It hurts to part..

 The feeling of emptiness when an enriching, warm, long-running engagement ends is so depressing. I finished Pachinko today - my first book of this year, and I am already missing it so bad. It was a long book and I have spent many wonderful hours with it. Some experiences have this quality of haunting you long after they get over. I am thinking of some other times when it hurt to part. 

1. Books: Atlas Shrugged, Totto chan, A suitable boy. 

2. TV series: Big Bang theory, Friends

3. Places:  Most places where I have spent a considerable time - my two homes in Allahabad, my apartment in Joka, my home for 4 years in Bangalore, my apartment in Hyderabad. Strangely, the 8 days spent in Udaipur + neighbouring places continue to haunt me. 

4. Workplaces: I only felt this for my last software company, Yodlee(now Envestnet) and my last company, Medtronic. Of course, I spent my longest time working in these two. And my school which I had attended for 14 years. Didn't feel much for either colleges. 

These are just off the top of my head, and heavily tainted with recency bias. Starting a new book tonight to ease the misery. So long!

Growing old together..

..in a marriage is undeniably overrated. I think it is far more important to grow happy together. It needs to be acknowledged that the lack of happiness is unhappiness. When we stop being happy together, growing old together just translates into two miserable people waiting for their respective lives to end.

An agreement without definite timelines is as good as void. Till death do us apart is not a timeline. May be, in the earlier times, when human lifetimes were less than 50 years, and days were only as long as the daylight. Not any more. 

A commitment made at 22 should not be binding at 42. Humans grow and evolve continuously. It is an insult to human intellect to presume that 2 people think and feel the same way over a lifetime of 75 years. 

It is said that all the cells in the human body are renewed over a period of 7 years. This means that effectively, we do not share a single cell with our own self from 7 years ago. It think 7 years is a good time to review and renew the contract of marriage. Or annul!

K-drama Part 3/4

We have only 2 days left in the month, and only 2 posts left for me to meet my target of 30 posts. It is important that we complete the K-drama list. 

 1.Vincenzo: Perfection, addiction, obsession! Again, one of the most highly-rated K-dramas, Vincenzo was a treat to watch. It had 20 episodes against the norm of 16, but even that left us wanting more. 10/5 

 2. Business Proposal: Average run of the mill stuff. Nothing worth remembering, except for the male lead's large nose. I think the guy is too young to get surgery yet. The actress was forgettable as well. 2.5/5 

 3. Suspicious Partner: Interesting drama with some high points. Both good looking leads. I swooned over the male lead while he had his hair neat and brushed back. Once he got the k-drama hero fringe, all love was lost. 3/5 

4. Something in the rain: I watched this one because of Son Ye Jin. It started off real strong, and I loved the initial episodes. The jazz music, the tender romance, the rains - all the right ingredients. Then it just went downhill with too much rona-dhona. What a waste of 2 great actors! I will still rate it 3.5/5. 

5. Sky castle: Very highly rated drama focused on the rot in the Korean education system. Super intense and powerful with exceptional production quality, but it was all stress and no fun. I dropped off mid-way. 4/5

We feel really safe now..

..with our 2 resident spiderkids.

High level security doesn't come cheap though. My mother has to play with them a minimum of 3-4 hours a day in exchange for the family's safety. In the evenings, Papa needs to carry one or both of them down to the park. Not a bad deal in this dangerous world, I say!

Of high aspirations

When one is young, there are few things that appear more desirable than growing older. Once you are old enough, there are few things more depressing than growing even older. I think the person can be considered as truly mature on the day this flip happens. We had put up a couple of numeric balloons with numbers 1 & 6 on Pari's birthday to mark it as her 16th. Not because we consider 16 as anything special, but because the balloons were part of the decorations that the neighbourhood general store owner had recommended and sold to us. Also, because on inflation, they looked nice and went well with our theme. After the party was over, I plucked the number balloons off the wall, bought them home and pasted the 16 in Pari's room. I thought it looked great on her wall. The following evening, I went to Pari's room to run an errand. The numeric balloons looked strange and unsettling. And then I realised that Pari has rotated the 6 to make a 9 and pasted it before the 1. Many of us would offer an arm and a leg to be 16 again, I have a child who can't wait to turn 91. I would appreciate her enthusiasm about life, but for the fact that I would either be long dead and gone or 115 years old. I prefer the former.

Of travelling fathers and lonely daughters..

Husband is just back from a 3 day business trip. The man rarely travels for business and it is a big deal for the family when he does. The newly-minted 16 yo who generally avoids parents like plague is surprisingly and severely impacted. 'The house looks so vacant without Papa', she rues on Monday, the day following her Dad's departure. She spends most of Tuesday looking forlorn - 'I miss Papa so much.. when will he be back?' she asks. The child starts brightening up as Wednesday progresses and joyfully proclaims in the afternoon - 'Papa will be here tonight.. I am so excited!'. Most of the evening is spent checking the flight status and once he lands, tracking his transit from the airport to home. At times, I feel like I don't know this girl at all!

Of birthday cakes..

I had mentioned Pari's birthday cake in a recent post. Most people who saw the cake were impressed with my idea of a piano cake as well the craft of the designer. My sister, however, wasn't. She felt that by ordering the cake, I am not putting any effort and insisted that I bake one for Pari. It is understandable. Sis bakes lovely cakes and dresses them so well that they can easily pass as store bought designer cakes. I have none of her talent, and zilch willingness to make extra work for myself. We ended up ordering a cake from a professional bakery but this incident reminded of some of the innovative cakes my parents had baked for my birthday. My mother is the kitchen goddess and baking queen. I think except for the first, second and a few later ones, she always baked cakes for my birthdays and continues to do so to this day. One cake that I specifically remember was the guitar cake for my 9th birthday. I was taking guitar classes at the time and my dad thought it was a cool idea to make a cake that reflected my current hobby. I have no clue how they did it. I may have been at school or my usual absent-minded self. I would imagine that Mom would have baked multiple cakes which Papa would have cut into shapes and decorated with chocolate and frosting. I just know that it was there on the table in the living room when I came to cut the cake, and I got super excited to see it. Fortunately, I still have a picture to show Pari.