Srishti Kumari

Tag: connection

  • Morning Video Calls

    A love language I didn’t know of earlier

    Photo by Vitaly Gariev on Unsplash

    It’s been a few days. Yeah, only a few days since I started talking to my parents over video call in the mornings. Actually, early mornings. And usually, I am waking them up through this early morning video call, to which they respond very sweetly.

    Their smile, sometimes their laughter, and a bit of “good morning and have a nice day talk” between us sets a very healthy, loving, and peaceful tone for the fresh new day to unfold and bless us.

    I didn’t plan or think of doing any such thing before. And today I think, why didn’t I? Because it is so amazing and so full of love. You know, I feel it is a priceless blessing of life to have and live moments like these.

    Just imagine for a second that you are living with your partner in another state, and maybe now you won’t live with your parents like before, never again, but you are blessed enough to talk to them every day and see them every single day virtually (thanks, Internet!). It is a priceless blessing. I feel it honestly. And now that I am almost 30 and married, I feel it even more.

    Sometimes, happiness is so simple yet so priceless. Yeah, the classic happiness thing! Simple and priceless!

    My friend, talk to your parents often. If possible, then every day. And if you can, then even twice a day!

    No one will be here forever. No one!

  • Tea Without Sugar

    Not a tasty choice though!

    Photo by panchanok prem on Unsplash

    Hot milk tea with just the right amount of sugar, with my morning breakfast, has been my favourite for so long now that compromising on that feels really bad. And despite all the love in this world for that morning tea, I have not had it for the past 15 days. Thankfully, tomorrow is the last day of my “tea without sugar” or no tea at all phase.

    Suddenly, I had to stop sugar, rice, potatoes, maida, bread, and packaged food from my diet because of one of the medicines I am taking for my nerve pain. Rice is not a very big thing for me, and I don’t need it to eat every day. Potatoes I can do without for a few days, and maida and processed food are not in my everyday staple diet, so it was fine.

    But my morning tea! The tea I am used to having for the past many years with my morning breakfast, sometimes infused with the grated ginger and crushed cardamoms in the regular milk tea with sugar, and more recently with brown sugar instead of white sugar. But no sugar at all? I can do without all those sweets, laddoos, rasgullas, even my favourite chocolates for a few days, but chai…I am honestly telling you it was difficult. And I am so, so, so happy that tomorrow is the last day of my “tea without sugar” phase.

    You know, when I was younger, and someone used to say that they can’t do their work unless they have had their tea, or they feel tired and have a headache if they don’t have their tea, I didn’t understand. Though I don’t understand the real correlation between these things till today, one thing I’m sure of – tea is an emotion. We chai lovers love to have our chai, like we have it, every single day. Period.

    Maybe chai is the one thing that gives us the feeling of “some things don’t change, and they don’t need to change” every day, amidst the ever-changing seasons of life. I don’t remember exactly when I started to hold onto my morning tea, but I guess it’s fantastic. Because sometimes I have to hold onto life with that cup of tea in my hands – one sip at a time!

    Yeah…that was my tea tale.

    Holding onto life. One sip at a time!

    Do share me yours.

  • The Relatability You Feel In Stories

    They make you feel seen and heard every time

    Photo by Priscilla Du Preez 🇨🇦 on Unsplash

    You know, whenever you read someone’s story — be it on their blog, their linkedin post, the instagram story, or anywhere, and you feel a part of you being described there, that feeling of connection and relatability makes you feel valid for your actions, feelings and emotions you were finding to get from people around you, is my friend a miracle in today’s life.

    Miracle, because everything — when you see someone succeeding, someone going gym every day, someone waking up at 5:00 am consistently, someone running marathons, someone earning in crores, and someone always looking so pretty and aesthetic, you deeply feel so behind, alone, isolated, and bad for yourself every day.

    Perfect pictures are for performative goals. They are perfect online because they can’t afford to be seen as anything less than that. Those perfect pictures from perfect angles are actually trying to hide many blemishes, dark spots, and unevenness that everyday life throws at us.

    And poor us! We believe in the perfectly captured, edited, filtered, and carefully curated corners of someone’s grid, as it is the reality of life.

    The reality is, humanness comes with a lot of insecurities, confusion, failures, tiredness, hopelessness, slow days, mood swings, low periods, edgy feelings, anxiety, stress, and nerve-wracking, vulnerable moments as well. And that, my friend, is not pretty and aesthetic. That is bad, ugly, cruel, silly, confused, sad, with a generous amount of existential crisis. And we feel like we are alone.

    No, we are not. We are not alone. Yes, a 10-step skincare routine may have a million views online, but you also have the stories where people openly share about their bad skin days.

    When someone shares their raw, real, personal, mostly unpopular, and normal stories of spending weekends at home, Netflixing, reading, gardening, and living through the days instead of performing, I feel more connected to those stories naturally.

    And I think that is what connection requires. Simple truth. Simple ways. Simple acts. Everyday life. Mundane days. Fleeting moments. Us. And our stories.

    There is a strange connectedness in everyday stories of people you are not connected to in any way. And maybe that’s a shared connection we possess as humans.

    So simple, so subtle, so powerful.