Being What I Always Wanted To Be.....

Ever since I started a book club in my apartment, I am so inspired to read more than ever that my reading speed has increased threefold and I am finishing up books like magic and feeling so content after each book. Seeing me read every other minute, while cooking, while feeding my 3 year old son, while getting a 5 mins break or basically on every other opportunity, my son is also getting more than curios than ever before about reading everything in the world.  He has always been a reader (since he was 1 year old) but there have been phases when he wasn't interested in finishing the story and just making a game out of a book. However, these days he even wants to read what I am reading and sometimes I can sense him feeling "insecure" (in a child's way) expressing to me that I should read with him and not ever without him. He feels he is missing out on "books" if I read in his absence. Remembering one such incident, I was reading this book last month "Deat...

 A post after a long time and a lot happened since then. Met my family after 2+ years to attend my sister's wedding.  Discovered that my son is a keen traveler. Visited close friends for new year celebration. Husband caught and fought Covid. I and kid went through some tough time supporting the covid warrior and trying to keep ourselves safe. Met office team after 2 years. Met another friend after 2 years. Kid graduated from pre-schooling from his first ever school and ready to join his new school in couple of months and pretty excited for it. So all in all, lots of reunions while fighting some challenges of life. Now that it is being said that life is getting back to 'normal', we need to first redefine normal. Offices expecting us to come back to office in hybrid model should help us understand where to dump our kids of age who do not have access to any vaccination?  There are news that mask is not going to be mandatory going forward should help us understand how to brea...

 I just had a memory popped up in my head today which happened a really long time ago. Maybe 2 decades before.. I really can’t remember when. But anyway, my father was getting the house renovated during which he decided to give a name to the house and a name plate engraved. This is a very common proud moment of anyone who owns a house in that era. So anyway, though I was a kid but being “the literature geek” I was asked to come up with some name for the house that covers the first alphabet of all the family members living there at that time. So that’s me, my 2 sisters, mummy and papa. And with all the letters 3 S, 1 K and 1 R, the most sensible Hindi name I could come up with was “Sanskaar”. So we named the house Sanskaar and my father got all the 5 names engraved below the house name in the order of their age: Rajiv Garg Kanchan Garg Supriya Shipra Shreya A lot of people of “the society” questioned my father on putting daughters’ name on the name plate. After all, daughters are no...

So I have been having this “social sickness” for a while now. It’s funny that before the pandemic, life was so occupied that we didn’t have time to breathe from the social life. Going to office was itself a fully social day.  It has been a good isolated run for a year and a half, with a bonus of being away from people, travel, traffic and mechanic routine. There is just one routine now.. the crazy routine !  But slowly it so happened that we got so caught up in the crazy routine that there was no time to be social even over phone calls and video chats. And now, when there is a day that seems to have an hour to be able to talk to someone outside the 4 walls.. I realised I am unable to find any. There are some whom I could never give time and now they don’t have time for me, and there are some who couldn’t give me time then or now and there are some who are there and I am here but I don’t know what to talk. So basically it ended up having this weird sickness called social sickne...

This one comes after a long time and by the time I finish, it might seem like a dragging confusing train of thoughts but I had to scribble these down so here I am!  We humans are such weird creatures.  We can’t keep our decades old relationship intact and we seek new love to probably disappoint them another couple of decades later if life gives you enough decades to live through. We want our kids to be small babies and as cute and as innocent as they are today but we crib the sleepless nights that come along with the pack and parcel of them being babies. We seek attention and love and care from everyone who love us but when they need the same we are conveniently busy.  We miss and cry and demand the presence of our loved ones around us but we can’t fill that gap by being with them instead.  Our problems are always bigger than others’ problems, our days are always bitter, our love is always lesser. We are a little less happy, a little more sad, a little too far and a ...

So it’s been a tough month for various reasons and one of those are the unsolicited advices that I have got in last couple of weeks for my 3 year old.  There is a phase when you are new at parenting and you can’t make head and tail out of any simple or complicated thing thrown your way. During that phase, you seek help and advices and that time you get all abstract advices. Like for anything related to your kid’s health, do not go to a doctor, go to a priest. For anything behaviour related to your kid, don’t try to reason it, just tell the kid this is how it’s done. So over the time you realise that though some things are very precious and exclusive in terms of the years of experience the other people have but it’s always safer to make your own experiences if you really don’t consider those people to be your role models for parenting. Then you start taking your own calculated risks in taking decisions about your kid. Like following only doctor’s advices, or following only home reme...

I used to be very proud of not being addicted to anything in my life. If I am spending time on tv which can become an addiction, I would immediately shut it off without being much affected, if I am getting to be a workaholic, I would immediately get back to other priorities in life and stuff like that. If I keep scrolling social media for no reason, I retire from all those apps in a snap.  And that’s the reason I prefer even the hobbies which are self dependent. I mean if I like sports, I prefer going for a run rather than something which needs another person. I like reading, writing which is a big time solo.  But lately, I realised that I have an addiction of being addicted to people which is probably since the time I was big enough to be social. And apparently that’s a real thing! There have always been people in my life in every phase whom I am addicted to talking to, chatting up, sharing things etc. Obviously not everyone is not so fond of such things and over the time the...