after more than three years of living back home in India we are finally out on the road. all our other holidays so far have been out of India or to Goa (which isn't really India). and I had begun to think that Delhi was India or that India were Delhi-like cities. 

last night we got our second punctured tire in a week, just the night before we were to drive. the puncture repair guy and other men who stopped to get their tyres filled up all gawked at me. and the mosquitoes tried to eat us alive while we waited and the guy patched up our wheel. this isn't the life I usually live, this isn't the india I am usually in. 

but that was still just outside of the mall that belongs to my india. this morning while I drove the first 2-3 hours out of Delhi, truck drivers bikers more truck drivers all gawked at me, the biker smiling invitingly at me when I honked at him to get out of the way. I guess they aren't used to women driving. but also a small truck/tempo full of rajasthani women waved at me repeatedly when I found myself trailing them after having overtaken them; that was a rare found connection across cultural barriers.

India is a funny country, you see signs for water parks and rows of unoccupied new apartment budings every 50-60 kms or so advertised as dream homes when the surroundings are rural and farmland, and the highway dividers are drying spaces for cowdung cakes. the highways have become smoother and wider than I remember from 10-15 yrs ago but strange contraptions of slow moving heavy vehicles still drive in the fastest lanes and trucks come at you suddenly in the wrong direction and no one thinks it strange, and maybe houses have become pukka have got electricity and dish tv, but there are still stacks and walls of cowdung cakes, the people making them look like their fathers and grandfathers in their garb and way of living. yes, 14th century forts have become luxury and boutique hotels and the demand for clean bathrooms has started to create some surprising rest stops along highways, but from the terraces of the fort hotels you still see lil farmers' houses keeping a few animals and farming tiny plots of land, their women still in their ghunghats. 

and even in those hotels there are still rowdy chauvinistic north Indian men splashing around loudly in the pools, more so when other women are around, flaunting what they think are their peacock feathers.

Forster says india beckons or rather appeals to one without promising anything. I wonder what indja is today. the man splashjng in the pool while his girlfriend wades in the kiddy pool in shorts and tshirt (pool rules clearly written say one must have a proper swimsuit to enter), is gone now; the tiny remnant of drizzle leftover from the evening rain is over, it's getting dark and mosquitoes are wondering if they can penetrate my protective film of sprayed odomos, the fort is coming alive with decorative lights that attract attention away from the stonewalls and bright Bougainvillea hugging them, and I hear bats just above my head flying in circles and clicking away. 

A woman is starting a wood fired chulha next to me. I ask her what she will make. She answers "makka aur bajre ki roti". there's a leopard spotted cat we saw earlier lapping up water from the pool; now it's kitten is running around and has scared a group of Delhi tourists, trying to get scraps of their food under their table. the chulha is smoking away and reminds me of the smog this morning and the factory chimney spewing black smoke you can see from the fort. 

what is India today, when most Indians who remain living here do so because they can't seem to get out. Is it still a promise-less call, an idea, contradictions of poverty and money, misery and luxury, history and modernity, patriarchy and women pushing against it. 

Rajasthan also reminds me of the obsequiousness of the people who serve those who pay them. it's stronger here than in many other places I've been or lived in. a waiter refurnishes the outdoor chairs and table that I am occupying because I'm sitting here even though the drizzle that was his reason for removing the cushions is back again. and he is embarrassed that I moved the mosquito coil myself between tables, although I'm happy to do so. and the cat is now sitting on the chair next to me even though I have no food and I'm just typing away. 

reading EM Forster again, after years. this time it's A Passage to India, after a few other books by other authors about India (although those were non fiction unlike this, but Forster's fiction is more real than life). reading Forster is like a gentle blissfulness. the following, a quote.

"She felt increasingly (vision or nightmare) that, though people are important, the relations between them are not, and that in particular too much fuss has been made over marriage; centuries of carnal embracement, yet man is no nearer to understanding man. And today she felt this with such force that it seemed itself a relationship, itself a person, who was trying to take hold of her hand."

I think I somewhat understand why there exists stigma around mental illness. It can be very challenging to live with, not just for the person themself but for spouses and partners and living-in family members. 

But for all those reasons and more we also need to open up and talk about these things, to share family histories and genetic propensities so that people are more aware of what they can pass on to their progeny and whether it's worth it. So far I thought my family, possibly on both sides had some illnesses zigzaging through members; now so does his. Many of these are much more common than we as a society accept or acknowledge or can even imagine. And yet ppl keep having kids without thinking what they might be burdening them with. At the very least awareness of genetic propensities should help design and maintain safer environments when they grow up, so that the possibilities in genetic makeup don't necessarily become realities through triggers.

Laura Marling 'Alas I cannot Swim', especially the title song and My manic and I.

she wrote it when she was 17-18.

we were always special. and then the realization that he was ill all this while, that he hid from me all along, dented that feeling. I thought he taught me vulnerability, trust, honesty, love, sex, running, a rediscovery of literature, and courage. now I know it was getting to know him that taught me all of that; he barely knew those things himself. he was barely surviving, struggling since ever that he had forgotten it took so much effort. but we are still special, the two of us. 

and did you see the moon today? I was driving back when it just got dark and I saw it low in the sky suddenly to my left. it scared me how beautiful it was. perfect, round, and glowing. I showed it to him from our window when I got back. he also said it was 'scary'. its probably today I understand why the word 'stunning' is used to describe beauty sometimes. 

Gods were probably creations of schizophrenic or anxiety ruled minds, or those on psychedelics (also naturally occuring, just like illnesses). The idea of heaven and hell probably added by hope and inspiration seeking depressed minds? Or maybe to rationalize some concepts of morality for social cooperation. Rituals must have come from OCD patients. And maybe dervishes and the idea of religious fervor and trances arose from bipolar highs. 

so in one way, religion is probably a concoction of mental illnesses. but on the other, for that very reason, it's basis exists naturally in the human mind. what to make of that? 

seems like I had been unconsciously preparing for this for the last few years with all that reading about genetics, mental illnesses, psychedelics, and the human mind. new purpose in life, or my fate. 

we are both in therapy now. he is back to his reader self and I realize how and why I missed that so much (he reads so much faster than me). and I'm feeling superheroic too. I always knew life wasn't a gift. Now more than ever when I'm overwhelmed though, all I need sometimes is a look up into the trees and hear the birdsound and look at those various shapes of green leaves. or a run in the park.

and I should have never come back to India.

sometimes I love reading books written decades ago to know the words used then, to understand the dilemmas occupying their minds then. to learn more about the origins of and the evolution of our thoughts and language. 

Raja Rao writes of his first meeting with Nehru, and I learn that there was/is a dialect called Deccani Urdu. That in the northern Urdu, idol was translated as 'budh', probably connected with the idea of Buddha. and that 'murti' is in fact Deccani Urdu for the same.

I learn that Nehru had a British passport, and probably so did Indians then as British subjects. but it seems like Raja Rao did not; did he have a French one because he married a French woman?

I have earlier read Nehru write about his visit/stay in the black forest in Germany. today Raja Rao describes visiting Nehru there. and for a while I transcend the passage of time and find myself thinking their thoughts and listening to their conversation.

there's also an essay where Rao extolls EM Forster (one of my idols/loves), but I have yet to read that. 

and I learn new words when I read old writings. chthonic; esurient.

But there are also the women who claim to be feminists but are ironically sexist in this regard. They assume that men can only want any advances they make toward them, verbal or physical, subscribing to the sexist myth than a guy wants all the sex and female attention he can get. Women also need to keep their hands to themselves, also need to understand consent; because although feminism is about women's (sexual and others) liberation, it is more importantly about equality. And consent is crucial to equality, either way. Any analysis of harassment or inappropriate touching/talking should be gender neutral.

boys (in India and elsewhere) grow up being told a whole set of lies about human sexuality in complete contrast with the silence we girls receive. about their need to masturbate in contrast with the taboo-ness regarding female masturbation, about their need for sex in contrast with the myth that women don't really enjoy sex but do it for the man.

so they as men are moulded by talk and treatment (and porn) to become (sometimes) unpleasant sexual partners. the holding her head in fellatio, hell even in intercourse, the objectifying of the breasts as having their own identity separate from the person (or the butt for that matter). I've always pointed it out when it happens to make him stop doing it cos of how inanimate it makes me feel. and it needs to be pointed out, every time every instance. 

even when we tell a street harasser that it's not ok, we somewhat correct the imbalance in conversation around sexuality. even when you kick away that leg from invading your personal space on a flight or bus. 

many years I wondered how such sexist parents brought up reasonably feminist sons like him and his brother. now (I'm a slow learner) I realise how much the sexism of the parents has percolated within them. 

the things the mom says, "Because she's a girl she must have told you everything.... she will come around ..."; and thinks and suggests, "having a kid will solve all problems". 

someday I will still probably write that book, now it will have to be about honesty and sexism and marriage and proximity to someone with mental illness (and how it sometimes feels contagious not by touch of course but by connectedness of minds and by the togetherness of dealing with it, the sharing of thoughts and the effort to obliterate myself so I can be less judgmental and less upset). 

just this morning he told me about this other blog and in comparison I felt like a coward because even in my mostly anonymous state here I haven't had the courage to confess and tell; therefore this today.

I have a strong sense of intuition. even other ppl have said this to me, ppl who know me well and have heard me a lot. these days I'm feeling like I also have some premonition. kinda scares me that. 

but now in hindsight I wonder if those falls on my runs were a warning for what lay ahead (I fell once more, soon after buying new shoes). I also remember telling him around that same time that almost every year the coming winter encourages me cos I do look forward to these few months of not continuous sweating but this year it felt strangely dark and depressing. 

even my plants are dying one by one, some red tinier-than-ants-insects feeding on the spotted croton.

there are my memories, 

and there are his, 

and they don't often align. 

and half our life, 

spent together

is a lil hollowed out.

even though I dream his memories now

and there is no 'truth'

only what we manage to construct together,

feeding each other's version

in and out back and forth,

sometimes losing touch of the boundaries

between us and the walls within.

it's hard to explain. I've read a decent bit about mental illness, I've seen friends who refuse to get help and family some of who have been blurred from being due to medication. I've always found the topic captivating, dark yes and scary yes, but enigmatic and mysterious. I've met ppl who almost brag of their struggles and those who are surprisingly open and matter of fact about it. There was also this girl once in hostel I was getting friendly with and then one late afternoon in her room (very dark I don't know why) she told me things about her family and childhood and violence which spooked me enough to avoid talking to her after that. Ive wondered many times since then if I could've helped her and I didn't. But what I feel often when I think back is not guilt but a strong sense of self preservation. 

In a similar way I have avoided some family members because I couldn't bare to see or hear them in their state of being. Sometimes it's very hard, you don't want to hurt them in the slightest but that means allowing them to bruise you quite a lot. 

And now, now I want to read a lot more about it. I remember that time I ate that spiked chocolate on a not great day, almost dehydrated and tired, and how it felt like my mind had gone across. That was soon after reading Plath's Bell Jar. Since then I've been ever more curious, of coourse because I crossed that line back in my mind but the fact that there was a line, right there, made it all too real. 

Now I want to study it professionally I think. It's becoming more and more irresistible. And these words from The Gene keep hanging around in my head, something to the effect of (I don't remember the exact words) 'where does the illness end and the person begin' or 'how do you separate identity from the illness'. 

some theories I have formed over the years and some words I need to put in writing so I don't forget and can quote later. "being human is becoming difficult" ppl who suffer from anxiety depression and related issues can't help becoming more self centered. can you ever really know someone? if you confess something to ppl, they will sometimes extend/impose their idea of things onto you in that moment of your vulnerability. ppl love to equate themselves to you especially in moments of defeat or other types of low. even if you know ur a much better fighter in life than them, even if that intent to equate kinda humiliates/underestimates you. It's hard to be objective, but it's not impossible. Reading has been a trove of wisdom and empathy, from where my sense of right and wrong emerge and evolve. And if you write, try and make a deep incision; don't barely scratch the surface, you can be better than that. And if you daren't do that, then ball and crush the written surface, obliterate it. Language is secondary.

photopost and a recommendation

sometimes the sky even in delhi is Blue.

these are from my terrace that I'm going upto a lil bit more this winter. Peepul keeps taking root along the water pipes. 

Today was esp beautiful, cold breeze blue sky and strong sun, just like I like December to be. 

birds were playing with the wind, floating weightless.

Oh and yeah, do watch My Octopus Teacher on Netflix. and then look up Craig Foster's other works.

a strange encounter

i had gone to le marche in vasant vihar (a supermarket where the clientele is often the embassy crowd of expats and their friends) the other day. just wanted to pick up 2-3 things while i waited for my fried chicken at the korean place nearby. many of these supermarkets these years have more aisle-help than one needs, and they make themselves obvious, "Ma'am do you need any help" or some such. there was this young girl who asked me that and because I couldn't find where the garbage bags were I did ask her. now I know the sizes of the bins at home in inches, or actually the sizes of the bags i usually buy. but this place had all garbage bags sized up in cms. i couldnt remember the conversion from cms to inches. and i wasn't carrying my phone cos i often leave it at home now to save up on sanitizing it after public exposure. so i asked the young girl if she could please tell me how many cms were an inch. i think i said it in hindi cos i do know a lot of the help around are not fluent in english. she asked me in turn what the size of my bin was. i do get annoyed when ppl answer a request or a question with another one, so i was already beginning to lose my patience but i told her that i knew the size in inches but not in cms so could she please translate for me as i wasn't carrying my phone on me. she said she didnt know. i asked her if she had her phone as i wasn't carrying mine; she took one out of her pocket; i told her she could look it up on her phone. she opened her calculator app and said she couldnt see how. i suggested gently that she should open up a browser and search on google. i had to somehow say it more than once explaining that a lil bit. the trusted google blank page came alight, and she didn't know what to do after that. i was trying not to show my surprise/shock on my face, and i just tried to lead her to clicking on the search bar and asked her to type "inch to cms". she even missed the lil virtual keypad that appeared and didn't seem to know what to do with it. because of covid and keeping my hands off her phone i simply tried to point out to the keypad and asked her to click on i-n-ch . she got the i, but no more beyond. even after 3-4 attempts. i realised not only did she not know that she carried a trove of information in her pocket and did not know how to access it, she was also unaware of the english alphabet. what surprised me then that she wasn't using the phone in hindi. i kept my mouth shut though and simply gave up at that point. i just picked up a medium sized pack of bags and told her it was fine, and thanked her. i came home and told hubby, told my mom and sis the day after, and have been thinking about it since. all those statistics that count and estimate the spread of smartphones and internet access in developing countries and use them to imply how these devices empower people's lives, etc. etc. and this was not an old person who had missed the internet revolution and could never seem to catch up with it. this was a girl of probably 18-20 years of age, belonging to a generation of people who use smart devices like physical appendages to their bodies. yes, i understand she probably didn't know english, she probably didn't have much education, that it was probably a new phone too that she had just been able to afford. but it was right in her pocket, it was a not-cheap smartphone, right in her pocket, and she worked in a store where she would probably see and hear and learn a lot about how things and people commmunicate. i was stunned. i still am despite the fact that i sort of know that india is a country where paradoxes are abundant and where dichotomies often do overlap. i was stunned at what i saw and understood to be the relationship between the young girl and her phone, probably that of dialing numbers and calling and receiving calls in turn, and maybe adding/subtracting amounts of money on the calculator. i was stunned at me being stunned. i mean this is my country and what do i know about it. what do i know about its people, my people? i could have been that girl, if i was born in different circumstances; could i really? there was a time when i remember marveling at someone's typing speed in college (Masters years!) when all i could do was use my two pointer fingers to click on one letter after another much much more slowly (now i do use multiple fingers to type much faster or i wouldn't be writing all this down). maybe that strange encounter will help her question what her phone is capable of, maybe she will sit down with it after dinner that day or with some friend and ask/explore how she can interact with it. maybe next time i won't be so surprised, and maybe i will actually try to teach her something. and maybe i've actually learned something from it already.

I bought my first pair of running shoes (nike air) in 2006, after a few days of running in my converse sneakers because I didn't want to splurge on expensive shoes if I wasn't going to like running. in about 2013-14 running started to hurt. my left knee would click every now and then and going down stairs was especially difficult. i ran funny somedays then, swinging my feet out to the sides, cos it seemed to help, slightly. round about then I also fell one morning on my run; scraped my knee (I forget which one) and my left hand between the fingers and the wrist on the non-palm side. I still have butterfly shaped mark from that bruise on my hand that now looks like a birthmark. I remember I also tore my leggings that day on the fall. I stopped running as often, especially after my knee aches and then after someone suggested my shoes might need a change I think I stopped running altogether. there was new found yoga then. sometime after I moved to Fort Worth in 2015 and found myself by the river (Trinity) I wanted to run out in the mornings again. I remember some running discomfort again. and then I bought some cheapish Asics on sale, online, not sure changing shoes was the answer. the pair turned out to be so snug I couldn't fit socks in it and I think they were beyond returning giving having been bought on sale or some such. I started running in them without socks and felt like my free-er toes simulated barefeet running. my knee felt fine again just like that. although without socks my shoes got a lot more stinky and dirty on the insole. I had them till a month ago. this monsoon I started running outdoors again. then maybe in October I twisted something just above my right ankle. felt like I had hurt my achilles tendon. rest for a week, but it was sore even after hurting when I ran. then it kinda went away. and then one day I just fell headlong. probably got my shoe on a stone protruding from the park path (there are many all over). probably distracted by the cricket croud laughing (at me? there are often comments directed at me in a park where I am the only running girl). and I suddenly found myself hurtling toward the sand colored earth ahead of my with my hands outstretched to embrace it or push it away. I scraped my left knee and my left elbow. a few old uncles asked me if i was ok and told me about some woman who had just the day before suddenly fainted in the park. i said i was fine, i brushed the dust off, the elbow just looked like some dry blades of grass and the rough earth had scratched it, and my knee clothed in my grey leggings felt strong. so i started running again, finished the lap and a half that was still due. my knee was singe-ing by now and by the time i got into my car I saw that the leggings were staining with some blood although not enough to emerge through the fabric on the outside. got home washed it, was a bloody patch for about 3-4 days and i couldnt bear fabric on it so i wore shorts although it was getting coldish. new skin has covered it now. i always find the melanin spots so symmetrically arranged in any patch of new skin (golden ratio?) pretty cool. also the bruise colors. i didn't run for a few days again. next time i ventured out i was very careful looking at the ground and watching my steps. then in my final lap i felt this guy's eyes on me, sideways, right next to me. I looked reflexively. and then I fell again. he turned back to see me on the ground, didn't offer to help thankfully. i cursed myself. but thought i wasn't hurt this time. and then I saw the palm of my right hand; blood oozing out. probably my car key had scratched me; I usually have it in that palm while I run. the key itself had flown off to the side. I grabbed it, wiped it on my legginged leg, this time didn't try to finish my lap and drove home if only to wash the earth off the bleeding palm. for a day or two I obsessed over a bit of skin around the piercing that looked muddy and I couldn't seem to reach within it to get the brown out. inspired by all the reading about microbes and diseases I thought a bit about tetanus bacteria spores. but it healed beautifully, no bruises or scars, just a slightly darker spot left in the pink palm. by the way i once read (or heard) that we don't quite know why our bodies leave scars. its not like a scar is necessary in the skin's process of closing up, sealing in, and healing the wound. its probably a reminder to our past accidents, mishaps, foolishnesses, pain, etc. etc. dunno if that makes sense but to me it seemed cool then, like our body communicating to our minds, across time and place. anyway, two falls in two runs in a row. i initially attributed it to change of running speed cos i had then started running with a mask as October is PM2.5 month. maybe running slower upset my balance somehow. maybe. but then, anyway, i also blamed my shoes. each time its time to change shoes something like this happens, multiple lil incidents and injuries. so i bought the third pair of running shoes in my life. online again. asics again. but not pronated ones this time (i am slightly flat footed). ive been running like a charm since then. and these are half a size larger than the last ones, so socks fit in too. don't seem to ruin the barefooted feeling too much, I still splay my toes (within my socks) before they hit the ground each time. running is quite a natural muscle memory art. the other day two guys commented (talking to each other) that I had started coming to the park very late these days. i wanted to tell them: its hard getting out of my blanket as it gets colder. a couple days some men commented on my shorts being too small, and my tshirt being too big almost covering my shorts. this where even in hot summer other women walk in skin tight leggings. and today some middle aged uncles (maybe younger) weren't quite as appreciative in the right way when they commented on how active to them I looked. I've heard other women complain that delhi isn't a city for early morning runs alone for a girl. i've run alone at 6-ish mornings since 2007 on and off. somehow these men never bother me enough. 2 years ago I used to go out with my pepper spray, now I don't even bother with that given the pandemic has got the park so busy with ppl channeling their energy into new healthy habits.

pandemic instrospection

a cousin had some insomnia, lack of appetite, and anxiety issues. one day when I was talking to him he was trying to explain how he and his best friend feel like the world post covid19 is despondent. it leaves just work and home and family, stripping away diversions and crowds.

his friend is quite outgoing and extrovertish, but my cousin is not. I was trying to understand, gently pointing out that crowds and socializing can be tiring such that the pandemic can offer a valid excuse and thus some relief (?).

I later thought about it a lot. work and family and home. what else is there really? yes, once in a while exploring untrodden paths and swimming in unknown tides. and staring at trees, the horizon, mountains and lichens, into the distance and the sun, dreaming out onto old town roofs, talking to strangers yes and exchanging stories and smiles and foods and wines, and sweating happily in all that exploration in many different ways. but only temporarily. till one feels drawn back by the need to work or that to get home. to a one person family or more, or even to an alone home so one can work. 

is work what is exchanged for a means to a living? or is it one's effort to contribute in some way what only one can. I feel like that's where the answer lies. between work and home and family being enough or not. similarly, whether home and family are truly an extension of one's self or are intrusions, uninvited and inescapable.

I've been reading a lot of book samples these days, not knowing what I want and choosing more carefully, spending a lil more wisely. there are good samples that I will still not ending up buying, where the 50-odd pages are somewhat enough even if they soothed me, informed me, helped me calm down before dozing off. but then there are samples where I so badly want to highlight words, phrases, sentences, thoughts. even if I know I'll rarely come back to read them. these books I must buy. last night the sample mostly consisted of an introduction, something of a literary review of the book by another author/critic. samples don't allow highlighting; so I had to buy the book. and now I'll have to look for this second author, this critic, and his books too. if his intro to another's text was so highlightable I hope his writing is too. btw below, a few highlighted bits from Philipp Meyer's introduction to Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian.

"When you are judging a literary masterpiece, you are judging first the substance and ideas behind the work. Are they true, are they worth saying, does the book articulate them organically (without talking over the characters) and in a way no one has done before? You are judging the artist's ability to capture a world and the people in it and the ability to work in a mode so distinct it can only be hers or his. You would not confuse a Van Gogh with a Rembrandt - in fact you would be able to identify both at a glance. At the highest level, prose should be no different."

"the Judge is constantly recording things in his notebooks, sketches and observations, in attempt to replace or supplant the real item (which he physically destroys when possible). This is not so different from what the artist hopes to do. Few of us know anything about fifteenth-century Danish kings, but most of us know the story of Hamlet. Such as it is with Chamberlain and Cormac McCarthy. Art has eclipsed the Real."

"a man moves about the barren plain "striking fire that God has placed" in the earth. He is digging holes for fenceposts, creating the demarcation between civilization and the wild; or, depending on your point of view, between a new civilization and an old one. Other men follow him blindly. They see only the holes he has dug. They don't see the man. They don't see his fire."

in other stories, watching Mira Nair's A Suitable Boy is bringing back not just the book and it's visual scenes and heartfelt characters, but is also bringing back the time and that past me when I was reading that book about 10 years ago. I read it partly in India and partly in my first home alone (technically with a flatmate but not really a companion) in Texas. I remember being immersed in it, moved by it, remember even that I read the stampede scene a lil after a similar one had occured in India in reality. And now it's all coming back, not just the emotions that the story and the characters whip within my soul, but my frame of mind then when I read it, my innocence and my optimism, my lack of disenchantment and disillusionment. one thing that strikes me now (and it did not then) is how there's a common theme in the stories of many characters in the book: that of Faiz's "humse pehli si mohabbat mere mehboob na maang ...". another is how the horror of partition that till now always felt so in the past now feels so much more like an ever present threat.

anyway, from India to Texas and back, between books and stories, I'll be smiling some more nights in my bed as I highlight words that resonate deep within somewhere. the act of highlighting though has changed, I don't need a pencil or a fluorescent one, now my finger suffices.

Somedays this life is just too much work to live. I am a misfit, I still don't know my work or place here. 

plumber was supposed to come this morning, said around 9:30/10. my pot cistern has been overflowing, so I've been controlling it through the open/close switch/lever on the inlet pipe rather than call a plumber, cos it's too much work esp now. but this week one day i forgot to close it after peeing when I was sleepy and water ran for about 40 mins before I heard it. so I decided to get it done.

dreamt of pots and crap and the latter spilling and overflowing and me carrying it and what not. woke up 4 times during the night for various reasons of controlling temperature and one of us going to the loo. then at about 6 he goes again. this time it's a bit much and cos the sun has started to creep out and I can see its bright outside of my eye mask I find it harder to slumber off again. think I'll get up to throw in the laundry before the plumbers visit blocks that bathroom. and then I want to pick up my bed stuff and get a few hours on the sofa. but my bed stuff includes my phone and somehow the bad dreams tell me I shud look at what's waiting on my phone for me. of course, rejection email from yet another journal. I doanage to give it one full reading, debate whether I shud wake him up but he isn't responding anyway. sofa then, try some sleep. dunno why wake up v happy and contented, although remember the email. kinda feeling like not giving a f about it. 

laundry is calling out. dryer, some on the rack, morning stuff. breakfast and complaining to k. bell rings, plumber is early. but of course. 

cut short and fast fwd. finally have a working flush. it's just 10 in the morning and I'm exhausted of the effort it takes to live this life. k is upbeat goes out to get our fav pizza. I've said to myself before, every rejection has got to be celebrated or else it gets to you. might as well. 

I'm looking at job postings. Facebook is looking for someone to help with it's forthcoming payments app, waiting to show up on ur whatsapp as well. aarghh. I'm also still too idealistic. 

oh well let's see how this day goes. I'm becoming superstitious too. and more defiant. slowly feels like I've disconnected from this world. it began with the work without a job, then covid and associated isolation, now I'm not even talking to mom in law for something she said. had an argument with sis cos of her messed up love life, now staying out of that too. what's left then? k and pizza and my unsellable equations, and running. missing the swimming too big time. 

pandemic 2020: streaming tv worth watching

Borgen (Netflix)

Masaba Masaba (Netflix)

Stateless (Netflix)

Handmaid's Tale (Amazon) 

Rasbhari (Amazon)

yes Indian Netflix/Amazon shows are growing up after all. the year before (or maybe two years ago) Little things and Made in Heaven were pushing boundaries.