2025 - an inward journey

 

 As I mindlessly scrolled through Instagram Reels bidding goodbye to 2025, one post caught my eye - "20 things I did for the first time in 2025".

Well, I don't have a list of twenty things, but I do have two interesting first timers:
1) I danced with my son at his wedding while 200+ guests watched me! Never in a million years did I think I could do this. And I wouldn't have been able to, without Ponti gently guiding me through the whole experience. For the three minutes on the floor, I actually forgot to be self-conscious and enjoyed matching my steps with the lyrics of 'Forever Young' and the incredible voice of Joan Baez.

2) I hiked Aravaipa canyon in Arizona with multiple river crossings, sometimes in knee deep water.  I have never hiked through water, and this was a delightful and slightly challenging experience I got to share with my family. I actually went off trail and got lost at the beginning of the hike (also happened the first time ever in all these years of exploring trails!) - my family couldn't find me for half an hour and were totally freaked out! I found my way back on the trail and the sweetest sound was hearing Ponti and my daughter in law Natalie calling for me and their expressions of relief on seeing me - one for the memory books! Just to note, Arindam was not happy with me for being extra adventurous and scaring everyone :) 

2025 unfolded with promise and the excitement of planning my son's wedding. While the wedding was a beautiful experience and a time when we connected deeply with so many of our friends and close family, the second half of the year has thrown us myriad tough challenges, health and otherwise. We all try to build a life with low risks and high yields, just like our investment accounts. We want to layer it with protections, balance pursuits with pleasure. Volatility scares us, makes us really vulnerable. We want to retreat into a safety nest and stay away from uncertainty. But that doesn't work always, life catches one off guard, and a lot of our usual routines are pushed to the sidelines.

 I have lost consistency with my long-time hobbies like reading, walking with my podcasts playing, and to my utter regret have not picked up my paint brushes more than a couple of times in 2025. 

Still, there were some lovely times this year that made my heart full and mind enriched.

Wedding - The three golden weeks I spent with my sister and her family during Ponti's wedding will stay with me forever. The house was bustling with energy and happiness. The younger generation's laughter and excited voices filling my house still rings in my ears. The four of us older ones spent endless hours in gossip, wedding preparations, walks around the neighborhood and occasionally complaining about our two boys :) Iggy stole everyone's heart with his antics. My Jamai Babu was so excited every morning to check if a new eggplant or cucumber had sprouted in my raised bed, and my Didi made sure everyone was fed and taken care of, while I was recovering from a broken wrist.

Books - I met an internationally acclaimed author Arundhati Roy in person. It was an absolute honor to listen to a conversation with the brilliant writer of "The God of Small things" in person. While I have been to many book launch events and had a chance to talk to authors before, this was the first time I met a Booker prize winning author and activist up close. I will never forget how she described her experience being out in the waters of the Pacific in British Columbia and forgetting the atrocities of the world for a while. But as they were getting closer to land, she remembered the children of Gaza and felt like a 'cloudburst of blood' had opened up.in the sky. What a powerful and searing imagery! What made this event even more exciting was that I was at the event with my young, dynamic and book loving friend Tiasha!

Art - In early spring, I had the privilege to visit the art exhibition 'Myths to Mundane' by my former art teacher and mentor Shruti Ghatak, followed by an Artist talk.
True to the name of the show, Shruti's work reflected the seamless merging of Indian mythological stories into modern day themes of equality, feminism and migration. Her bright mind dazzled in the Artist talk session, as she highlighted the timelessness and relevance of our mythology in today's world.
This is truly one of the highlights of the year for me, and a cherished learning opportunity.

The final wrench 2025 threw came at the very end of the year. We lost a very young, vivacious, absolutely brilliant young coworker to cancer within four short months. It feels like a devastating personal loss to me. I look back with fondness at all the times I spent with her talking about our travels, books, politics, her crochet experiments and her cat. There were numerous times when she explained difficult flowcharts and technical concepts to me with patience and respect. She was full of life and genuine warmth, had traveled the world in her short life and was never afraid to call a spade a spade. Everyone who knew her at work has still not been able to recover from the shock, and we have reminisced our times with her every day for the last two weeks.

This was so unnecessary, 2025 :(