PTO to new chapter

34 minutes to go and it will be a new chapter in Dodo's life.. There is a concoction of emotions. Dread, another year flew right past and I do not know what the future holds for me.. Relief, I have managed to abide by my principles and have not done anything I regret.. Sad, It has been a good year, with many memorable moments and experiences, and it is time to let go. And yet happy, I have managed to not disappoint anyone as such and I have a whole new year to fill in..

As I look back at the pictures of the year gone by, nostalgia floods me. All of a sudden, I want to be in many places at one time.. I want to be back in my childhood days when my parents would throw me a birthday party and everyone would come over bearing gifts.. Which I would open with glee even before the party was over. Always, there would be Ma and Pa ensuring that everything was to my set standards. The cake would be ordered days in advance from bakeries in Delhi or Calcutta. Most of these cakes over the years never arrived on time and I would have to cut the awfully hard Imphal cakes, the dismay apparent in the pictures..

(Horlicks Cake!)

I want to be back also in School, where friends would make me Horlicks-and-bread cakes, decorated with biscuit crumbs and chocolates, and where they would step on my bed and hang buntings and banners over my head at midnight as I pretended to be sound asleep.. These friends with whatever little we had then, would do all sorts of things to make my birthdays in school special. So I can happily flaunt my experience in successfully finishing a birthday treasure hunt, staying (im)patiently locked in a bathroom while they did up my bed, controlling my laughter while a friend decorating my bed fell over me among many others.. A torrent of memories, sounds of distant laughter echo in my head as I reminisce..


I want to go back to the early Manchester days, back in Gabs.. How I spent that first birthday walking in slushy cowdung in some farm and running across a hill on a fieldtrip, how a friend and I finally decided to venture into an English pub....
Memories continue to flutter in my head, drowning me in its sweet nostalgia.. Like I said, I want to be in so many places now, I have so many people to miss..
Then again, I have loved ones around me now too.. 
Like right now, how four of them decided to surprise me 15 minutes earlier than midnight.. How they came with Hetty the desk vacuum cleaner, and a cake.. How every minute then on turned into one stuffed to the brim with warmth and laughter..

I realise, old birthdays are good too.. They bring solace to my heart, comforting me... But I look forward to new chapters.. remember how I said some posts ago- the best is yet to come.. Well, I have reasons to believe- the best is happening NOW.. :)