When the Baby of the Family Got Married

“You just watch when Monty gets married,” he’d said as he brushed away his tears, “Then I’ll really cry.” This was vintage Sher Alam. Over the years, in multiple retellings of this incident, which happened when the eldest of our four siblings got married, the love and genuineness that Sher Alam, self-titled as Baati, the baby of our group, wanted to convey has never been lost amidst the laughter and mirth. As sisters and brothers-in-law, nieces and nephews came, they all developed their special equations with ‘Baati Dada’. I won’t lie; when the announcement of Sher Alam’s wedding finally came, there were definitely mixed emotions.  On the one hand, there was elation, excitement and curiosity even as to how the erstwhile kid, who, until recently, […]

A little kid wearing a fake moustache and glasses while his mother looks on.

Accepting Who I Was Allowed Me to Change My Life

For the longest time, I kept a secret from everyone, including myself. I always wanted to be a writer but felt that sweeping it under a rug would allow me to be happy. I was so wrong.  Don’t you sometimes wish there was a chance to go back and rewrite history? Granted, if that were possible, one would want to give Hitler a wedgie or prevent colonization. But if there really is such a thing as the ‘butterfly effect’, I’d rather start small and just change my own past. Or, at the very least, one teeny tiny decision.  Out of Sight isn’t Out of Mind Our brain is a funny animal. It plays tricks on us all the time. And the way it does that […]

An elderly couple talking to a young man.

How to Raise Your Parents 101

After more decades than I care to recall of rinse, lather and repeat, I can now say for a fact that mornings are not my thing. Clarity has no fixed timeline. But this much I know; if waking up is hell, Monday mornings are the cherry atop the icing on the awfully-tasting cake, I prefer to call office. But it’s all good. I’m a pro by now. Even if my physical body consistently rejects the process, muscle memory helps me do the bare minimum to make it through the day. Heck, way before ‘quiet quitting’ was a thing, I was already doing the beta ​version. But I digress, back to the morning ordeal. Before I decide to haul myself out of bed, my mind is the […]