Winter is coming.

Usually, I don't write on request but this one time, I thought I'd oblige. Mainly because I want to and partly because, if not for him, then who and if not now, then when. So on. 

Except for a random post its been a year since I read or wrote anything and that's pretty sad. Actually, you know what's sad? Me and my year. I spent the first quarter in the hospital with a spinal injury and thought that was the worst thing that could happen to anyone. Then, my mom grew a tumour and I worried that this was it. But it was benign and they did operate and then it was over. Except of course, that it wasn't. 

Last month, my dad came down with the flu and went to our local doctor for a cough syrup. Last week, we found out it was Stage IV, cancer.   

You know, considering how many horror movies I watch, I should have known, the false scare. Classic stuff. Mother walks the halls of her new and eerily quiet house, following the whispers from the basement. With her heart in her mouth, she takes one step after the next, climbs down the stairs and in one sweeping motion, yanks the closet open - there is nothing.  She can't believe it. She sighes in relief and turns to go back to bed. And then gasps, but...no... its only the cat.  She picks it up and laughs and chides self for being silly.  She gets back into the bed and under the covers.  There he is, waiting.  

That's how I feel. Shocked. Numb. Screamy. 

Life hasn't changed at all though. Not yet, anyway. My dad still laughs merrily discovering email forwards, youtube videos and Telugu TV. My mom still worries about the milk. I work. Or play boardgames. Or from time to time, sob uncontrollably into Bear's chest. 

My mom's favourite anecdote from my childhood is that she could almost always predict when I'd get sick. She'd have a stack of leave letters to send school every time my dad went away on tour. The morning after he left, I'd just run a fever, every single time. I laugh everytime she tells this story because of how far-fetched it is. But now, I can see why that could be true.  I feel physically, revoltingly sick every time I have to think of a world in which he doesn't exist. 

But, I don't have to think about that. Yet. So, I won't. 

Gaah. This is not what I started wanting to write. Also, I think I just DDed you. In case I haven't told you about DD, she is this girl who sat next to me for breakfast last week and told me about how (i)her boy broke up with her (ii) her PhD didn't work out (iii) her house got flooded and rot (and) grew moss (and) got infested with rodents (vi) her dad had a heart attack (v) her grandma died (vi) her house caught fire (I might be making this up) and (vii) her mother found her a new boy who's 15 (or was 10) years older. 

(viii) Oh and also, she got food poisoned two hours after she told me the story. 

Let me stop here while some of your pain receptors still remain.   I will write the post that I meant to and before next year, I promise. 

On marriage and other things.

After many, many months of radio silence, Smurfette and I got talking one day last month and she casually let it drop that she and the boy were looking at a December wedding.  I pretended outrage. I didn't even know there was a wedding on the cards, let alone the season. And then, she said something that's been in my head ever since. 

"What else is there when you start dating at this age, man," she had said. For someone who's been single for a decade, at 25, I found myself reluctantly conceding her the point. 

But now, when I see one talentless photographer after another making millions filming my friends and their mothers getting dressed in incandescent-lit wedding shoots, I am beginning to see the point. No, wait, doesn't mean I am getting married. But all I am saying is that I get it. 

I think there just comes this time when you finally realise that you no longer need to belong to the misfit of a family you were born into. That you can make your own now, one that will look and feel just as you want it and you can at last have that the home and the dog your mother never allowed you to have. And above all, have someone in whose story you'll be the hero.

So, yes, I come to the same conclusion that has been arrived at by millions of minds and shaadi.com a million years ago. I don't know why they don't just advertise it like this: 

Marriage (v): A great distraction from the dreary business of life.  

There. I am sold.