Movies, cheesecake and work

It's been a busy week or two. We had the happy entirely novel experience of having S working out of Gurgaon for the entire week, and of course we all made hay while the sun shone! The kids and I got to spend quality time with dad/husband. We watched movies, went on walks, played board games, ran errands jointly - it was so much fun to do the normal mundane things!

Talking of movies, Lincoln was a wonderful watch. Daniel Day-Lewis was brilliant - what an actor! I was left spellbound by the many shades he brought to the character of the great American President - his humor and wit, his gentleness, his oratory, his fits of depression, his political genius. I could not but help but notice the parallels between those stirring times and the present day American context - the rivalry and later, mutual respect and cooperation between Lincoln (the little-known lawyer from Illinois) and William H Seward, his Secretary of State and an illustrious NY Senator who was defeated by Lincoln to win the Republican nomination. The shenanigans and antics of the legislative process have been brought out beautifully - times have changed but politics has not!! No surprise that Day-Lewis has won the BAFTA Award for best actor and I have my money on him to bag his third Oscar as well.

Special Chhabis was another entertaining, crisp and edge-of-the-seat crime caper, witness to some fantastic acting especially by Anupam Kher and Manoj Bajpayee. Even Akshay Kumar (gasp!) put in quite a creditable and understated performance. We enjoyed the movie thoroughly while getting annoyed with the side love-track and couple of totally unnecessary songs.

There was a Valentine's Day party that my friends and I threw for ourselves :) We all dressed up in red and had a lovely potluck dinner, accompanied by tons of gossip and laughter. I'm so lucky that I managed to find such a good fun group of friends in Gurgaon. When we moved here 2 years ago, I did not know a soul. As you grow older it becomes more difficult to make friends, especially if one is, like me, not a natural extrovert. But with 2 young children, living in a cocoon is not an option and one is forced to socialise with other moms and force-fit oneself into some sort of loose network. Sometime you get lucky and meet people who you like and who like you back, and sometimes it's just a marriage of convenience. Fingers crossed for the new environment and new people in Bangalore - the bar has been raised!

My second time with making an Oreo cheesecake - a no-bake, no-egg affair this time - lip-smacking delicious! It was my contribution to the Valentine's Day potluck and the oreos on top are a feeble attempt to create a heart-shape :)

 

 

And oh yes, the most important update for the last! :) I quit my job! The small non-profit which I was a part of, has most of its work in Delhi and there was nothing I could have done out of Bangalore (except fundraise maybe, and I did not want to do that even if the option had been offered to me). The last year has been a lot of fun but there's also been a lot of stress. The overwhelming feeling now is one of relief. The sense of freedom is just wonderful. I have to wonder - what does that say about me and my approach to paid work? I would be less stressed if I was a SAHM, that's for sure. Would I be more fulfilled or less? Would I be happier? Having been on both sides of the fence now, its very disconcerting to discover that I still don't have the answer to those two critical questions. The most important learning I've had in the last year has been that flexible working hours aren't some kind of a holy grail. Sure, it's pretty cool to be at the door to receive your kids with a hug and a hot drink (and it makes you feel sooo saintly!!) but the craziness that precedes the rush back home and the physically-present, often-mentally-absent state that I am in even when I am with Ads and Y.........well....clearly, it's not ideal. Ok, there is no ideal, we all know that.

So, at this point, there are far more questions than answers. More than enough fodder for another long post! I'm spending the next month prepping for our move and hopefully all that clearing of junk from the house will go hand-in-hand with some clearing of mental cobwebs as well :)