I’m back home in Dhaka after a month and a week in India. My older daughter was there with me for all five weeks, the younger one came for a month and hubby was there for three weeks. It was one of those holidays that we all felt the same about: fulfilling, and we were thankful for it. We travel to places that my husband and I had gone to on our honeymoon, 24 years and 8 months ago (ahead of our 25th anniversary as the girls will be in university on the date).
We also spent a week visiting my in-laws, in Kerala. It was special going back to the house that holds so many memories. The house had been closed for a year as my father-in-law had been unwell and my in-laws moved out to stay with my sis-in-law for the surgery and healing after. Mom-in-law had fractured her toes in February which had delayed their return to April. Being in the house filled me with gratitude. He had come through and we had got a home to return to. Although, he’s still weak, it’s nice to see that he’s got his sense of humor back. I’m grateful for the time we got together as a family. It more than made up for the inconveniences and irrtants along the way such as our flight getting cancelled making it impossible for us to attend my husband’s grandmother’s 90th birthday.
On the bright side, I also got to meet a blogger- turned- friend in Dharamshala, where we were holidaying. It’s not often that you visit a place on the foothills of the Himalayas. So, when I bumped into a blogger turned friend, someone I had co-authored a book with, I was shell-shocked. The two of us hadn’t spoken to each other since we last met in March 2023. A one-off birthday wish, a wish for New Year, perhaps. But that was it. Call is serendipity or kismet connection. We were supposed to travel to Kashmir but canceled our trip because of a terror attack. They were supposed to travel to Shillong but canceled their trip because of heavy rains.
After getting drenched in an unexpected mountain shower, and managing to visit the monastery in drenched socks and squelching shoes, we decided to stop at a café for a hot cup of coffee. We had our coffee and got up to leave when she walked in (Her family had been sitting at the table next to ours but I didn’t know them) and exclaimed, ‘Oh my God, Smitha’. It took a moment for me to comprehend what was happening. I hadn’t expected to meet her, of all people, in this of all places. Here, in the wilderness where few visit. Coincidentally, the book we’d written together is a book of poems called, ‘Roads- A Journey With Verses’. We were zapped that in a population of 1.4 billion and more people, and a million choices of places to visit, our roads crossed again. When we realized we were staying in the same hotel, we decided to meet the next morning and take a walk before I left to the airport. So, at 7.00 a.m. we stepped out like excited teens braving the fog, persistent drizzle and cool mountain air, and walked and talked for an hour.
While in Bangalore, I got to meet a friend who happened to be visiting from the US. She’s the one who arranged a book talk at her place in Mumbai, for my book. She was also one of the first readers and reviewers of the book. She moved to the US, soon after we moved to Dhaka and this was our first meeting after the book talk, a year and a half ago. With both our crazy schedules, we had one point where there was hope for our journeys to intersect- the evening after I dropped the girls off at the airport and before my flight to Dhaka, the next morning at 10 a.m.
In addition to all of this, I received a 5-star review for my book, which I’m thankful for. This review comes from Sweden.
5,0 av 5 stjärnor Bonds of love, respect, trust and understandingRecenserat i Sverige den 7 juli 2024
I bought this book in June last year, and it stayed waiting to be read on my bedside table for a while. As days and months passed by, suddenly I found myself reading mainly because of the connection one feels with and the pull to find out about what happens to the protagonist Shanaya. Does she end up marrying the person she falls in love with? Curious? Then one has to read the novel to find out.
It takes the reader through the ups and downs in Shanaya’s life which one can relate to easily, the places in the story are real and described in detail, the characters though fictional seem like everyday people one encounters. There is a certain flow to Smitha’s writing, and the reader can feel that the author in some way has experienced it all herself.
Waiting to see if there is going to be a sequel or perhaps a short series??
Mithra
Stockholm
Now, for the Thursday doors challenge hosted by Dan Antion. While I managed to click loads of doors from my recent trip, I thought I’d share the remaining doors from my sister’s trip to Japan in March (I had some in my last Thursday Doors post).
I end this post with the picture of chrysanthemum artistic armin. This is for the Flower of the Day challenge.
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