year 2024 - a retrospective

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the year 2024 has been a year of love while feeling the pain of loss of dear ones. also, it has been the year of fulfilling dreams, travel, meeting friends and meeting self closer than the previous year. 

the first few months were spent in shravan (my then boyfriend and now husband) meeting parents, looking for temples for wedding venues, scrambling time for completing mba studies, ananya coming to hyderabad, me traveling to bangalore to meet ananya who kindly hosted me and introduced me to her world in bangalore, and then we met shloka and aishwarya, and then a trip to kolkata to meet surela, a gracious host who ensures i see every bit of kolkata, met urbi who accompanied us to the lampshade kolkata reading - collab with penguin, thanks to patrichia and mayura ji for organizing it.

 phew! time just flew...

this year, i met pallabi who has become a dear friend of mine. 

also, i moved from a full time job to a freelance one! i have been meaning to make this change since a long time and finally life took its own course to make this happen for me.  i continued to pursue and understand haiku and worked with bric a brac (set up a stall with shravan at the angadi). also, met shilpa who had come to our apartments and spent time with me.

july 2024 continued to be a month of preps for wedding and completing studies. 
august 2024 was the month of our wedding and also the last exam for mba was scheduled on the day of our wedding.. almost, movie like! after the exam, surela and ananya helped me dress for the wedding. 
it was such a magical day watching our friends and family come together. we spent the post wedding days at iim indore followed by a trip to mandu - our heart almost broke on returning. 

we spent the next few months traveling: 
october: to kothagudem where i spent time with my new family and bonded with them over chai, chat, walks, making kebabs.

november: to bangalore to meet shloka and ananya and then to nandi hills to spend time with the generous seetharam uncle who hosted us. we climbed 2500 steps to the hills to miss the sunrise but had a memorable time.

a few days later we went chennai to meet devika aunty, mother of my late friend, and then december marked a memorable lampshade chennai edition in midst of cyclone fengal, later, we braved and went to pondicherry, and after a few days break, a rejuvenating trip to goa to chorla ghats (thanks to michelle who gifted us a stay at wildernest!), house of aramba (home of the lovely bala, ambica and their son who have made us a part of their family for the few days we stayed) and then a short trip to arambol. i was saddened leaving arambol and its pastures and the beach. 

the trips were much deserved as october and november were hard. we lost ammamma and spent many days mourning. a dear childhood friend passed away too.

it felt like pieces of childhood were lost. but travel ailed the heart.

                                       here are a few collages (not in order of any events):


event at yka with mom, meeting shilpa, celebrating with sondesh and mimiso, last meet with ammamma, and meeting surela and ananya


marriage to mba to friends in nandi hills and bonding with dipen and ranjan

december in goa

first edition of lampshade in chennai.. 
meeting guns after several telephonic conversations









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