A Year’s Contemplation part 8 ft. 2025

“We can never truly see into the hearts of others.” — Tales from the Cafe (Before the Coffee Gets Cold, series 2) by Toshikazu Kawaguchi.

This line made me realize that it has been a really long time since I peeked into my own heart, let alone the hearts of others. I’m experiencing a flowing epiphany: looking into your own heart enables you to look into the hearts of others. But before I go deeper, let me introduce this blog-post series to any new readers.

To all new readers: A Year’s Contemplation is a series I started in 2018 (links below). It’s simply a reflection on how my year went by and some random blabbering.

For 2024: https://skiesofsakshi.wordpress.com/2024/12/23/a-years-contemplation-part-7-ft-2024/


For 2023: https://skiesofsakshi.wordpress.com/2023/12/25/a-years-contemplation-part-6-ft-2023/

For 2022: https://skiesofsakshi.wordpress.com/2022/12/25/a-years-contemplation-part-5-ft-2022/

For 2021: https://skiesofsakshi.wordpress.com/2022/01/10/a-years-contemplation-part-4-ft-2021/

For 2020: https://skiesofsakshi.wordpress.com/2020/12/28/a-years-contemplation-part-3-ft-2020/

For 2019: https://skiesofsakshi.wordpress.com/2019/12/29/a-years-contemplation-part-2/

For 2018: https://skiesofsakshi.wordpress.com/2018/12/31/a-years-contemplation/

Coming back to my epiphany, I owe my readers an apology for being completely MIA (missing in action) from my blog for quite some time. Simply put, I couldn’t pick up my pen because I hadn’t looked into my own heart. That’s why this contemplation write-up for 2025 is super late.

2025 was the year of achieving societal and psychological milestones:

1. Finally getting a job at one of the biggest MNCs.
2. Making concrete steps toward “settling” in life.
3. Attempts at understanding my conditioning.
4. Visiting multiple beaches and my favorite mountains in the same year.

But meanwhile also,
1. Forgetting to look inside my heart.
2. Forgetting “What actually makes Sakshi happy?”
3. Forgetting to recognize the mistakes I was making due to my conditioning.

In 2025, unknowingly I closed my heart and opened the door to conflicts — both in my inner and outer worlds. Looking back, I now realize the reason was my incapacity for inward looking.

I might sound a bit dramatic when I say this, but I’ve realized (yes, I’m using “realize” a lot because I really have) that the heart is more complex than the brain. The brain can be trained by worldly notions, desires, and phenomena, but the heart cannot.

I do not know what my heart wants.
I do not know when my heart will stop wanting what it wants.

Contradictorily, it has also come to my realization that the heart is very simple as well as complex. At least mine is. 🙂

My heart is simple but also very full.
Full of dreams.
Full of hopes.
Full of experiences.
Full of love.
Full of people I love.

Isn’t that the whole point of living: to understand what your heart wants and to understand the wants of those you love?

Every year-end I pick up my pen and pour my heart out, and I wasn’t able to do it in the cold winter of December 2025. I don’t know why.
Nonetheless, I assure my readers that my heart isn’t done contemplating yet, and with each passing year there will be more to come.

To sum it up, one of the most important lesson from 2025 was to look into my heart first, and then into the hearts of others.

Coming to the end of this post, I apologize again for the delay, but as they say about the best things: “good things take time” and “better late than never.”

Starting to write this contemplation was one of the most difficult things I’ve done in a while, but I’m glad I was able to.

Thank you for staying with me, my words, and SkiesofSakshi for 11 years since its inception.

Stay tuned for A Year’s Contemplation part 9 — featuring 2026.

Happy reading.
Love,
SkiesofSakshi

Where do you write?

Where do you write?

I want to know.

I haven’t picked up my pen and diary for a while,

So I ask you,

Where do you write?

Do you write in an aesthetic cafe?

Or curled up on your sofa with a cup of coffee?

Do you write in a quiet place?

Or sit somewhere amidst the buzz of people?

Do you need inspiration?

An idea?

Or just the practice of writing keeps you going?

Do you write in a diary?

Or tap your fingers on your laptop’s keyboard?

Do you even write?

When life gets busy,

When self-doubt comes creeping in,

When you can’t muster the courage to pick up your pen,

Do you even try to write?

Oh, please tell me, how do you write?

When do you write?

How do you write?

Do you want to write more often?

Or do you feel you have written enough?

Oh, please tell me, because I want to write,

I don’t want to fight,

With my thoughts,

With my words,

Where do I make peace with them?

Where do I sit and write?

Oh, please tell me,

Where do you write?

A Year’s Contemplation part 7 ft. 2024

“Sitting here, trying something to write, recollecting from my black and white.”

I’ve always used the above phrase as a starting point for a write-up when I can’t think of how to start. This year has a similar sentiment of being unknown to me when it started. Towards the end of 2023, things were a bit chaotic, and 2024 just glided in, without any sound or glamour. However, before I talk more about it, let me introduce this series to any new readers here.     

So, to all the new readers, A Year’s Contemplation is a series of blog posts that I started in 2018 (links for which are given below). It is nothing but a reflection on how my year went by and some random blabbering.

For 2023: https://skiesofsakshi.wordpress.com/2023/12/25/a-years-contemplation-part-6-ft-2023/

For 2022: https://skiesofsakshi.wordpress.com/2022/12/25/a-years-contemplation-part-5-ft-2022/

For 2021: https://skiesofsakshi.wordpress.com/2022/01/10/a-years-contemplation-part-4-ft-2021/

For 2020: https://skiesofsakshi.wordpress.com/2020/12/28/a-years-contemplation-part-3-ft-2020/

For 2019: https://skiesofsakshi.wordpress.com/2019/12/29/a-years-contemplation-part-2/

For 2018: https://skiesofsakshi.wordpress.com/2018/12/31/a-years-contemplation/

Now, as I said, 2024 started without a bang, without even a crinkle. It came filled with anxiety, excitement, nervousness and a heavy heart about leaving behind the girls I spent a year and a half living with to step into a new, empty house. As I have grown up over the years, I have jumped up to the idea of experiencing new adventures in life; But the very idea of making a house into a home made me feel, oh let’s say it out loud, scared. Really, really, scared. I don’t know how our mothers do it so gracefully. I just thought I couldn’t.

But, alas, a year later I feel I have done it and I have done quite a decent job of doing it. I have created a space which I can call home away from my home and in the process of doing it I have failed and succeeded and undergone smaller changes that have the biggest impact in my life. I can’t put it in words how it felt but whoever has done the same knows that it is something un-explain-able. 

As abstract as it may sound, I have also realized that creating a home makes you want to care, just as our mothers do. This care is not just limited to humans, plants or pets but also to things that you have put effort into making, organizing, cleaning and arranging. I did not know I could do all the things that I have done or feeling things that I have felt but here I am, changing into someone I do not know, but someone who I do like.

And this train of thought makes me think that I am becoming like my mother and there is no more wonderful feeling than this. My mother has been a source of abundant love and care. She has instilled so many qualities in both me and my sister that make both of us better humans every day. Mothers always know how to make you feel at home and I have been trying to do the same for myself as I gather the courage to stay somewhere far away from my home.

As I also write about care, I am proud to say that I have also exercised the highest level of care, that is, self-care.  We sometimes forget or even don’t realize to do it because all along we had others caring for us- our mother, friends, family, and partner. But self-care is something that goes a long way in life enabling us in multiple ways.

We do complicate a lot of things in life, I am guilty of that as well, but self-care is the simplest of them all. My self-care is:

1. Waking up in the morning after a good sleep
2. Drink warm water with lemon
3. Cut fruits for breakfast.
4. Arranged pillows and bedsheets
5. Fold blanket

I might miss out on doing any of those things on some days but that has never stopped me to not do it again the next day. As I step into next year, I want to move a level up and start exercising as a part of my self-care. My friends Dhaval and Nikita would be super proud after reading the above line and will try to push me if I slack.

Hence, after blabbering for more than 600 words, this contemplation is coming to an end. I hope you liked reading it and I hope to write more and read more. Before, ending this, I want you to do one more thing- wherever you are, at home or at work, please drink a glass of water, your body needs it.

Alright, that’s it from SkiesofSakshi for the year 2024. Please scroll through for other interesting reads, if you are new here, please do follow SkiesOfSakshi just by entering your email id to get regular updates.

Wish you, my dear readers, a Merry Christmas and a Very Happy New Year.

See you on the other side of the year with more write-ups.

Happy Reading.

LotsOfLove,

SkiesOfSakshi. 

Featured image source: https://www.freepik.com/premium-vector/painting-sunset-with-view-mountains-sunset_203684309.htm

A Sunday Brunch Sight!

It’s a surprisingly warm Sunday afternoon during the winter months. Sun is shining at its peak and the people around are enjoying it, while it lasts. She’s loving the feel of sunny rays hitting her pink cheeks after almost a few months of snow. Soaking every bit of it, she walks up to the nearby Café for her favourite Sunday Brunch.
The Café owners are a friendly gay couple who love interacting with their customers and serving amazing Italian food. She’s been a regular customer of this Café for more than a year now, and so as soon as she steps in, she is greeted with a cheerful smile from Gregory and Joel, the owners—one behind the counter, another behind the Kitchen window.

She orders her usual order and sits on the table, next to the glass window of the Café. She loves the cold touch of the glass and the smoothness of it. She sits there quite peacefully while waiting for her order. She has a small book in her bag which she pulls out and puts on the table and at that moment she closes her eyes to smell the freshly made pasta being served to the customers sitting on another table behind her. She is quickly reminded of her love towards Italian food and is transported to her grandmother’s kitchen quite immediately.
Monito, her grandmother was an Italian with an exquisite taste for food. She used to cook amazing food and also take all of her grandchildren to nearby places to explore Italian food when they used to visit her in Rome. She had a knack for enjoying food with all the five senses and her grandchildren equally enjoyed the same. Monito’s food left a deep impact on anyone who ate the food she made.

Remembering all those fond memories of her grandmother, she sat there with eyes closed for a long time and she did not notice a rather young boy, dressed in a casual half-sleeved shirt and shorts, come and sit in front of her. He was amused to see someone sitting so calmly amidst the hustle-bustle of customers in the Café. It looked like, he was staring at her beautiful face when she suddenly opened her eyes. The boy hurriedly spoke, “ Hey, I’m sorry I did not ask you before I sat here. Are you waiting for someone? Should I leave? Sorry, I did not want to disturb you while you had your eyes closed and I couldn’t find any other place to sit at this time in the Café, so I just sat here”.  All of it, he said in one breath and she could not help but laugh softly.  “Hey, it’s okay. I am not waiting for anyone here and I understand that the Café is usually jam-packed at this hour on Sundays, so you can sit. I have no problem.”
And so, both sat right across one another, without saying a word for a handful of minutes.
“Umm, hi”
“So, hi”
Both spoke at the same time to break the ice and reduce the awkwardness and laughed.
“Let me go first, Hi I am Liam. I study in the nearby University.”
“Hi, I am Naomi. I teach at the school, two blocks away from here. Are you new here?”
“Yes, I am. I just moved into this area a week ago. I was exploring this vicinity when I found this Café and it smelled amazing so I had to step in and had to have food from here.”
“Indeed, they do make very tasty dishes here.”
He glanced at the book she was holding between her hands.
“I see a book in your hand, what are you reading currently?”
“It’s a children’s storybook that I am reading as part of my teaching exercise.’
“Oh, lovely. Can I have a look?”
“Of course, sure”.        
He took the book in his hand and found it to be unique. It was not any regular book, it had bumps on every page and no alphabets, words, only bumps.
“I don’t understand, what kind of a book is this?”
She laughed gently. “It’s a braille book. I teach at the blind school”

And then he realised, she was visually impaired. She was sitting right in front of him, unbothered by the sunlight hitting her face. It was then he noticed that she was closing her eyes every now and then to take in the waft of Italian food that had spread across the Café, she was touching the cold glass, rough table edges and smiling beautifully at him without any hesitance.            
Never had he seen such a beautiful smile, such a soft face and at that moment he wished if she saw him too. If could ever fall in love with him, the way he had fallen in love with her, at first sight.
 

Featured Image From: Cafe Fika Sip Savor

An Open Letter to Time on a Decade

Dear Time,

In a time where people’s attention span is not even 30 seconds, I am writing an open letter which is fairly, an outdated concept. In this letter, I want to talk about not just about a week, a month or even a year. I want to talk to you about a decade.

This writing piece has found me in my biggest writing slump and is getting me out of it. I have a million things on my to-do list, but only then will I get my train of thought and compel me to write about what is going in my head.

So, my dear time, let me tell you that the first Sunday of every August is Friendship’s Day. I am a week and a day late to acknowledge it, but that does not stop me from writing about it because August is also a month, back in 2015 when I joined my undergraduate college. Those four years were the fastest years that went by in the blink of an eye. I was a naïve 18-year-old, stepping into the world of the unknown and coming out with people who I call “my friends”.

This month makes me want to reflect on my decade-old friendship that went through a rollercoaster ride and still survived. It has survived your test, dear time and I am sure it will keep going on for decades to come because there is something about those friendships that lasts a decade.

I sit here now, writing about it and I see all those years flashing right in front of my eyes. Friendships like these are not only built by effort but also by you, dear time. Now and then, year after year, the time that we got, to be together and jump on the nostalgia has been reduced to only a handful number of days, which we spend re-living our memories and narrating the same old anecdotes.

With a very heavy heart, I look at the changing colour of the sky from my window and feel grateful. Eternally grateful. I am hopeful that life has more to offer, for I, am still young, but one thing it will not give me again is this decade-old friendship. In the years to come this friendship, our friendship, my friendship will only keep compounding.

Yours Lovingly,
A friend.                

Featured picture: Shuttershock Images.