Journal of A Wife by Anais Nin

"...and of all the things he dared to do, the most dangerous for the well-being of their marriage was to encourage Anais to be herself."
Preface by J. Nin, Journal of a Wife

Hussy brought me a book to read in sick bed. A book I'm enjoying so thouroughly an completely that I never want it to end. Being a wife in the last 5 months of being one has been an experience I can only write about, so imagine my complete fascination with someone who has already written about it. I'm not reading this book, I'm absorbing it as entire paragrpahs jump out to do justice to the wonders of being someone's wife.

two mariams, two takes

past few days have been testing, bad, ill ones for me.
the two mariams with different spellings both came to the hospital.
one brought me red flowers, one pink. one got bounty, one ferrero rocher.
both know me very very well.

one said, "falling ill gives your friends and people who care a chance to show you how much they love you...sort of like a chance to prove themselves haina?"

the other said "falling ll always makes you realize how many people actually care so much about you haina?"

and it made me realize how lucky I am, to always have two takes on life.

grown-up tests of life.

Grown-ups can be so wonderful. No matter what you are going through in life, and they will have been through it already.

It's so awesome (and i mean it in the AWESOME sense of the word) that K and I are just beginning our journey. My mind reels at all that we still have left ahead of us, moments and occasions which will on occasion scare us, make us joyful and maybe even one day test our love. It's so daunting to realize that we are at that first level again, the babies in a marriage, and, I'm learning from the "grownups" who are in their 3rd, 5th 11th, 30th and mashallah even 60th year of married life.

We have so much knowledge and experience around us to do with as we please. And as life starts rolling around with its unpredicatblities and twists and turns, not all happy, we latch onto the lessons, the exanples, finding faith and comfort in the fact that some grownup somewhere went through this before and survived this test also and is now living in flying colours.

how you eat and live.

Hussy once told me, with all the authority of a true Cosmo fan, that how men eat is a giveaway to how they are in bed. I found that bit of trivia immensely enjoyable and for the next few days if we saw a friend eating particularly unusually, the two of us would burst into gales of laughter.

Of course being the over-thinkers that we can be, the conversation went one step further. I noticed that how we were in our college lives, in our earlier days were all clues as to how we were going to tackle important relationships and marriage and eventually babies later on. I realized that out of the lot of us who started out in IVS together, all of us evolved so definitely, so surely into who we are today. For some it meant that we made our peace with husbands and babies earlier on than others and for others it meant accepting that at 30, we will be single and fabulous. For some it starting life away from places they had taken for granted, and for others it meant restarting life in the same place. It's fascintaing to see how every decision can be traced back to those early days when decisions seemed less urgent, less life altering, but somehow I suppose they were.

Looking back is great, especially when done with the right people. You see so many clues which existed back then which link up with who you are today. How you think, how you act, behave, love, fight, sit, shout, and yes, even how you eat.

Trips are always significant I feel. They give you a chance to reflect, rethink, resolve and eventually reposition any stance on life you might be contemplating at that moment. Even an annual college trip to Hyderabad can suddenly turn meaningful with the right amount of intro-extro-spective people on it, and while being drawn into the intricate webs of self-analysis, you can be freeing demons and really truly running freer than you have ever before.

suraj-mukhi

Flowers always make people better, happier and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the soul.
Luther Burbank (1849 - 1926) US naturalist, plant breeder