Shreya Shively

I’ve spent most of my teens & early 20s desperately trying to run away from my parents- away from the rules, the advice, and more importantly, their decisions. 

Now, way into (and almost on the wrong side of) my 30s, I desperately want to run to my parents for every little thing in life. The number of times I wish I could just ask them to make my decisions for me… teenage Shreya would have a huge ‘wtf’ expression on her face, reading this right now. 

But dear teenage Shreya, one day, you’ll have a never ending root canal with a thousand complications, and you’d wish your parents were the ones driving you to and from the dentist, and deciding whether you need to get an implant, or a new dentist. 

One day, you’ll need to understand taxes and investments and make decisions that will affect you when you’re retiring, which suddenly isn’t a far off age, and you’d wish someone would just tell you what to do instead.

One day, right out of college, when you go grocery shopping for the first time, you’ll realise just how expensive fruits are, and will come back to your dilapidated PG with one apple, one mango and 2 bananas, because that’s all you could afford. And you’ll have a sudden appreciation for all those times your parents tried to force feed more fruits to you.

And there will be multiple painful days when office is giving you trouble and you really wish you could ask your parents to come down and talk to your boss and somehow just sort it all out for you.

As I write this, I’m contemplating running away home for a week. 7 days of not deciding what should be made for breakfast-lunch-dinner. 7 days of cuddling between my parents the way I used to when I was a kid. 7 days of realising how different I really am from my parents, and being amused at all the similarities I can now see too (that teenage Shreya would be appalled at). 

7 days of unconditional love, which I now realise is not always the easiest thing, and find myself craving for, instead.

What is it about the mountains and writing?

Maybe it’s how we’ve grown up seeing writers write. Either in cottages with a mountain view. Or by the window in a picturesque villa by the sea. Because supposedly, how else does one let their creative juices flow? Definitely not in the craziness of a city. Not with all the honking and horrible air and just generally having to deal with the realities of life. Like the bai not turning up. Or whose turn is it to do the laundry. (On a side note, ‘doing’ the laundry is the most misleading term in India. Doing it is simply putting it in the washing machine. It’s the who is going to take it out and put it up on the clothesline that’s the real work. Unless you’re one of those rich folks who can afford a dryer, or more importantly, the space to keep a dryer. I mean, who are you and why are you even reading this?)

But coming back to the mountains. They do make you want to read. And scribble. Maybe even sketch just a tiny bit. They make you think about all the beautiful paper and art supplies at home. Supplies that have been locked away in a box (a transparent box, mind you, in the hope that being able to see the supplies will make you want to use them. P.S. Doesn’t work). And you look at the beautiful view in front of you and daydream about just how you’ll use them when you go back. The beautiful things you will create. The words that will flow on paper.

Not really a news flash, but nothing’s gonna flow.

Because by the time you’re back home, you’re exhausted. You need a vacation to get over your vacation. Forget the pens and paint, you’re already worrying about that meeting you have tomorrow, preparation for which you put off because you were in too much of a holiday mood earlier. But now it’s all piled up for today, not tomorrow. And the words and the ideas take a tiny little backseat, you know, just for the time being.

Until they’re pushed just a little further back. To accommodate for the monsoons making your commute to work just a bit worse. And that new project that is amazing but also time consuming. And that other project that kinda sucks but you can’t really put off anymore. And the grocery shopping. The meal planning. The Netflix shows to catch up on. The people to meet. The hours to sleep.

Until the next hill or beach vacation. Where you’re suddenly reminded about this writing itch, and find yourself without a pen and paper, again. And you wonder, what is it, about mountains and writing?

Given how long I’ve been away from here, I frankly don’t even know where to start. For one thing, I actually didn’t do a year’s round up of everything I’ve learnt this time in December. Given how weird this year has been, and how horrible for some, it just felt like too much of harping about my own privilege. And also, there was just so much happening, there that really wasn’t any any time to sit back and reflect on it.

But here are some updates anyway, just to catch you up (just in case you haven’t seen me harping on and on about it on my Instagram).

1. My first book got published (finally)! It’s out, and it’s (surprisingly) getting good reviews. Even as I write this, I know that using the word ‘surprisingly’ shows a lot about my own confidence levels about it, but that’s a whole other discussion for another time. But needless to say, I’m happy with the response, and the numerous messages I’ve gotten from people about it. This book was written a long time back, and has been through so much (including a pandemic), that it was just time for it to be out. You can grab your copy on Amazon!
2. I am now a certified life coach! If you’d told me a year back that I would be saying that sentence, I would’ve rolled my eyes and laughed you off. But the me of a year ago hadn’t ever been at the receiving end of coaching. I didn’t know what it can do for a person, how much it can change you by helping you find yourself, how transformative it can be. Studying and becoming a practicing coach myself has been a beautiful experience, and I’m super excited to see where this goes. If you’re interested in booking a trial session with me – you can reach me at shreyashively@gmail.com
3. The low after the high. It’s weird, but I have been on a super achieving adrenaline rush since September last year. There was just way too much happening in life – and I was hell bent to come out on top of it all. My parents were moving cities – so I spent two months traveling between cities, helping them pack & unpack, all the while attending classes for coaching, figuring out the final edits on my book and of course managing a full time job. For once 7 hours of sleep were enough, there was minimal snoozing, and I even managed a daily workout. All of this without feeling tired. And then 2021 hit. The course is over. The book is out. There’s still a lot to be done in life, mind you. But I feel like I need 10 hours of sleep. It takes all my willpower to get out of bed and go for a walk. I barely workout because my bones are creaking like an old haunted house. I don’t know what this is. I don’t know if it’s a sudden crash after the adrenaline has dissipated and you realise that exhaustion was, in fact, there all along. Of course I don’t like it. Of course I want to go back to that over achieving super human of the last few months. But if there’s one thing this year has taught me, is to be patient with myself. To listen to my body. To give my mind the time and space it needs. It isn’t ideal, but it’s important.

So, phew. That’s the quickest summary I could manage. Frankly, the longer I stayed away from this blog, the more it piled up, and the tougher it got to pen anything down at all. But here it is, word vomit. And now, we can finally move on.

Happy new year, happy hoomans, hope we manage to make something good out of it.

It’s been 12 years since I left Delhi. Sure, it’s been an on-off relationship, with me returning in between for a couple of years in between – but overall, it’s still been a decade. And each time I return to this city, I’m painfully aware of how much my emotions towards it have changed over the years.

To be clear, I was never very emotional about it to begin with. I feel like I have the talent of moving on from places and people faster than most, and this definitely applied to Delhi as well.

But in the beginning, I did find myself talking about it rather dreamily every now and then.

You know, the beautiful roads, the insanely yum food, the delicious fog in the winters.

It’s difficult to forget the beautiful nights spent romanticizing the smell and taste of Delhi winters as a student living in North Campus. The memories of t shirts sold for thirty rupees on the side walks of Sarojini Nagar market. Of the momos and fruit beer at Dilli Haat. Of ice cream at India Gate. Of the buzz of politics and power as students got together, energized after Rang De Basanti. Of believing in things, and fighting for them.

And yet, over the years, each time my plane lands and I find myself in an Uber, half my mind on the Google Map silently open on my phone because it’s difficult to keep a track of all the new roads and not trusting strangers runs in every Delhiite’s blood; I find myself more and more detached from it. Not the least of it is because Delhi, like every city, has changed. I no longer know which is the best place to eat, or what might be open past midnight. Hell, I don’t even have the guts to be out past midnight anymore. North Campus has evolved, my college is now a heritage site, and air conditioned. I cannot for the life of me bargain in Sarojini Nagar now and the momos just don’t taste as delicious anymore. As much as I’d like to deny it, I’ve changed.

And with each trip I realise, that this city no longer pulls at my heart strings. The romantic memories are fading, replaced by rising statistics of crime and pollution. The only reason to come back is family, and now half my family has decided to leave the city behind as well.

And I suddenly feel homeless.

Which is weird, because I haven’t called Delhi home for a long time.

But, neither have I ever gotten around to calling Mumbai home. Mumbai to me has been this dream. One from which I’ll suddenly wake up. One which will fade away before I can quite remember what it was. Mumbai is where I live, and yet, not where I’ve settled down. Nor do I see it happening anytime soon.

Don’t get me wrong, I love a lot about this city. But it’s just not home, yet.

I’m not sure if any place will ever be home.

And maybe, I’m okay with that.

Maybe home is in the chaos of the in-between.

Because what’s more romantic than being able to pack your bags and move whenever you want, leaving behind the bad stuff, taking with you just the glossed over beautiful memories, that one day will fade away into sweet nothingness?

P.S. On the other hand, A took all of two months to shed his Delhi-ness and start talking like a Mumbaikar. This time, our cab driver in Delhi asked him if he was a Mumbaikar, based on the way he talked (Chalega…Karega…), which we all know is the absolute final acknowledgement of your roots. I felt a little offended, though I have no clue why, and then remembered that I don’t even talk like a Delhi-ite, my Hindi is more of Lucknow than anything else, a city where I’ve never even lived. We’re all screwed up in our own ways I guess.