Maya

To all my blog readers, I think it is time I owed an explanation. The last few months have been.... irritating to say the least. My mood was fluctuating on a daily basis, my confidence on an hourly basis. I could have drawn a statistical chart with the number of times I cried versus the time of the day. And I subjected you to my pain through my blog. Now that I have a job and the near future no longer seems as uncertain and shrouded in mists as it did till a couple of days ago, I think and I hope I will be happier. The last few months were some of the best in my life but the one fact that I didn’t have an internship was a lingering niggling itch in the back of my mind. Hopefully, I can be happy in peace from now on.

I was working on an internet draft that finally got submitted. And now there is a piece of internet paper with my name on it floating in the cloud. And like the ex-girlfriend character from the ‘Social Network’ says “what you write in the internet is written in ink” or something along that line, this will stay on forever, my work is eternal, my name shall ring through the corridors of history or atleast remain smudged in a corner of the wall. So a job offer and an internet draft later, my life seems much sunnier. Or maybe that is the California weather getting reflected in my mind as well.

The last few weeks have been a series of emotional lows. The grandpa I stayed with in Chicago passed away. It was a sad time for all of us. I wanted to go for his funeral but I couldn’t get the tickets on time. He opened his house to me when I was a stranger to the land and at a time when I was feeling alone and sad in the little world inside my head. I wish i could have said goodbye. My paternal grandpa managed to fracture his hand. So my parents’ plans of visiting me in LA got scrapped. My mom’s 50^th bday passed without me in it. It cut me up that I couldn’t do anything for her. A friend of mine is getting married in September. She insisted that I be present in her wedding. I wish people wouldn’t do that. Keep asking me when I’ll be coming and demanding that I do. It is very sweet of them and it makes me very happy that they miss me. But it is painful that I cant give them the answer they want and I want. I seem to have fought with every single one of my friends now, the ones here and the ones back in India. It makes me wonder how every one of them could be wrong about me. But I cant find anything wrong with anything I did with regard to them, so they must be. I’ve never been one for crying unnecessarily but the last few weeks have been too much even for me. I have cried in random classes, in the stairs leading up to my house, in the middle of the university grounds behind $5 dark sunglasses. I have felt betrayed and lost. And when a friend asked why she would possibly want to go back home when she has nothing to look forward to in India, I wondered too. But life goes on. And this aint no place for the weary kind. So you pick up your crazy heart and give it one more try.

On the brighter side, I have discovered a latent domestic goddess-liness within me. The day I screwed up my Intel interview, I made an awesome Chicken Saagwala (Chicken in spinach sauce). And I realize what gazillions of women have realized before me- that cooking calms me. It calms me and soothes me. The act of producing and giving, if only to yourself, helps correct a day’s worth of emptiness. I have also discovered a new song. If ever I survived last week, it was because of this. I havent been able to stop listening to it since. Bin Laden was killed. America celebrated. Castle released a new episode. And I am getting addicted to a new person to talk for hours with.

You might wonder what the title of the post has anything to do with it. But i think the fact that I am writing this post looking back, is testimony to one person who has always been there for me, regardless of the circumstances, unselfishly and with no hidden agenda. When i’ve felt utterly alone, when i’ve felt like the world i knew was collapsing over me, when i’ve felt happiness beyond measure, there was always one person who was there through it all, with me. If i were to audit how much i owe to the people in my life, she would need an entire book. And so, this part of my life shall be called....