43

another year done. this one flew by, but in some ways barely passed at all. last year, mom was here in Belfast. After seeing mom off to Mumbai (from Heathrow) I was able to travel twice to Mumbai - for a month in October and another month around Christmas/New year.

Christmas/New year was super busy with so much stuff happening (and I think I also worked for a bit? Can't even remember now!) that it was gone in the blink of an eye (and loads of partying - and Desiree and Tony getting married!). The October trip was noteworthy too, as marked my first proper motorbike trip on Carly (beyond goa!).

That was the eventful bit of my last year. Things went rapidly downhill once back in Belfast. Everything from health, vehicles, even stuff at home (I tried my hand at some DIY plumbing that predictably went wrong, and there is now a massive patch of water damage that I have no idea how to fix!).

On the positive side though, I did sign up for the IAM RoadSmart membership, and did a good couple of months of twice-weekly rides, before summer trips kinda took priority - I still try to make at least one ride a week, but it's been slow (almost painstakingly slow!) progress.

And yes, I started going to the gym. I was never a fan of gym, but I am currently in a state where I am so immobile my body was shutting down. Gym has helped with that - but it's still a bit of a struggle finding the time and energy to be regular.

Everything else has been pretty much treading water - or worse, desperately trying not to sink.

And yes, even that can get quite overwhelming. It is a stark and almost menacing reality that a single ill considered decision can take me out of action for days or weeks. Thankfully the only time I was out of action for weeks was last year - but the odd series of bad days is a warning that I cannot be complacent despite gradual improvement.

I try not to bring myself down with the thought of it but I am increasingly drawn to memories of good times more than the actual prospect of good times.

All said and done though, it was a relief to pull off one last vacation around my birthday. Oslo - Svalbard - Oslo. It was great, and I was able to enjoy it with enough planning, not as much activities as past me (or basically anyone my age) would, but still doing much more than nothing. Svalbard (Longyearbyen) was everything it was touted to be, and more. At the end of 5 days though, I think we kinda ran out of thins I could do, and so it was the perfect duration. I did crash for the last 2 days in Oslo, but given how my year has been, that was fine. In comparison, even my October trip to Kodaikanal involved at least a full day of rest after a full day of activity, so there's definitely been a small but perceptible improvement.

I must say though, my 43rd year has been a year of mostly being almost alone. Mostly just Shruti and me, but also times of being truly alone. It's supposedly not good for me, but I don't feel it yet. Only time will tell.

Anyway, I don't have many plans for 44. Just hoping to continue this slow upward trajectory. No goals (OK, maybe the IAM qualification!), no bucket list.

It was weird when I spoke to a friend recently and explained to him that I have given up 99% of the things I used to do. Definitely an exaggeration, but I was even more taken aback when he asked me what's the 1% I haven't given up.

I think the only thing I've not given up throughout this year has been trying. That's my last 1%, the one thing I absolutely refuse to give up on. I know it sounds pretty privileged given all that I've done over the past year - I know people with perfectly good health who do even less - but I was never one to compare myself with others. It was always only my past self that mattered. And that's the most humbling part of it all. Accepting that it is going to be slow and steady, and anything more aggressive will simply result in reverting to an even worse situation. Those are the days when I am literally hanging on to that last 1%. Get out of bed. Get moving. Move slowly, but move.

All said and done though, I am happy. It's a different happiness, a happiness I've had to search for, build up bit by bit. But it's there. And I look forward to preserving, strengthening, and building on top of it.

As the cliche'd phrase goes - happy birthday!

the dark birthday dream

Disclaimer: I hope it's obvious, but in case there is any confusion, this is only a dream. No correlation with real life thoughts and actions.

Shruti and i were on a boat. It was a powerboat/ferry sort of boat, but not a very big one. We were standing near the front of the boat. There was a very small cabin at the front (a weird place for a cabin, I'd say!) but a bit of room around the cabin between it and the railing. The cabin and the deck were white, and there weren't many people on the boat. It wasn't moving very quickly either - it was moving through a somewhat narrow waterway, and the waterway had a very strong flow of water against the boat. The water rushed so quickly that the bank and the water around the water were white with turbulence. The water was full of turbulent swirls and eddies. Shruti was wearing her olive green fleece jacket, the one she uses only in extremely cold/windy weather. She stood behind me and to my left, close to the other side of the boat - I was near the middle. It was pretty narrow as it was near the front of the boat. Two men walked past me on my right, till near the front of the boat. They were quite well dressed, a bit too formally dressed for a boat - trousers, shirt, woolen overcoat and both were wearing a shawl-type thing around their neck. All wool, in plain, dark colours. Not exactly the same, but quite similarly dressed.

One of the two men jumped off the boat - over the railing, and straight away to the right. He hit the water with barely a splash - it was almost like a clean Olympic dive. He swam a few feet and then the other man dove behind him. By the time the second man hit the water, the first had already disappeared under it. Seconds later, there was no trace of the second man either. It was obvious they had drowned. And from the way it all played out and what the water looked like, it seems obvious that it was intentional. The two men had moved in synchronisation and coordination that suggested it had been planned and agreed in advance - some sort of suicide pact.

And that's when I woke up. It was around 9:30am. It was my birthday. It was time for coffee (which Shruti had already set the cafetiere brewing) and breakfast. When she woke me up, the dream instantly vanished from my consciousness.

There was loads to do today. But by about 4pm, I was exhausted. I really needed a nap. And after a few minutes on my phone thanking people for their wishes, I was asleep.

I was back on the boat with Shruti - everything was exactly the same as before. That's when I noticed a man at the bow of the boat. He was dressed a little more appropriately for the boat, with a heavy warm windbreaker, waterproof trousers and a beanie. He was standing there in silence, alone, leaning his back against the small white cabin. Another similarly dressed man walked past me and stood beside him. They both stood side by side for a few seconds, staring in the direction the two men had leapt off earlier. I could see a massive eddy had formed between the boat and the bank - it was more deep than it was wide, so while the edges were visible, the bottom of it wasn't.

The few seconds felt like an eternity. The two men stood side by side, not exchanging words or even a glance. Until finally one of them turned to the other for just a moment. I could not see either one's face, but I could tell they exchanged a glance. And as quickly as they shared the glance, they turned back to where they were previously staring. One of them dove into the water and started to swim. He swam powerfully and efficiently - barely breaking ripples in the water, barring a bit of white around his body. He swam straight towards the eddy. I was transfixed by how well and straight he was swimming. Barely a couple of seconds later the other man dove in behind him. He dove and swam equally well, almost (but not quite) synchronously. Within seconds, the first man reached the eddy and disappeared into it - followed by the second man.

Almost as instantly everything else, I realized we were now alone at the front of the boat - in fact, I had not seen anyone else on the boat all this while, despite there obviously having been someone at the controls of the boat. Shruti was still there, little more than an arm's length away.

I was confused about why we were there. Did we know what seemed like this boat was meant for? Were we intentionally there? Were we meant to see this?

In my confusion about situation my thoughts were interrupted by the realization that the four men were certainly dead. I felt a chill come over my body. Is this what the end is supposed to be like?

Fully remembering the glance the two men exchanged before diving in, I was afraid to make eye contact with Shruti. I tried not to. I didn't know what was going on in Shruti's mind. I didn't know if she had seen how the two men dove off after exchanging but a glance.

I couldn't stop myself from glancing at Shruti. When I did, I saw she was already looking at me. As our eyes met, I felt my body shrug, as if I was asking "what now?"

Shruti didn't say a thing. She simply took a step backward - just half a step in fact, barely a move. But a move nevertheless. A move away from the front of the boat. I stepped back myself, relieved.

And that's when Shruti woke me up. It's 7:15pm, and we had a dinner reservation for 7:30pm at a restaurant!

I told Shruti I was feeling really down. I summarised the dream best I could. She helped me out of bed and told me it's just a dream. 

L'été Indien

29th July 2026. I woke up as Shruti was dressing up for work. It was somewhere around 7 or 7:30am - way too early for me to be up, if I wanted to have a productive day.

A song was playing in my head. An old song. An instrumental song. A song from my childhood.

A song from a cassette, which was basically a mixtape. I don't know who made it. I do remember the day I first heard it though. It was in dad's workshop. He had these two cassettes on a shelf. I wanted to hear them as I had never heard them before (I was given a free rein to play any cassette and record from his collection at home, but these two were always in his workshop). He told me the two cassettes were what he used to test any cassette player he was repairing.

One of the cassettes was a test cassette (basically a demo tape) by some manufacturer. It was the shortest audio cassette I had ever got my hands on - barely 3-5 minutes on each side. I don't think I ever listened to that cassette again.

The other cassette was more mysterious and interesting. It was the first 90 minute cassette I had ever seen. Dad told me I could take it home and listen to it. There was no list of songs. Only the text "Herp Alpert" written in a cursive hand that wasn't my dad's, on the title side of the case inlay. And the cover - it was a picture cut out from a magazine or something, and stuck onto the cassette inlay.

I think it was one of my favourite cassettes from that day on. It's hard to say that it was my absolute favourite, but it was definitely in my top 5. Kevin and I called the cassette "Herb Albert" (I assumed the person wrote it wrong on the cover - or maybe I didn't care? I didn't even know if Herp or Alpert were real names, and Albert definitely sounded more realistic!)

I played it over and over again. And thanks to its length and my cheap player, it had a tendency to get chewed up. Every time it got chewed up, dad would dutifully chop up the bad bit and splice it back together. I don't know how many times it happened, but dad eventually taught me how to splice the tape myself. He had a special non-residue "splicing tape" for this. I don't know how many times I spliced/tried to splice it myself, or indeed if I was ever successful, but I know that at some point he decided it wasn't worth the effort and decided it was best to split the tape into two cassettes. He gave me a dummy box, two dummy reels, and I split it myself. Ironically, I do not remember what was written on the label of the other half, and I think that half has been discarded along with the other cassettes I wasn't interested in.

As the years passed, my musical tastes expanded, and while this cassette remained a favourite, I don't think it was in my top 5 or even top 10.

Eventually, we outgrew cassettes. The drawer of cassettes wasn't touched for years - decades, even. After moving to Belfast, and moving most of my records here, I went through the cassettes. Most of them didn't appeal to me any more. But I still wanted this one. I've even played it in Belfast a couple of times - notably, the last time I played it was when I was fixing a cassette player myself!

I identified some of the Herb Alpert songs. Hits like Rise, Rotacion, Aranjuez, etc. But I never tried to identify this song. Or maybe it was because I couldn't? What would I even look for?

Until the morning of 29th July 2026. I woke up and started humming the tune. Shruti heard me and asked if everything was alright. I told her I am trying to remember a song from my childhood.

I went back to sleep, and she went to work. But later that morning, I used Google Gemini to identify the song from me humming the tune.

The search results looked weird. I clicked the first one. It wasn't English, for sure. The video was kinda weird. The man was half talking, half singing. I wasn't even sure if it was the right one. But played it through, half asleep.

But the tune was right. I had found it. Not the version on the cassette, but this was the song! The original, in fact! I also found the exact version that was on the cassette - it was a cover by Paul Mauriat!

And yes, it is even more beautiful now, some 35 years later, now that I have looked up the lyrics and their meaning.

ps: Listening to the cassette as I type this, there was one song that had the distinctive series of clicks of a lightly scratched record. I never noticed it until today! And I haven't identified more than half the songs to this date.