The lean girl diaries.....

I am my mother's daughter. I look like my dad, I speak like my dad and many say that I behave like him too, but I am my mother's daughter. It was easy to call my dad a role model, because I only knew him for 6 short years and I guess death does tend to soften memories. I've only heard of great things about him - from my mom and everybody else. There was an altar of legacy built around him where I had to be the perfect copy to carry the torch forward. With amma though, I could just be. I could be whatever I want and would be accepted for it. Amma tends to downplay her role in building the person I am now. She thinks genes and 6 years of inane babbling with my dad has contributed to my personality more than 23 years of consistent effort she has put on me. Everything I know about love, commitment, kindness and a hundred other things are solely because of her. There are not enough words to explain everything she has taught me and how much I love her; but words are the only thin...

My sister had a baby last month. This tiny ball of sunshine has since occupied my life completely. Probably because now, I'm older than I was when all my other siblings had babies, I am much more directly involved in the care of baby Miriam. While I've always been obsessed with babies (if you want to kidnap me, showing cute babies is the way to go), it's pleasantly surprising to have a baby love me this much. Yup, I said it. Miriam ADORES me. In a big way - stops crying when she hears my voice, smiles when she sees me in the morning, sleeps easily in my arms, makes it obvious that I'm her favourite - BIG.  It is humbling as much as it's brag worthy. Being the youngest in the family with a considerable age gap meant that I was often too young for the milestones that my siblings were at. I wasn't old or brave enough to hold tiny babies, giving proper support to their neck. My favourite experience was holding the babies when I was sitting for a few moments and just...

(I actually wrote this for an assignment for a philosophy course - your autobiography from the POV of a body part) I grow about a tenth of a millimeter per day. And I have regrown countless times, so a different version of me has seen her everyday, I suppose. She leaves me be, when she's away from home but cuts me down as soon as her mother comes anywhere near a hundred meter radius. It was fine when she was 5, but now that she's in her early 20s, it's a little silly how decisions about her own body are still dependent on other bodies and minds. The way she's groomed me from when she was a child shows how she grew up and what she grew up to be. The little girl who used to sit with trembling fingers expecting pain as her mother cut her fingernails was a picture of a mess. We were always caked with dirt and if let loose, was coated in spices which amma had to quickly wash off before they inevitably landed in her ear. Always (trying to be) an overachiever, she figured out ...

Last week, I gave a eulogy for my grandmother. I was in jitters the day before. It was unlike any speech I had done before.  In my head, my word vomit in those 5 minutes would determine how she was remembered by the people who came for the funeral (at least the ones who did not know her that well). I had to verbalize a fitting legacy. But more importantly, in a childish sense,  it would be the last time that I would get to talk to her - face to face - even though I knew that she couldn't possibly hear me.  Following the funeral, it was little difficult for all of us to look at her things - her sarees, her airbed, towels......An absurd thought occurred to me then. What if she had a phone? More specifically, what if she had a phone number?  If she had a number, then it would soon get deactivated; after a point of time, it would be reassigned. What would I have done then?  Message her everyday, only to get a "sorry,  wrong number", one morning in return? ...

  I read somewhere that “the purpose of the first draft is to simply exist”. This was an idea that gave me immense relief in recent times - times when I wrote nothing other than what I absolutely had to. In the pursuit of academic writing and a short-lived content writing job, I forgot the joy of writing. When I finally told myself that I had to go back to leisure writing, I was appalled at how empty my head was. I could not think of a single thing to write. Sure, if you gave me a topic, I could make up something and put it out there - but they were not out of my own imagination. The pandemic took away my ability to see beauty in ordinary things. I could no longer look at a passenger in the metro next to me and romanticize her life. There was a lot of strife and conflict around me, that every version of the future looked bleak. I found escape in fantasy books and movies as I was scared of relating to the harsh realities in other kinds of media. It felt like while I still had a lot ...

  Today my grandmother forgot how photos worked. She looked at the picture of a kid in the magazine and thought he was smiling at her. It was a weird thing to see - to see her let go of her understanding of memories. It was sad to know that she would not remember a thousand good days but it also meant she experienced every moment afresh. There is bound to be some confusion when she sees herself on some of those photos. But I will deal with the flurry of emotions if it means she smiles back at everyone who smiles at her through the prints, so full of joy. I always thought memories became important because of their ability to be shared ; that nostalgia was what made certain experiences worth going through. My grandmother's gummy smile today tells a different story. Memories are important because they can be felt (maybe only one time, maybe many many times) This revelation is a turning point for me - because with the idea that memories gained their worth due to the ability to be treas...