The Chase

20 years of married life! We start the day with a squabble. I remind myself to shut up. No matter what, we should avoid fighting or have an extra special fight today. Can't allow the 20th wedding anniversary day to be wasted in run of the mill squabbles. I look at myself in the mirror. Ms. Vanity tells me that I look soooo much older than in that picture taken 20 years ago to the day! My hair would appreciate a coat of paint too! But heck, no, I have had quite enough of paint, painters and the like. So I give Ms. Vanity a determined shake of the head and tell her to like me as I am, lump me or get the hell out of here. There! I just chased her away.

Painting the house, a couple of semesters off work with more teaching work doing stand ins than working semesters, dealing with living in a war zone (thanks to the painting) in all senses of the term and such like are enough to send people looking for the stuff. Not me! Am made of sterner stuff. So I chase videos. I am particularly keen to know about "The Crown" and hence get the 1 month free subscription for Neflix which has recently made its appearance in India. When one does not chase drugs or alcohol, one can drown one's sorrows or celebrate joys by chasing serials. Eventually end up with a hospital series where one of the docs is called Dr. Chase. I don't see him chasing girls or even diagnoses! So I wonder what he is chasing. (Am I addicted to chasing docs? Hmm... food for thought. When I did not become a doc, I married one, provided many other docs with a living and enjoy watching hospital serials. I realize somewhere along the way that I am grateful I did not actually become one .....)

Talking of chases, I get the feeling I am doing a lot of it of late. And when I am not chasing, I am being chased. Chasing dreams. Chasing birds (strictly of the winged variety), chasing Women Friday, Saturday and Sunday, chasing painters, electricians, carpenters.... All this as I continue to be relentlessly chased by numbers. Strange part is it feels as if only one entity of my entire being is being chased by those numbers. (NO, I refuse to talk of age!) What about my head? I have never owned a dog, but why do I feel I have taken one for walk at sometime in my life? It feels like my body is trying to hold me back, while my mind - the dog - keeps dragging a few feet ahead in all random directions. It is doing that right now. So please forgive the rambling!

Well, I found myself talking to an old friend after more than a decade. We worked together at one point of time, more than 25 years ago. She is in touch with the other people who worked with us. When I asked about them I was shocked to hear that some of them had retired! Seriously? Some others are now going to head departments too!

Yesterday I ended up talking to another friend from my college days and she told me her son was 30. I remembered the chubby baby I used to go play with every other day and the times when friend, myself and kiddo in tow went off to a favourite restaurant to treat ourselves. :-D

When was it we turned old? How come I never noticed? Or I have noticed each time I have to scroll down a long list of years to find my year of birth in drop down lists but chose not to chase something that was chasing me! Or may be I not yet turned 'old'? Don't tell me my brain is 'kidding' me when I find myself making myself a morning cup of coffee and jiving to some nursery rhyme which is playing inside my head. (It's too boring to just stand there watching the milk boil!) Talking of nursery rhymes, I have always had a thing for them. This friend told me she visited London some time ago and found herself singing all those nursery rhymes and thinking of me! Well, well, if she remembered all my nursery rhymes after 25 years ..... may be I had the makings of a good kindergarten teacher, but never realized my potential in time. Never mind. I still teach adults who would give KG kids a run for their money!!!

Maybe my brain is in some lala land. I am happy. In fact, my mind seems to be happier now than I ever was in my younger days. Talking of London, happiness and lala land, reminds me of the time I was sent to an acupuncturist on NHS when I kept getting migraines. Wow! What an experience. To start with there was this drop dead handsome doc who had trained in China. (I clarify that I was single at that time, so it was legitimate to let my jaw drop mentally every time I saw him!) So there was one reason for some major tachycardic moments. Not to mention the high that the actual treatment gave me. I found myself coming out of the treatment and wanting to skip along the road - walking was too mundane. Well, what stopped me? Nothing. So I skipped. The joys of anonymity in an alien land. People would think here was a crazy woman. But heck, she was a happy, crazy woman. So who cared? I wonder whether I sang nursery rhymes as I skipped along! Who knows? I was just too blissed out. So the person then and the person now are basically the same - nuts. The body might have died a million times over and regenerated itself in the intervening years. As long as I can wiggle my back to some nursery rhyme and climb ladders to pull down stuff from lofts at least once a week (and then lie in bed for another 3-4 days), I am perfectly happy. See happiness chases the happy, and the crazier, the happier.

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