to deliver some official letter or parcel. Email and SMS took over our lives. Gradually, Gtalk, Orkut, Facebook, Skype, and Whatsapp flooded our lives and we forgot the art and joy of letter writing.

There was a time when we saw the crucial role played by letters in literature, films, and theatres. There were so many books written in the epistolary format using letters. Can you recollect a few such novels? There were movies that used this format and of course plays. One play that I absolutely loved in this format was “Tumhari Amrita“.

I still love to write letters however these days nobody shares their postal address but only share their email address. Even today whenever I go through any emotional turmoil, I end up writing letters (emails). Writing a lengthy email often proves cathartic and I end up feeling good. Now, tell me how do you feel about writing letters. Do you love it or loathe it? Drop a comment.

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The Palm Tree- #thursdaytreelove

“ It is the nature of the strong heart, that like the palm tree it strives ever upwards when it is most burdened “. …Philip Sidney

 

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On our recent trip to Vasai Fort, I clicked this especially keeping in mind Parul’s Thursday Tree Love. This blog hop has taught me to love Trees, and I was feeling sad while I was not taking part in it. Hope to be more regular going forward.

Morning Glory- #WordlessWednesday

 

“A flower blossoms for its own joy“….Oscar Wilde

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Every morning,

I go for a walk to a small garden,

adjacent to my home

a strange calmness engulfs me

I look at the flowers, blooming in various shapes and hues,

and stare at the various shades of green,

watch the early birds getting the worms

then absent-mindedly sit on a bench while small kittens come and hide under

A flock of pigeons come and gather at the center 

Squirrels climb up and down the branches 

Elderly people come and do pranayam

I sit there, lost in my thoughts, thinking of a far off land. 

I clicked this flower during my morning walk in a nearby garden. I loved the fresh raindrops on the newly bloomed flower and couldn’t resist clicking it. Now, Linking this to Wordless Wednesday hosted by Esha and Natasha, two beautiful bong beauties.

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The Misogyny in Arjun Reddy/Kabir Singh is not Exceptional #MondayMusing

A lot of debate is going on around the movies Kabir Singh/Arjun Reddy. I have not watched Kabir Singh but I did watch the original Telugu Arjun Reddy. I watched it simply because I like Vijay Deverakonda, the actor who played Arjun Reddy in the Telegu version.

I agree the movie is misogynist and sexist, but, at the same time, I consider it unfair to single out this particular movie because let’s admit, most of our movies are sexist. This weekend, I was watching Californication and that series has a similar story. It is almost like a Hollywood version of Arjun Reddy/Kabir Singh. Popular culture loves to show a male protagonist who tries to forget his “true love” by indulging in substance abuse and sleeping with numerous random women. Be it Hank Moody from Californication, Arjun Reddy or Devdas, they all do the same. However, can you think of any movie Bollywood or Hollywood where the girl tries to get rid of her heartbreak by sleeping with random men? Very Rare. Female protagonists get married to get over a heartbreak while the male protagonist “destroy”(tch!tch! poor baby, heartbroken and out of his mind) themselves. They stop earning, they become alcoholics/addicts and sex maniacs. Popular culture all over the world loves to repeat this story.

In real life also I have met men who do the same thing. They feel that in order to mend his own broken heart he has the right to break numerous other hearts. These men get into relationships and then they say they cannot commit to the new girl because his heart still belongs to his ex. He has no qualms in sleeping with these girls but he cannot love her. Almost some kind of a Madonna-Whore complex.

Men find it macho to talk about their substance abuse and sexual encounters. The more women they sleep with, the more “Alpha Male” they feel like. Men even exaggerate the number to feel uber cool. It boosts their masculinity, whereas when a woman does the same she becomes a slut. Our popular culture inherently loves to sympathize a fallen and wronged hero. In popular culture, there is a common perception that women love “bad boys” and “good boys” are boring. Women love “bad boys” but gets married to “good boys”. These stereotypes are everywhere and society endorses this. Thus, “bad boys” are given some sort of license in popular culture to abuse the women verbally, physically and emotionally. When they do it they are not shown as the abuser but as a victim, there is always a parallel narrative to justify his abuse and perhaps also bail him out. He is always shown as a person good at heart yet abusive, who loves to abuse his woman, either under the influence of a substance or else his love for the lady is so powerful that it makes him blind towards physical violence. He feels “everything is fair in love and war” including slapping, punching, etc. Even women start believing this and many victims of domestic violence justify their partners by saying “he loves me a lot and so he hits me”, exactly what the director of Arjun Reddy, Mr. Sandeep Reddy Vanga said “If you can’t slap, if you can’t touch your woman wherever you want, if you can’t kiss, I don’t see emotion there.” According to him, slapping is not an act of abuse but only an emotion.

Even in the past, we have seen movies where women have been slapped, abused, abducted, raped, threw acid in the name of love. Misogyny in movies influences real-life sexism or the vice-versa is not known. These movies gross hundreds of crores in the box office and that clearly proves that a large section of the society love these kinds of stories and perhaps they also relate to it. For many, this is also a reality. Arjun Reddy/ Kabir Singh is neither the first nor the last movie that depicts deep-rooted patriarchy.

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Linking this with Monday Musings by Corinne.

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6 Must See Places in Florence

Pisa Central station is the most deserted station that I have seen in my life. It was 7pm and other than Gail, me and a homeless man, there was not a single soul to be seen anywhere. Pisa is a small town that becomes quite deserted after sunset and the station was no exception. Our Trenitalia train to Florence was delayed by 20 minutes, so we had to wait at the empty station for close to an hour. When the train arrived we found it was equally empty. Other than the two of us there was nobody on our couch during the 40 minutes ride from Pisa to Florence.

However, Florence or Firenze station was crowded even though it was quite late in the night by European standards. We got out of the station and took a bus to reach our Hotel. It was drizzling and the roads were quite empty. Italians are extremely helpful people and thus with help from passersby, we managed to find our hotel without any difficulty.

Florence is a small city and extremely walkable. As I went during winter, there were fewer tourists and walking became an extremely pleasurable thing. Honestly, it was a delight to walk on the streets of Florence. Not even once did we feel unsafe here.

There are numerous museums, art galleries, and cathedrals in Florence. It would take almost half a day to finish each one of them. We were told that the serpentine queue in front of museums and art galleries are usually so long that one may have to wait for hours to get inside. I had read blogs and watched YouTube videos that said the same. However, let me tell you I had to wait not more than 30 seconds to enter them. Either, I was plain lucky or else it was the ‘off-season‘ that did the trick.

Accademia Gallery: The most popular gallery in Florence is the Accademia Gallery. In this gallery, Michaelangelo’s David is kept. As there was no queue in front of this gallery we thought we had come to the wrong gallery and were almost going away. The security guard then confirmed that it was indeed the Accademia.

David is honestly a sculpture to behold. I stood there mesmerized and awestruck. The intricacy of this statue is such that you are bound to stand there gaping at this naked man.

Apart from David, there are other artworks also. However, the most interesting section of this gallery is the music museum. Here, musical instruments from the medieval era are showcased and it is undoubtedly a must-see section.

Al Duomo: Every Italian city is adorned with a Duomo, Florence is no exception. The Al Duomo of Florence is in the center of the city. From the top of the Al Duomo, a beautiful view of Florence can be seen. The Duomo is visible from numerous parts of the city. It is undoubtedly the most iconic building in Florence.

Ponte Vecchio: Bridge is known as Ponte in Italian. I absolutely loved this bridge. It is a small stone bridge on top of the Arno river. The bridge is full of shops. The shops look very nondescript but all the shops are of big designer labels like Rolex, Gucci, Dior, etc. In medieval times these shops belonged to jewelers.

Piazza de Michelangelo is undoubtedly my favorite place in Florence. Ideally, it is advisable to climb up, however, we took a bus to reach the top. The best time to visit this place is during sunrise or sunset. There is a replica of David here as well. The panoramic view of Florence from this place is mesmerizing.

Leonardo de Vinci Museum is a great place to visit, especially for the kids. My son is fond of Leonardo de Vinci and keeps watching about his inventions on Youtube. I was traveling solo and exclusively visited this place for my son. I actually did a Skype call with him from the museum. I hope during my next visit, I would be able to take him along with me. This museum showcases the replicas of all Vinci’s inventions. This is one place I would advise not to miss out.

Piazza del Vecchio: I hurriedly passed through this place at night, on my way to catch a train to Rome. I couldn’t spend a lot of time here and honestly, this was an injustice to this beautiful structure. I should have spent more time to admire this architecture.

Apart from all these places, there are numerous other places to visit. Just walking around will help one explore amazing places in this quaint city. We did not have much time to explore, however, whatever time we got we used it to the fullest and came across so many beautiful buildings, bridges, cathedrals, lanes, and statues.

Vasai Fort- A Hidden History

Last Saturday, I woke up at 4am. I wanted to sleep till late but found myself waking up at the wee hours even without an alarm. Once I wake up, I find it very difficult to fall asleep again, even staying in bed becomes difficult. Therefore, I left the bed and started reading a book.

While reading, I suddenly realized that it has been quite some time that we went anywhere as a family. Both of us are traveling but together we have not traveled in a long time and looking at our schedule (including the little ones who has the busiest schedule amongst three of us) we don’t see a trip in near future. The better half has been cribbing about this, since long.

I felt that it was a perfect opportunity to make the best use of waking up early. I woke up the man and asked if he would be interested to take us for a long drive. The driving enthusiast in him couldn’t say NO to this and within half an hour we were on the road. The son was still sleepy and we let him sleep on the rear seat.

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As usual, we had no destination in mind. I wanted to travel towards Lonavala while the man wanted to drive towards Vasai. We had a brief argument and as an ‘obedient wife’, I accepted his opinion.

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We had heard about Vasai Fort and even seen the road sign while traveling on WE Highway a zillion times, however, we had never visited it. We took a left exit from WE Highway and within 20 minutes reached Vasai Fort or Bassein Fort.

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Contrary to our expectation, we found the Fort in a well-maintained condition. A clean premise with manicured lawn and date trees arranged in perfect symmetry. Thankfully, even though it was a Saturday there were very few tourists. Apart from us and a group of Archaeology students, there were none.

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The main entrance to the Fort has a muddy road and during monsoon, it is difficult to reach in a car or by foot. However, there is another entrance on the road and one can enter through that but they have to come all the way around to reach the main stairs to climb the fort.

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These stairs take lead to the top of the boundary wall and the entire area looks beautiful from above.

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Adjacent to the main Fort area there are also smaller structures. The most interesting was the Portuguese Basilica. It almost reminded me of the Basilica of Bom Jesus in Goa. This place was also used in the Coldplay video for the song “hymn for the weekend“. I particularly loved the spiral staircase but I felt claustrophobic to enter and thus couldn’t click a photo.

 

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The small door from which a child is coming out is the spiral staircase. Isn’t it claustrophobic? This area also used to have 64 bells. Now they have been removed and shifted to various museums all over.

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These relics are outside the main campus, nevertheless, I found them equally interesting. Adjacent to the fort there is a memorial of Chimaji Appa and it was also an interesting place to explore.

 

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Our perfect Saturday long drive concluded with a beautiful breakfast at Misal Darbar where we had three different types of Misal. While I had the Malwani Misal, the man had Darbar Misal and the son had Cheese Misal. Yummyyy!!!

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Six Months into 2019 and I Found My Muse Back #ZombieBlogHop

Six months into 2019 and I got my muse back, today. Six months ago my muse left me in a lurch. Actually, I was so self-obsessed and confident that I presumed I would do absolutely fine without the muse. However, after my muse left, I found myself in the middle of a creative desert. My ideas stopped brimming, my stories stopped weaving and a bad writer’s block befriended me. My blog turned into barren land and I was staring at it with helpless blank eyes. Strangely, I did not even feel any compulsion to revive it. Gradually, I stopped visiting other blogs also and went into a complete blogging hiatus.

Last month, my blogger friend thebespectacledmother woke me up from sleep (both real and metaphorical) and said that she was shocked to not find the name of my blog in the list of Top Indian Blogs 2019. However, I stayed snobbishly nonchalant. Nothing seemed to matter. I had almost reached Zen where not only my blog’s but even my existence didn’t matter. Who cares about blogs, Alexa, Instagram likes when life itself seems irrelevant.

This morning at around 4am my muse knocked at my window and said: “I keep updating myself on your writings but you seemed to have not written much”. I stared at my muse with pleading eyes and said: “I stopped writing because you left me; I thought I would manage fine but nothing worked and I turned into a slob”. I almost had tears in my eyes while my muse was grinning impishly, I almost fell on my knees and begged: “Please stay, please hang around, and please never ever leave me because, without you, my world turns gray.” Looking at my helpless condition my muse smiled and said: “Ok, I will hang around”. The moment these golden words were uttered I felt a pressing need to write down something and so I sat on my laptop and started writing this post.

Six months back, I had asked my muse to “back off” and like an obedient friend my muse backed off living me in a perpetual state of self-doubt. I tried to replace my creative muse with numerous other things. I stopped writing and started trying to become an “influenzaaa”, likes and comments started pouring in but something within me was feeling extremely hollow without the muse. I felt a part of me was detached.

Then today morning when my muse came back and I sat down to type, I realized how unhappy I have been in the last six months. What I have missed. How I had felt disconnected from my own soul. How I have not been able to pour out my emotions. The moment I wrote the first sentence a strange relief spread over my body and I got back to my old true self. I hope my muse never leaves me again, ever, and I keep writing the way I used to do. Writing is not only something that I love but it is something that completes me. Without my writing and my muse, I feel incomplete.

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I received this tag from Madhavi and I am passing this on to Shinjini

24 bloggers have got together to celebrate six months of 2019 from June 17-19. They will have to start the sentence with “Six months into 2019 and I” and then carry forward in their own unique ways, and share what the last six months meant to them. So don’t forget to read these posts and share some love.

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

Zero Waste-Third Week

The third week of zero waste had more challenges than triumphs. Let me confess  I even felt overwhelmed at times but thankfully never gave up. Let me list down the challenges:

Milk pouches: This is literally giving me nightmares. Trust me when I say this. If you have read my previous post, you know, I have written about how Green Mumbai is collecting milk pouches. As per their advice, I went to BMC to deposit milk pouches but due to election nobody was there to collect and I stood like an idiot with a bag full of milk packets. I now have to find another way to get rid of them for two reasons, first, going through the BMC  ordeal every month is not possible for me and secondly, these pouches will anyways land in landfills once the saplings outgrow them, therefore it is not exactly a good idea (probably).

Overflowing Plastic. I mentioned in my previous post how an NGO is ready to collect and recycle plastics but they will collect no less than 100 kgs and therefore I am collecting plastics and my balcony is overflowing with plastic wrappers and grocery packets. I realized how much comes in plastic. I always believed that I use less plastic, many of my readers also wrote that they try to reduce plastic waste however in our consumer world it is literally impossible to avoid plastic (even if we use cloth bag) because everything from chocolates to cheese, candies to condoms, salt to software, spices to pulses comes wrapped in plastic. There is not a single item that doesn’t use plastic. The entire packaging industry is based on plastic. So it is goddamn difficult to avoid plastic.

I believe it should not only be the responsibility of consumers to reduce plastic from their lives but manufacturers should also come up with alternative packaging ideas that are biodegradable and environment-friendly.

Non-cooperating family. My family(well, the man) thinks I am crazy (I am in a way) and so he is yet to abide by my zero waste rules, thankfully son read something about ill-effects of plastic in his textbook and now is following me (victory!!!!)

Maids: A small part of wet segregation falls on my maid and she is yet to get trained. Every single day she is confusing dry and wet waste. Mumbai maids are always in a hurry and my zero-waste rule means a little bit more work and time for her and she is upset about it. She even said, “aap hi itna jhikjhik karte ho, baki madam log kuch nahi bolte yesab kachra wachra leke.”

Facebook zero-waste group: I joined a group but soon realized the group is more interested in selling so-called eco-friendly products than actually thinking about how to go zero waste. I found many members quite judgemental and left the group. They were only promoting and selling stuff and I didn’t like that.

Plants: The coriander plant died but the mint is mashallah growing nicely. The other seeds are also sprouting.

I realized in the last three weeks that recycling is not the only solution rather we need to reduce and reuse. Reducing should not be restricted to using a cloth bag only. I have decided to stop buying milk in pouches from next month and rather switch to buying milk from a dairy near my house. It would be a little difficult but not unattainable. It will also give me a good reason to go for a walk in the evening. It would also take me back to my childhood when we had a Mother Dairy booth in our neighborhood and every evening my mom used to send me with steel-can to fetch milk.

I strongly feel that consumers should unite and urge the government to reduce plastic usage in the packaging industry. Few steps that they can take is

Use cloth based or reused paper instead of plastic in packaging
All supermarkets should have a center where consumers can give back their plastics
Each housing society should have a compost bin

If you can add to this list then I would appreciate that. Together we need to bring a change and save the Earth.

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Zero Waste- First Week Progress

After starting my Zero- Waste challenge, I realized that we Indians are pre-adjusted to zero-waste. Since childhood, we have been trained not to waste anything. For example, wasting food is almost a criminal activity in most Indian homes. “How dare you waste food? do you know how many people in this world are starving?” or “Why have you not switched off the lights after coming out of the room? There are kids studying under street lights and you are wasting it.” I am sure most of us have heard these dialogues from our parents during our growing up days. My mother used to show me images of Somalia whenever it appeared on Doordarshan, either during news or World this Week of Pranay Roy. I have a feeling she used to wait for those clipping to appear and show me to make me feel guilty. Then I used to feel irritated but today I feel grateful.

I hate to waste food and teach the same to my son. I am great at recycling leftover food into a new dish. In fact ten years back I started my blogging journey with a food blog where I used to post recipes of dishes prepared from leftover food. My mother never ever threw away any food or clothes and always recycled or donated them. I remember once she donated a beautiful silk saree to a cobbler whose wife was wearing a torn saree. The cobbler got emotional at this gesture and couldn’t control his tears. That moment is still etched in my mind. I also donate my clothes and use the torn and tattered ones for dusting, mopping and cleaning the house.

Now back to my zero-waste journey and my learnings. I evaluated the waste that goes out of my house and divided it into a few sections and took care of them one by one.

Kitchen Waste or Wet Waste:

Vegetable and Fruit peels: We are lucky to have a compost plant in our housing society so I am giving it to them to take care of.

Seeds: I am collecting the seeds from fruits and vegetables and washing them first, then they are dried and refrigerated. Planning to germinate them soon and either plant them in my housing society or on the highways. We travel a lot and I have seen barren lands on the National Highways where the germinated sapling can be planted. I will also gift them to friends and family. They might also become a return gift for my son’s birthday party.

Roots and stems: I live in Mumbai and therefore my house is small, nevertheless I planted roots and stems of few plants like coriander, mint, celery and spring onion on my tiny window. They are growing and am feeling like a proud mom.

Bones: We eat non-vegetarian food every day and therefore gather a lot of fish and chicken bones. I spoke to an Aunty in my building who has five cats and they are vegetarian so she was buying fish based food from outside. I spoke to her and she was delighted to feed her cat with leftover bones from my house. I clean them and give it to her.

Food scraps: This is what remains on the plate, it is a tiny quantity and it goes to the compost. Eggshells also go to the compost bin.

Dry Waste:

Newspapers: I often feel guilty about this but “old habits die hard”. Reading newspaper is a childhood habit and not easy to get rid of. However, we are now trying to shift to e-paper and will phase out the paper gradually. Nevertheless, the newspapers are sold to raddiwalas and then they go for recycling so that redeems me a bit.

Milk pouches: For one whole week, I struggled with milk pouches. The raddiwala refused to take it and I was lost about what to do with them. In Maharashtra, there is a buyback offer for milk pouches (on every pouch it is written that buyback price is 0.50) but the system is not in a proper place so nobody has a clue where to sell them. I made calls and wrote emails but to no avail. Then I came across Mission Green Mumbai, they are collecting milk pouches to plant saplings. They need 1lakh milk pouches. I contacted them and they asked me to leave the pouches at any nearby BMC office. Phew!!!

Plastic Bags: These are an unavoidable menace. Our consumerist lifestyle is such that everything comes in a plastic bag or container. The raddiwala bought the shampoo bottles, oil containers but refused the bags. The same situation as the milk pouches, there is a buyback policy but no implementation. I again started searching the net and came across Bag for Cause by Green Yatra. They collect almost anything. They prefer bulk order but also customize it. I am gathering my plastic bags and other stuff. I am also trying to encourage the other members of my society to donate to this NGO.

Exchange Your Raddi with Cloth Bag
In this campaign we are appealing housing societies, companies, corporates, schools, colleges to collect and donate their dry waste and E-waste to Bag for Cause. In return we will gift them both low cost (Bags for daily needs as grocery) and better quality designed clothes/canvas/cotton Tote /Jute bags with witty environmental quotes and messages that people can use for shopping, office, college and such other purpose.

Apart from waste segregation I also adopted a few new habits and replaced the old one.

I stopped using plastic straws that came with coconut every day
Started avoiding plastic carry bags as much as possible
Stopped buying fruits and vegetables from supermarkets as there I have to use a plastic bag to weigh the stuff. Local vegetable vendors do not do that.
Started organic gardening at home

That is my journey so far. Stay tuned to know more and I would appreciate if you use these tips and start your own zero-waste journey.

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Gratitude List- March 2019

I am back again to write my monthly Gratitude Journal. This is my most favorite part of blogging where I write about the good things (and occasionally also about the not so good things) that happened to me. March 2019 was an erratically hectic month with a wedding in the family. My regular readers know from my February Gratitude post about how we were at the tenterhooks regarding the wedding. Thankfully the wedding went on smoothly and we enjoyed like crazy and were exhausted at the end. So let’s start counting the blessings.

Write Tribe Festival of Words: The month started with the WTFOW and I wrote five posts based on the prompts. This was the first time when I couldn’t complete the challenge as the blogging marathon coincided with the wedding and it became too hectic. The posts that I wrote are:

Forgive

Miracle

Serenity

Gwendolyn Brooks

Feminism Vs Misandry

Wedding: In the first week of March, the house was full of guests as relatives had come from all over for the wedding. Late night chattering was keeping us awake. I also took the opportunity to indulge in some sajna sawarna. In Mumbai, I hardly get a wedding invitation, therefore the ones I get should be thoroughly utilized.

 

Delhi Conference: I traveled to Delhi for a conference. My early morning flight got canceled and I was put on another flight that reached Delhi around 11am. By the time, I reached the conference it was halfway through. However, I am grateful that my colleagues from Delhi managed perfectly. This conference was an amazing learning experience and I look forward to more.

Holi: I am not fond of the holi mess, but I love festivals as they share joy, happiness and laughter. Due to my leg injury, I couldn’t do the rain dance this year but that didn’t stop me from enjoying. The thing I love most about holi is the afternoon siesta. I think colours have an impact on our sleep and since childhood, I have always slept well in Holi afternoon.

New Guest:  During my morning walk I found someone whom I brought home. He stayed with us for two days and gave us immense happiness. We named him Stunt, looking at his antics. However, we had to give him back with a heavy heart (me and son were sad, better half was relieved) because in few days we would be traveling and keeping Stunt at home alone would have become an issue. We are grateful that he found a nice home. We will meet him again for sure.

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This month was crazy in the work front and son also had his annual exams, added to it the wedding and travels made life quite hectic. I even didn’t get time to read and finished only one book Mossad. No, I also read Hardy boys, Ruskin Bond, and Anne Frank but they were re-reading so not counted. This was more or less my month, how was yours?

 

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Happy to join Vidya Sury and her Gratitude Circle