A month already !

Today we finish a month. Since we moved back to India for good. Has it been a good month, has it been a bad month? Its difficult to put it all in one word, so some more words to torture you guys;)

I've literally seen it all in this one month. Right from taking RTC buses to haggling with Autowallahs, to learning back Kannada out of compulsion, to tending to my Dad in the hospital, to flying, to taking the train AC class, to taking the train Sleeper class, to visiting relatives, to attending a wedding, to eating mom's food, to eating Subhash's moms food, to setting up a place, to sweating hard by the sun, to sleeping by the moonlight, to eating berus, to eating sapotas, to drinking mosambi juice, to reading Tinkle, phew! Yes, I think I can say I done it all.

The best part has been of course that Subhash and I have been together for a month without apprehension of when he would have to leave for the next project, in the last two years. *TOUCH WOOD* I really have to say touch wood. Or maybe I should say "Buri Nazar Wale Tera Mooh Kala" lorry-style. Now that is a thing with my blog though. Whenever I write about something nice that happened, it seems to immediately manifest itself into something horrible. An example is when I wrote that post where I said I haven't done household chores for three days, the very same day, the water purifier got installed and the outlet pipe for dirty water slipped out of its place and the water was all over the living room. And I actually had to do repeated rounds of soaking it up with a cloth. And this mind you, I have never done in my life :( And the next day was worse, we went shopping and the thing slipped out again and this time it was like that for longer so I had the dining area and most of the sitting area as a bonus to clean, all this with a train to catch in two hours. Sigh!

Unlucky times maybe, or just people getting jealous, but whatever it is, I have seen more mishaps happen to me in the last one month than in the last three years put together. Small irritants like this, just ruining everything and tiring me out. Hopefully its a passing phase.

I really didn't think I would see my Dad unwell almost as soon as I got here. But I am glad that I was around. Long distance worries are even more killing. I really cannot bear to see my Dad helpless and being taken around in a wheel-chair in the hospital. It tears me apart, it makes me want to cry. It just kills something within me. But then to see it is better than to imagine it. At least when you see it, you know exactly what you are dealing with. When you are half way around the globe, its all left to your imagination and I can imagine really worse things really vividly. Plus I always mistrust information given to me over phone. That status is usually given with a "why worry the children, they are so far away, they anyway cannot do much" attitude and usually the situation is shown to be much nicer than it actually is. Or at least you always fear that. Plus I did what little I could to help my mom out. Which makes me feel much better than that time in 2002 when I couldn't do a thing to help my mom through my Dad's second heart stroke. I am a happier person both for being here and being around.

Work has been piling, I have been slashing it down, then it piles again, then I slash it down again and that saga continues as-is. Nothing much has changed. Its been good in a way. Same manager, same work, not much to adapt at work, no new learning than the ramp I already am on. Except for familiarizing myself with the place and meeting new people and adding on some more things to do locally, pretty much 70% of my work has remained the same old story.

All in all, both good and bad, both lucky and unlucky, but whatever it is, its been a very much "happening" month. California seems like a far away dream already. Was I ever in the US? That seems so so so distant. And I am happier because I moved. I am happy to see people like me around me (it wasn't that different in California but still, its not the same), I am happy to be meeting my aunts and cousins every now and then. I am happy to be with Subhash without having to depend on the phone to stay in touch. I am happy to be with my family.

I am just happy to be in India :)