rashmi-vasudeva.com

Last year around this time, I copied a friend's idea and wrote a post listing all the events and incidents that taught me something. I had no intention of repeating myself this year but my hands are itching. Aren't we all suckers for lists? Some like me list out EVERYTHING and promptly forget about it and make another one. Some make lists and go on a great guilt trip after that. Some are sticklers. They actually make lists and do what's on it. The New Yorker has a fascinating abstract on making lists http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1977/09/19/1977_09_19_032_TNY_CARDS_000323032
I envy those who have a subscription and can read the entire thing. As I am sure most of us don't, you and I both will have to make do with lists of lesser beings like yours truly :P 
I am going to list out what I term in my mind butterbeer moments of what has been an extraordinary year for me. (For non-Harry Potter fans: Butterbeer is a warm, fuzzy drink that wizards and witches drink; a drink that is supposed to warm its way into you, heat up the cockles of the heart and all that). Be warned.
This is going to be a highly self-indulgent, quite pointless personal post. So here is where you exit. 

* This is technically not in 2009 but since it is part of the application to Erasmus I sent, it has to go in here. Watching my English lecturer Manu grab a A4 paper and write a hyperbolic reference for me in slanted, fast handwriting, without pausing for breath. It was so hyperbolic that it could not have been anything but sarcastic.

* Staying online for a whole day in anticipation of a live chat with Atif on January 25. Was glad to know the teenager in me was alive and well.

* Waking up from a disturbing dream in which I dreamt that Siddharth was crying and discovering that he was indeed crying when I was dreaming that dream.

* Seeing the mail from Bettina telling me about Erasmus scholarship in the middle of work in DH on March 9. Hands shaking, rushing to the toilet to call Siddharth who was in Chicago.

* Middle of the night in April, listening to Nusrat, reading a random chapter from Wasted Vigil and crying for no other reason but for having nestled against beauty.

* Seeing Samaara for the first time. She had so much hair!

* Having had a perfect birthday after a long time in a restaurant called 'roll over, it's noon'.

* Sitting in the bus in Chennai. 40 degrees C. Worried to death about visa problems. In sheer despair because of Papa's illness. And a strong surge of strength from somewhere deep inside me. Music tinged. I always suspected a core of steel. Does flash against the sun sometimes.

* Writing to Gumby about how much Coke Studio stood by me when I was feeling alone and getting a warm reply.

* Listening to my grandfather's voice after a patient wait of nearly 15 years. Sometimes, heard melodies are sweeter.

* Sitting in a long cold corridor in Vidhana Soudha, not even having the strength to pray and watching the sunset from behind dirty white curtains.

* The shiver that ran down my spine when Atif raised his head and his hand, closed his eyes and ended the alaap of Mai Ni on a high note. Literally. Thanks Srivani for understanding what I was trying to say. It still gives me the shivers. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTybbAri_3g

* Being desperately hungry and thirsty but forgetting all about it while flying over Denmark. Which looks exactly like a broken porcelain plate from above -- just as Bryson had described it.

* Pleading for a sip of water in the train from Copenhagen to Aarhus and getting a warm smile and a whole bottle in return.

* Hans Henrik's first class in the journalisthoiskolen -- the room with the brutal architecture, the man with that brutal charm, my absolute brute excitement at being there and the completely un-brutal hot chocolate :D

* Walking and walking and walking in search of a forest that was supposed to lead to a beach. Not finding the forest but coming upon the beach suddenly.
P.S: This has an epilogue. Another day, I walked and walked in the forest, found several rabbit paths but never the beach.

* Several mornings of weak tea, digestives, huge blob of sun, breezy curtains, Atif and me.

* Serendipitous youtube sojourns. And having had the time for all this.

* Feeling absolute warmth from friends who were strangers till just half a year ago. So inadequately put when put like this. And so reconfirming of my faith in humankind, love and other such soppiness.

* Having got out safely without getting caught by the Stockholm politi for ticketless travel on the metro. Whew.

* Eating pulao and chicken with strangers, yapping in Kannada in a cozy flat in cold rainy Stockholm and feeling completely at home.

* Sighting a light pink-stoned cottage on the edge of a slim river with red, orange, golden yellow and pale ochre bursting around it. Home if there is ever one.

* Fish, friends and fire in my belly in the Incuba Science Park canteen.

* Getting up in the morning to a pale eerie blue light, purple sky and pure white everywhere else. Snow.

I will end with the best lines I have heard this year: Thanks Yamini.

Five mysteries hold the key to the unseen: the act of love, and the
birth of a baby, and the contemplation of great art, and being in the
presence of death or disaster, and hearing the human voice lifted in
song. These are the occasions when the bolts of the universe fly open
and we are given a glimpse of what is hidden: an eff of the ineffable.
Glory bursts upon us in such hours."

(Salman Rushdie)

And if those bolts don't fly open, go near and open them gently the coming year.