In 2010, would the name Ramdev be familiar at all to you? 7 years is a long time, and we’ll come back to that. But don’t worry, this isn’t an ayurware post. This is actually a sequel. It features the successor of a companion of 7 years, who called it a day last month, after 7 years of service that began in January 2010, when the world was a different place.
The first month in this genre of books is always an eye opener because it all happened far back in time. Even the mundane makes a story – the ‘maid + cook’ is now paid close to 3.5x, but the mobile bill has actually fallen! Spar became Auchan and then Spar again. But the more profound ones lie beyond the routine accounts of a month. The inverter we bought in January 2010 was with us until last month. But the house whose EMI we used to pay now belongs to a different family.
We haven’t been to Blossoms in years, but it’s heartening to see that it’s still around. So is Woodstok in Indiranagar, a place that hasn’t disappointed us. My early days in Myntra are marked by a series of visits to Grigliato. Sadly, 3 Storys, a lovely coastal food restaurant off Lavelle Road can barely be found even on the internet, and cannot be found offline anyway! Through the years there are others who have fallen by the wayside – Veekes & Thomas, Sahib Sind Sultan, Huckleberry, and so on.
In 2010, a passport was finally made for me, for a Sri Lanka trip that would mark the start of many longer journeys. The detailing in the book helps me remember a lot of things – a spate of dinner costs on consecutive days in 2011 means that D was traveling! 🙂 I can also vividly remember the trips to Kerala – watching Best Actor in Cinemax, Cochin, for instance. Speaking of movies, Gopalan seems to have become the theatre of choice, upstaging PVR, thanks to its Malayalam movie releases.
I can see that our biannual trip to Phoenix Marketcity began in January 2012, the numbers call for some serious introspection. 😀 Spar gave way to Big Basket completely in 2012, thus retiring my biceps from active duty!
There are some wonderful memories and stories, and life has indeed changed. We shifted houses twice, and changed jobs – D once, and I, four times! Beef is much more difficult to find, while Ramdev’s face can unfortunately be found everywhere. But in all this, as I thumbed through the pages, I felt that the constancy was increasing. This is vastly different from the previous seven years, when it seemed that the only constant was change. It looks like the days of our lives have found a rhythm, a familiarity. That perhaps is how a life plays out. Wild zigzags giving way to smooth curves and then straight lines. In the meanwhile, there are still some goodbyes that have to be said.
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