Oh well, look who's back. For those of you who have been consigning me to several hells reserved for bloggers who deny eager readers their usual quota of high-class entertainment, I have excuses galore. For one, I've been rather busy being pregnant.

Well yes. I am. I'm also sort of on my way to the finishing line, and apart from the fact that most of the time I've either been too tired or too sick to blog, this thing has weighed on my mind. As in, I've wondered whether I should announce it here. See, I never meant this blog to be the public confessional sort of thing (much as I respect and enjoy blogs of that nature) but at the same time it did feel a little weird to be going through something so drastic and then go on on your blog as if the jolly Marauder is still her carefree old self. Which dilemma has often stopped me from writing more often in the last few months, which means that the several posts that remained half-formulated in my mind are now (much to your chagrin, I know) lost in nothingness.

For instance, I meant to write about the reverse pressure I often felt NOT to have kids, because most people I know are either indifferent to the whole thing or feel unhesitatingly negative about it. It's completely their decision, but to everybody who deplores aunties who come up to you at weddings and ask 'when are you having a baby', I have this to say -- people my age have often recoiled in horror when I've said that I would like to have babies, and what's more, sometime soon.

I still look for excuses mentally, possibly to share with the recoiling-in-horror friends, about why this WAS the right time to do it and feel ashamed immediately. Though I have to say in all honesty, not too many people have really asked me. They've raised eyebrows, yes, and looked cockily and said 'you?!' and said stuff like 'you still sound so kiddish' but no one has been graceless enough to say 'my god, you behenji, you' (which, I admit here to exorcise it once and for all, has been the secret fear throughout). Mostly, people have been concerned and sweet and even very New Age -- one friend said I was doing something 'sexy and creative', which I admit had never crossed my mind, but like, wow.

Which is not to say I still don't have doubts -- about whether it's too early (I'm 28, I could easily have waited another couple of years at least), whether I am ready to give up the arriving home drunk at one in the night kind of lifestyle, whether I ought to give up smoking completely now that I've done without it for close on eight months etc etc.

Meanwhile, life's gone on much as usual. So ok, I look different and am sick of wearing the same five set of clothes that still fit me, I can't remember the last time I ate something and didn't feel nauseated immediately after, I can't turn from side to side in bed without groaning loudly enough to make R sit up with an alarmed look on his face, I have been mercilessly exploiting the current status to get a lot of TLC, I have tried to get used to people moving gently out of my way in office (for some reason this annoys the hell out me) and I visit the powder room (see how delicately nurtured I am?) a lot more often.

But apart from that? Things have been just the same and very predictable -- I hated Don, loved Yun Hota To Kya Hota and Sideways (both of which I watched slightly late in the day a week back on DVD), enjoyed Pyar Ke Side Effects and gave up my TV sabbatical to follow Nach Baliye 2 with enviable dedication. (On which: Did you feel glad Tanaaz-Bakhtiyar were out because their over-energetic chirpiness was getting on your nerves? And didn't you just love the way Shweta said 'main apne Raja ke liye nachungi' in total jab tak tere paon chalenge tab tak uski saansen chalengi style when 'mera Raja' was in hospital suffering from some mysterious liver ailment?) The show's over now and I go into TV hibernation till next year -- though something tells me I won't really have time to analyse my negative feelings for television for some time.

And that, in short, is that.