Back from hiatus(?)

I see that it's has been a long time since I wrote a post. Getting all existential about your life and then moving to a different continent will do that to you. I also started (and have been neglecting) a different blog and wrote a few stories in the hiatus. So it's not all bad on the creative writing front.

Its so quiet as I sit in my room now and watch a leafy slowly flutter down from the tree in my backyard. The grey silence of autumn is strangely soporific. It is peaceful and unnerving at the same time - I crave the quiet and the solitude but it often plunges me into a kind of pessimistic lethargy. And so, I try daily to strike that right balance between a public life and a private one.

When one is alone, it is so easy to carve out some me-time. To do just what pleases one or to do nothing at all if that is what one chooses. It can quite spoil you for company. So easy to lay curled up in bed, endless thoughts spinning through one's head.

Being alone makes you realize just how many conversations you have with yourself. And if you're like me, it doesn't bother you at all because you have a pretty active inner voice anyways. It struck me one day as I was going back home after a long day at the office. Once my office work is done, it is highly likely that I speak to no one at all as I journey back home, prepare dinner and get ready for bed.

You realize that the reason why you didn't do certain things has nothing to do with location and everything to do with you. I thought I would finally learn the culinary arts once I was on my own. Turns out I still don't like to cook. Neither the beautiful kitchen nor the growling of my tummy can make me do it. I do the occasional egg-frying, pasta making etc. but I find I can't be bothered to do more when I can do less. In other words, when I can easily eat out or buy ready to eat food which fits my mood at the time, why would I want to spend time cooking. After a hard day at work or even over precious weekends, I feel I'd rather spend my time doing something else.

This is not to say that I don't miss home-cooked food. I miss it intensely. The cliche about nothing quite besting "ma ke haath ka khana" (meals cooked by mother) is true my friends. After a while, all the restaurants of the world will pale in comparison to a meal of familiar, comfort food cooked by your mom. But yes, the fact that I am used to dining out and experimenting with my cuisine has been helpful. I know some people who stuck to the same culinary diet all their lives and suffered each time they had to travel. Experimenting with one's taste buds is one of the joys of living.

This also means of course that plans of a change in lifestyle have flown out of the window. Healthy, organic food, regular exercise and other such dreams turn to dust when I get stressed with work. Then only a ready to eat cheese-laden pizza and several precious hours of sleep seem important. Waking up early to exercise? You must be joking. Working out after work? Do you know what time my work gets over? So, yeah.

I get easily distracted these days, so I'll assume the same for you and continue my knowledge-sharing some other time. I have to go figure out what to have for lunch.