New Post

A new post for the new year, just to remind myself, and the two of you reading this that the blog isn’t dead. Yet.

My aunty Leela is though. She had Alzheimer’s and arthritis and eczema, which is a pretty ghastly combination of diseases to have to live with.

Among the other people who died was Pandin- a friend from class (1st-5th).
I’m not very interested in children born- until they can talk and develop personalities. I prefer old people- the sad thing is old people don’t always stay old for long enough. They die.

Pandin was only 24 though. Or 25, I’m not really sure. We travelled together in Thailand when we were small. His mother bought me a painting-engraving of an elephant on rice flour paper that the monks at the monastery we visited made. We ate lotus hearts and other aqueous water plant parts. Pandin liked touching people’s ears- other eleven year olds objected to this, but I remember not minding the occasional inspection much.

This isn’t meant to be an elegiac post. I was only doing the accounts. I have the niggling feeling that I’m forgetting important people. But let’s move on.
I did mean to make a few remarks about whether or not one can ever really know another person, and if so how. I recall reading posts of this sort- that attempt to skirt the line between personal revelation and profound truth, but just end up as an exercise in over sharing. So I shall continue to work on that (the post), weed out all possible details that would aid discerning readers (yes mummy I mean you- I know you still check this thing even though I’ve been trying to will its erasure from your memory) make inferences to events that have actually occurred. While the nick name and the anonymity it pretends to confer is a joke, I really am happier crying about my life on the phone. Plus I remember griping about confessional blogs once too often to turn mine into one as well.

In other news I made the second of my twice yearly expeditions to Rishi Valley. Returned in the most fancy bus; with seats that reclined nearly a hundred and eighty degrees, plug points for cell phones, speakers near every seat, leather upholstery and more detailing, that probably escaped my attention. Four kilometres out of Madanapalli there isn’t a mobile phone signal. The incongruity. Climbed many rocks in RV, encountered, at close quarters one tree frog, one spider (large) and one lizard (large with livid pink and orange spots). The lizard bothered my sister, the spider bothered me, and the both of us ignored the tree frog- which peacefully sat on the ledge near the door and watched us walk in and out of the room. There were also many fire ants which we successfully evaded. With the thorns we were less successful- I fell into many nasty piles of them. My arms, unprotected by denim as they were, look like they have survived a hideous slashing, some sort of failed suicide attempt.

And here- having written more than I have in the last three months, I shall stop. Congratulate me. My blog. It lives.