Past Imperfect

Mia will be ONE year old next month and frankly it's making me feel quite strange. There's the bit about where-did-the-year go. Then the bit where I go, "Oh my god, my baby is not a baby anymore!" Then I start thinking that it's been three years since I had a proper job, i.e. as a journalist. And I wonder if this is the end of my media career. But then I think I really don't want to put her in childcare unless we really need the money. Amidst all that thinking/wondering, I realise that soon it will be five years that I have been writing this blog. Well, this is more or less the same as Emancipation of Eve; I just gave the old blog a new name.

So much has changed over the last five years. It amazes me at some times and totally scares me at others. There are so many amazing bits. Mia, Partner, living here, a terrific rapport with my parents, a new family I love... In five years I've gone from smoking 10 (and more) joints a day, spitting mad at the world to not having had a cigarette in the last five days. I am wearing nicotine patches, but it's a start. The scary bit is that none of it was planned, everything just happened. So it could also un-happen right? That's what scares me but I'm not going to be chicken shit. Jo hoga dekha jayega. :)

Here's what was happening with me this day, on this blog in the (five) years passed:

2010 June 23, Anti-nesting feelings: There's state of mind and then there's a state your mind's in. Or moments when I am so cranky it irritates me. Or I am so irritated I really want to cry. My belly is HUGE. Correction: The thing under my boobs with red streaks and spider veins running all over -- that can sometimes change shape on its own -- is HUGE. I also projectile puked yesterday because the body felt like it. READ MORE

Hinsdight: I was hugely pregnant and waiting for Mia to be born. And majorly grouchy. The official due date was July 28th; I didn't know it then that Mia would be two weeks early.

2009 June 20, Doklet-Nha Trang, Vietnam: Just look at the place... need I write more? We stayed at the White Sand Resort, Doklet (pronounced 'jok-let', Vietnam). And just did not want to leave. I am grateful that someone invented the camera. Sunrise like this is hard to imagine. Or maybe because my imagination sucks. Is there a name for the colour of the sky?! READ MORE

Hindsight: We were travelling through Thailand-Laos-Vietnam-Cambodia to India and back. We didn't know it on the holiday that we would be pregnant three months later.

2008 June 27, Delhi decade, so long : I've lived 10 years in Delhi and changed umpteen houses, even worked just 15 minutes from it but I've NEVER been to Chandni Chowk. Thankfully as part of my job, I saw some bits of Delhi that I otherwise wouldn't. Like the autorickshaw colony near Karkardooma airport at 1.30 am, sitting in an auto and trying to 'buy' ganja/marijuana so I could then do a bust-up, a crime story. READ MORE

Hindsight: I was waiting for my study visa, Partner had left for Melbourne the day before. Everything I knew I was leavhing behind in one country, everything I wanted was in another country. I didn't know it then but the visa came through the next day.

2007 June 21, I want to write night: I hate reading medical sites. They always convince me that I have ALL symptoms for the worst kind of diseases. What bothers me more than the illness itself is: who will look after me and how will I pay? Because I need to work to pay and if I am ill and not working, where's the money going to come from? READ MORE

Hindsight: So lonely then. Four-five months before Partner walked into my life. So lonely. I had no idea life would change for the beautiful and I woulnd't have believed if you'd told me.

2006, June: I'd recently been beaten up. I'd bled, cried wanted to die. Instead I got angry. I didn't know then I'd be starting a blog that would help channelise my anger, help me survive.