Ok. So I have no idea what I’m going to write right now. Yay for the alliteration!(or was it tautology? Or neither? 🤷🏻‍♀️)

This journey from thinking about writing to buying a nice pen and diary to motivate me enough to just start it already (as if that would work🙄) to actually write, took about a year. That is how much of a procrastinator I am. Like right now, I have a sudden, inexplicable urge to watch Aishwarya Rai’s ‘Kajra Re’. So I did, and ended up losing my train of thought (Not that I had much of any in the first place).

This smartphone that I own is a constant source of distraction. And by constant, I mean ‘I’ll-sit-here-and-lure-you-with-thoughts-of-all-things-you’d-rather-do-with-me’ constant. It just sits there, innocent and unmoving, not realising how many potentially fruitful years I’ve wasted looking at its screen.

Seriously. I’m realising that a lot of that lack of focus must be attributed to my phone and my inability to keep my hands off it.

You see, I have a hungry brain, and it must be fed with all kinds of brain food. Even when I was younger, my father would bring me all kinds of comic books and magazines to read. And when I used to be done with those, I would attack my mother’s stash of ‘Gruhashobha’ and ‘Diwali Anks’ collected over many years. My extensive and totally unnecessary knowledge of recipes that no one would ever make stems from those hours of reading.

The best day used to be when Dad used to bring a new magazine ( Champak, Chandamama, Tinkle) and piping hot, spicy samosas, stuffed with the tastiest aalu – matar sabzi along with tangy, raw mango pieces seasoned with red chilli powder and salt on the side, and a flavourful chutney to dunk those samosas into.

(If you think I got a bit carried away with the food description there, I couldn’t help it - if there is a heaven of Indian savoury snacks somewhere, those samosas most definitely are the royal family. And by this I mean not any other samosas, just the ones that my father used to bring. Samosas stuffed with Chana Dal, mint leaves and Kismish should burn in samosa hell).

What I’m trying to say is that the combination of those snacks and new books was heaven. If I were a witch trapped in a forest with a hundred Dementors swarming around me, that memory would help me cast a Patronus strong enough to send all of them scurrying back to Azkaban.

(My Patronus would be a bear, by the way - in case you are wondering).

So the point that I’m trying to make despite all the detours that my mind insists on taking, is that my hungry brain needs to be entertained steadily, and it loves to lap up works of fiction in every form, which is why I’m constantly attached to my phone - reading, reading, reading.

So it wouldn’t be fair to blame the phone when the fault lies with my hungry brain. And I’ve said ‘hungry’ so many times that I’ve realised there are many forms of hunger, none of which are going to be satisfied if I keep on ranting here.

So now I’ll head to my kitchen to cook something up and hope to dream about a huge silver bear attacking a Dementor who reveals himself to be Leonardo DiCaprio, resulting in me wiping out my loyal Patronus and inviting Dementor – Leo to share those heavenly samosas while we discuss the effects of global warming😇