When I get frustrated with other human beings, I find myself wishing I was their mother. Then I'd just slap them all so hard. No questions asked.

searching questions

Fans and Avid Readers!!!! I am so excited to share with you the news of my rising fame and stardom in the world of Google searches. Blogger stats informs me that Google is leading people to this blog when they ask "is it bad manners to burp loudly?"

Fans and Avid Readers!!!! In other still more exciting news, can you believe that there are people in the world who really do ask Google if it is bad manners to burp loudly? Wow!!! So cool!!!!

sighs

In my youth, way back in college, I used to calculate everything in terms of Airtel-to-Airtel STD calls. 1 minute of an Airtel-to-Airtel STD call was 1 rupee. 1 trip from my house to college by auto was 20 rupees by meter or 25 rupees by haggling. So, in general, 1 auto journey was equal 25 minutes of Airtel-to-Airtel STD calls. 1 cup of masala chai or 1 lime bar was equal 5 minutes of Airtel-to-Airtel STD calling. In my youth, I felt that if I didn't spend on everything else I would be able to talk on the phone forever.

Now, I calculate everything in terms of dialysis money. Dialysis for one month costs about 20,000 - 25,000 rupees. Dialysis for 1 year costs about 3 lakhs, roughly. If we buy a fancy machine, the best-ever most patient friendly type of dialysis is 4 lakhs for the machine and 44,000 per month on maintenance. Right now, if I don't spend a single rupee of my salary for 2 whole months, I can afford dialysis for 1 month.

I am so broke when I start calculating things in terms of dialysis money.

More things to get angry about

These girls are fighting for the right to use their university library. They have been banned from entering it for the very logical reason that they are girls. Obviously.

our bed

And so I have inherited my grandmother's bed. It is the bed where she spent her last night alive. It is the bed she used for the last 20 years of her life. And I have been sleeping on it for the past 20 nights.

What is it like to sleep on a dead person's bed?

Apart from feeling oddly cool about sleeping on a dead person's bed and being secretly (and eternally) grateful that no one in the house has objected to me deciding to use her bed, the experience is deeply emotional. 

I will always remember my first night on her bed. It was the first night I that slept peacefully after her death. Although I have no way of confirming it, I really want to believe she was with me that night.

Some nights are filled with a lonliness and pain. These are the nights that I remember how in winters, I used to come  to spread her shawl over her while she lay in this bed and tuck a pillow underneath her feet before she slept. This was in the last few years of her life, when she became too weak to do these things for herself.  I also remember all the times when I used to make haldi milk at nights and come and sit beside her on this bed while she drank her glass and I drank mine. This was last winter.

Other nights I just lie quietly and think about her and wonder where she is and what she is up to and I ask her silently if she would come and visit me in my dreams. She has obliged me once.

And there are still some other nights where nothing really happens, I just set my alarm for the morning and fall asleep.

And then, of course, there was the night of ecstacy, when I found a couple of strands of her hair hedged between the mattress and the bedstead.

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"It's bad manners to burp loudly. It's true. You can ask Google - "Is it bad manners to burp loudly?"
-- My aunt, to me

viewpoints

Today I discovered that the metro I take everyday to work passes over the cremation ground where we cremated my grandmother. Now I shall spend every ride looking out of the windows, trying very hard to find that exact spot where she burnt.