I want to tenderly smooch everyone ! I’m planning to work on tenderness towards myself and try and be a vegan in 2024. It has been in the works for ever and not sure if this would work even now. But I figured, making plans aren’t going to do any harm.

As I previously acknowledged, meeting this Stranger changed me, which is really surprising to me.  Even though, sometimes I burst into tears because of the uncertainty and absurdity of it all, I’m filling my life with colors and smiles. If I were a cartoon, a butterfly or two would be fluttering around my beaming face. I’m breaking into smiles for no apparent reason and freely exchanging them with others and I’m immensely happy. Should I feel guilty about this ?!

Or is this what you might call an OCD dream ? It’s like he’s my ultimate escape from reality. I don’t know what attracts me to him. I’m so drawn to him, and unless I’m completely mistaken, he is also attracted to me. It’s like two souls unconsciously recognize each other and are drawn to each other for their survival. I’ve had crushes before, even with a guy at my work but you know, this time it’s different. While my other crushes were fleeting, this Stranger is a goddamn knight on a white horse !

The other day (12/5) while driving to work, the traffic was terrible, so my car & I weren’t making much progress speedwise. My car navigator which I leave on even though I know the route, kept repeating “the traffic is heavy for some reason, but this is the fastest route”. It cracks me up to no end. Anyway, I was crawling along and I looked at this car in the next lane and there was a teenage boy in the backseat, and the boy and I both looked at each other and we burst into laughter ! it was so strange but also so featherweight and so fresh and so innocent ! and this filled me with sheer joy like you can’t put a price on it. the boy looked more like the aborigines or maori –

My cat, Minnou, will only drink from faucets, and that too from the faucet which I’m currently using. Some mornings it’s extremely irritating and disruptive especially the mornings when I’m rushing to go to work. I have to personally accommodate and pander to this little furry rogue’s hydration needs when there are perfectly good drinking water all over my place; a water fountain, two bowls of water (on the floor next to the fountain and dry food bowls), a bowl in the sink in the kitchenette (I use the term loosely) and another in the bathroom. (I’ve this irrational fear that if I get into an accident or die, at least my cats won’t die of hunger or thirst). If I’m using a sink either in kitchenette or bathroom, I remove the respective bowl, but there he will be, his royal highness, demanding water.  I tried to entice him to using other multitude bowls by buying various bowls of metal, ceramic; not even remotely close and a cigar wasn’t on the cards.  Sonu, on the other hand, is a kitty, who gets his hydration exclusively by eating wet food and he has no need for water. And the days when he demands to drink water, I know it’s time to make a trip to the vet because he will be running a low grade fever. And he would only drink water at the kitchenette sink, where I’ve to present him the bowl of water, with the kitchen faucet open slightly and then, he will proceed to drink his water while staring at the steady stream of water out of the faucet. Weirdo !

As I’m on vacay, I was clearing out junk while eating junk and singing to my cats, old hindi songs which I grew up with and now and then breaking out into little dances and thus confusing my cats but they are polite, civilized and gentlemanly and put up with their mama !

I’ve been observing this phenomenon and am not quite sure if I’m remembering things wrong or have completely lost it. Like I remember watching some movies and I could swear I watched them with my husband but when I look at the release date, it’s released after his passing. So I’m like, this is not possible. I can understand one movie, but a lot of movies are like that and I’m baffled. I know sometimes, I would be watching some stuff and if it is interesting, I’m like, I should tell Jace (my husband) about this. So, may be that’s how I’m remembering that I watched it with J, who the fuck knows ?

 Anyways, today (12/20) I watched a hindi movie called “Bazaar”, the cultural theme is truth based even though the story of the movie is a fiction, and cried my little eyes out; Ugh, it’s such a sad movie and I watched it when I was a child and this movie is basically set in my city Hyderabad and it is quite sad where barely legal girls (especially muslim) from poor background were sold by the parents as commodities because they need the money; obviously it’s not called “selling” because we live in a hypocritic society and so we observe basic social norms and cultural values. So while it’s not okay to call it “selling” and this is unacceptable term, but it becomes acceptable and respectable even if you call it “marriage”. But the truth of it all is, it’s more like “marrying” these girls to men who can be their fathers or grand fathers because they have money, and they can buy the girls. It is a terrible thing and I don’t understand why poor people think of tethering themselves to social norms, when society doesn’t save them. False pretenses, fake respect is all they live for.

I’ve been thinking a lot about storytelling, or penning them down in some space like this, so I can share a late night with the Stranger, may be while eating cakes and having coffee; like they do in the stories while sitting in the kitchen (I got no kitchen in this tiny apartment, so we probably will sit on the metal stairs); I’ve been thinking about penning memories as a way of preservation of myself, as a way to remember a moment in another way, taking up root and growing into a legacy.

We all have stories to tell and sometimes we find nice ways to frame our stories. The moral of this story sharing with Stranger or any tale is whatever we tell ourselves. Lies also can fit as perfectly as shards of broken glass when we take clues and glue back each jagged edge back to the original shape with a cracked view.