1460...

... days, not counting whatever adjustments need to be made for Sex and the City, H&M, general lethargy, sheer boredom, my one month extension, my paper on Wild Foods, my book review, whole weeks lost to angst, frustration, confusion or chasing deadends, days spent doing Other Things, days lost or gained through whatever funny thing leap years do to such a calculation and days - sometimes weeks - of lying in bed with colds, flus and in one case, a broken bone...

... is the number of days that it took to hand in just under 80,000 words of Thesis.

I won't miss some of those days. Some others I'm starting to miss now that the Red Bull and coffees have stopped grating away at my nerves and I've stopped feeling like I'm in a fast tailspin, dropping too quickly into the huge question mark that is today, tomorrow, next week, next year...
But the days I missed right from the second they were over, more and more all the time, are the days I spent in Chincholi, and the long hot afternoons when I sat in the shade of the neem trees outside their pink temple, listening to the drone of the crickets and the gurgle of the doves and feeling truly happy, peaceful and blessed.