And Yet Another Uneventful Holi and Navroze Day!

Thursday, March 21, 2019
Bombay

Any Yet Another Uneventful Holi and Navroze Day!
     
     Namaste from Bombay!
     Living in Bombay after so many years is taking me back to the holidays of my growing years in the city. Today happened to be both Holi and Navroze. First days of spring, celebrated with the hurling of color and soaking in colored water to symbolize the arrival of spring mainly among the Hindus of North India and the celebration of the spring equinox in Persia for the Parsis came together splendidly in a Bank holiday. The city came to a standstill as I recalled "playing Holi" as a teenager with the other teens in my building in Bandra. I have a lovely picture from those days (when we were all so young and so beautiful!) sitting in the compound of our building and grinning for the camera. Those were the days!
     Today, I woke up at 5.30am and began blogging and checking out Twitter, just as I do each day. I had a calendar with no engagements on it as I had kept the day free for Dad in case he needed help following his oral surgery.  Luckily, he is not faring badly at all and I can only hope that the second phase of fixing implants (which will take place on Tuesday) will go just as smoothly. 
    I caught the bread man and had a broon with spreads and coffee for breakfast before heading out to the gym where I worked out for an hour. In the interest of losing a bit of weight, I am stepping up the length and intensity of my cardio workouts and it seems to be working as I am steadily losing about half a pound a day--that exercise with savage carb control in my diet and portion control is doing wonders. However, I have to wonder how long I can sustain this deprivation as I am craving chocolate and desserts! I have given up ice-cream for Lent---and that might be a very good thing, in more ways than one!
     I then sat and worked at my laptop all day. Basically, I caught up with NYU and other email and I asked the IT folks at work how I could access my email prior to the 2010 as I have managed to retrieve a lot of work related material through my NYU email. Not so lucky on the personal front. I have also begun the transcribing of interviews I did through the week that my laptop was in the shop--so six interviews had to be transcribed--and today I finished three of them: Vijaya Mehta, Naresh Fernandes and Jehangir Patel. Tomorrow I intend to finish the other three and get caught up (after which I shall valiantly try to get back to the 40 interviews I had transcribed earlier and start working on them again).
    I stopped for lunch (during which time I had returned to watching Come Dine With Me) and had a short nap and then I had tea with nuts (while watching more of the same show). In the evening, I set out for Dad's--just a little earlier than usual because I wanted to put his food into a mixer to mash it up to make it easier for him to swallow. I did this and was delighted to find that my mother's mixer-blender is still working although it has not been used for about 8 years! Dad's food pulverized, I went with him to Church. Russel had a visitor, one Hazel from the parish, who also left with us for church.
     After Mass, I returned to Dad's home to help him with some bank figures--those did not take too long before it was time for them to have their dinner.
     I returned home and had mine: beans, dal and chicken mince with potatoes--I ate only a tiny piece of the potato. For dessert, since my guavas are over, I had a small piece of dark chocolate. I watched another episode of Vera as I turned sleepy and switched off the light.
     I warned you that it was a totally uneventful day..but the interviews will resume tomorrow and I shall be busy once more. However, this quiet time was a blessing in disguise as it gave me the time to download my Documents that I had deleted and to catch up on my transcription.
     Until tomorrow...