Weeknotes - 2025-W33
The only thing that comes to mind as I sit to write this, is that we made it through this week. Monday & Tuesday were the rituals for the 1Y ceremony of my FIL. Wednesday was his birthday. Iām sure as you can imagine, it wasnāt necessarily ācomfortableā by any stretch of imagination.
Even though I donāt have any belief in any of this, it is still hard to digest that a ceremony is being conducted for someone that you knew and loved dearly. For me, Monday night was tremendously hard. Many memories of FILās and my time together came rushing back and squatted on my chest and just refused to budge. By now, Iāve understood that the only way to deal with the pain, is to go through it, not around it. And its a mechanism that I feel more comfortable doing rather than side stepping it.
I have unanimously decided that August 13th will henceforth be Ragz day - a day that serves as a reminder that a glorious man that once walked the earth, was born. Someone who treated me as an adult, took it seriously when I spoke, listened to music that I shared, shared his music with me, circled articles in the newspaper that he thought Iād like to read, was one of the few people I made an exception to have alcohol with and just an overall badass.
It also marks the day, that an OG girl dad was born, who raised a strong willed, hard working, sensitive and an absolute unit of a daughter. One that Iām proud to call my partner.
I lifted heavy on Ragz day and gave my all to my workout. I vowed to myself, that health allowing, I will not miss a workout on August the 13th. He wouldnāt want me to. So, I will workout in his place, hope to catch the sunrise in his place and drink an inji chaaya in his place.
This week also marks 78 years since India became an Independent country. I spent a while pondering about what freedom meant and only one thing came to mind - something that I heard in one of the talks during my course work at Takshashila and I think it perfectly captures what I feel about freedom:
āThe price of freedom is eternal vigilanceā
This so wonderful captures the amount of work that we need to put in, to protect the freedom we achieved, all those years ago. In these polarized times, this matters more than ever.
Who polices the police? Who takes accountability? What does accountability even look like? Are we subjects or citizens?
There are lots of questions that we need to ask ourselves, and look for answers to, as we move forward towards becoming a super power. As much as there is work to be done in finding answers to important questions about the power structures around us, much work also needs to be done in building the ever elusive fraternity that Ambedkar so beautifully outlined.
Badminton was a lot of fun this week, I feel that weāre all getting so much better together and so the quality of the games are increasing as well. Iām so glad that I found a nice group that enjoys this as much as I do. It has made such a difference to the quality of my life. I highly recommend picking up a sport you love - the sense of camaraderie is just unbeatable.
Played a very interesting new game called Decrypto with 5 other friends. It was such a wonderful game to play. Weāve never played it before and it really got all the intellectual juices flowing. Adding this to our list of āboardgames-to-pick-upā. Really beats codenames at the āmany peopleā category, I think.
Iām excited for the upcoming week for a major reason, which I will write about in the next weeknote.
Till next time šš¾