3 days ago, a black butterfly with a broken wing flew into my living room. Despite my best efforts, I could not manage to shoo it out of the house. It kept itself latched onto the ceiling and would not budge. My wife asked me to let him be.

I am not sure if my 55 day old labrador noticed him but the butterfly kept switching it's place, wall to wall, always maintaining it's elevation. I kept the doors open for him to fly away, but he seemed to have other ideas.

Last night, I found him lying down - like a crumbled piece of paper - ready to be discarded, in the puja room, very much in front of the gods that we worship - lifeless but perhaps in peace.

I do not know what to make of this inefficacious incident, but I hope the butterfly found its resting place.

-

My handwriting is like my personality. It’s not really mine, not patented.
It’s a strange concoction of everyone else’s handwriting I've come across.

Growing up, everyone always said I had a beautiful handwriting. I didn’t mind the adulation but never really received any ‘extra marks’ for them.
I had a varied writing style – It'd be cursive with a ‘gel/ink’ pen, straight with a ballpoint pen.
I'd be able to mimic any handwriting I adored. My father & my maternal grandfather both had excellent styles – grain like, beautiful like a typewriter would print & I’d forever keep emulating them.
Once I’d borrowed a classmate’s notebook & ended up copying his bulging-potato-like writing style, just because I found it oddly interesting. My mother – who happens to be my first writing-in-lines tutor, was not very happy about it.
Most of my exam papers used to start with a ‘Calibri’ & end with a tribal font. But I digress, the point I was trying to make is - my writing style was always inconsistent.

9 years ago, I took a personal call to stick to a style – like a mental gate to writing & it hasn’t changed since.
It’s still good I’d say from a neutral perspective, but is it really mine ?

-

My father is not much of a chatterbox nor a conversationalist,
but he would make sure everyone was in touch with each other - a call here & there in crucial moments, not regular but more like
festivals, anniversaries etc - all via my mother.
Very much aware that the same contacts were saved on his own cell too, but he'd rather let his wife do the talking.
And nothing would please him more than getting to hear/see his kin. Old-school family man.

'Duty', he'd call it, whilst beaming.

Years later, I find myself in the same position, with my wife making the calls to my relatives on Dussehra.

-

I usually sign off my work emails with a 'Thanks' or a 'Kind Regards'.

Last week at work was exhausting, overwhelming and loaded with issues, so I got a tad miffed when I chased a downstream team to send over their report and RCA, with no end product.

I sent them a reminder again today and this time I signed it with 'Lukewarm Regards'.

I have the report with me now.

-

Death. For in death they say, the soul quits the body, leaving it to decay, fester and perish, whilst setting itself free.

-

And I let you. For I had become comfortably uncomfortable in my stagnation. Contaminated.

I let you, hoping someday I would be scrubbed free again, when a breath of fresh air comes my way.

-

When I was in school, my parents used to say that this city has changed and grown by a landslide since their academic years.
I couldn't care less then and used to dismiss this with an air of ignorance.

Decade and a half later, i find myself making the same exclamation to others.

This proves 3 things -
1) Parents are mostly right.
2) Change is continous.
3) We are all getting old af.

-

It’d be safe to say that weddings are very much like a Bollywood movie – there’s tears, there’s music and there’s starring & supporting cast. There will be sourness, bitterness & sweetness – all fighting to blend together, like a green mango chutney perhaps.

Months & months of planning and the events come to an end in a flash – just like that. Again, very much like a movie - that takes months of preparation but lasts a mere couple of hours.

But when the youngest & dearest of your cousins have gotten married now & the party’s ending, over or completely dead, there you are, standing by your car with its radio on, absent-mindedly two-stepping to the beat, sipping in your cup of tea with your eyes closed in complete denial, that it’s all over & once you open them you’ll be staring in the face of the real world, wondering when would you get to see these set of people next, the people you grew up with.

Vacation’s over, your job awaits you.

-

Working on a marriage is no child's play. It requires discipline, devotion, guts, sufficient bank balance and immense number of sacrifices to keep it ticking.

And sometimes that isnt enough too. Because neither doesnt know what they signed up for. Because no two human beings are the same. They compromise, reach to an agreement to settle down with each other - like a binding contract, a trade, a transaction - promising to fulfill the terms & conditions till its maturity date.

It's either the beginning or the end of you.

-

'How's married life?'

I have been married for 4 months now and I can't help but give a droll smile, everytime somebody asks me this question. If only I had a rupee for everytime people asked me this.

My schoolmate turned girlfriend turned fiance turned wife, on the contrary - beams & grins like the Cheshire cat. She - a trained singer & my post retirement piano-guru father are beginning to form a music band. My wife having lost her dad a few years back, found her father in mine and my shy father eased up to her like she was the only child he ever had.

So yes, life's good, no thanks to you but thank you for asking - is what i want to say everytime, but then I decide that this is totally unnecessary, so I just flash my crooked teeth smile.

-