I returned from a heritage walk the other day ( I’ll write about it, soon, each time I try, my mind wanders to other things) and had my aunt, who I absolutely adore, grill me about my ( lack of a ) love life. Ironic, isn’t it? In my thirties, my dad got my signature analysis done. Which went like all my predictions go, that I’m basically flaky and flirtatious. Though, one’s been quite open about one’s relationships with the parents ( and have received tremendous amounts of beatings for them), other than the one that was the most sporadic, Indian father, lost it on reading this. Funnily enough, now the same father and everybody else, keep trying to convince me that, I need to find someone. I wish my heart worked according to a timetable but alas! it is a wanderess, that belongs to no man and no city!

Something makes me terribly melancholic in the winters. Usually, I hibernate from the world, hide behind layers of work and books in Kashmir but this year, one didn’t have any and one hardly, ever travels for leisure, unless one is battling with one’s inner demons and is going to lock one’s self up in a room in Pushkar. So, here one is, in Delhi. For a change of scene, I’m back in my dungeon, staring at the shiny disco ball that hangs on my ceiling and going through random things. Found a bunch of photographs, the first book of Osho’s I read- for Mad Men Only, love letters from boyfriends past and these two papers, each that sum up everything from my 30s, like the two tats on my arm separated by a star, do!

The photograph on the bottom, has my late brother’s name on it and the song that the singer was supposed to sing, was, I’ll be watching you but he didn’t know it. It was the most thoughtful birthday gift, ever. The one on the top is self explanatory. I know, I know, I have been the fucking, Queen of the Rebound my entire life. ‘Tu nahi to koi aur sahi, koi aur nahi to koi aur sai’, has been my love mantra. But you know what, my 30s made me realise that, relationships go against my grain, they aren’t my core competency. I absolutely suck at them and that I’d much rather utilise all my passion in my work. Everyone needs to stop worrying about me, I’m having the time of my life. Companionship? Well, I’m thinking by fifty I’ll need someone, then I’ll find someone young, whose excited about life and can deal with my cynical ways. Love? Between the one’s who are dead and the one’s who are gone, the heart it seems keeps the company of ghosts, some you remember on the day they died and others on the day they were born.