AN ATYPICAL SEASON
As the new famous Lady of Netflix would say: “Apologies dear reader, but anything is fair in the 2020 festive season, even a Sunday pause for Mr. Spills”. Even though Glühwein is a more suitable drink for the season, considering the year we have experienced, I have accompanied many of this winter’s moments with a Cuba Libre. This sweet rum & coke latin combo, takes me back to the times when I was able to party with endless energy until the sun was up. Cuba Libre also reminds me of one of my mom's best friends, who took up the sport of ironing while drinking one, two, three or even seven Cuba Libres. As an adult, I now play it too.
The last two weeks have been a revolving schedule of gifts wrapping and unwrapping, intermittent quarantining, covid testing and voracious eating. I kicked off the season with the celebration of my Sagittrius birthday, surrounded by a selective and petit comité of my covid approved friends. I indulged myself with a tamal-like chocolate cake at a Mexican restaurant, which I ate entirely by myself after blowing the candles purposely breaking the covid protocol. However, the pick of my birthday was receiving a package that contained eighty (80) hand-written letters from the owner of my heart who lives across the Atlantic. The letters came with specific instructions for when each letter should be opened, as a countdown for a rather marvellous event that will be revealed in due time.
At this same time five years ago, I was celebrating my birthday with an early visit to the Taj Mahal as our last part of the “no to wedding, yes to party” trip of Saira. The night before however, I had paid various and not pleasant visits to the bathroom, courtesy of India’s ice water. Nevertheless, that didn’t kill my spirit to wake up at 5.00 am and head to Agra with my brother Andrew (who by the way is celebrating his own covid birthday this last week of the year). After a few hours of traveling in a constant cloud of fog, we arrived in the contrastive city of Agra where you can see the best and the worst of India’s heritage cohabitating. Our tour guide was a local middle-aged man who spoke about the Taj Mahal as if in a Shakespeare play with the blinding ivory-white marble of that monumental beauty as his stage. He truly believed in the love story between Shah Jahan and his favourite wife, the Persian noble Mumtaz Mahal. In a way, I felt like the man himself was in love with the Taj Mahal, and that overwhelming passion motivated us to buy a marble elephant with the idea of bringing home a little piece of this ancient love story.
Prior to experiencing the monumental love of the Jahan-Mahal’s story, Andrew and I arrived in India a few days before via Mumbai. Like many other Asian countries, India has truly understood that airports are the mighty doors of a country and thus, Mumbai’s airport welcomes you with magnificent fountains and gigantic copper sculptures. After the cancellation of Saira’s wedding, we agreed to still move forward with our plans of traveling to the East for an ultimate “no to wedding, yes to party” trip in India. According to the new plan, Saira was supposed to pick Andrew and I at the airport, but she never showed up. Confused, we could only think of two reasons; she either died or she was facing one of her very ‘Saria-style-first-world-dramas’. Luckily it was the latter, as she was accidentally locked inside her room at her aunt’s apartment by the housekeeper with no communication. Anyway, after 23 hours of travel. Andrew and I decided that it was best to to take an airport cab to the St. Regis at once and this is when the India spills started…
Buon coraggio,
Myster Spills,