- I met Swara on a train. She had the brightest smile, friendliest demeanor & the ability to write sentences sans punctuation. She told me she wanted to be my friend & followed it with a story of a king & a queen who are disappointed in a soldier because he didn’t work hard & I told her a story of a chocolate factory. She had a book in which she taught me to color strips & I taught her to draw jellyfish & octopi. We played games, ate chocolate biscuits & wrote each other letters.
- I asked for help. I texted B from Andaman. We hadn’t spoken in years but when I reached out, he was there. He has asked me how I am every day since then, allowing my life to change drastically each morning. K showed up like an armor. A did everything in his power to help me take a break, but most importantly he took me to eat Kerala food & kept me supplied with cupcakes. M accompanied me to the doctor. Asking for help was one of the bravest & kindest things I did for myself.
- I traveled often. Though in distress, I walked around, ate local food & documented everything. Good & bad. Through this phase of good health- yesterday I walked into the kitchen to find Mumma and babyR doing dandiya with spoons & forks, papa was teasing me for being inept with the new remote control & teasingly fake laughed so hard he threw us all into a fit of laughter- I am coming to forgive myself for the trip. I shall put my journal entries online soon.
- I put on kajal for the first time after a month. It felt so big that that day held a promise of no foul moves, no crying. I remember texting people & telling them about it.
- I listened to Mora from Gangs of Wasseypur like an anthem, a chant that gets people through walking to pilgrims. ‘Jo bhi wrongwa hai usse set rightwa karoji, nahi loseye ji hope thoda fightwa karoji’ moved me to tears & got me out of bed.
- The plants I had got home did not die. The Bouganvilla bloomed. The potato Mumma & babyR planted now have baby potatoes that BabyR shows to everyone who comes home. Her dream is to harvest them to make fries. Boganvillas, palm swiftlets, dragonflies & now potatoes will stand for happiness in my heart.
- I went to NH7 and what an adventure that was! It was something I had looked forward to through low times. I enjoyed the music, but mostly I enjoyed being myself. I got my energy back, I ran around, bumped into people I hadn’t seen in months, but hugged. I got called ‘dadiji’ by a group of marwadi boys I scolded and that’s something off of my bucket list. When I grow up I want to be my dadi! A nice guy asked my friend for my number, who left me alone when I said I wasn’t interested. And during low times when my self-esteem is in the dumpsters, this felt nice. I made new friends, held their hands while Hariharan sang Jeev Rangla and laughed so hard everything hurt.
- I didn’t stop working. I created an email thread with one of my colleagues called the ‘awkward conversation thread’ where I write emails on the lines of ‘Bad mental health day today, working slow, please do the heavy lifting on x task if you can or I can pick it up tomorrow.’ And I was reminded anew of how much harsher we are on ourselves than anyone will ever be. I was also reminded of the healing power of having and sticking to a routine.
- An iron gate fell on me, non-metaphorically. Unnecessarily, in the middle of my busy life, one night, K’s society gate fell on me and hurt my left knee. I find this to be such an odd and funny thing to happen to someone. It reminded me that my body exists outside my mind too.
- I met an aaji who discussed books with me. She started reading when she was 4 because she was ill and couldn’t play out like the other kids. Her uncle would get a book from his friend’s shop, cover it in paper and give it to her to read. The book would be delicately read, uncovered, and put back in the shop to sell. She never stopped reading after that. She had to quit her library recently because she can’t climb the stairs. So she reads anything she can find in the non-staired places of the world. She is reading Ludlum right now. She told me about a Spanish war novel she read and I told her about the African one I did. We discussed Enid Blyton and how much we love libraries. My life is a little richer for having met her.
