Update long due

It's been ages since I last wrote and this time, there are no excuses. I just did not feel like writing. Every time I came to see the blog, I felt like updating it but never managed to gather enough verve to actually sit and write something. Not that there was a dearth of things to write about...quite to the contrary, actually. Not only from a strict news point of you, but even from the emotions and sentiments ruling my life, there were so many things I should have recorded but I did not. Well, better late than never!

Getting on to the news front first, I bought a house in Mumbai...that's right, a dwelling place in one of the most densely populated and costliest cities in the world. That is the good part. The bad part is that the house and associated liabilities have resulted in a fixed monthly expense of about Rs. 80,000 and that is without taking into account the other, relatively variable expenditure that one will have to make towards regular expenses like maid, electricity, cooking gas, car fuel, groceries, etc...most of which is being covered by Priya today but that will only last for that much more time.

The office, incidentally, has also shifted to Kalina, which is only 3 odd kilometers from my new home. What this means is that I have now got additional two hours of my life per day, all to myself. I have started utilizing these two additional hours properly. While the one in the morning goes into exercise (I have actually started running and to my utter surprise, I have managed notwithstanding my leg), the one in the evening goes to reading (one good habit that I had put on the back burner for a long time).

Amongst other news, my car has become a wreck and the driver is threatening to leave (not related to each other but still...). Now Sunil, the driver in question, has been serving our family for the last six years and since he belongs to the native place, the trust factor is pretty strong. From my side, I have tried to treat him well but the promise of Mumbai does not fail in getting anyone. Having spent his driving career in Jaipur and Delhi, Sunil has realized, having come to Mumbai, what the possibilities are...how endless they seem once you are free to pursue them...and free is what he wants to be.

Okay, now that we are done with news in its strictest sense, time to do the transition from news to its impact. The transition, of course, starts with more news and this one happens to be that I did not get any special treatment from my firm this year (and this includes bonus and salary hikes which I did not expect, as well as promotions and role definitions which I did). That's it...I have said it and I don't care who reads it.

Obviously, all the news has resulted in a combination of some extreme sentiments. There is, of course, happiness, joy, pride, and a sense of achievement on the family owning a house in Mumbai (celebrated in part via two housewarming parties, one for the college junta and another for the office people). At the same time, there is sadness, disappointment, disillusionment, and a resignation to fate that has resulted from news at work.

I have become so befuddled with all this that I don't know whether to be happy or sad nowadays. The end result is that I have become such an explosive mixture that at times, I hardly know what to expect from myself. A friend tells me that I am dead and have lost my sense of humor, another tells me that I am into some sort of depression, my sister has stopped talking to me since I flare up at her at the slightest of things, and I get tired of any conversation that lasts for more than a minute or two.