Category: Personal
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Looking forward. Looking back.
I am by your side on the passenger seat. You are at the wheel, a picture of concentration. Your eyes scan the road, the rearview and the mirror that reflects our children. I notice a smile cross your face involuntarily as you watch Ammu fiddle with something on her side. That smile that is at…
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Pebbles in the sands of time
I stand by the bathtub watching you massage our baby with oil. The sun streams in from the half-open blinds from the picture window over the tub. The greys in your hair glint as they catch the sun. Your brows are furrowed in concentration as you turn her over and rub gentle circles. A smile…
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Hurtling through the past
A place belongs forever to whoever claims it hardest, remembers it most obsessively, wrenches it from itself, shapes it, renders it, loves it so radically that he remakes it in his own image. – Joan Didion The year was 2000. The city was Bangalore. I remember speeding through the roads in the dark, the lamp…
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Just write
It is late in the evening. My almost 2 month old is sleeping in her bassinet. My ears are tuned for sounds of her stirring. Twenty minutes. That is all I have wanted for myself today. Yet, those precious few minutes eluded me all day. Posts kept writing and rewriting themselves all day. You see,…
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Hey! I can touch my feet and other notes
A little over two weeks postpartum, I am discovering things about me I had forgotten. Like how I can actually put my socks on myself or how I can see past my tummy to my feet and gasp! I can actually bend down and soap my feet. The learnings have mostly been pleasant and there…
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Grandmothering
I stand by the patio door, baby in my arms watching you flit from tree to tree in pursuit of a white-winged butterfly. You look care free and unfettered following the dictates of your heart. In your white and blue PJs you look much like a butterfly yourself. You watch it light on the fence…
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Falling in love
It is late afternoon. I sit with my baby on my arm. Her head is cradled by the crook of my elbow and the rest of her ensconced along the length of my arm. I hold her close and bend down to touch my lips to her forehead. She scrunches her face and looks towards…
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D-Day
It is 10:00 AM. Tonight is when I get admitted at the hospital. I sit in front of my laptop with a cup of warm barley water by my side. The to-do lists are scrolling through my head but all I feel is malaise. It is chilly inside the house. I pull my sweater closer.…
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Natural instincts
For days, the anxiety has been building. A feeling of restlessness and a fear that I will never be prepared enough. A week back, I trudged to the basement and hauled a suitcase two floors up. It sat there on my dresser collecting toys and odd scraps of paper that the twins decided was essential…
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Time honored traditions
As I turned the lights out last Tuesday night, the last thing imprinted on my mind were the plastic bags with fruit, flowers, parupu thengai and silver vessels laid out on the kitchen island. A day of meticulous preparation and gathering of items needed for a puja the next day at the temple. In my…