Ashutosh's Musings

Yesterday, I was telling about the past of my mother to a friend. After the call got over, the conversation had me thinking about how little I did for my mother as her elder son and how I could not even do the smallest of things that were within my control.  How many times I must have made her cry and hurt her and how much I could have done for her that I did not.  I started looking at some of our old pictures, upon seeing them I felt overwhelmed thinking about my mother, and tears rolled down my eyes.  I remember reading "Tears are the words that need to be written". Ever since yesterday, I have been thinking of my mother's unknown sacrifices for us and I felt writing will bring me some calm and peace.  Mommy was married before she could complete her elementary education. While my father continued his education in Allahabad, mommy took up the role of daughter-in-law and a farming woman in a very remote village of Bundelkhand. She shouldered the huge responsibility o...

72 are the number of days I have lived alone in Delhi house during the ongoing countrywide lock down. During these days I was completely alone all by myself. I would get up in the morning, prepare breakfast, start working, prepare lunch, resume working, and then in the evening prepare dinner and go to bed. I would also call friends in the free time which I had in abundance. My life these days had become very monotonous and boring. It was tough for me to be honest.  It was dawn of March 18, when my chachu with chachi and their 5 year old daughter Riddhi left for my village after his office announced work from home amid covid situation. I, by the way, live with my chachu, chachi and their daughter Riddhi at their flat in Delhi. I was also supposed to leave delhi but I was waiting for confirmation from my office about work from home, by the time I got to know that my office would be shut and we'd be working from home, Prime Minister had already announced countrywide complete lockd...

I am ashutosh, your resident 'gareeb aadmi'; I call myself gareeb for a reason. For God's grace, I was born in decent to do family, had a decent upbringing, decent education and now I have a decent job. So I am comparatively very privileged in a country of 1.3 billion where hundreds of millions of people go to sleep on an empty stomach every day. I call myself gareeb for I feel gareeb not materialistically but emotionally. My 'gareebi' lies in my happiness and all my life I have believed that happiness is the scale to gauge one's gareebi and ameeri. And if happiness could be translated into currency, then I would surely be your resident gareeb aadmi. 

Nowadays I remain ill at ease, I am operating against all odds. Lockdown has come rather hard on me for it is hitting me on my weaknesses. I am more ill at ease because instead of conceding to those weaknesses, this time around I have decided to fight them with all my heart. However, the timing is imperative here, which I got wrong I feel,, but now I have set on this path I do not wish to go backwards as I feel I am stronger than I actually am.  Why I said the timing is wrong because for the past 25 days I have been all alone on my own locked in a small 2 BHK flat because of Covid19 outbreak and I have gone out only once to get vegetables, and other essential stuff. My point is if I had decided some other time to fight these weaknesses of mine I would be much better off. What weaknesses I am talking about? Well, some other time maybe. 

Day 22: So I got up at 8:30 AM. I got to know to that Papa had also left early morning from Babina to village and was about to reach our illage, baba called me up and he told me about papa. Then I got up I had got the methi chopped the previous night. I started making methi ke paratha. I made had them in the breakfast and it was delicious. Then I opened the laptop and looked for any important work. I mailed one or two people and then I got busy with the work and later finished household chores of cleaning and cooking. Since I had not eaten much after breakfast I made 2 rotis one normal and the other was of methi and ate around 5PM. But in the dinner, I prepared Biryani the Sanjeev Kapoor style. I looked his recipe up on youtube and then I prepared it his way. Eventually, it turned out to be tasty and I made it extra mistakenly so I am gonna eat it tomorrow as well. 

So yesterday night, we’re partying; me, Akshay, Naveelah, Yakita and Pranay. Before the party and after the office, I and Yakita decided to go to Mcdonalds as Yakita really wanted to have burgers and perry perry fries at Mc D. Yakita looked for the nearest Mc D and we booked uber pool and were ready to go. I was happy as it was Saturday and I did not want to reach home early and do nothing. We were waiting for the cab to arrive outside our office at the large stairway. Earlier in the day, Yakita had told me that her boyfriend completed his graduation from my graduation college i.e. Maharaja Agrasen College, while we were waiting for the cab, I got reminded of it and I asked her to show his picture if I had known him or seen him in college. I saw his picture but I could not recall him and reconnect him from the college. Then I started looking up his profile on facebook and yakita laughed it off as I was stalking her boyfriend on fb in front of her. Then our cab arrived, we headed o...