Things That Comfort You

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When we are at our worst, we need someone or something to comfort us – to tell us we are not as bad as we think, to make us realize that there’s a well of goodness within us too. But let’s be honest, how many people get such comfort? Being married or living in a family doesn’t mean that you get that comfort automatically. I’m one of those people who has to comfort herself.


As I was down and out since last few days, I was trying to do activities or find things that gave me a spark of happiness. And, was I surprised! At the start of the cycle (yes, I take sadness as a cycle, which can last from couple of days to weeks because you just can’t get over it at your convenient time), I went crazy buying books. As you must already know, I proudly call myself a bibliophile. So here I was, left, right and center buying books – romance, philosophy, thriller, anything and everything that’s fiction. Couple of bloggers whose writing I respect had also published their books. I bought them too, thinking if nothing else, I will enjoy their written words.

What a joke it turned out to be!

Everyday I would start with a new book: not because I had completed the one I had started the previous day but because I was bored and I was unable to find solace that I usually found in books. I was baffled. I couldn’t believe that my decades-old love was going down the drain. Desperately, I went through the stacks of books, online and offline, just to see if anything catches my eye, and there it was! Hiding under glossy covers, the pages yellowed with age, and the binding on the verge of being undone. Something Wonderful by Judith McNaught.

I just don’t know what’s about this book but I fall in love with it every time I read it. Set in earlier times, the books beautifully describes the agony of a young woman who falls for a man without title, while her family desperately needs a titled lord with lot of spare cash to get them out of the gambling debts. The man, cynical and intelligent beyond anyone’s imagination, falls for that woman like a ton of bricks. Misunderstanding and society separates them, until the man realizes he could be actually happy with her and convinces her to take a leap of faith. The initial phase of married life is full of love and happiness, and then the old insecurities crop in and wrong decisions are taken. Again they let go of each other, until they learn forgiveness and start holding themselves responsible for their own actions.

Yes, I not only love this book but felt at home when I was re-reading it. I cried with the heroine and fell in love with the hero – all over again. And so I started reading all my old favorites, and soon, I again was a bibliophile. There’s something really beautiful about coming back to your old books: when you re-read the characters, you feel as if you are meeting your old friends after a long time, when you re-read the plots, you are re-living the parts of your life that always gave you happiness without questioning if you ever deserved it.

The same goes for food. I wasn’t eating properly. Being an over-weight girl, it was good for me but I had started feeling weak, and to be honest, I hate physical discomfort. Thinking I need to try something new, I went to fancy places, ordering dishes I can’t even pronounce properly. Nothing worked. And then the craving for mom’s food hit me. Unfortunately, I live alone and I couldn’t get my hands on home-cooked meal. I did the next best thing: I made spaghetti the exact way my mom made it when we were kids. I ate two bowls of that. And man, I can’t describe the happiness it gave me.

Phew! I wonder if it’s just me who craves the familiarity of old habits to find peace of mind.