Yup, February has also gone by in a flash. However, there's a very different feel to how this month has gone by compared to January. In a good way. I guess the week and a half away has had a lot to do with it, in more ways than one.
A first trip back to India in almost four years... in some ways I could tell, in others, it felt like I'd hardly been away :). The weather was great! Bright sunny days with the temperature bouncing between 15 and 30 ºC. A perfect getaway from the deep freeze of the Norwegian winter.
Made the most of what felt like very little time, visiting family, checking out old haunts and new. Meeting people I'd heard about for years and not met before. Found out yet again why I like clothes made in India :). Took some more steps towards making peace with the fact that while we're not looking, the world is constantly changing around us.
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| Dadu 1926 - 2023 |
I'm also grateful we could see my grandfather one last time.
No account of a trip back to India can possibly be complete without mention of the food, of course :). Given that this was not mango season, it made sense that I didn't have any of the fresh, sweet, juicy mangoes that I crave most of the time. Other than that, had pretty much everything :D.
Even went so far as getting some phuchkas from one of the local phuchkawallas on the trip to Shantiniketan for the really complete Bengali food experience! (Note that the link is not to Wikipedia since they seem to have made the shocking decision of redirecting to pani puri, which anyone would tell you is nothing like phuchka. Only phuchka is phuchka, ok? Good. Moving on.)
It was all over too soon of course, but hopefully the next trip will be rather sooner than four years :). All the travelling worked out quite well in the end. A bit of a tight connection through Dubai on the way back notwithstanding. The checked in bags didn't make it, but hey, that meant we didn't have to lug heavy stuff over ice and grit and got them delivered at home the next day :).
Since then things have been busy, but not too busy. And I think at least in part this has been a case of perspective. And letting things go a bit. Which is something I felt I'd gotten better at, but I guess it's one of those things that's never really sorted forever. A bit like cleaning the house. You clean it, and then after a while you need to clean it again. In between, life happens.
Speaking of, reading's been happening. In between things. I'm finally done with the Culture. Even took the books back to my friend who'd lent them in a big shopping bag yesterday. What can I say? It's been an experience that has forever changed my perspective on sci-fi. The boundaries of possible have shifted. And it's an immense loss that Iain M Banks is no more and there will be no more Culture novels.
The story itself had it all :). While nothing, in my mind, comes close to the shock and awe of Use of Weapons, The Hydrogen Sonata very much holds it's own compared to any other Culture novel. The scope and extent of the story, the variety of the characters. Mix of Minds, various pan-human and more exotic species. The long view of the evolution of a society while maintaining focus on individual lives. It was a treat :).
Since then I've also finished reading the book club book for the month, The Tiger's Wife. An amazingly visualized fabric of story with beautifully fleshed out characters. Neither the story nor the characters were sacrificed. Add to that the layering of generations of lives in the mercurial social political and religious landscape of the Balkans and it was a genuinely eye opening experience.
And now I'm finding myself sinking into the world of Bone with a very contented and relaxed sigh (metaphorically speaking, haven't read any of it this weekend :P).
One thing that happened before the India trip of course, was the weekend trip to Norefjell! To go downhill! And what a great weekend of snowboarding it was! The lack of recent experience was definitely on show the first hour or so, but after that it was like the last three years melted away.
There was fresh snow both days, so the surface conditions were amazing. And on top of that the weather was brilliant with lots of sunshine. There was a lot of wind the Sunday morning which shut the upper slopes, but luckily Norefjell has quite a lot of more sheltered slopes, so we enjoyed our time regardless :).
That weekend now, unsurprisingly, feels like a long time ago :). There's been a surprising amount of fresh snow this week though, and yesterday I decided to head out on a solo expedition on cross-country skis for a change.
The day was perfectly sunny, the tracks were pretty close to pristine seeing how it was the school winter holidays which meant most people were away, leaving the tracks more or less empty :). To be fair, I also probably picked the relatively less frequented ones anyway. Starting from the tracks beside the local train station, taking it easy and stopping often, to take photos or catch my breath, I made it all the way to Spikkestad in a bit over three hours. The train back took ten minutes :D.
