It's Always About the Sea

Late realisations are usually painful. This morning, when I woke up from my 5700th dream of the sea, I knew what was missing from life - the crying of seagulls, the sound of waves,  the smell of the ocean. And since I can't go to the beach anytime soon, I decided to use the last lot of images from my trip to heaven and publish a blogpost.

That's all for now. Will try to write a proper blog post next month. Whoever still reads blogs and is going through this one, may you have a great trip to somehere you have always wanted to go. Soon. 

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My Days at Sibang

No matter how hard I try, I don't think I can express what I feel about this café. Café - a place where people sit down to have a cup of coffee, read a book maybe, work remotely, hang out with friends, or go on a date. While I may have done all of the above at Sibang Bakery, for me, the place is far more than the sum of its parts. It was a place I went to just be, I guess. Every Sunday morning. Sometimes Saturday mornings. For nine years.

I may go to hundreds of cafes in the years to come. Not sure if I will  feel this way about about them though. Below are some pictures I am uploading to document my life when I could go there regularly before I decided to choose a more nomadic life. 

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Missing My Old Place

As I write this post, a sense of loss fills me. No matter how strong my resolve for writing a happy blogpost is, I find it hard to be all bright and chirpy. Anyway, so the update is that I just left my old place and I feel lost. In this post, I am sharing a few images that I took while I lived here.

The food I cooked there

Nothing special about them, I guess. But I would miss cooking in that house.

This wall

With this wall, I took the time and effort to create something meaningful. Never really got sick of it. 

This reading corner

I don't remember how many books I read here. But I will always remember the feeling.

My view at night

Beautiful.

A selfie

Just to document.

The way to the house

This may look like the odd one, but the view from the metro as I went home every evening was not bad at all. 

No Set Agenda

For the longest time, I held this belief that I could not get bored. That my brain would always find something exciting to catch fancy, and there would always be something to mull over. And that has been the case for the most part. And lately, after more than a decade of putting my brain to work 24X7, all I yearn for is boredom.

I want to wake up without any job list for the day; no pending articles, no fixing things around the house, and no set agenda. And I want this boredom to last for weeks, if not months. Sitting around and doing nothing but having coffee, reading random articles and books, and staring at trees for hours sounds delightful.

And while I do all this, I don't want to dress boring at all. The clothes could be monochrome, free of accessories, even repetitive, but far from boring. For example, this combination of black and denim, recreated in different ways for each day of the week, could just be perfect. Black t-shirt, short denim skirt, black embroidered blouse with black midi skirt, black bralette with pair or relaxed jeans...

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Almost Like a Magazine Cover

While writing about fashion, it's easy for me to feel like an imposter. After all, I have no fashion degree. Nor have I grown up around fashionable people. I have never owned a designer piece, and I don't remember buying anything that was not on sale. 

In the last few years, like a canvas that has been sitting blank and untouched, my wardrobe has been vegetating. And yet, I see one glimmer and am ready to put together an outfit or write an article on fashion. These glimmers could be anything - a well-dressed woman walking down a street, a new print in the market or a Netflix series with protagonists in clothes to die for. 

And before that glimmer gets a chance to fade, I try not to feel like an outsider. So, I write. I feel like a model - off-duty, yet stylish. And then I am photographed and put on a magazine cover. 

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What is it about sweaters?

Out of everything I feel while flipping through the pages of a fashion magazine, or while noticing fashionable people in the streets, that feeling of coziness upon seeing a sweater is the most perennial. It doesn't matter if it's worn by a female model, a male model, or even lying on a studio floor; it almost always makes me feel good.

So what is it about sweaters that stands out to me? Is it the nostalgic image of my mother knitting non-stop, her needles clicking rhythmically as she worked? Or is it the jingle of the iconic Monte Carlo TV commercials from back in the day? Or is it simply the touch of wool against my skin? I'm not entirely sure, but there's something about sweaters that gives me this warm and fuzzy feeling.

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Winter Coats, But Make Them Cheap

In my world, money has always spoken the loudest. It has been the driving factor behind most things - where to study, what to eat, where to rent when to start working, how to travel and so on. 

Naturally, money or the lack thereof, has also dictated my sartorial buys. This rings particularly true for all the winter coats I own. The day I decided to buy my first winter coat, it took me very little time to realise that I didn't have the budget for it. Disappointed, I decided to make do with the sweaters I had. And then, my colleague introduced me to the place that had answers to every broke fashion question I had - Sarojini Nagar. We went early in the morning to avoid the crowd, and she took me to the exact lane where they sell the trendiest coats starting at 300 INR! Before I knew it, I had three coats (if memory serves me right). Two of these coats still hang proudly in my closet, including the one in these pictures. 

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Never Not Sure Of

There are days when I have it all figured out - where to live, what to do on weekends, who to meet, the vacations to save money for. And then there are days when I feel as lost as a ball in dense shrubs. Days when I stare at a fully stocked fridge and still unsure what to cook. Moments when I have absolutely no idea how to spend an entire day.

Today is one such day, so I don't know what to write about. And then I stumbled upon these pictures from my library and I decide to upload them because this is one outfit I will never not be sure of. A grey chunky sweater, black pants and black boots. Nothing can go wrong.

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Simplifying Winter Dressing

For some people, putting together a winter outfit is more complicated than an intern trying to figure out their first job or someone trying to find a balance between their cravings for coffee and anxiety management resolutions. Here are three things that have simplified the art of winter dressing for me.

Owning versatile outerwear: Owning a few coats and jackets in colours such as black, grey, tan or navy has allowed me to throw them over almost everything.

Shoes that do the trick: Shoes with minimal design, e.g. black or white sneakers with very little print or typography, or flat boots can easily go with layered winter outfits.

Solid t-shirts and scarves: When it comes to solid t-shirts and scarves, I think we can opt for almost any colour. If it's muted, it will look like an organic fit; if it's a bold colour, it will add a pop to an otherwise monochrome or basic outfit. 

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