Came here to review a book and somehow ended up reviewing my life :)))

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Starting Over, Once Again…

Well, it’s been ten days since I moved to Manipal, Udupi. God, I still can’t get over this place. I genuinely don’t think I will even after two years. After spending almost two years in Delhi, where I, someone who loves roaming around, was mostly made to stay indoors because of pollution and those long, brutal winters, this feels like a breath of fresh air. But I’ll always be grateful for Delhi. Getting to live and work in the capital city of India was something I’ll never take for granted.

A Pause Before the Next Chapter

Then came Chennai. For the last two whole months being there with family and friends, and let me tell you, I took my break VERY seriously. Slept. Ate. Did my follow-up hospital visits. Drove around. Met people. Repeated. I had started a book long back and couldn’t even be bothered to finish it. Peak laziness.

Not Fast, But Forward

The one productive thing I forced myself to do was learn swimming. Attempt number two after almost two years. This time I told myself I wouldn’t quit. The first four or five days? Absolute humiliation, lol. I was still trying to glide with a floater while my husband was happily doing freestyle and I’m pretty sure five-year-olds were making better progress than me. But surprisingly… I didn’t quit. Around day 12 (out of 15), I actually started doing freestyle in my own questionable style. I was so happy because my goal wasn’t to become an Olympian…I just wanted to learn for better health.

And then, out of nowhere, I got a high-grade fever. No symptoms, no warning, straight to the emergency room, followed by a terrible throat infection. There went my swimming classes, uff. Packed my bags instead and got ready to move. Not everything goes according to plan, I guess. But I still left Chennai feeling content.

The Journey To Manipal

Then came the drive to Manipal. We stopped at my brother’s place in Bangalore and before we left from Chennai, my brother confidently told my dad, “Take the Kanyakumari route, it’s easier. Avoid the other route because it has three hairpin bends.”

Anyway… somewhere along the journey from Bangalore to Manipal we discovered every hairpin bend in Karnataka lol. The first half was beautiful. Amazing roads, amazing weather, gorgeous views. I was sitting there thinking, maybe I should learn to drive car again, or at least convince Godwin to become the designated road-trip driver forever.

Then it became dark. And suddenly it was bends, slopes, diversions, no lights, more bends and me internally talking to God every five minutes while externally acting very brave. To be fair, the roads weren’t bad at all. If anything, they were quite nice. It was just the darkness and the mountain roads that made it… exciting. (By exciting, I mean I was silently praying for survival haha.) But hats off to my dad. For someone who hasn’t driven such a long route in years, he absolutely nailed it.

The Quiet Shift That Comes with Growing Up

After arriving here, we spent a couple of days with my parents, driving to beaches and just hanging out. Watching them enjoy the simplest things like little kids was honestly so wholesome.

And it made me think… our parents probably weren’t perfect while raising us. They definitely annoyed us, we definitely annoyed them and somewhere in between everyone was just trying their best. As we grow older, we stop seeing them only as parents and start seeing them as people. And maybe now it’s our turn to take care of them…with a clean slate and a clean heart.

‘The Small Things Like These’ …. That Stay With Us

Anyway… this was also supposed to be a book review. I finally got around to reading Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan after wanting to get my hands on it forever.

It’s such a tiny book, but somehow it carries so much. The story follows Bill Furlong, a coal merchant in Ireland, who slowly uncovers the reality of the Magdalen laundries and is faced with a simple but difficult choice..keep walking and protect his own peaceful life, or do something because it’s the right thing to do.

What I appreciated most was how simple the book is. It doesn’t rely on dramatic twists or anything. Instead, it slowly sits with you and asks questions that make you question yourself or those questions that make you uncomfortable. What do we owe other people? When is silence a form of complicity? And how much are we willing to risk to do the right thing?

Bill isn’t some hero. He’s an ordinary man with responsibilities, bills, a family and every reason to look away. But his own upbringing…being the child of a young unmarried mother who was shown unexpected kindness makes him pause and think when others might not. The book reminded me once again that kindness isn’t always convenient. Sometimes it costs your comfort, your reputation or your peace. But looking away has a cost too.

And weirdly, reading all of that made me think about faith too.

For a long time, I had stopped believing in God. Or maybe I had just stopped believing in the version of faith that felt forced or performative. But as I’ve grown older, I’ve realised I still pray. Just differently. Not because I think I have to. Not because someone told me to. Sometimes I’ll just put on a D.G.S. Dinakaran songs, sit there, cry a little and somehow feel comforted afterwards. That’s my version of prayer these days.

In fact, one of the first things I searched for after moving to Manipal wasn’t just cafes or a restaurant or a bookstore, it was also a church. Not because I wanted to “be seen” going to church or because I’m suddenly ultra-religious. Honestly, I just wanted fellowship. Somewhere peaceful. Somewhere to sit with my thoughts, sing a few songs that are comforting and hold onto faith when life gets hard.

I’ve said this almost every Christmas and I still believe it…love is the religion that makes the most sense to me. As Christians, we often talk about reflecting Christ. But to me, that has always meant showing love, kindness, compassion and grace. Not being louder about faith than we are about helping people. If my faith doesn’t make me a kinder human being, then I’ve probably missed the point.

Maybe that’s why Small Things Like These stayed with me. Bill doesn’t change the whole world. He simply refuses to ignore someone who needs help. And maybe that’s how change usually happens…not through grand gestures, but through ordinary people deciding to do one small, good thing.

And So, We Begin Again

I also haven’t been posting much lately because, like I said, I took my break very seriously. But the truth is, there are still days when the pain is excruciating…annoying, exhausting and sometimes completely disabling. In Chennai, my mum and Godwin took turns looking after me. Now that we’re in Manipal, poor Godwin’s back on duty again. Now that we are back to the routine, it’s chaos sometimes, but most of the times, its peace. We are still learning. Anyway, I still haven’t received my college schedule, yet I am already anxious about how these next two years are going to go. Funny enough, I have two degrees and a postgraduate diploma, and I’ve never attended the convocation for any of them. But this time? I kind of want to. I want to do amazingly well, walk across that stage and hopefully land the career I’ve been dreaming about. It’s a bit scary to have made this choice of quitting job at this point and to go on taking up studies, but also like I said, I fill hopeful.

So here I am, ten days into a new city, a few weeks away from starting my MPH, still unpacking boxes, just re-starting to cook, still turning this house into the home I always wanted and still figuring things out…

New city. New chapter. Same me… just hopefully a little kinder, a little braver and maybe, if I ever get back into the pool, a slightly better swimmer, haha.

Here’s to more updates from this little journey of mine, more books that make me think, more learning inside and outside the classroom and more stories from my time here in Manipal :))))

New Chapter on Writings of Prathipa K | A life journey