Right here Right now.

I am eating bran flakes with raisins right now, although the orange cake is making me salivate.

There will be no cooking today because my fridge has too many leftovers. (Please do not misconstrue this as an excuse for accumulating more fat on my bottom while I lounge around in my lounge!)

I have lost my data three times today because I failed to press ‘Save’.

I have had only one cup of tea since morning.

Life is going at a leisurely pace right now. Finally! I wake up in the morning and quickly finish up my household chores and settle down with a book. Since I moved to Dubai, only in the past month or so did I actually feel, ‘this could be called home’.

I had been feverishly busy since last November. A new country and myriad different nationalities hobnobbing together, everything had to start from a scratch. Getting a license (Alhamdulilah, got it in one go), getting to know the roads (I still get lost), and worse still learning to cook! Yikes. My biggest achievement was to be able to make Aloo Ghost and Pullao that looked normal and could be eaten without a salt-attack.

Six months after the move, I visited Pakistan and blissfully lapped up everything from the rain to the trees, food to the endless wedding invitations. Coming back and resetting my self into the mundane: cook, clean, eat, sleep then cook, clean, eat, sleep; I felt my life slipping away. Amazingly I had calmed down. I let it slip. There were no tears, no fiery outbursts, insecurities or such. I just said to myself, ‘so it is destined to be this way’. How easy things can be when you let the current take you, devour you without protest.

So the very next day, that I uttered the magical phrase, by some queer twist of fate did I find Abez sitting in my lounge, scribbling a few addresses, edging me on to write. The encounter lasted hardly fifteen minutes. Is my old self being resuscitated! I do not want to comment. I just spun into action as if bewitched. I read up blogs sometimes laughing sometimes feeling awful, nevertheless enjoying literal concoctions that others had put online.

I just want to thank Abez for giving a dying flicker in me, hope. Whether it lasts or not is not the question.

This maybe a new blog but its making me dig out some of the old things that I thought I had ditched. Funny, you always seem to need that particular tool or extra thing that survived numerous moves from house to house, stashed under your bed for years and years, only the day after you muster up strength to throw it away one, fine spring cleaning day. I am having the exact same experience right now!

Getting started, getting off the first mark, the awkward pause and then rushing into something new is always something. The first day of school, first day behind the car wheel, first pay check and of course the first blog. Let me just sip my chai and blaze on into the unknown, because that is just what I need to start filling in the pages.

I finished Zadie Smith's book 'On Beauty' a few days ago and found that more than her celebrated humour and sarcasm her dialogue came alive. 'White Teeth' will always be a landmark but 'On Beauty' woke me up off boredom after quite some time.