Side Quests and Chicken Curry
Always grateful :D
I've realized how important it is to be grateful for everything in your people. If Brishti from six months ago knew what kind of people she'd be around today, she would crash out (in a good way).
How else would I be in a random Dmart in Versova with AK, CM, SG, and Sonu, trying to find sattoo and channas like it's some bizarre side quest? It wasn’t about the sattoo, not really. It was about the way we moved through those aisles, laughing about things that didn’t need to be funny, debating which brand of sattoo was superior. It was about the absurdity of it all, how an errand could turn into a memory, how a grocery store could feel like a place worth remembering just because of the people you were with.
I’ve been at grocery stores alone tons of times after i’ve moved out and started “adulting” and for me it is a chore.
I definitely do not look forward to them, but my people made it seem like it was something so premium?
How else would I be at the beach, watching the sunset with them, the sky melting into colors we’ll probably never see the same way again? There’s something about standing at the edge of the ocean with people who feel like home. It makes you think about everything differently. The way time passes. The way the sun dips below the horizon whether or not you’re paying attention. The way laughter and silence can exist side by side, and both can be enough. I don’t think I had ever really watched a sunset before, not like that. Not with people who made it feel like more than just another ending to another day.
It is insane how much I've changed. In a good way. The kind of change that settles in quietly at first, so subtle you don’t even notice it happening. Then one day, you’re standing somewhere you never thought you’d be, with people who make you feel like you’ve always known them, and you realize, this is it. This is what it means to live differently.
How else would I have Aakash’s chicken curry, so good that I immediately wanted to sleep because I was just that happy? The kind of happiness that fills you up, heavy and warm, like a full meal shared with people who make even the smallest moments feel like they belong in a story. It wasn’t just about the food, though it was incredible. It was about the way someone put effort into making something for us, the way we all sat around on the floor, eating and talking, feeling full in more ways than one. There’s a kind of comfort in meals like that. A kind of love that doesn’t need to be said out loud but exists in every bite.
These are some of the many recent events since this week, on the top of my head.
How else would I have ended up here, in a city that once felt unfamiliar, now wrapping itself around me like it was always meant to? I used to believe that change arrived like a sudden storm, loud and undeniable. That one morning, I’d wake up and just know, I belonged. But that’s not how it works, is it?
It’s quieter than that. It’s in the unnoticed moments, the ones that slip by until one day, you realize they’ve become part of you. It’s in the way your feet instinctively navigate streets that once felt like a maze, in the way you recognize the rhythm of a place you used to feel separate from. It’s in the small rituals, the nod from the man at the corner shop who no longer asks for your order because he already knows it, the way your phone fills up with names that didn’t mean much before but now map out the shape of your days. It’s in the way plans stop feeling like events you have to prepare for and instead become effortless, like muscle memory, like home.
How else do you explain it? The way life folds into itself, pulling people together in ways that feel impossible until they’re undeniable? The way time stretches, warps, bends in the presence of the right people, the ones who make even the most ordinary moments feel touched by something bigger? How else do you explain the magic of a late-night conversation that refuses to end, of laughter spilling out into empty streets, of a meal shared so effortlessly that it turns into hours, then into something more? How else do you explain the way a sunset, a song playing softly in the background, a fleeting glance, can shift the ground beneath you in ways you don’t notice until it’s too late to pretend you haven’t changed?
I used to think belonging was something you chased, something you had to reach for. Now, I see it for what it really is, a slow unraveling, a quiet becoming. Not a place you find, but a place that finds you
I think about Brishti from six months ago, and I want to tell her: Just wait. Wait for the people who will change the way you move through the world. Wait for the laughter that feels like home. Wait for the moments that don’t seem big until they’re gone, and you realize they were everything.
I want to tell her that she will stand in places that once felt unfamiliar and they will become hers. That she will sit at tables with people she has yet to meet, and they will feel like family. That she will walk through grocery stores, through beaches, through kitchens where food is made with love, and those spaces will hold memories she doesn’t even know to wish for yet. (And she finally had the courage to get piercings)
I would want her to know that she did it, it passed, and she is better than ever.
How else would I be here, in this version of my life, if not for all of it? The big things, the small things, the way it all fits together in ways I’ll never fully understand but will always be grateful for.