Through a haze

This time it took a lot! A lot of time to decide, a lot of courage to muster and a lot of coaxing myself to embark on a solo trip.  Might sound silly but what's life without meaningful rituals that you create for yourself? 30th in Hongkong, Cheung Chau Island on the South China Sea, to be precise. 35th at South China Sea again at An Bang Beach in Hoi An, Vietnam. So this year I decided on Muscat on the Sea of Oman to spend my 40th.  It took 3 months of planning and methodical step-wise execution because I had forgotten what travelling alone feels like! There was a point in time around end of December, when I started dreading the trip and enumerating everything that can go wrong...almost building up a case against travelling solo. But then I identified that it was just anxiety and by the time it was mid-January I felt elated thinking about the upcoming trip and was excited to research videos online to build the framework of an itinerary. Life continuously threw challenges at me...

This blogpost is to remember the memories of the first year of Bunny's life. 07/09/2022 This photo was taken to commemorate the first social smile he gave me one morning on waking up. He was just a few days shy of turning 2 months old. The first two months were so difficult, in more ways than one. But this smile made up for all of the hard times. I teared up and took many snaps. Then we video called Daddy and showed him our new smile. Truly a lovely milestone. This was taken by Jojo in the hospital nursery on 15/07/21. I was still admitted in room 1204 and was going downstairs to meet my little Swaddle Bunny multiple times every day only to be refused by the little man when it came to breastfeeding. The name Bunny stuck from there. I refused to compromise and give in to the Dev that Jojo was peddling! Hah! On 16/07/21 we brought this 2.42kg bundle of cuteness home. I was sore from the surgery, totally new at mothering and a complete idiot.. as I ...

This post is going to be about my relationship with art galleries. Art and I have a tenuous relationship, now that I am no longer in school and projects involving artistic creativity are no longer a part of my life. My mother is an artist. She has the quintessential temperament of one when she starts on a picture and her sense of colour and aesthetics are far superior than mine. It was she who took me around a few art galleries on various occassions when I was little. I remember looking at some of the canvases that did not make sense to me back then and asking her what the picture depicted. She blithely replied that it was Modern Art, where the artist did not paint anything defnitive and it was up to the viewer to interpret the piece, as they liked. Over the years there have been fewer and fewer instances of Mother and I visiting art spaces. But then again, I have voluntarily spent hours in art galleries with friends who love art. Over my last two visits to the National Galley...

'Unconventional' was the name of the game when it came to my first-ever pregnancy. I was aware that my biological clock was ticking but had never really paid much heed to it because the time had never seemed right. When I say this now I realise that the circumstances were not to blame, I was! I was just not psychologically ready even a few years ago. Call it hedonism or lack of taking my life seriously, thinking about being a mother was never really on my mind.  Things came to pass in a very bizarre manner. Due to severe migraine headaches I had started playing fast and loose with my oral contraceptives...in other words, we had stopped taking any protection whatsoever. This also happened in the period after my boyfriend's heart attack! By the time 6-7 months had elapsed, we had started joking about the both of us being infertile. At one point after turning 35, I noticed a sharp drop in my menstruation and met my gynaecologist about it. She told me that this was due to aging...