2012

2012, the advent was on a rather sober note. It vastly differed from what I was used to all these years...spending time with family, celebrate together, or simply lying in front of TV.
This year I was away on a more serious occasion when all the family members gathered for the one-year ceremony of my FIL.
It felt funny to be in Vijayawada which is so unlike our Hyderabad. Even when you attempt to sleep early, the bursting of crackers and the joyous noises from celebrations do not allow you to. On the other hand, the new year was brought in so quietly in VZA...no noises around. Even within the house, people were so tired with the rituals all day that they climbed into beds by around 11 pm  Spending time with the extended family also felt a bit strange as the siblings now had such vastly different styles of living, vast differences in thinking... Beneath the polite, superficial binding, I strived hard to reach out to that core which means reliability, trust and faith. All that eluded me. Well, this only strengthens my belief that each to his own in today's world.
To look back on 2011, career-wise, it was rather tepid with no great challenges in the new role. Especially after the challenging and super-tight schedules of last year.
Money-wise, I was reaping the benefits of the hard work put in last year, and hence was good.
Relationships...those that mean to me have stood by me and I thank God for those reliable ones.
Health, despite all my negligence, has been quite kind to me. Need to take greater care of the physique.
In 2012, I resolve to be optimistic of the outcome of my efforts and surge ahead with a strong belief that life can only get better.

Ugadi

More than a year has passed since I began writing this blog.
I remember the excitement of discovering Rourkela friends through Rourkela mates a year ago and my posting a lot on the mates...especially vividly I remembered posting about Ugadi and how it is celebrated…the Ugadi pachadi etc. I was so enthusiastic about it the last year...but this year there’s no mention of it in the mates...somehow inappropriate responses/ no responses have put them all off.
Well, I began this Ugadi by having an ordinary breakfast of bread and chips. This was followed by the conventional Ugadi Pachadi. I tasted it after offering it to God. The taste that first hit me was that there was less of salt in it...means life may not have that special zing this year...even otherwise my life has remained more or less a straight line for quite some time now...I still feel that even this is ok as long as I don’t get to experience those terrible lows in my life that I had earlier.
I listened to the "Panchanga Sravanam" which predicted that this year would be favorable though the Income, Expenditure ratio was predicted to be 2:8! It was also said that my lucky number would be 9... as tho I didn't know about it. The new year beginning on the 27th ( 2+7) itself augurs well for me. :)
Made 'pulagam' for lunch…offered it to God and ate it.
Later in the evening, I had a bath and wore new clothes…pink and white and prayed for a long time...later made 'payasam'...
This is how I celebrated Ugadi this year quite conventionally...though all alone.

2009

It seems only yesterday when I was looking forward with awe at the prospect of turn of the century. 2000 seemed something, when from childhood we used to sign the date as 19xx.
My memories of signing the date go back to my Class 1 when in the left margin of the page above the first line, I used to diagonally write the date and underline it. So used to do it from Class 1(earliest memories of school). It used to be 1-2-1969 for example. I used to think that I would be in my thirties in the 2000. This itself used to awe me…imagine being in your 30s…
But it’s already 9 years since 2000!
What did 2009 bring me?
Stepped into 2009…or rather limped into 2009 with a torn ligament on the left upper part of the left foot. It was on the 20th of December…well that’s another story to tell…on the 13th of January I still am limping all over.