The opening line for yesterday’s unwritten, unpublished blog post was – “I have just had Butter Chicken; the light in my room is a warm yellow; life feels good.”

But I could not get myself to writing it. I did write an equally lengthy mail/report to @Saurabh though. To which he (basically) said: If you can write this mail, you can also go back to writing online. To which I (basically) said: I am going to write tomorrow.

So, here I am. October 16, 2024.

One year back, on this day, I was in Pune. I could have also been there today for a rock climbing thing but life had other plans. This post is obviously not about that. The point of this is to get back to writing and documenting and scrap-booking more of my life and thoughts on the Internet. For some reason, I’ve not been able to bring myself to it in the last few months. I think I know why.

Every time I came here and write about life and what I am up to, I look at others on the Internet. And get into a funky, competitive, insecure mind. Like, all the 22-year-olds of the world are doing WAY better things with their time + lives and I’m just here. Tiny little speck of dust. That amounts to nothing. And never will. Which is still true but right now I see it as a good thing. Nothing and no one might amount to anything. Not the tiny every-days, not the greatest highs, not the lowest lows. All that’s there is your life. For you to live. And make something meaningful out of it. Meaningful to you. Everyone else is going to die anyway.

Moving on. Here is a story from my day. Indulge me?

As a newly minted adult, I get to have my own fridge. Come to think of it, it’s a supremely cool thing. A fridge of your own. Yes, this is a nod to Ruskin Bond’s A Room Of Your Own. It’s one of those things most people probably don’t dream of. But it happens to them, and it’s super fun. At least that’s the case for me.

In full disclosure, it’s not one bit neat or organised as what my Mummy has kept all these years. I don’t know how they ever do it. Oh, and I know I have been spoilt. Learning that now.

But but but, here’s what I come to tell you. If you ever open my fridge, you’ll always find fundreds of half-cut, squeezed out lemon rinds resting in the middle of two eggs. Always! I “save” them there thinking I can get more juice out of them. I never really do. And then, every 2-3 days, I trash them out to make place for new lemon rinds.

Today afternoon, while putting back a juice-less rind it clicked to me why I do this. As a kid, I was never able to juice out lemons completely. My little hands could never put enough pressure. I’d waste at least 3-4 lemons trying to make one glass of lemonade. So, grandma found a solution. She’d tell me to keep my poorly squeezed out lemons back in the fridge for her to use in her cooking. I think I’ve been doing that since I was 8. Over time, of course I learnt to squeeze them completely. Till my teens, it became a muscle memory. Squeeze a lemon, put it back. Ten whole years, at least. But up until now, Grandma would also clean the fridge out herself, so I’d never see the remains. And I don’t think she ever told me stop putting them back. She simply throws them out.

It is only now when I have a fridge of my own that I realise that – One. I can squeeze lemons well enough now and I should be throwing out the rinds. Two. Grandma has been quietly throwing the peels that I meticulously “save” in the egg box. Three. This throwing out my lemons rinds is one my major coming-of-age moments.

I threw my first peel out today. Bittersweet feeling.