November arrived...

November arrived ineluctably, all too quickly. Dawn broke. There were ominous clouds gathered in the horizon. Feeble sunlight filtered through, apologetically. I whined as wispy morning sleep gave way to wakefulness. I stretched, yawned, rubbed my eyes, cracked my knuckles, counted the fallen hairs on my pillow, swore under my stale breath, and made my way a little unsteadily to the bathroom. My husband smiled dreamily, adorably. A far-away thunder prophesied a wet weekend. I kept that needling thought at bay.

It was a busy weekend by our estivating standards. For one, our high-spirited four-year-old was still in the thralls of her previous day’s Halloween party. A credulous part of her mind believed that if she tried hard enough, she could make her toy broom fly. And she fervently clung to the notion that trick or treating extended through the weekend and carried her bag around for more candies. Our helper did a vanishing act yet again and so there were chores to take care of. And I had dance rehearsals on both Saturday and Sunday, two days of back-breaking dancing for our show next week. There was simply no place for that needling little thought.

Of course, we feverishly followed the US elections and the final F1 race. And the weekend was full of it. The messianic figure who apparently spent four years of his childhood in this archipelago got my support whereas a world champion who deserved the title did not. Among wins and losses, merciless gossip, irrational favoritism, and baseless speculations, we spent a weekend arguing, laughing, and shaking our heads, and I almost forgot that needling thought.

Come Monday and the busy week started again. Monday is reserved in my calendar for unabashed, uninhibited fun. It is the day when half a dozen of us thirty-somes gather together and learn what is quite unsurprisingly termed “Bollywood dance.” For an hour or more, we subject our pelvis and our acetabulum to various degrees of torture, at times even threatening a dislocation, all under the excellent tutelage of a teacher who is young enough to call us “aunties.” We dance without restraint, we talk without boundaries. And we go back to our homes rejuvenated. On such a Monday, I had no time for that needling thought.

My husband gave me a surprise present – a trifle early, but then, that is how surprises work – a beautiful little statue of a dancing girl carved in ebony. I fell in love with it and narcissistically thought that the svelte figure looked like me. My daughter let slip that there is a little printout of Blue’s Clues in her room that would transform into a card. It is getting harder to keep away that needling little thought.

Today, my ever-ebullient husband proclaimed that as the surprises were all over and done with way before the actual event, he would cook a special dinner for me tomorrow. “On your big day,” he rubbed it in. “Oh goody,” I said uncertainly. I have the faintest suspicion that I would be the guinea pig tomorrow yet again, like the other times when he made me the much-touted celery salad with roasted peppers or his very special avocado dip for tortilla chips. He has already enquired about balsamic vinegar and Brussels sprouts, so all I can do is keep my fingers crossed and quieten my mutinous tummy. Anyway, I have given up pretending that I don’t think my needling thought.

Because I think of it all the time. In this rush of minutes and hours and days, tomorrow is my birthday. If I had started traveling at the speed of light the moment I was born, I would be playing ring-a-ring-a-roses with Pleiades now. Okay, that might be a gross exaggeration. On a closer approximation, I would have simply reached Arcturus. But suffice it to say, I feel old, old as the stars. And that is the one thought that doesn’t make you starry-eyed – to say the least.