30

2018, what a year I must say. Year got tougher in every aspect unthinkable. For the starters,  I turned 30 in October 2018. I'd pined to write on this but schedule was difficult. Three decades complete, with last decade full of a roller coaster ride. I moved around few number of cities in India: Bhopal, Pune, Gandhinagar, Mumbai, etc. I moved to another nation, the US; moved here to three cities: Atlanta and most currently New York City Area, Weehawken township. I made few or close to no new friends in the decade save college ones from under graduate, give one or two from masters'. The ones from work were non existential and are none to say. 

I think it is good for me to see how things have shaped, unshaped in this decade or several years combined. I got my first job in 2010 Dec., I got my first paid intern in year 2014. I saw a good number of movies until 2011 thanks much to under-grad hostel and LAN. Movies rarely added to my schedule after 2011 give or take few A-OK and recently some more. 
Songs, I stick to 1990s songs from Sonu Nigam, Saif Ali Khan's rom-com movies from early 2000s or so, Jagjit Singh ji's ghazals, few numbers from Raageshwari, Shamsa Kanwal. I yearn for songs popular on highways in trucks. I miss road trips I had had those long years back. They were fun in Maruti Omni van on Madhya Pradesh-Rajasthan roads. Highway trucks from Chetak transport, myriad lights in truck cabins, numerous idioms and poetry (dohas) on back of truck to blow horn and greediness. I miss excitement of sitting on passenger seat and watch truck passing by, and us passing the trucks. The cacophonous yet rhythmic horns from trucks. I miss them that has been a long long past now. The cassette recordings from Kuch Kuch Hota Hai, mix of recording from remixes from old songs were exhilarating for a long road trip. We used to sing, flip over the cassette for another songs and get along the bumpy single track roads, cough from handful of road dust. There was a journey I recall, our car being towed from muddy patch in rains for the wheel wouldn't stop spinning. Not anymore does that happen now.
I have grown old enough to have a log of my memories and I may miss not to log evanescent memories.

Last decade hasn't been incredible with relationships. They aren't my forte, it's hard to manage, balance, match up, tone down, accommodate. Nope, they have been a complete disaster. Financially, things haven't been glamorous, either, I make some and burn some. Not breaking banks with thick paychecks. Food wise, I'd fiddled with not so well-cooked food, learnt how to cook well, new dishes, get all raw spices to cook any traditional dish. I mess up when making large quantities food. I gave up consuming deep-fried dishes, mostly; my stomach can't stomach it. 

As a person I cannot say how much have I improved, or to say, downgraded in last decade. I'm still hard, want things that I yearn, absoluteness I've been able to shed off. I still can't make things on the fly, or pretension part is yet to be learnt. The only saying part, and later not looking into isn't my approach, nor I've attempted to learn, or even pretended to learn. I've lost: things, people, interviews, but, I'm devoid of incomplete or say grey areas. 
Over the last few years, I've tremendously started missing my school days, I get dreams of my friends; wish I hadn't left school. But in school we've had this burning urge to enter college; life, have fun, motorcycles, trips, get rid of school dress, boards drama, chemistry and physics laboratories. A few years back, I met one of old school teachers; she was still teaching students at her home in the evening. She introduced me to students with a hand gesture about my  childhood body size and told them this small I was when she taught me. She was my first grade teacher.
I've nostalgically been thinking of home, my family past few months, at long hours, in the silence of the (US) nights, yeah US is unarguably a silent place. How things have gone and where did things screw up? We all tried yet here we are in unimaginable, unfixable paths of life. Packing of bags, salary slip, shopping and other numerous related yet unrelated now, things don't add much. They are as simple task as picking up newspaper from morning doormat. The eyes well up at the departure gates with heads turning away, yet the journey continues.
Hostel birthday bashes were unforgettable, accompanied by alcohol and kicks by a group of tens of friends at the stroke of midnight. Whoever had joined to kick used to get a  smoking stick, or he joined rather for a smoking stick, to say. Those celebrations; we used to dread and at the same time crave for good or bad. Next day, with heavy heads of body-numbing hangover, with body still trying to figure out where the kicks hadn't hurt, the birthday used to end.

The day was mundane, I had cut cake in evening, had a shot or two with friend and friend's friend. The burden has overwhelmingly grown with birthday. With zero-and-thirty, I don't feel like looking forward to celebrate birthday. The party and joy part don't stoke me. I'd rather simply have a peg or two, hangout with my family in a city with pleasant weather of 70-72 degree Fahrenheit, eat delicious food, sleep tightly in a dreamless night.




Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Standing in snow

Books from yesteryear

Around DC