After a hazy May, I’m trying to settle back into my routine this June. A lot has already happened in the first eleven days. However, my brain feels a bit scattered these days, and when I tried to recall what’s happened so far, I literally had to scroll through my phone’s gallery to jog my memory.

The most important event is that my son’s school has started again, giving me some free time to focus on my own things. Since we hadn’t taken a vacation during the summer break due to Operation Sindoor and its fallout, we planned a short trip to Pune to make up for it. The short break was quite refreshing. We caught up with some old friends and my husband’s cousins. It was especially heartwarming to meet my son’s childhood friend, with whom he had gone to school from playschool to standard eight. The kid had moved to Pune but stayed in touch. The boys went bowling, had burgers and chatted as if they had never parted. At one point, their sudden burst of laughter was loud enough to startle an elderly couple sitting nearby! watching the two childhood buddies meet after two years made me more nostalgic than the boys!

Pune is famous for its food, and for us too, this short trip turned into a gastronomic revelry. It was also relaxing, not having to wake up and think, “What to cook today?” is a luxury. A day without such decisions is always a good day. The rain-lashed long drive, with intermittent stops for coffee or smoked corn, added some zing to the trip. Honestly, this was our first proper family trip in almost three years. These days, it’s usually just Mommy and son. The dad perhaps feels a bit excluded. Though, after the trip, my son whispered that it’s more fun with Mommy—Daddy is way stricter, sets more rules, and doesn’t let him get his way so easily. Kids these days, I swear!!

Another highlight was meeting my school friend after 30 long years in Bandra. Though we both live in Mumbai, we somehow never found the time to meet in the past twenty-odd years. Finally, an impromptu meetup brought back warm memories of our childhood school days. But I also realized how much I’ve started forgetting—I couldn’t recall many names and incidents from the past.

This June, I also attended a meeting of my Buddhist chanting group. It felt good to connect and interact with everyone again. I also met my crochet group. This hobby is really lifting my spirits, though it’s also giving me a backache and aching fingers! Whenever I sit with my crochet kit, my son jokes that I’ve officially entered the “old wives” bracket.

I’ve also been catching up on Netflix this month. Whenever my mother-in-law is around, it becomes hard to watch anything, as she prefers religious Bengali shows. I usually avoid the TV in the hall and watch whatever I can on my phone—but I don’t enjoy watching on mobile for long, so I often skip it altogether. After she left, I felt a strange sense of digital freedom and could finally watch whatever I wanted on TV. I saw quite a few movies and series, including Stolen, Bodkin, The Four Seasons, and Madgaon Express (don’t watch—it’s quite bad).

I’m also reading two Bengali storybooks and one discourse by Krishnamurti.

That’s the June update so far. Tell me—how is June treating you?

Joining Vinitha‘s two hundred and fifty fifth edition of Fiction Monday with the word prompt Startle.