Pinku-Enchanted Life

1 st Jan 2015 – I woke up to a new year and a raging headache and wisely told myself no more drinking for at least 3 months. I had been overdoing it over the past few months and the 31 st night barbeque party where I kept tossing chicken legs on the grill and drinks topped the list. Cut to 8th Feb – I figure I am pregnant, we rush to the doctor and after a Ultrasound we get to know that I am over two months pregnant. And that is how Mowgli came into our lives…unannounced, slyly and when we were not expecting him at all ….much like happiness. Oh and I must tell you how he got his name? Well Aarini was watching Jungle Book…the old one you know, the one we watched as kids on Doordarshan with that unforgettable song…jungle jungle pata chaala hai, chaddi pehne ke phool khila hai. So she figured that our new baby (who is still a three month foetus at this point) would also wear a chaddi and crawl and therefore should be called Mowgli and she started talking to my tummy addr...

Four years and a few months ago, I had rushed after work to the eastern part of the city to house hunt. We were planning to get married and one essential part of the plans was to have a place of our own to start with. Till then both of us were living with respective parents. It was an attempt at trying our hands at setting up home a second time having tried our best and failing the first time round with other partners. Everything about this second attempt had a bitter sweet tinge. The bitterness came from already knowing that marriage is not a ‘happily ever after’ and the sweetness from the fact that we had grown to love and respect each other and were expecting to remain friends above everything else. He had checked out a couple of places already, some too dingy, others way above what we could afford. The property dealer took us to the gates of a corner house late in the evening. The landlord an elderly Kashmiri gentleman asked his man Friday to take us around the first floor whi...