Se obujh, kheyali, se bheeshon ekaki, aabeg sob-i taar toh fnaaki.

Every day when I wake up, I pray for that strange emptiness in my heart to go away. But it never does. The bus rides to office through the dusty Noida roads are the worst. I plug in my mp3 player and stare out of the window, trying to resist thinking about it. But the problem with letting my mind wander is, it inevitably settles on the inevitability of it all, and every dusty corner I turn, I wonder why I live this life I do. Counting every penny, living in my head half the time, and choosing to stay in this city while one incredible soul battles with a hundred tubes and beeping monitors in a cheerless hospital hundreds of miles away.

First proofs, second proofs, perfect grammar, companion Web sites, who gives a fuck anyway, when each phone call from home sends you into a panic attack and all you want to do is curl up in a fetal position with a comforting shoulder by your side and you try and you try but you cannot block out everything you want to?

This is a rambling post and it shouldn't have been up for everyone to see. But I needed to get this out and I needed somebody to read it and there was no one I could mail it to. Ei mondar bajare, readily available comforting shoulders for a self-obsessed twenty three year old are hard to come by.

Blah.

Growing up is not all it is made out to be. For example, this weekend, I'm looking forward to:

1. Cleaning the bigger loo.
2. Getting the rice cooker fixed.
3. Cleaning the top of the fridge. (The red ants are killing us)
4. Pestering the plumber until he comes over to fix the leaky pipe and the broken washer.
5. Getting quilts down from the loft and sunning them.
6. Buying a nice overcoat for myself from Janpath before the temperature dips to single figure and the prices shoot up.
7. Cooking the leftover pork in the fridge.
8. Making the long overdue mutton curry for my roommates.
9. Finishing A Song of Ice and Fire.

Previous weekends usually involved extensive hours on the phone, obsessive texting, and mailing. But I've given up on the last two (because I figured there's only so much of one sided conversation one can take) and am slowly working on curtailing the first one. And therefore, I'm left with the list above.This isn't really how the life of a twenty three year old, living away from home, should be. Apart from finishing that strangely addictive book, I do not see a single thing that gets my adrenaline pumping. The future, my friend, is bleak.