September 24, 2024

 Not sure, but this is as big a hiatus from my writing as I can remember. The last entry was on my milestone birthday. Ever since there has been a flurry of weekends which were packed with acitivities. The weekend following the one after my birthday was devoted to celebrating Ps birthday. We had a music session at Ranajoy’s which, aside from other things, resulted in my first ever performance on the Cajon. It was a new format where me , Ranajoy and Atanu were experimenting on performing rock ballads. Ranajoy had this knack for programming his synth and then playing some melodies over it with a heavy guitar-type tone. I was singing and playing my acoustic guitar and Atanu was on Cajon. Our focus was mostly on Rock ballads- slow and steady songs which were melodic yet somehwhat heavy and powerful. On the one song- “ Aro Ekbar” by Fossils, since I hadnt prepared it, Atanu decided to sing alongside Ranajoy’s keybaord work and not having much to do I sat perched on Atanu’s Cajon and started patting it alongside the song. It came out well and I didn’t realise that I could pass up as a part time cajon player too- atleast for simple beats as you would encounter in a rock ballad.

At the stroke of midnight, a cake was prepared for P- but also there were two other cakes for two other birthdays also being celebrated ( a day or two ahead and behind the original dates). So it ended being a nice ringing in of the birthday. The following day we travelled ot Abu Dhabi to spend a night at a hotel while enjoying a free dinner on account of the celebration of Singapore’s national day. This was a sponsored event by the Singapore Embassy- and everyone who was Singaporean or a Permanent Residence of Singapore was invited. We realised that this may well be the last year that we remained Permanent Residents, and so we might as well partake in every freebie opportunity. But that is not the real reason- I, in particular, still very much miss Singaporean cuisine. And this promised to be a nice “Makan”- replete with Singaproean classics. Well, I must admit it flattered to deceive a bit. Not that singaporean delicacies were not available. Some were, but the quality was nowhere near the real thing. Also, the absence of the use of Pork created some obvious gaps in the offering. Chinese food revolves around the use of Pork one way or another and there really is no substitute let’s say for Char Shiu Pork, Wanton Mee or Bak Kut The. The breakfast at the hotel the following day was slightly better. On the way back home from Abu Dhabi, we stopped at the newly built Temple in Abu dhabi- the one that Modi came to inaugurate months ago. It was a really hot morning, and we were quite exhausted when we got home. That was the weekend done. The next weekend was the mother of all weekends. I took a trip with a close friend to an undisclosed location. All we did there was splurge- thanks to the extreme wealth and penchant for living the high -life espoused by my friend.We stayed at a good hotel, ate at gourmet restaurants- and even had cocktails at an acclaimed roof top bar where each pour was the price of a kidney. All of this was in one way or another related to my milestone birthday. Overall, I  had a great time but I was glad to be home again.  For me the itinerary was wonderful but a little too full- and I cannot enjoy a holiday if I don’t have hours of empty time during the day. I realise that I prefer to be home a lot. I have a bucket load of musical endeavours, writing excercises and active pipeline of reading material to traverse. All of which is best done alone. However, such is also not entirely possible at home, because there is always stuff to do. Homework for kids, house chores, the occasional cooking, entertaining guests and friends- the list seems to grow every time I conceive it.

As a number of activity filled weekends draws to a close, I cannot help but notice that unlike other years,  we have not celebrated P’s birthday with our usual set of friends. Nor have we been invited to Onam- something that was a routine we looked forward to every year. All because of some events that caused falling out with some folks. New friends have since taken this real estate over, but for me every time this happens ( and it happens a lot) , I feel something within me die. And this will probably continue to happen. Yet if I have learnt anything, it is that life goes on. So many relationships form, ebb and flow and eventually die. Some can be resurrected, but most not. And there are key distinctions betweeen individual friendships and family-based friendships. The latter tend to be a package deal- if something goes wrong with one family member, the whole family tends to be expunged from the scene. Which makes it very important to form the right relationships at the family level. On an individual level, there is much less to lose. I don’t tend to fall out invidually very much- because I tolerate a lot. Not sure if that is a good thing or not, but it feels like a practical way forward. In any case, it is abundantly clear to me that we are all off upstairs, one way or another. There are things about others we will not understand nor be able to reconcile- and yet no person is made up of only one flavour of ice cream. So I don’t like to judge people too much. Not that I don’t judge at all- I most certainly do. Moving forward, there has to be a stoic inner transformation within myself, so that I can harden up to such roller-coasters of friendships. The way I can do that is by merely being an observer- and trying to look for patterns and trying to explore the workings of the deep mind. As I have said before, Psychology is the last frontier within the realms of discovery. There is much about how we think, perceive, and behave that we cannot yet model. It is this erratic behaviour that makes us human- else the robots might as well take everything over now.