And just like that, we are in the month of love, February. I always associate February being a month filled with love and laughter and so hope that this month is like that for all of us.

I finally reached my home state of Maharashtra this month, after walking nearly 6,000 km since the beginning of 2021. I am currently on the outskirts of Maharastra’s third-largest city and its winter capital, Nagpur. To reach my home in Mumbai, I still need to walk another 700 km.

I exceeded my expectations this month and read 12 books, a mixture of both fiction and non-fiction. I don’t think I have read this much in a month in recent years, so this was a very good start for the year for me, in reading terms. Now comes the part, which is to sustain this reading pace.

This week’s quote comes from Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American essayist, lecturer, philosopher, abolitionist, and poet who led the transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century. He was seen as a champion of individualism and a prescient critic of the countervailing pressures of society, and his ideology was disseminated through dozens of published essays and more than 1,500 public lectures across the United States. Waldo as he was known as tells us that our past and future circumstances are not important as our character; no matter what setbacks we’ve faced or challenges that lie ahead, we can succeed if we have inner strength. Food for thought, right?

The children are busy with school and winding down to the end of the last semester of their polytechnic education. And GG is also busy with university applications and I hope she gets admitted into the course of her choice at the university she wants to attend. BB will now be liable for National Service and we are still waiting for his enlistment letter which should come anytime soon. So after the end of his diploma, he will start focusing on his fitness, so that he does not have too much of a problem during his Basic Military Training.

That’s all for this week. I hope February is just as lovely as the promise it shows.