Hello!
Welcome to Divya Writes, an occasional newsletter on relationships, parenting, motherhood, marriage, food, and books.
i.
I wish we had a fast forward button for our lives. We could use it to travel to a day in the future - when the pandemic is a thing of the past, when a vaccine exists and is widely available, when things are back to “normal”, whatever normal is going to be, when we can go outdoors without face coverings and shields, when we can meet and hug anyone we want to, and travel with abandon.
Pressing that button would also mean traveling to a day in the future when my son is older than he is today, it would mean hurrying past this glorious age that is exhausting and exhilarating all at once. I wish we also had a pause button, a way to make time standstill.
But time has already come to a standstill. It is August, but it still feels like March, when all this started - all the locking down and the isolation. It feels like February was only last month. Yet when I look at pictures from February, pictures taken at restaurants and parks and malls, before masks and obsessive hand-washing, February feels like a lifetime ago.
Today is Thursday, but it feels like Friday and sometimes Monday feels like Tuesday. I never seem to know what day it is or what month. I am at once surprised and shocked that we have come so far into this year and that December still feels so far away. Time is ticking but it is also not moving fast enough.
Time, this year, has been many things. A contradiction. An accordion, stretching and squeezing. Time has been fluid, fitting into tight spaces, taking new shapes, and then gushing and flowing, dropping on us like a waterfall.
This year has been unreal - like one of those nested dreams that you cannot seem to wake up from. Maybe this is all a dream. Maybe what we truly need is a rewind button to get out of this dream and have another shot at 2020.
ii.
I have not posted anything new on the blog, but you can read older essays and poems at divyakamath.com. I also post poems on Instagram at divyawritesstuff.
iii.
I am still catching up on pop-culture trends from the last two years so the next two recommendations might be dated.
My Village Show - a comedy series on life in a village, available on YouTube. I have watched only one video so far - Village lo drunk and drive and I had a good laugh. The video is in Telugu but subtitles are available. All the videos have millions of views, a sign of popularity, I think? Mindless comedy is much needed this year, please let me know if you have any other recommendations.
Sitar Metal - music recommendation that a lot of people on my Instagram feed shared in the last week or so. Perfect music for a workday. Available on YouTube and Spotify.
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That’s all for now. I will write again soon.