O n w a r d

I almost went to Chiang Mai for New Year's Eve 2016. I had been harbouring a dream of seeing thousands of lanterns floating up into the night, Tangled -style, even though this wasn't the main festival for it. I've also long harboured a desire to have a special last-day-of-the-year, which is usually a meh affair. So Thailand had seemed like a great plan at the time, but I was hesitating – and then, just as I'd made up my mind to click on the tickets, the prices suddenly skyrocketed. The universe decided for me. It was mostly okay; I was just embarking on my first relationship, there were things to look forward to. Maybe if I'd known that not going on that trip would start a seven-year travel hiatus, I would have booked it anyway. I had the money, though my job was in trouble. But we have no way of knowing the future, so I folded up the dream and put it away. Over the years, I thought about it again, but the discourse around lanterns had become dimmer: they were toxic...

How will I remember Korea? The thing about travel is that it's not really glamorous. It's not always happy. It can be overwhelming. Crappy at times. You're transplanting yourself so far out of your comfort zone. It can be scary, even. I find that my radar for risks is slightly wonky when the rules of daily life are temporarily suspended. But Korea? It was there for me. It gave me soft landings every time I felt vulnerable. I kept finding pockets of peace in unlikely places, in less-than-ideal situations, when I needed them most. Over and over and over.  My idea of peace is evolving. I made a vision board for what it represented to me last year – or what it was represented by – but recently I realised it needs some expansion. More on this another time, but as I was adding little peaceful vignettes to my Instagram collection, I realised more deeply what I had already figured out: as the days slipped across that June fortnight in Korea, a theme had begun to emerge. The first ...

Returning to my grandparents' home after seven years was bittersweet. Everything has changed; much of the time I felt like I existed between the wonder of the new and the ghosts of the old, trying to reconcile the familiar with the unfamiliar, separating the superimposed layers of what my eyes saw and my mind remembered.  It was the first time I'd returned since my grandfather passed away in this house that he built, this adventure that he gave us all. I wanted to feel his presence, imagine his movements, his path through the home, his favourite position with the best mountain view, the table where he would cut paneer with precision prior to selling, the sound of his army boots on wooden floorboards, the nook where he watched TV. Some of these, including the stove upon which I once burned my hand, have been erased. We can't live in memory and time won't stand still, and so much of the old is...just falling apart.  And maybe it's change that helps us cope, rewriting...

I got married a couple of weeks ago. It was simple – just us and three kind witnesses at a small registration office whose whitewashed walls belied its crumbling exterior. Somewhere in the courtyard, there was a primarily blue mural depicting the old and the new of this city. We talked, waited and sweated in our masks, sat in front of a camera and left a thumb print, signed papers and a register and repeated weirdly old-fashioned oaths ("I ... take thee ... to be my lawful husband.") There were flowers and balloons, lunch by the sea (well, sort of), and a free piece of cake. We also had another, larger cake – with three kinds of chocolate and adorned with books – all to ourselves. There were evening outfits for a virtual celebration, and there was wine. I just finished reading Meik Wiking's The Art of Making Memories, and he talks about how photographs are the "key to a vault of memories", and a way to "outsource" memories by serving as triggers. He su...

One year ago, we escaped from the craziness of Mumbai to the rains of south Goa – my second visit, and second monsoon there . The trip was a pastiche of our interests, from architecture and long walks to distilleries and bakeries, with a few (mis)adventures and changes of plans (for the better) thrown in.    Beaches look very different in this season. My favourites were a private beach in Varca and the small beach at Cavelossim, where I largely loitered taking photos of creatures and people.  I spied bright blue things amid the shells, which I later discovered were called blue buttons, with the scientific name Porpita porpita . I've never encountered them before, though admittedly I've been to relatively few beaches in my three decades of existence. There were so many in some places that a whole part of the beach appeared blue. I didn't get too close  – instinct told me otherwise – but found this discovery quite fascinating.   One of the highlights was the P...