The ankle has been diagnosed as a severe sprain and some tendon tear, and will take its own time to heal.

The sense of disconnectedness that always seems to come over me after a journey is spreading its miasma of unreality. I went back and read several LJ friends’ posts but even lack the energy to go right back…and I just don’t feel like commenting, especially given the fact that I am typing on the old tablet of KM’s and it’s somehow unfamiliar and doesn’t encourage my typing….

I have a lot of thank-you’s to write and don’t feel like doing that, either. Lassitude…of the worst sort…sits upon me.

I find it difficult to respond to people when they ask me leading questions. “Do you think we conducted our son’s wedding well?” a neighbour asks. “Did you like the accomodation in Rishikesh? That’s where we stayed and it was wonderful” says another friend. I may not, in general, have any disagreements with these statements…but I want to say I liked something, at MY own pace and time,not be forced into a fake enthusiasm. A friend in Delhi asked me pointedly, wasn’t the “return gift” she gave me after her daughter’s wedding (a few months ago) very nice? How on earth to tell her that I have not seen it yet (KM attended the wedding, not me.)…and have really no interest in it? If I am asked how the Arati at the Ganges was, by someone who’s taken a lot of trouble to take us there, can I really say, “it was nice,but the dirt and filth all around me, the amount of plastic being used and trashed, and the crowds, all put me off”?

Insistent questions of “Do you like it?Do you like it” can have only one polite response…but sometimes it may be less honest than I’d like it to be…..and sometimes, as in the case of the wedding return gift, not honest at all!