#20: Twelve Months of Making Memories, Inbetweenmas, and Another New Year
Blurs and fireworks.
A weekly journal on finding home and learning to slow down, but mostly about food and things that bring me joy.
It was only last week that I learnt the word “inbetweenmas”— that period of limbo between Christmas and New Year’s Day when time blurs and no one knows what day it is. Earlier this week, as we updated our budget sheet for the year, Aninda said, “I have no clue what day it is.” This was such a weird week. It is hard to commit to anything. Projects at work are on hold until Monday, when the team returns. Those of us who have gallantly volunteered to keep the lights on are languidly organising inboxes, clearing to-do lists that were buried under piles of other lists, and scribbling new ideas while our children and pets raise a racket in the next room (or, next to us). It is a week of no caring. We eat all the junk we’ve promised not to touch in the new year, drink all the miniature bottles of alcohol that we got as Christmas gifts, and doom-scroll with nary a care while, simultaneously, polishing our plans for a healthy and mindful existence with much rigour come January 1.
Between riffling through the sale at M&S and baking cookies, the weekend was over, and we were back to work on Monday. I read Colm Tóibín’s A Long Winter and Annie Dillard’s essay, “Total Eclipse”, which charts the almost otherworldly journey of going into darkness before coming back into the light during an eclipse. The essay read like a profound metaphor for grief: a disorientating experience that throws you off balance, but also a process that eventually shifts and moves toward healing, even if it takes time. The wall of shadow that engulfs you at unimaginable speeds is like the initial moment of loss; even when you anticipate it, it still knocks the wind out of you. Then the cold and darkness, how everything seems drained of colour and muted; the eerie silence that swallows the world mirrors the isolation. There is a gradual and inevitable shift into light, but being a witness to the experience leaves you changed.
The second before the sun went out we saw a wall of dark shadow come speeding at us. We no sooner saw it than it was upon us, like thunder. It roared up the valley. It slammed our hill and knocked us out. It was the monstrous swift shadow cone of the moon. I have since read that this wave of shadow moves at 1,800 miles an hour. Language can give no sense of this sort of speed—1,800 miles an hour. It was 195 miles wide. No end was in sight—you saw only the edge.
Annie Dillard, Total Eclipse
The essay was a wonderful conclusion for the year. 2025, as I wrote last week, was a mixed bag. Because I, like so many of us, tend to focus on all that’s smelly and lousy, I often forget the dazzling bits, but even the worst years are not without their moments of delight. The year my mother died is, without doubt, the worst, most difficult year in my life, but even then, it wasn’t completely devoid of moments of delight. I was elated when Maa said she would repurpose one of her old saris into a lehenga that I could wear on my aunt’s wedding day. Baba and I visited her at the hospital every evening. With its large ward with two rows of beds against the walls, it resembled one of those makeshift World War II hospitals in period dramas. I would sit on a stool by her bed, and we would munch on groundnuts and plan for the wedding, which was just two months away. She would neither see the wedding nor me in the bright orange lehenga.
But I made an intentional effort to retain the good bits in 2025, and here are my favourite moments from each month:
January: walking on the foggy banks of Loughrigg Tarn; seeing the Langdale Pikes for the first time; listening to Burns’ night celebrations at the Portrait Gallery
February: ambling through the streets of Paris; spellbound at the magnificence of the Louvre courtyard; eating a jambon beurre outside Le Petit Vendôme
March: seeing Baba and Dida and everyone else on our trip to India; driving up the winding Himalayan roads on a day trip from Siliguri; eating plates full of pierogies in Wrocław
April: sipping coffee at Café Sperl; walking under the magical cherry blossoms of Starbank Park; feeling speechless at the splendour of Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien
May: spending sunny afternoons on the beach; soaking in the romance of the hothouses of Glasgow Botanics; strolling up and down Nyhavn
June: watching the swallows circle the summer skies of Sienna; the magnificence of the Duomo in Florence; the simplicity of meals at trattorias
July: navigating the picturesque canals of Geithoon in the pouring rain and feeling like Allie from that famous scene in Notebook; soaking in the romance of Amsterdam; walking more sections of the John Muir Way
August: dining at Montrose; spending hot evenings on the beach; admiring the abundance of colourful produce at farmers’ markets
September: listening to the Chandipath at Edinburgh Durga Pujo; meeting my professor from Oregon; watching the leaves turn
October: going up in the London Eye with mesho, mashi, and Aninda; digging into those delicious langoustine kinkallis at Kinkally; punting on the river Cam under autumn foliage
November: spotting deer in Archerfield; climbing North Berwick Law; wandering along the Water of Leith
December: seeing that majestic rainbow on Bradwell Moor; planning and cooking a Christmas dinner; seeing the NYE fireworks on the beach
On New Year’s Eve, we had these fabulous yolk-filled pasta called Raviolo al’ Uovo from Aemilia, then headed to the beach to see the fireworks. It was wonderful! People had gathered from all over town in the icy night, lit bonfires on the beach, and were toasting the start of a new year. Someone was playing the bagpipe, children were running around playing games, and there was an atmosphere of camaraderie. At midnight, the fireworks went off, painting the sky in blazes of red and blue, gold and green. We basked in their brightness. I didn’t take the first two days of the year off. So, it was work as usual, but we went on a short wander around the neighbourhood late in the afternoon. At Figgate Park, the swans and gulls were competing for food. A moorhen floated around without much care. They do not know that we have crossed the threshold into another year. The trees were dull copper, and daylight was at the cusp of twilight. It was freezing; my lips had begun to feel numb. Later, as we watched a stunning pink sky from our window, our friends said it was snowing near the Pentlands.
Sometimes when I am lying quietly, caught in between the pages of books, I can scarcely believe that I have been alive for so long. In 2026, my mother will have been gone thirty years and Saturn, according to astrology, will again return to the third house of my chart. Saturn, the “taskmaster” planet of discipline, responsibility, structure, and karma. I often wonder what awful deeds I perpetrated in a past life to be assigned a life without my mother in this one. I woke up today from a dream where I was sobbing over some of her belongings: a letter penned in blue ink and a book. Perhaps like Miguel in A Long Winter, a part of my subconscious goes out day after day in search of my absent mother. In the book, the lives of Miguel and his father begin to unravel— the rabbits die, the hens stop laying eggs, and there are no vegetables left to pick from the kitchen garden. When my mother was gone, my father, who is an expert cook, seemed to misplace all his skills. We went about our days in a grief-induced torpor, disoriented and confused. He stopped reading to me, and that one change further wrecked my collapsing house of cards.
When I wake up today, distressed with a sob trapped in my chest, I know that this is going to be the year where I will have to emerge from the marshes of grief, leave behind the landscape I have become accustomed to, and forge a healthier relationship with my history. I fear that I wouldn’t know how to define myself without the sorrow. Who am I without my mother, or rather, the absence of my mother? Perhaps it is time to question what it means to trust the blurry ring of light even in the “saturated darkness” of a total eclipse.
What We Cooked This Week
This weekly post is also my journal to remember some of the dishes we cooked and ate that week. After decades of struggling to enjoy mealtimes, I am on a journey to discover the joys of eating, all thanks to Aninda.
Jeera biscuits: Angie gave us this recipe from her Dishoom cookbook, and it was an absolute success! Salty and buttery, and laced with jeera, these biscuits are the perfect accompaniment to a cup of tea.
Chocolate chip cookies: Our first, but not our last, chocolate chip cookies were made using Sarah Kieffer’s recipe from 100 Cookies. Chewy and chocolately, they are the perfect pick-me-up snack.
Spinach and aubergines with posto: This easy recipe goes well with some piping hot rice. I fry cubed aubergines with a bit of garlic and nigella seeds, and once that is golden and softened, I add a few cubes of frozen spinach. Once everything has almost cooked, I add a blob of posto (white poppy seeds) and green chilli paste, and cover the pan and cook for a few minutes.
Sausage and root vegetables traybake: This has become our favourite winter traybake, especially because the sauce is an irresistible blend of kashundi and spicy mango chutney. This week, we swapped the chutney for chilli jam and some pineapple hot sauce, and it turned out equally delicious.
x, Mohana
[December 27 - January 2]