Mindful Musings

It was a long Geneva- Rome – Delhi – Bombay flight. I was 12 and bored. Sitting in a completely different part of the airplane, far away from my parents and brother, my ADHD ridden mind was going completely haywire. I remember having finished Anna Karenina and the in-flight magazine and three glasses of juice and being irritated out of my skull. We were stranded in Rome for about an hour and everyone was edgy. People kept telling us that someone’s luggage hadn’t been loaded in and we were being held up because of that. Sitting in the first class of a fancy airline, the very propah crowd kept murmuring about people who had no consideration for other’s feelings. There were plenty of empty seats around, including the one next to mine. I sighed and looked out of the window for some excitement. A heavy sigh made me around. A corpulent Indian old man, sweaty and tired, with a grim face and a bushy mustache had flopped into the seat to my right. He made quite a meal of putting away his luggag...

I miss my daddy. We live in the same house in the same city. I see him every day, we share a meal together but I miss him terribly. Like I mentioned before I hate growing up. Achchan is Malayalam for father. My father never let us call him anything but that. For the longest time, my achchan was my hero, my Superman. Still is. He’ll probably scoff if he read this but its true. Maybe its because I’ve never ever experienced the crash that happens to children when they realize that their dad isn’t the perfect man. My daddy still holds strong to that one childhood fantasy. He has never let me down in any way. At the grand old age of 26, I’m still sent back to my room to “wear something that covers you up” and still told to eat my vegetables. Last month I bumped my head on the corner of the table while bending down to fetch something (I’m a klutz.). When I came back home that evening, he has taped Styrofoam to all the potential hazard areas in my room. He is a fine man and a brave one. In ...