she would have been slouching on the bed. legs folded, painfully fat and patchy with eczema. eyes droopy. back broken, itchy. hands old and dry, anemic. breasts heavy, as if she were a new mother. bladder forcefully full. heart faded, jaded and weak.

Phew! October seemed liked it would never end. Just after navratri ended, we lost mota kaki on october 11. it didn't come as a shock..she hadnt been keeping well for over a month..but it is really difficult to accept it even now that she's no longer a part of the household, to keep reminding me to drink my glass of milk or have my breakfast, to keep inquiring about my sister or my parents or remind me to wear my helmet whenever i was out on the scooty. That was the role kaki played in our house. she was the reminder..in every sense of the word. she reminded us about all the tasks we had forgotten and she was the reminder, the left over, the one who was given the least importance in the family. may be that's why everyone wept so much when she died. because they were all guilty. we were all rude to her at some point of time or the other, especially kaka and baa. and now they miss her the most. it's been 20 days today and baa still stands by her photo frame and seeks forgiveness for all her mistakes.

the worst part about death is not missing the person whom you have lost, but having to deal with all the rituals and unrealistic customs. bhabhi and i and many of the bahus and betis of the family really had to work our butts off till kaki's 14th day ceremony.

but at the end of it all, if these customs and rituals are for real..hope they have worked for kaki. may her soul rest in peace.

Navratri's around the corner..just a week to go..and I'm beginning to dread the rigmarole already..loads of food (first to cook it and then to eat it...sheera, upma and all sorts of stuff on the pretext of 'upvas' for all of nine loooonng days), hours spent embellishing the temple, the idol and some egos, rising tempers and tantrums...all in the name of 'mataji'. except for baa's composure during the nine days, i hardly find anything 'dharmik' about the festival

im quite content, cooking and caring at home...but somewhere i know im missing a life i pine for..and of course had i been living that life i would be whining for my life today...so i guess i just have to admit that im obsessed with the job thingy..kind of..trying to prove to myself that im good enough to get well-paying job..(though i don't know why i have to prove it to myself cos the rest of the world is full of reassurances of a great successful career ahead).

im hopelessly hopeful of a gooeey job offer that i found in my mailbox yesterday..who knows what's in store for me.

im also busy planning a new look for myself - coloured, straightened and rebonded hair. hmmm....

Shantaram seems to be gobbling up all of my limited free time. I have no time to check mail, blog or do any other reading.
It is so easy to get lost into his world, with his writing so vivid and his subject aamchi Mumbai). I almost want to envy him for his eventful past. Yikes!!

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Three best friends and all share a birthday tomorrow. Prachi, Chris Ann and Reshma, wherever you are, God bless you. Hope you have a great day and year ahead!

Wednesday was a very fruitful day.
I chanced upon an old friend from college.
I was instrumental in successfully arranging a net meeting for Baa (my granny-in-law) and her sister (in mumbai).
I joined the BCL.

Finding Runa's e-mail in my inbox was something i had never imagined. I had tried to hunt her down through google, but was never successful. But she was, thanks to livejournal and google. Her mail brought back memories of college -- trains in mumbai, buses in thane, pepsi-colas in mulund, maneater of malgudi, shashi deshpande, indifference curves and much more.

Runa would wait with Ashwini and me at the bus stop. And at many such intervals, we have laughed our hearts out amused by our wild imaginations. Runa once suggested we should have a train so long that it started at one destination and ended at the other. She wanted this train to start in Thane and end in Nagpur so that people could even walk inside the train if they wanted to. :)) We also spoke about vada-pav stalls in the air for domestic flights..and translated popular hindi numbers into english. Life was carefree then.

'What is this life so full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare...'

--William Henry Davies

I am still jobless. Alas, my blog is luckier than I am. Though I can find the traces of a freelance assignment coming my way...I am not counting on it, yet. I have cleaned my book shelf (bustling with Gujarathi books from Satsang), my wardrobe and everything else that was demanding attention since the last few months. I have to catch up with my reading. I want to read Shantaram. I havent read one English author in the last five years (after joining Satsang, I have hardly found anything else more interesting and worthy of my time) and for the first time I feel like I want to read Shantaram (thanks to rads).

It’ll soon be a year since I blogged. Not that there hasn’t been much to write about, but more because I have never been able to find the time to write. But today is different. I am actually idling time in front of my laptop, I have time to browse and surf the net as much as I want to, I haven’t even told my folks at home that I’m considering quitting my job with F&S, (and hence haven’t taken up any new assignments with them) so they think I’m busy working as usual.

Why am I sitting idle? I think it is time to move on, so I’m looking out for a good (read well-paying) job that I think I am now ready to do full-time.

After a lot of pondering, introspection and retrospection, I am determined to work full-time now, irrespective of the negative response I am likely to get from the home front.

It’s been ages since I blogged so I don’t really know where to start. My marriage to elesh. My gujarathi household full of 14 members. My new hangout (my office, where one is witness to politics on a greater scale than in the newspapers) or my satsang group. I could actually segregate my life into three parts: Wife/Daughter-in-Law, Content Writer, and Mumukshu (One who yearns for Moksha, or whose only aim in life is to be rid of Moh [all attachments in life]). While juggling between these roles I struggle to steal time for rads, amma and achhan to whom I play Deepa or dapdishoo (the one role I really miss playing).

But like always, life moves on. Lots of predictable and lots of unpredictable, unthinkable things have happened in the last three years. The first and the most obvious—my smooth transformation from Deepika Janardhan to Deepika Elesh Davey. It didn’t take me too much time to adjust in 135, Dev Darshan Apartments. Everybody was happy with my progress. I learnt to cook authentic guju food very quickly, picked up the language in less than a year and speak it very fluently now (more fluently than marathi—which I’m really ashamed of). I have learnt to first serve the ‘Men’ in the family (and to correct you rads, it’s tradition in most conservative ‘Indian’ families to serve men before women, and not just malayalees) and many other things that I snubbed achhan for when I was much younger and naïve, and without as much as a second thought. (I can go on and on on this part but I find myself rambling… and there are too many incidents and events fighting for space on this page here, so I’ll probably structure them to form another journal entry on some other day/night.

The last and the least obvious or the almost undetectable thing to happen in the last three months—my not-so-smooth transformation from Deepika Elesh Davey to Deepika. And the most instrumental person (besides of course amma, achhan, rads and elesh) who’s paving the path for me is Pappaji. After exhorting me to start working again, to think of but also beyond the family, to think about my future not only in this lifetime but beyond, I am finally learning to be my real self. The one that even Deepika is ignorant of.

Diwali's done...finally.

it's funny how life changes...i just read radhu's post...and i'm really happy for her..she finally got to celebrate diwali at home, in india...it took me back to the diwalis we spent together in mumbai...

diwali always meant oil, rangoli, deeyas, crackers, noise, lots of calories and new clothes. frankly..the only thing that got me excited were the clothes and the shopping..

times have changed now...and so has diwali...i know i'm not going to be eagerly waiting for this period of navratri and diwali ever in my life.

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i just read somewhere that 'freedom is getting to choose your burden.'..either i haven't understood completely what it means, or i'm not ready to accept what i've understood.