A Very Happy Birthday Indeed

This year we decided to bring in my birthday in Samui. We have been travelling since August. Sydney-Auckland-Bangkok-Delhi-Bangkok-Samui. I am tired of living out of suitcase since November last year.
A told me a table has been booked in the restaurant downstairs for birthday dinner. I was reluctant to dress up as I was tired after hitting the pool and beach. To top it all, Aryan had been a riot and I was totally flustered. But A convinced me to dress up saying that he likes it when I am all dolled up. So whilst the twins went on a stroll with their dad I went onto deciding my look for the night.

After being dressed up and collecting all the compliments and mesmerized looks from the three boys, we ventured downstairs. Suddenly A disappeared keeping me waiting. I hate waiting. I hate minor gripes. I am infamous for getting upset because of minor setbacks.

Mister returned only to usher me towards the stairs and then to a path where I saw a romantic setup done tastefully (Demanding when it comes to aesthetics). Organza (my favourite) covered canopy, candles, elegant floral setup, soft music and lots of plants all around – RIGHT ON THE BEACH. Best part – he tells me there’s a babysitter.

The babysitter came and took the babies away who were comfortable and yawning in their stroller. As I walked towards the organza pergola I noticed rose petals on my way. A private butler welcomed me. And then? FIREWORKS. Skylit full moonlight. Don’t judge me but I LOVE FIREWORKS.
Then we lit a candle in the hot air balloon and I made a wish for my Papa and thanked god for my two little angels.

We made a wish and two came true

Enjoyed a personalized five course meal after raising a toast and sipping champagne. Mister had discussed the menu in great details with the chef and I loved everything.
Towards the end we got the twins and then I cut the cake with my boys whilst the birthday song played in the background.

This year’s birthday had everything perfect right from the morning. I woke up to a great view, ate breakfast by the beach, plunged in the pool where the twins took their first dip. I went solo for a walk on the white sandy beach. Finished a book. Sipped piña colada by the pool (my favorite).

Contemplated and organised several thoughts. Reminisced about the difficult last years that took toll on me physically and mentally.

I looked up in the sky as the waves gushed through my feet and soaked my sarong. I felt glad to be alive – a feeling I had forgotten for the longest time.

Who needs therapy when one can take a holiday?

Lazy Mornings = Quick Creamy Mushrooms

Gone are the weekends where all that I did was sleep eat read and repeat. 

Life has become extremely hectic and in an extremely good way. 

Cooking is something that rejuvenates me. It calms me down when I am low or super hyper. 

My go to brunch item is always creamy mushrooms and a nice simple salad on the side with a cuppa. 

This recipe is the shortcut version of proper creamy mushrooms in bechamel sauce. Trust me if I had the time to prepare the roux, I would rather prefer taking a nap. Sleep indeed, is a luxury. 

So here it goes:

Ingredients

Mushrooms 4-5 large

White wine – A quick guzzle 😉

White Onion – 1 small roughly chopped

Mustard Powder (optional)

Garlic cloves – 2 big ones

White pepper powder

Chilli Flakes

Brie cheese

Chives

Method

1. Heat a frying pan. Add sliced garlic and white onions. Do not brown them. 

2. Add roughly chopped mushrooms. 

3. Keep sautéing till the mushrooms are cooked in their own liquid. Add a glug of white wine when the mushrooms start to stick to the pan. 

4. Add white pepper powder, mustard powder and chilli flakes. 

5. Add brie to this and wait for it melt and till all the ingredients are combined. 

6. Add finely chopped chives. Healthier alternative is to add baby spinach. 

7. Lightly toast some bread. These mushrooms taste heavenly on toasted ciabatta. I generally toast two slices of Molenbergh Wholemeal Grain Bread. 

8. Spread the mushrooms generously. 

9. Add baby spinach leaves and some fruit like apples or pears or mandarins. 

10. In a small bowl mix a tsp each of honey and dijon mustard and little EVOO. Mix well and spread over the baby spincach. 

11. Sprinkle fresh black pepper and salt from the mill if desired.

VOILA. Enjoy your creamy mushrooms with a hot cuppa. I used Jarrah’s Bavarian Bliss to make my coffee with a hint of hazelnut. 

  

Quick Creamy Mushrooms

 

Remnants

Most people sympathise with you but very few help lessen the absence of a lost parent. Warm thanks to all those in the latter category.

I wonder many times daily, how would my life be like if he was around. How our phone calls would be like? How often would we video chat or how would he react to my updates on fb.

I usually walk near a cemetery because the path is serene and majestic with a lake on the side. I imagine if my parents were visiting, I would go on walk with Papa.

The other day I was doing my evening walk and decided to read the many headstones there. Loving fathers, mothers, grandparents, heroes, rockstars! I read them all.

I kept walking and crying slowly. Felt this urgency to get to see him once more. Tell him how much I love him. That’s the last thing I told him in the hospital after kissing his forehead and telling him ‘I will see you in the morning‘. He heard me and nodded even though he was heavily sedated. The next morning was ugly.

Kept walking and reading the headstones. Read what legacy people had left behind.

As per Hindu traditions, everything is donated once the soul departs. My mom gave away everything. I remember fighting with her in Haridwar when she gave away his glasses. I cried. I screamed.

What no one knows is I stole one of his kurta. It is still with me. I smell it. After 7 years I still try to smell him.

I often think what all I could have done to undo things. Frankly. I could have done nothing.

Then I thought what can I do so that the life he left incomplete gets completed. Kept walking and reading the headstones.

Then I realised his whole life was spent in doing things for others. He never got to enjoy his own life.

I promised myself not to do that. To be selfish and live not little but lot.

I looked up in the sky while thinking what if he also had a grave that I could visit. A grave that was his remnant. That point I badly wanted some legacy, a remnant of him to touch and cry. Then I touched my heart.

I realised I am my father’s most precious legacy.

I have to wear the best shoes because he wore torn shoes.

I have to see the world because he told me he will not be able to come to NZ because he won’t live by then.

I have to be happy because he told me how he felt unloved.

Don’t worry Papa, I will be happy because whatever that is left of you is the entire me who has to live royally for both of us!

Learning it the hard way

It is astonishing how your closest friends will say the most acerbic statements to you in a spur of a moment and won’t even feel sorry. Your kind soul might give them a benefit of doubt by blaming stressful life, PMS or just being a temporary bit**.

Under the cloak of jest, friendship is often abused. I have been at the receiving end of it just because *takes a moment for this* – I am unemployed. I, like my girl community over think the statement again and again. I have realised that in the past I must have also uttered inanities to my friends as well. I can actually recall two incidents where I was consciously being a bit**. I apologised to one of them by picking the phone once I reached home and saying  sorry. The other one, I never got around saying sorry.

Now why I end up being bruised by these statements:

1. I tend to do a LOT for friends whom I consider family. Specially when you are living abroad you need to have a close set of friends else it gets severely depressing.

2. Number 1 leads to high expectations.

3. I avoid conflicts. I hate loud fights. I hate when people in a spur of a moment forget their limitations.

4. I mostly smile when some inanity is reflected towards me rather than answering back owing to our relationship history or seniority (if the said friend is senior to me).

Four recent incidents have made me write this post. I have been continuously over thinking why these  people behaved in the way they did. I am not going to confront these people – not because I am a coward (the direct term used by one of them who was hell bent on shoving their morality down my throat).

I have been subjected to constant jibes, raised voices and verbal abuse while growing up. I know there is no point in yelling back. You only projectile the dirt back onto yourself. I learnt this the hard way in 2007. I am a totally different person ever since that year.

What I have decided to adopt is this:

Learning it the hard way. But the good news is I am learning.

1. If your so called close friend or even a family member is continuously taking jibes at you or is ignorantly causing you grief, best is to stay away from them.

2. Focus on cultivating your passion. If you don’t have a passion, focus on finding what drives you.

3. Promise yourself to emerge as a better person, to not being a pushover, to focus more on life’s goal.

I realized one of my life long goals in 2012. I am now going to focus on the next two goals – one personal and one professional. 

4. Being successful is the only quality that earns you respect. No matter how nice you are, being kind is a cheap quality these days it seems.

I am sad at the same time to give in to the hardcore materialistic way of life. But I got to change with time before I am crushed to dust. And to people who drag you down because you are unemployed – please eff off.  It takes guts to quit an amazing job to focus on yourself.

To my detractors, I will only rise from now on. Don’t want anymore of your fake friendship or cynicism or banal advice.

Forgiveness will always be a long process where the inanity behind it might be caused in a spur of a moment.

Life has become the future

“Did you know that for pretty much the entire history of the human species, the average life span was less than thirty years? You could count on ten years or so of real adulthood, right? There was no planning for retirement, There was no planning for a career. There was no planning. No time for planning. No time for a future. But then the life spans started getting longer, and people started having more and more future. And now life has become the future. Every moment of your life is lived for the future–you go to high school so you can go to college so you can get a good job so you can get a nice house so you can afford to send your kids to college so they can get a good job so they can get a nice house so they can afford to send their kids to college.”
― John Green, Paper Towns

I find my peace by looking at the flowers left on the graves.

Trick

“Trust me on this. You gotta go all out on them. Show them what you are made of. You gotta trick them, you gotta yell, you gotta contradict, you gotta claim, you gotta scream, you gotta fight.”

“Have you considered, maybe I don’t want to? I don’t want to yell. I don’t want to contradict. Do you even know me at all? That’s not who I am. Why do I have to do all this?”

“But if you don’t, how will you make things better?”

“What if things are already beyond repair?”

“You are weak.”

“Maybe that is my superpower.”

“That’s your self-defence against not doing anything.”

“Maybe it is a sign that I have been strong for too long and I am tired.”

“That’s some bullshit you must have read in one of those books.”

“What if it is?”

“So you gonna pretend this is who you’ve become.”

“I don’t need to pretend. I have always been like this. You are just starting to know me.”

“So now you denying I don’t even know you anymore.”

“No, I am just saying – what you know of me is what I have led you to believe.”

“So you have tricked me.”

“Exactly!”

Dose of truth in honesty

When you say nasty things about people, you should never say the true ones, because you can’t really fully and honestly take those back, you know?

~John Green, Paper Towns

Life is Lulzmaxxx

My mind thinks about ten thousand things at the same time working at an obnoxious speed that leaves me begging for a start/stop switch. It processes ten thousand decisions, thoughts and survival theories in random order.  I cannot stop it. Even while sleeping, this process  continues to defeat the valour of sleep and takes pride in its despicable insomniac victory.

When I attempt to fight with this process, I sometime just take a moment and ponder over the marvellous connectivity of the several thoughts. A long lost memory of a family friend or a distant relative, a childhood story, destiny’s legit path, a faint smell, someone’s first name, someone’s last name – they all compete together in the process. It is a terribly exhausting exercise that leaves me drained out of emotions that could have been otherwise helpful in daily life. I am mostly rewarded with a headache that is most of the times alleviated by the iPad.

Amongst many other useful features of iPad, the most important is putting it on your forehead in case of headache. #LifeHacks

You see, I am trying to maintain a sad kind of sense of humour here. Maybe this self-depreciating style is heavily inspired from my lulzmaxxx buddy Shawshank.

Anyway the point is, Life is lulzmaxxxx. It is so sad it is funny. I am writing here because they say writing is therapeutic and also I kinda wanted some space to pour these random thoughts else head always feels like a landmine. And I was bored. Fringe’s first episode scared me and I didn’t had anything else to do.

SO there! Let the mother of random blogposting begin. One lulzmaxx at a time.

Getting over

I will get over you. Even though there was no closure, I will. I will let my heart prepare for excruciating pain that will last for months. But this pain will be less painful than the pain I get daily from not hearing from you, not looking into your eyes, not telling you silly things, not letting you go.I will be fine. I guess. I am hopeful.

The mere thought of stretching this comatose relationship while putting it on odd messages’ ventilator support is inhuman. It needs to be set free; to be euthanised – into an indefinite dead stage, where you and I could breathe finally.

We have been choking on each others’ monumental expectations, on each others’ time windows. I beg, you yearn – this needs to be stopped. We need to be brave. We need to mingle in our own social circles to help us fill the vacuum we have left in each others’ laughter. I will be slightly tipsy while dressed looking all sorts of gorgeusness. Not thinking even once about clicking a pic for you. Not thinking even once if you could be there in the mix of crowd as my comforting face telling me shhhhhh I know you way more than these morons.

I will be fine. You will be fine too. The feelings will remain forever because ‘we are each others’ that single person we will always have feelings for no matter what’. 
Just that we won’t be talking. We won’t be expecting anything anymore. We will find another person who will help us fill in the large vacuum.

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Currently listening to – Sau dard hai.

Behta hain paani behne de, waqt ko yuhi rehne de

Dariyaa ne karwat li hai toh sahilon ko sehne de

Sau hasratein par tera gham nahii

Sau dard hain,sau rahatein sab mila dil nashin ek tu hi nahii

 

Originally posted here.

Come back to me

Come back to me. I want to see you, take that warm palm of yours..that is full of so many complicated lines that intersect at so many places. I wonder where I fit into that fate line. Let me hold your palm. It is bit rough and I like it. Makes it even more inviting to hold it.

 

Let’s spend some time together. In the same coordinates of the universe. Spend a day together. Just talking nonsense. Or even better, don’t say a word. Just make few shapes with our fingers and play with their shadows on the wall. Just find something new about each other. Notice a mole or a scar on our skin. Notice how the lines on our faces changed since the time we met.  Just watch each other breathing. 

Then fall asleep when the eyes would give up after staring. Then let our dreams continue our story.

 

Partners in rhyme

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Currently listening to – Your body is a wonderland // Something ’bout the way the hair falls in your face 
I love the shape you take when crawling towards the pillowcase //

 

This post was inspired after some heavy J. Mayer dosage. I am trippin’ on Born and Raised. Hey, he got me out of oblivion on this blog space.