It's been a while since my last house decor update... because I had no update. Things literally hung like a hung screen, neither going forward nor back. My painter 'ghosted' me. I don't know how else to put it. Vanished after stalling me week on week. This being the very first step of the process, I couldn't move at all.

I was trying to figure out other things while playing the waiting game though... Like this cleaning person I found. It's a relief to have found this chap because cleaning is one of those things I like having done but find very hard to do :( This person offered to do the painting as well for cheap. When I said I had committed elsewhere, he said there aren't many people like me anymore, people who stick to their word. Sounded like a compliment and subtle manipulation rolled in one ;) So obviously I didn't pick him... hehe...

A whole lot of things quickly moved last week. I found a new painter, got the carpet thing fixed for right after that, and I am getting away to London in a few days while all this goes on! I didn't think of me being away as an option and that was partly why I was stressed about all this—noise, dust, people all over the place, etc. Looks like it's all turning out in the best way possible :)

I am excited to be heading to London. It's unbelievable I have stayed away not for months but years... when it's one of my favourite places to be! I am hoping to make this trip the start of many more...

I was heading towards the printer at my usual brisk pace the other day and almost collided into someone as I turned a corner. This person whom I know asked how I was doing, I said 'good', smiled, and kept walking. A few steps later I was mortified to realise, hang on, I should have asked too! They will think me awfully rude. But it was too late...

It reminded me of this one moment that rewinds in my mind off and on. Someone very dear to me said to me once that I never asked them how they were doing. It stunned me to hear that. Not because what they said wasn't true - it was. But because I never thought asking this question would ever be seen as an indication of anything meaningful. To me the 'how are you?' is a polite pleasantry, a bit like a 'hi', a greeting; it doesn't mean they really care to know how I am. Initially when I heard the English equivalent 'are you alright?', it confused me because it sounded like it was coming from a place of care. It turned out to be a sister of 'how are you?'...hehe! They are just words people mouth unthinkingly to acknowledge your presence. They are not genuinely interested in how you are doing or if you are indeed alright. It just happens that I am bad at mouthing words that don't mean anything. It just doesn't come to me the way it comes to naturally social people. Which is why when this person very dear to me remarked that I didn't ask how they were, as something that hurt them, I was rendered speechless. I thought we were beyond pleasantries and here they were judging my level of care by what I thought was an uncaring pleasantry! I just did not know how to explain to them it was actually the opposite! But in that moment I also realised that perhaps not asking this question to someone I did care about meant I never gave them a chance to tell me how they were doing. Not as a politely meaningless question but a genuine inquiry? After that I pointedly reminded myself to ask this… because I did care.

Daane daane pe likha hai, khaane waale ka naam; goli goli pe likha hai, marne waale ka naam

This is a Hindi saying that used to appear in almost every movie in the 70s/80s. It roughly translates to 'every grain has the name of the person who will eat it, every bullet has the name of the person who will die from it'. I do wonder sometimes if the stories we grew up with shape the way we see the world. In my case it was a rather paradoxical mix. English literature and Hindi movies/shows. Social media came in later so I suppose there wasn't as much diffuse global exposure for us as there would be today but there was also the scope for sustained attention on the forms available to us, which would perhaps not happen today. I would always finish one book at a stretch and then start another one. There was nothing to distract me from it. Books were a distraction from boring or challenging everyday life circumstances. 

But coming back to my original point, I feel like the idea that what is meant for one, comes to one has always resonated with me. It might sound a bit fatalistic when put that way, but it doesn't have to be. If it is a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts, it can also be a transformative one. Isn't it the same as saying that belief has the power to shape reality? It doesn't have to mean one passively keeps accepting whatever happens to one... rather it could mean one actively responds to whatever comes one's way to meet one's destiny, creating one's destiny in the process so to speak.

I guess that simply means we do not have complete free will nor are we complete puppets at the hands of fate... as with everything, a bit of both ;)

"When people would ask me—and sometimes they did—to write about them, I'd reply, 'First, break my heart'." ~ Robert Gluck

I was reading Dostoevsky's short story The Dream of a Ridiculous Man and there was a thought there that I have thought many a times myself. I think I have mentioned it at some points on this blog too. A strange, almost ludicrous thought in a way, but maybe not. It's whether other than me, my consciousness, my experience, my perception, etc, whether anything outside of me, exists in any true sense at all? Do people just appear when I encounter them or are they living their own lives even when I do not see or hear them? Are only the things I see, hear, feel, touch real at that moment or are they real whether I am around or not? Does everything revolve around me (like the main character in a movie) or am I just an insignificant speck of matter like everybody else for whom it feels so because my consciousness and perception is all I can get a grip on...? Will everything just stop existing when I don't?

Following are lines from Dostoevsky...

"I may almost say that the world now seemed created for me alone: if I shot myself the world would cease to be at least for me. I say nothing of its being likely that nothing will exist for anyone when I am gone, and that as soon as my consciousness is extinguished the whole world will vanish too and become void like a phantom, as a mere appurtenance of my consciousness, for possibly all this world and all these people are only me myself."