Considering how much I’m wishing for some rain, I really wasn’t wishing for it this way..
But that’s the last of it. I’m going to, to quote the sister, “leave it, left it, right it, put it on a plane. And let it go.”
It’s amazing how I was in the same place just three months ago. And I still haven’t learned a lesson.
With that, I’m done. Over and out.
Tags: Lessons, Peeps, Sometimes I draw
When I woke up feeling awesome about today. Crunching on my All Bran flakes with diced mangoes soaked in milk, all the while thanking God for the awesome Friday it felt like, I could have sworn it felt like it was going to be a brilliant day that would swoop by and plant me at the beginning of another weekend. I thought it was super.
Life, of course, had to prove me wrong. I should have known it was too good to be true. I should have probably braced myself for everything that came around the corner when I was least expecting it, blindsighting me, taking the wind right out of my sails. But I’m a stupid optimist like that. I believe that when the going is good, not much can turn it around.
And of course, events of the morning promptly proceeded to fuck me over. Just the way I was not expecting. My morning featured a maddening project that just won’t leave me already. It kept me here close to ten pm last night, and just when I thought I might have seen the last of it this morning, it keeps coming back for more. Add to it the sudden disappearance of my earphones which suddenly make me realise I cannot function without music. Add to it the suddenly bulging inbox, with tasks that demand your attention, but you cannot bear to look at because what you have on hand just wont leave you. Add to that immensely meaningless and petty fight with good friend. And you have one awesome cocktail of emotions. Ranging from rad to frustrated and angry. Take your pick. It’s that kind of awesome day.
But here’s the kicker. That last event? Has led me to the scary conclusion that I’m a sucker for pain. Somehow I manage to constantly get myself back into the same complicated situations with people. Today was like someone ripped my heart out, handed it to me and asked me to watch as it slowly died a painful death. And something of that level of upheaval ought to have an extreme reaction, right?
Wrong.
Here’s where it gets interesting. My emotional reactions to these repetitive events in life seems to have gone from being completely distraught, buckled up in anguish and down in tears a few years ago, to just plain and simple, blinkin’ rage today.
But don’t get me wrong. I’m still just as hurt as I have been in the past. Just as sad. But sadness is a weird thing. Sometimes it comes with regret, sometimes with grief. Sometimes, surprise. Sometimes, nostalgia. And today, as I discovered, it can also come with a tremendous amount of anger.
And that my friends, sent me down a tunnel of thoughts I never should have gone down. The conclusion being, I think my brain has lost the capacity to just be sad. Purely sad. Like just accept it for what it is, and be sad. As much as my everyday emotions have levelled out and stopped being over the top and extreme, my reactions to events that must invoke a response bring out just one thing in me.
Rage.
It seems my brain is incapable of channelising these feelings elsewhere. I find that I don’t have as many abrasive and untoward reactions to things in general, I’m calmer in the way I take in things around me, I’m largely peaced out and calm compared to the uber emotional person I used to be (I think). But when I feel wronged, like when I’m seeing something go against what I stand for, I see red.
The husband gave me his usual taciturn advice: Cut The Fat. And it made complete sense, like it mostly does. If something is causing an unwanted stress in your life, cut it out. I so want to just get up, dust my knees off and walk away from this. I wish I could just be sad and get this out of my system, rather than have this nagging bothersome anger lingering around. I wish I could cry my eyes out like I used to. At least that was some vent for what I was feeling and a few hours of sobbing later I’d be done with it. But its hard to vent writhing rage when it makes you want to box a wall and you suddenly remember you’re at work, in a room full of people.
So much for picking up and moving on. The joy!
Tags: Just saying, Lessons
This past weekend, we ventured out to the beach. Again. And if you’re sick of my beach stories from here and here, you shouldn’t probably read on. This is yet another one of those posts, where I’m going to wax eloquent about the joys of being on a beach.
But this one didn’t begin well. With a hungover husband on hand, and a sleepy sister to kick out of bed, leaving early didn’t happen as planned. I was peeved and mighty frustrated, because I wanted to get to the beach before the sun got all blistering and unbearable. Several failed attempts to leave, including two extra trips up the 4 flights of stairs to fetch forgotten items, we finally were on our way to Ashwem. Logic being that the father away we get from ghastly Baga/Calangute, the better off we’d be. But close (close?) to 50 kilometers of driving later, after being sent on several detours, rerouting back to roads we remembered, and hunting for non-existent shacks, we realised the bitter truth.
The.
Season.
Is.
Officially.
Over.
At least in the far north, it is. Sniff. Sob. Sigh. And I can say that with considerable certainty because the far north is where the quiet beach lovers usually go after the shenanigans of the season are wrapped up and done. Except this Sunday to my horror of horrors, I saw Morjim and Ashwem stuffed to the brim with picnicking families, who had all come with matresses and picnic baskets and boomboxes. I don’t mean this with the slightest bit of affluence or elitism, but what that usually amounts to is noisy children running helter-skelter, groups of men who don’t know what to do with themselves when they see women in bathing suits, paper plates and other trash dotting the beach, the most ghastly music blaring all around. All we really wanted was some quiet time. To enjoy the sea and just be.
It was well past 2 pm by now. And I could feel myself melt away with every passing minute. My enthusiasm was running dry and I was ready to call it a day, when the husband suggested we ditch the adventure and go back to some place familiar. And that’s when we decided that it really does all come back to good old Anjuna. If you’re interested in more pictures, it’s where we always go. With friends and family. Over and over.
Sometimes you find an exodus of yuppie tourists, but that aside, I love Anjuna. Because its got a certain life about it that’s hard to find elsewhere in the north. It’s where you’ll find entire families (mostly foreigners) with their four, five, six fearless babies (all impeccably cute) wading into the sea, couples with their dogs, slightly stoned young tourists, Buddhist monks (yes! I’ve seen them too!) all on one single beach, all peacefully coexisting.
It’s where you’ll find father and son walking the beach, peacefully inspecting seashells, while women get together to catch up over an orange sunset sipping orange juice. It’s where groups of kids, all shapes and sizes, can tumble into the giant trampoline set out on the sand for them, and bounce up and down for hours on end.
It’s where the shack doggies come out to greet you, salty sea spray wafting off their coats.
It’s where you can study the anatomy of a fit man, flaunting it all on the beach in a game of paddle ball. It’s where the paragliders elegantly land on the sand, taking your breath away. Every time. It’s where children run free, play in the sun, and adults do too.
It’s where tourists gingerly tread on clammy rocks to get a peek of the other side. It’s all here. In one tiny stretch of beach. And somehow it never feels stifling or crowded.
It’s hard to think of Anjuna without the peac, quiet and harmony that it exudes. Tucked away behind the hill, it has the privacy of a small little beach, with the gentlest waves. Thanks to the rocklines on either side the sea is almost cajoled into flowing into the alcove that is Anjuna.
Anjuna has life. Anjuna has character. Anjuna is where the love is right now. And this was quite the Sunday to remember.
Tags: La vita e bella, Life in Goa, Peeps, Photography, The Husband
There is something about the coming of the monsoon that gets me really excited. Like a child yearning for a much-awaited goodie. Blistering as it still is, I take solace in the fact that I can feel the rain coming. I see it in the clouds that hang low. I smell it in the moisture-laden dawn air when I wake up and open my balcony. I see it in the waves that are heavy and getting bigger by the day. I feel it in the inky twilight that hangs close to the surface of the earth. And I saw it on Saturday at the beach. Nothing spells the impending monsoons like this sight did.
Even now, over two years since I’ve moved to Goa, I have a gentle, yet breathtaking moment here and there, that takes me completely by surprise and remind me of where I am. Overwhelming, completely taking my breath away, its these rare moments that suddenly bring me back to life, and gently shake me out of my smug existence. In the trap that is life, I often forget that I’m actually just 10 minutes away from this.
I forget that Saturday evenings can be spent here. Music in my ears, sand in my feet, wind in my hair. Chasing the sun as it goes down. I forget that there’s life beyond laundry, weekend chores, shopping lists, neverending to-dos, overflowing Outlook calendars, daunting KRAs and the like.
It’s moments like these that remind me that perhaps the chaos of the present is but a means to an end. And end I often lose sight of. That getting caught in the how’s of the here and now, makes me forget the why’s of a time to come. It’s moments like these that make me slow down, slower still and remind myself that I cannot be confined and that I must not be in a rush to conform. It reminds me to enjoy the song when I feel like it. To let myself write when I feel like it. To drive out alone if I feel like it. To do the things I want to, when I feel like it, because there is no better time than now.
It’s moments like this that really make me believe that life right now, while it seems like things couldn’t get better, has bigger things in store for me. And while I wait, I’m reminded that I must not forget to stop and smell the roses monsoon laden air.
It’s moments like these that keep me coming back for more.
Tags: La vita e bella, Lessons, Life in Goa, Photography, The rain
If a picture is worth a thousand words, I give you..well, seven thousand words.
This is a recap of last weekend. When we woke up and decided it was a splendid idea to head out. You can’t not, when the day looks like this:
So we went back to Zeebop:
And the day featured much swimming, much sun bathing, and I realised the world is a better place when you have a sister:
And lunch looked something like this (before it was mercilessly devoured by the three of us:
And then the we swam some more, and lounged around gorgeous fishing boats that were lying around:
Of course we fooled around some more:
I’ve said it before, and I’ll point you there again. I’m growing to strongly believe that my productive time is only really productive when I have enough empty time, to decompress, to balance it all out. I am not the quintessential workhorse. I burn out very easily, and its time I just accept it and take things as they are. Also, there are too many things in life that I like to do. Things that keep me going. And if I don’t make time for them, life becomes a chore. When all I end up doing is working and going home to cook, eat and sleep, life turns, well you know, lifeless. I have got to stop fighting it and beating myself into working harder than I am made to. But enough heavyduty thinking for now. I have yet to wrap my head around the million whirling thoughts that have emerged over the past two weekends in my life. It’s amazing what wonder a little alone time, in the crazy chaos of everyday life can do for you. It can crystallize in a single minute, the nebulous confusion I carry around for days on end.
I also made several fits and starts at posts to articulate this unnamed restlessness within, but its not time yet. When it is, I will know I guess.
Tags: Food, La vita e bella, Life in Goa, My family and other animals, Photography
I thought I should drop by a quick note, to say I’m around. Lest May also goes by on the same way that April did. Drenched in a dry spell. But I can’t slink away form it anymore. A dry spell is exactly what this is. Because its not like there’s a lack of food for thought, or fodder for blog. I guess I could show you those pictures I meant to. I suppose I could also get down to sharing all the music I thought I would through the month (seeing as how I’m suddenly listening to so much new stuff). Or I could give you the goss on what I’ve been up to this past weekend. It involved a giant crab. Or you know, the general happenings of life and everything that comes with it. I could do it all. But I think I’ve lost that burning desire to come here and say it all. The effort is beginning to feel like a burden. An obligation. Cumbersome, weighing down on me, making me want to run as far away from it as possible.
There I’ve said it.
I’m a little bored. And I need a break. I don’t know how it suddenly happened. It could be the lack of browser-time during the day. The need to not look at a screen when I’m home. Or it could even be the fact that I think I want to shut up for a while. And not come mass-share everything out here. Its a bit weird because I never imagined I would feel this way, (Disclaimer: there is a 100% chance I will spring back to the good old me and start compulsively blogging again), but until this feeling goes away and I spontaneously feel like coming back here again, I think I’m going to stop fighting these thoughts in my head, and accept it.
My dearest blog, I think we need a break. Not a break-up. Just a break.
Are all mornings-after-birthdays so heavy on the head?
Was it all that wine? Or the smokes? Could it be the old friend, sleep debt? Or just fatigue, perhaps? Whatever it is, the day feels like it could not be going any slower. When you come in to work, on time, running on just a little over four hours of sleep, and you begin the day with yawns that make your face as big as the moon, you know its going to be a difficult day. Add to it the lethargy that comes from overeating the previous day, the sugar overdose from that aweeeesome cake and a to-do list packed with a three-day backlog, and you have the perfect recipe for a blocked head. Nothing goes in, nothing registers, nothing useful comes out. Nothing makes sense. And all you want to do is shut off for the day and sleep. And that you, is me, of course.
I woke up this morning with a fright. Because I had happily dreamed that it was Friday night and that I was waking up to a lazy Saturday morning. I could not have been more wrong, and the day seems to be making me pay for my slight error in judgement. Instead of moving on swiftly and getting through it, I’m plodding along, neither being too productive, not being wholly unproductive. It’s a strange blocked state of mind. And its really getting to me.
It’s the kind of day that you want to semi-squeal-semi-drag your words out and listen to Blockhead on loop. Like I did.
And if you’re wondering about the birthday-night-before, much fun was had amidst laughter, music, cheer and fun company. Copious amounts of wine were consumed. I speak for myself, because I don’t know if everyone had enough. I suspect that might have had something to do with how quickly I was guzzling it myself. Somewhere between the fifth and sixth glass I realised that I should probably slow down. But it was already too late. Apart from the wine, biryani was also had. As was a 2 kilo moist chocolate cake sent straight from heaven. Drizzled with luscious white chocolate blended with condensed milk. If there ever was a cake to die for, this is it. And here’s the shocker. There were presents too! Shocker, because I really wasn’t expecting it. The last few years, since I’ve moved away, gifts have been solely received from the parents, the sister and the husband. But this year was different. Also different because a large part of the gifted items were hAAthi-related. A haathi-(piggy)-bank, a haathi tote bag, a haathi clock (!!!), a haathi toilet case, a haathi mobile and a haathi keychain. Its funny how turning 28, I felt like a child again, being showered with gifts, opening them right as soon as I received them, collapsing into squeals of excitement and reaching out for second and third hugs, mostly from the sheer lack of not knowing how to contain the excitement. Ah the small joys.
So yeah, the night wound down closer to 2 am. And by then I had enough cocoa and sugar inside of, to stay bouncing off the walls for a good long time. Which means only one thing. Less sleep. And that means only one thing. A blocked head the next day. And it is anything but fun.
One thing must be said though, if all birthdays can be as fun, I think I can handle one blocked-head-day a year, don’t you think?
Tags: Food, La vita e bella, Life in Goa, Music, Peeps
