Sunday, November 16, 2025
2026: The Year of the Fire Horse
According to Chinese astrology, 2025 was the Year of the Green Wood Snake. Next year, 2026 is going to be an Year of the Fire Horse. The year is predicted to be a year of courage, transformation and powerful movement. The last Fire of the Horse year was 1966 and the Fire energy returns to awaken passion and purpose.
10 January
What you
require is a realignment in your thinking as the self-help books go. Sometimes,
you need to find stories of survival that are quite different from what you
have known and it requires a good deal of strength to come unscathed out of a
crumbled world. But you need words, stories, narratives and strategies that
helped you survive. These words become reminders that you have survived and
that you have learnt how to create new worlds out the remnants. What I say is
that you need to realign your world from whatever pieces are left of you and
build a new perspective that will help you in being happy.
9 January
There are times when you want a happy ending in
life either with the one you had married or with the one you love but when
these thoughts strike you already make into some form of a fiction and you are
already under the impression that happy endings are part of fiction and not
life. You need memories of the past to make you understand that most of life
are repeated experiences as Coelho says teaching things that one is not ready
to learn. When I was younger, I was much fascinated by the connections between
fiction and real life. There are times when you feel that your life resembles
fiction and sometimes fiction is so life-like.
8 January
This year I have observed the rituals of moving on to the new year and done some introspection at the end of it. In some places, they call it a year ending ritual of moving inward and thinking about what all plans you might have for your next year. These plans could deal with materialistic aims or spiritual goals. For me, I have always wanted to write a book and what I scribble down I want to edit and create a book that can be read by a general reader with curiosity.
I haven't written like this in a long time with
only a few lines a day. This year, I got myself a diary with a
green cover that says Save Our Trees, Save Our Earth. I am thinking of
switching to the virtual format though as this business of writing down
thoughts has become too tedious.
As I told you, this last year has been one of
good fortune for various reasons. One doubts every year whether one has learnt
enough. This life has been full of ups and downs, at times with nothing to
bring in happiness. Despite troubles, one has survived though not overcome the
obstacles that life threw in its paths. And regarding the blank pages, they can
inspire a dull spirit by bringing back life. I felt something come alive within
me as I stared at the fresh-scented blank pages and the urge to fill them took
over every other feeling that I was having and I took my pen and started
writing.
7 January
When I was much younger, I wanted to become a
writer and I filled in all the blank pages that I saw. I learnt new words and
ways of writing but never thought of putting my mind to writing a journal down.
What I feel is that may be, I lacked the determination that was needed to
publish a book or create one. But every day was filled with reading books that
was of interest to the self with plenty of pages that contained my thoughts.
Now, I still have words with me and the urge to
fill blank pages with them. I wonder at life’s decisions and whether I have
taken them right. Most of the time, I struggle with life and memory and words
but when good memories come to my mind, I scribble them down into some pieces
of fiction and that is what has been on my mind lately. Though these thoughts
might be good or bad, I started a journal to scribble about them.
6 January
5 January
Now, sitting with a blank page before me and it scares me if I am unable to jot down a few thoughts. There are attempts to find balance in an uncertain world through the act of writing. You feel that there are dreams of becoming a writer but they are eclipsed by this desire to write, indulge in the writing spree, the act of word after a word after a word in the words of Margaret Atwood.
Monday, October 13, 2025
4 January
The sight of a blank page is very appealing to me and I want to write something interesting to read later on. What I have always felt on rereading own words is the interesting manner in which such words clearly depict the growth of an individual. Though I may not have achieved anything significant, I feel that on rereading it is like looking at yourself from outside and like the inner life of a stranger.
I have not written anything fictional for quite some time and I think this is something that comes back with a blank page, the urge to write and to record a few thoughts. It would be really good if I can spare time to start writing every day. That would be a remarkable achievement to start recording whatever you want.
I think it is good to start writing and fill it with details. I think it is time to connect the pieces together and start writing the book called Journal of a Female Quixote. May be expand it on the lines of Bridget Jones Diary and get it published.
Friday, September 19, 2025
3 January 2025
I have begun writing in this beautiful new book, in a diary with a green cover, ready to inhabit the creative space that is offered by the blank pages. As I said earlier, writing in a diary is often like baring yourself before the one you love, without any inhibitions and without self-consciousness. I want my lover to admire the beauty of my curves, the tiny details that make my body apart, with its moles and warts. Just like that, I want you to take in my writing with all its beauty and its flaws, completely, unconditionally. So, off to revealing my heart thoughts to my confidante.
2 January 2025
Writing in a journal often means that you are offering yourself, baring
yourself without any kind of censure. In some of the diary writing years,
I have thought of publishing mine but it never happened that way because I was
too busy with many things and my journal writing endeavours mostly fizzled out
before the end of January. This year I want to write a journal that is worth publishing
and want to create positive changes in all spheres of life
I like beginning my New Year with a little bit of introspection. Here, I am sitting with my pen and diary while the rest of the family is sleeping. For me, writing is a way of life and I love confiding in my diary almost every day unless overwhelmed with a busy work life. This year, like almost all the years that I have gone by I want to begin with a holistic goal setting of improving every part of my life including the emotional, spiritual, physical and financial spheres of life.
1 January 2025
The New Year began quietly at 0001 while I was busy writing in my journal. This has been my habit for the last many years when I have found happiness in journaling about the passing year and the coming one. Unlike childhood, when the New Year began with prayers in the church with the Midnight Mass, the years since my marriage in 2008 have been blessed with midnight musings and nothing else. I have jumped like the proverbial monkey from faith to spirituality to religion to nonbelieving all the time and its hardly news that I don't go to church any longer though I am spiritual and read religious books of all kinds. There are sounds of firecrackers coming from the neighbourhood and every year, it has been a special New Year with the people singing Te Deum at the midnight mass.
Rain Raga
Beneath the banyan tree, a woman sat singing some ragas. She was singing in her melodious voice some songs that invited the monsoons. The land was dried up and the sky devoid of any trace of rain and the people draped in cottons gathered around with the sun scorching their brown skins.
The ragas reverberated in the blazing summers and were offered to the gods of the sky and the wind and the people remembered all the occasions when the land was blessed with rain in the scorching summer season. The children from the village played by the dried up temple pond, thinking of the days where they splashed in the cool water, sat idly in the cool recesses of the rocks, or sat chattering with the juice of ripe mangoes oozing on their hands and faces.
The singer went on singing and the people listened to the songs that praised the advent of the rains: oh you rain; much awaited the boon of heavens that brings joy to the earth, solace to the people, oh you rain, come with thunder and lightning and soak our brown skins with delight. Oh rain, the fulfilment of forecasts and incessant prayers, I invoke you in the names of the barren earth, the dried up rivers and lakes, the animals and birds, the silent trees and the people on earth.
The rains were invoked to end the blazing afternoons of summer heat with the first drops of summer rain and you set the warm smell of earth rising and you bedeck trees with jewels like brides, from furnace hot afternoons to nights of restless pace. It is for the rains, incense is burnt and prayers chanted and it is for you, the comforter on hot summer days. The land and the people waited for the comfort offered by the summer rains. However, the singer went on crooning the rain songs and soon and suddenly a wind blew over the land. The trees began to sway with the gust of wind and grey clouds rose to silhouette the sky with hints of a sudden outburst.
Then it started raining heavily. With the advent of the rain clouds, the entire city rejoiced as the wait was over. The days of drought are finally over and the soft rain pelted over the crowd with bolts of thunder and lightning. The people received in open hands stretched to skies what the heavens granted as comfort from the scorching heat of Indian summer. The rain fell over the land and the people danced in the rain with the beaming children screaming with delight when the droplets of rain drenched their brown bodies. The singer sat drenched still humming the megh malhar raga.
Tuesday, September 02, 2025
Seasons
You have sang of the seasons of silence, remembrance and eternal sunshine. The heart has learnt its lesson and found solace in the coincidences that life brings.
You feel scared of the word planning and you drift through life without any plans or outline. There are moments when the heart celebrates its little victories and cries with pure delight at plain finished tasks that are in no way special.
The seasons remain and you have learnt to
count the years in a way that is surprising-one that is dependent on memories
and not on years. The heart longs for its lost seasons- youth, love, beauty and
intellect- and celebrates through recounting one’s lost glory.
Friday, August 29, 2025
Monday, August 11, 2025
Journal: Serious and Trivial
Wednesday, July 09, 2025
Tuesday, June 24, 2025
The Unsent Letters
Wednesday, May 28, 2025
An evening
In the same old park where we used to sit around,
Reading books and chatting for hours altogether,
While the ancient tabeubia trees bore us witness.
Once again, the carpet of pink blossoms is made,
For you and me to sit and doodle with lifelessons-
The serious thoughts about the angst of this life ,
The trivial thoughts about the colours in the world.
You are a strong shoulder that I had let go earlier,
Your few words fill me with so much of happiness,
I am the mighty wordsmith in whom you believe,
The one who can conjure up new worlds in verse.
You and I talk of the serious and trivial meet again,
In our old hang-out under the same ancient trees.
Thursday, May 22, 2025
Thursday, May 08, 2025
positive thought
When you wake up in the morning, you can think of the ways in which you can be creative with the day. Most of the time, people are worried about the past or the future and they are not fully open to the present.
Today is a new day and then only then you will be able to understand the meaning of the word present, which also means a gift. That means to be fully open to the world of possibilities and like the poet says to wake at dawn with a winged heart and give thanks for another day of loving.
A lament about lost love: K R Meera's novella Meera Sadhu
Love is like milk, with the passage of time,it sours, splits and becomes poison.
The novel portrays the tragic life of Tulsi torn between duty and love and she chooses to run away with Madhavan instead of marrying her classmate Vinayan. She finds that though she loves Vinayan, she gets carried off her feet by the kind of love that Madhavan gives her.
She runs away with Madhavan on the eve of her wedding though she knows from his own mouth that she is his 27th girlfriend. Soon, she recognises that she does not have a role in his life and the story is a lament about lost love.
Through lyrical passages that describe the desire that Madhavan arouses in Tulsi, the author captures the beauty of love buy equally descriptive are her details about his treachery in love, the countless women that he has relations with. This wounds her and she grieves how she sacrificed her career and her life for the sake of the man she chose to be with in life.
The novel details the transformation of Tulsi from a loving wife to Meera Sadhu grieving her life and serving others in the ghats of Varanasi. The frequent shifts in time cleverly portray her memories about her marital life including the good times and the bad times.
Making memories
I want to spend some time with you and I want to know everything about you. I want to spend all the best days across various seasons with you, wandering this world and learning more of you, what you are like and your likes and dislikes, creating some really good moments together. Someday, I want to look back and think that we were creating memories together.
I want to know close, read each and every look, every smile, learn your language and also what you say without using words. I want to see and remember how your eyes light up in a smile and how my world lights up with your smile and how this world lights up making it a better place to live.
Your fingers touch me and I forget myself and the worries of this world. Your lips kiss mine teaching me the art of love every single day.
It is with this pleasant feeling of being loved that I want to go to sleep at night and it is with the certainty of your arms around me that I want to wake up in the morning.
Learning Curve
You read and study about the world and the things that you have an interest in. You never cease in your pursuit of knowledge and you do not rest for even a minute.
Whatever task you lay your hands on, you want to learn it and do it in a better manner and that is an your understanding of learning and becoming an expert in your daily tasks or bettering your work or learning how to cook your meals or learning how to read faster.
Sometimes, you might learn a subject just out of pure interest without having any particular aim in learning it except for the pure fun of understanding what it is about.
People might ask you: What is the use of learning this now? Will this serve any practical purpose? But you tell that learning your area of interest is necessary for the purpose of developing your understanding of it and whatever you need to know, you need to know it urgent.
You have your idiosyncrasies and your quaint tastes in reading but you for sure that your knowledge will come of use someday sometime may be in another world that might be made complete by your deep understanding.
Your life gets meaningful by the very task of simplifying all tedious work through an overall understanding of how to make it simpler, better and easier.
Summer Love
Friday, April 11, 2025
Thursday, March 27, 2025
My roots strangely
Wednesday, March 26, 2025
Purple Riot
Who would've thought
Who would've known
In the rear view mirror
It looks like spring again
It's snowing every morn
And melting by evening.
The beauty that returned
The songs that don't cease
One day sitting nearby
Feeling the full purple riot
The deep desire in your eyes
That sang to me whole night
The hand that almost reached
The purple riot in your heart.
Tuesday, March 25, 2025
Journal: Serious and Trivial
The pages of my journal await to record a few thoughts. These could serious, trivial or even a mixture of both just like life. All these rambling thoughts were gathered from the same quixotic heart that has loved to dream, to fly, to win and to endure.
The serious thoughts were all about love and the longing to be with the one you love and the need to make him your heart's anchorage and sacred space, how from a chance acquaintance he grew into my world and how this love is celebrated in an alternate universe of togetherness.
The trivial thoughts were scribbled on early mornings as a bundle of words in the dream journal as a celebration of the pure delight of being alive, when a burst of fresh air, a bit of bright blue sky or a belief in the goodness of life were more than enough to keep this heart on cloud nine.
But the best ones are the mixed ones, a little serious and a little trivial about things that celebrate the joy of life that finds room in today's dream journal.
Friday, March 21, 2025
Rebus Writing
I really miss the days when people texted more than Yes, No, ok, and what? and abbreviations and short forms than send meaningful long sentences, properly capitalised, spelt and spaced meaningfully. May be you might think that I am a purist but this craving exists to get a well written letter or a handwritten page.
I remember there were friends who could match wit with wit, anger with anger and repartee with repartee, all in matter of seconds and you could roll in laughter at the words they said. You look with nostalgia at the SMSes that could make your day.
I really miss those texts in words, invites, reminders, emails and missing you messages not the rebus that you read these days. I think want2cu2moro is good enough but I think might like a longer text that goes: I missed you a lot today, my dear and want to see you tomorrow. Please stand near the tabeubia tree where we usually meet.
Wednesday, March 19, 2025
The Unsent Letters
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
rebus writing
Tuesday, March 11, 2025
The Unsent Letters
Dear Sean
Do you remember how you had given me a CD of popular songs and soon they became my favourites as well. It was your way of making people happy that made you a favourite among them. I was smitten by your charm and what was missing after you were gone was your ways of making one feel special.
The OSTs from popular movies were my favourites- be it Titanic or Armageddon or Robinhood. Our world revolved around discussions about books, films and music. This year, as I am making a playlist memories of our candid chats pop up before me and once again I feel happy to have met you though we lost touch somewhere along the way. This year, I will create a playlist for you so that you will get a chance to listen to my favourites and croon them in your melodious way.
Love
Berry
words
Daily
Monday, March 10, 2025
Reading Meghadutam
May be it was the shape of his beloved's favourite beast
Bent down to butt a riverbed that inspired him to poesy.
May be it was the memory of his lover's sandalwood body
Or the grief of separation from her that made him sing so.
Whatever the reason might have been for him to compose,
He thought of her long hair without adornments or flowers
Drawn together in a single sweep in the long absent months,
He sang this musical erotic message promising rejuvenation.
He thought of her beauty that made him err in his daily duties,
The early hours of the morning when he spent hours with her,
Which he didn't want to forsake and plucked the holy lotuses,
Which he plucked before time to get punished for a long year.
When the rain bursts on her, he wants her to remember him,
Who in the eight months of absence longed to be with her!
Beannacht: A Blessing for the New Year
Monday, February 17, 2025
Desire
You have been my home and my solace in times of trouble. It is with you that I learnt how to travel in a magical land of dreams. Though we have never been together in life, it is in this world that I run to you, whenever your thoughts come to my mind. Throughout the years, I have missed you so many times but more than that I would like to tell you that I have never forgotten you even for a day.
We have wandered through this life in many lands and drank deep from desire. Your gaze pulls me closer and I am jolted into a whirlpool of desire. I give my everything to you getting carried away by the moment. Your eyes sing melodies that has always lured mermaids from every land and brought them to you without fail.
Your words pull me to you and I dream about our moments of togetherness like eating a candy in secrecy. Your passion is something that gives me more to dream of and I watch you sleep soundly after this bout of lovemaking. You look peaceful like a small baby and that comforts my soul.
We wander in green fields watching the dew on the blades of grass and drinking from words and from silence. We watch the sudden downpour that drenches us and celebrate nature and our moments of togetherness. Though miles away, we are together in thoughts and dreams. Everyday our wanderings across time and space are marked by the stories we tell and the places we inhabit.
Thursday, February 13, 2025
Daily
My heart has always yearned to explore the world with you by my side-to wander through uncharted lands, to discover hidden gems of beauty and to find beauty in the simplest of things. I have always dreamed of waking up next to you by my side and watch the streak of dawn across the sky.
One of my deepest desires is to visit my ancestral home near the River Green, to witness the majestic snakeboats gliding effortlessly across the water during the Onam festival. I long to feel the cool water envelop me, to laugh like a carefree child, and to relive the joy of my childhood.
I also hope to visit the old graveyard where my loved ones rest, to pay my respects to those who have passed on, and to remember the stories of their lives. Perhaps, in the silence of the graveyard, I will find a glimpse of the love and beauty that has been lost with time.
My dreams are not just about places and experiences, but also about the emotions and connections that make life worth living. I yearn to find love again, to rediscover the beauty that has faded with time, and to relearn the art of smiling like a child, with abandon and joy.
And, maybe, I'll find the courage to wear a spot of sindhoor on my forehead, like a newly wed woman, with pride and happiness in my heart. To feel the warmth of love and connection, to know that I am cherished and to radiate joy and contentment.
Us
Masks
You and me have worn many masks with each other. Any other woman would leap and violently tear that mask of silence off your face. But I watch in silence, everyday, how far will you carry the game. You will only smile and say the same words of courtesy. But when your silence is broken by hoarse laughter that sounds so hollow, all my anger disappears and I find you the same as ever, childish and ever trying to hide your insecurity in being aloof and in being funny. After finding out how you feel, I see that I try to do the same with you.
Wednesday, February 12, 2025
Déjà vu
The place looks
familiar to me though I have come here for the first time. It's
as if you've been here before, though you know you haven't. The scene before
you is like a dream, one that you've had before, but can't quite remember.
As you stand there, lost in the tranquility of the moment, you start to wonder if the waves might hold some secrets, some whispers of the past that could reveal the truth about your connection to this place. Maybe, just maybe, if you stay a while longer, the waves will tell you the story of how you could hear the song of a home.
You feel a sense of longing, a yearning to know more about this place, about the person whose home might be this place. You're so caught up in the trance of the blue waters that you barely notice the stranger smiling at you, their eyes crinkling at the corners as they take in the sight of you, lost in thought.
For a moment, you wonder if this stranger might be the answer to the questions that have been in your mind. Maybe they're the one who can tell you more about this place and about the song that's been echoing in your heart.
Maybe the answer lies within you, in the depths of your own heart, where the memories of your dreams and the longings of your soul reside.
Us
Wednesday, February 05, 2025
Thursday, January 23, 2025
The Unsent Letters
Dear Sean
Your thought crossed my mind when I heard a song that you love.Then, I remembered how throughout the years, I have mourned your absence though I have never tried talking to you at all. I think I should made an attempt because staying in touch might have brought down the anguish that I experience in my life. I run through the young years and tell myself how blessed I am, to have met you and tasted of love though we were never lucky enough to be together in this life. But in an alternate universe created by my longing, you have never been away from me but has been my constant source of solace.
Love
Berry
Wednesday, January 22, 2025
The Unsent Letters
Dear Sean
If you ask me what will you do given the same crossroads, I will give the answer that I will do everything differently, take a risk for you and will give everything just to get you I'm life. You will be my top priority and I will not think twice about it. For every day, this heart has longed for nothing but your return and I will never think twice before picking you from the choices that I am given in any life.
Love
Berry
2026: The Year of the Fire Horse
According to Chinese astrology , 2025 was the Year of the Green Wood Snake . Next year, 2026 is going to be an Year of the Fire Horse . The ...


