A month and more into 2014

In March last year, I wrote this post. Who would’ve thought so much would change in a year? But it did. June 22 2013 was when I saw my dad alive for the last time. The memories of the day are so painful that when I remember snatches of it I tend to push those thoughts to the back of my mind – is that wrong? It is not a deliberate action, but still… I sometimes fear that this will cause the painful thoughts to fester in the deep recesses of my mind – thoughts of fear, regret, pain, tears, the deep sense of loss, the knowledge that he won’t ever come back – I don’t know what else… I feel the urge to pour it all out, an overwhelming one at times. It’s not as if we haven’t spoken about dad, we do it most of the times when we meet – every action, event, festival, occurence, mundane everyday happenings – and some or the other memory ties it back with him. May be if I cry my heart out one day this oppressive feeling will go away – but then I have a feeling it never will 😦

I didn’t mean this to be a sombre post… moving on, this year has brought a lot of changes in it’s wake as well. The project at my new job (which is incidentally now a year old!) came to a close in December and I was asked to work on another for a different client. This assignment saw me to travel to Mumbai for a week – away from home and the kiddo left in the care of his appa and ajji. I must say that he coped rather well, apart from saying – ‘amma neenu ellidya? amma neenu eegale bandbidu!‘ everytime we spoke over the phone, which wrenched my gut.

The Mumbai trip was a good break, workwise and otherwise – me and my colleague ended up staying over on most nights at another friend’s place, though the company had booked accomodation.We had some good girly fun, not to forget her sporting mother who was almost part of the gang! Back home, a new client meant a new workplace and no more luxury of having company transport. Which meant it was back to the days of traveling by good ol’ BTS! It had been a loong time since I’d regularly traveled by the city buses – I guess the last time being even before I got married! Those were fun times! But a few years and the worsened traffic situation is all it takes to remind you that you aren’t getting any younger and the enthu levels are dipping even as the bones get creakier by the day. Well, hopefully it won’t be a long-term problem, otherwise I need to think of ways to tackle it!

But what the bus-travel brings with it is the smaller joys of life – going past some well-loved lanes, the satisfaction of finding the rare seat on a tiring day, snatches of a favourite song on the FM, catching the antics of a little kid on an adjoining seat with it’s mother, the strange whims and idiosyncrasies of co-passengers, opportunities for general people and behaviour observation and so on… one such instance was when the driver while surfing radio channels chose just the channel which was playing the well-known and much loved notes of a favourite song from yester-years – the ‘Ab mujhe raat din’ number from Sonu Nigam’s album Deewana! A thrill went up my spine and a smile lighted my lips . There again was a moment of sad nostalgia at the recollection that me and the sis had pestered our dad to buy us the audio cassette and he had obliged, like he mostly did… all those memories of spending hours listening to every song so many times came rushing back and the foot and fingers automatically were tapping and there I was humming the lines, like I’d heard it just yesterday, though it had been years since I’d heard it last! That little interlude with music was enough to brighten up what looked like an otherwise gloomy Saturday to be spent at work. The rest of the workday didn’t seem tedious at all – thanks to all the songs from Deewana that I heard online and re-lived the pure joy of listening to some good favourite music!

Well, I guess that’s it for now… I hope to post a little more that what I’ve been doing – because I’ve been feeling the urge to write – mainly to capture and chronicle the cute antics and the growing-up joys of the little kiddo. But I don’t want to make promises, not even to myself!