Of Partings, Coping, Carrying on

#sareespeak

#kanjivaram

#SS/7/2020

#vasanthpanchami

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Vasanth panchami. Saraswathi puja. Had a lovely time with the Saraswathis in my life, culminating in one leaving for her home today. Going to miss her heaps.
A wise elder once said to me “Anyone who does any form of art, is a veritable Saraswathi”.
Posting this recently taken photo by my youngest Saraswathi. A grey lined silk with green gold borders and maroon gold pallu. Borders and pallu have stripes of gold leaves.
Feeling a little down as I always do when loved ones part. Wishing we had a few days left. Most of you will empathise with me. When studying overseas, when visiting in laws, when having moved here – we land, they land, we relish every moment, then time comes for us or them to leave all too soon. With heavy hearts, we bid our goodbyes, get on the plane, and force ourselves to switch modes, drop off the current avatar and return to our previous one, some of us block out the memories to ease the pain, some of us play every moment back in our mind’s eye. Whatever we choose to do, it is our way of coping with partings.
My sister wrote me “It’s moments like these that I wish we could all stay close to one another. Though the kids and we also will nicely fight , nothing can beat the closeness among siblings/cousins. All growing up and soon will be having their own families”.
So tough when we live in different continents.
My coping strategy is to dive headfirst into daily living – home, work, music, food, books, video calls, individual and group chats.
And Hope that it will help.
Photo credit Sowbhagya Nagendran