Friday, May 15, 2026

A Summer Vacation


A Summer Vacation

The first thing I did when the vacation began was to make a list. I have this habit of making to do lists that tend to be useful at times. There is always a list at hand. Urgent tasks, pending work, small details that might slip away especially since the time I crossed thirty-five and seem to have acquired a talent for forgetting. It runs in the family. I remember my aunt who, in the pre-mobile era, carefully wrote down every important phone number in a notebook—only to forget where she had kept the notebook itself.

This vacation, I told myself, would be different. I thought of making healthy changes in my diet and starting to exercise. My body resisted, my mind wandered, but something in me wanted to persist. There were also reminders of limitations such as high blood pressure, thyroid issues, fatigue, the discomfort of summer heat, a lingering sense of mental unrest. I thought of becoming a fitter person by the end of this summer vacation.

Instead, I found myself immersed in four seasons of Never Have I Ever, caught up in the chaos of Devi Vishwakumar’s life. It may be a show meant for teenagers, but it stirred memories—how confusing those years had been, how uncertain I had felt. Some emotions do not age; they simply wait for the right story to awaken them. Around me,the TBR pile kept on accumlating: Young Forever, It’s Easy to Be Healthy, The 5 AM Club. I read about discipline, about transformation, about becoming a better version of oneself. The ideas were inspiring, but inspiration, I realised, is fleeting. Still, I tried.

Then my sleep cycles became disturbed with afternoon sleep. Sleep became erratic. The afternoons stretched long and drowsy, the nights restless. I thought about waking early, about the idea of brahmamuhurtham, that sacred quiet before dawn. I have always been an evening person, but I wondered if mornings might hold a different kind of clarity. One day, I managed it. I woke early, walked, read, and felt, briefly, a return of something I had once known—a sense of purpose, of alignment. It reminded me of another time, years ago, when I had first read The Monk Who Sold His Ferrari. Back then, life had seemed full of promise.

There were interruptions such as travel, hospital visits, health concerns, unfinished work waiting quietly in the background. There were days of complete inertia, when even getting out of bed felt like an effort. Days when the question arose, uninvited: What for? Sometimes it is just a dull heaviness, a lack of direction, a quiet erosion of meaning.

My sole refuge was journaling and I tried looking at the empty page with a new understanding. It  became a habit and refuge by being a new way to make sense of inner turbulence. A way to remind myself that my story, however small it may seem, belongs to a larger human pattern. The days had blurred into monotony—sleep, heat, small attempts at discipline, small failures. I walked a little, ate a little better, tried to bring order into my surroundings. I thought about writing a book—The Diary of a Female Quixote—a collection of reflections shaped into something meaningful.

The desire to write comes in bursts and there are moments when you feel that you want to record every passing moment and narrate stories about your existence. In those moments, I am certain that I will write something worth reading, something that will endure. By morning, the certainty fades, replaced by doubt, by routine, by the ordinary weight of life.

I am half way through my vacation and I walk occasionally and try to eat healthy. This vacation did not transform me in any dramatic way. I did not complete my lists. I did not become disciplined overnight. I did not solve the deeper questions that trouble me. But I have made an attempt to write a summer journal and tried in small ways to care for myself. I hope that I continue journaling though not daily but at least whenever the burst of creativity reaches me.

 

 

Sunday, May 10, 2026

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

Tuesday, May 05, 2026

Us



I have a self that knows years of sense and more nonsense. I stand alone in crowds yet walk with you in green fields at the same time. I run in many new paths sitting at my armchair though I never leave my  world but for fresh signs or old paths. 

You are my other self, whom I do not know for I have never seen you as you really are, for I was struck blind by your light. and love was something that naturally followed. You were not with me in the physical sense yet I know you were with me in each and every circle round the holy fire and will find you near me in every dream.  

You are my favourite daydream that I return to time and again just to hold your hand in an unreal realm where rules don't matter and hearts speak only the truth. In another world, in a different circle of life, you and I will win our eternal game of love and may understand each other perfectly well. For us, time and space have never been important concerns for both of us and all that remains is the sense of unconditional love for the self and the other.

Diary of a Female quixote

Female Icarus

Your soul was a huge flame—blazing bright, leaping toward the sky in its effort to stand for what you truly wanted. You fought for your drea...