A lot can happen in a month

I have had some crazy months in my life. Some decidedly evil ones too, to be frank. Which is why whenever anything good used to happen to me, I would always be looking over my shoulder, waiting for the "bad stuff" to reveal its presence.

A funny thing happened though over the last one year. I stopped caring about whatever could go wrong. Most of it was the fear of "what ifs" anyway rather than reality itself. Somethings were out of my hands anyway so there was no point sitting and worrying or regretting. And the universe did respond positively too with a whole lot of changes.

But I would be lying if I said I have had many months as memorable as the last one. If 2014 has been about positive changes, October-November has been the cherry on top of this cake.

• I attended my third book launch as an author in as many years (this time for Myriad Tales). 
  
• I stayed at the Grand Hyatt, thus checking "stay at 5 star hotel" off my bucket-list.

  

  Waiter! Have one of these delivered to my home please!

• I got to meet co-authors from many books in Mumbai.
• I got to finally visit Blogadda at their office and catch up with the awesome team I credit with kick-starting my run of good fortune.
• I came back and was goaded by this cutie pie to collaborate with her in a blogging contest which I had actually given up on since I had no hopes of winning myself.
• Well, I WON (for this post that I am quite proud of since it is related to my medical field and the world today) - for those of you who are wondering, this was the FIRST time in 3255 days/8years 10 months and 29 days of blogging (not that I was counting or anything!) that I won a blogging contest. Seriously.
• I got to attend the prestigious INKTALKS and hear some inspiring stories and meet some people I never thought I would ever be sharing a room with in my life.
  
  
  

• I stayed at the Grand Hyatt. No, this isn't me repeating an earlier point by mistake. This is me telling you I stayed at the Hyatt twice in a little over a fortnight - and yes, the waiters recognized me!

  

  It's really simple: One plate of EVERYTHING
  plus an APPLETINI, of course.

• Today, I come back from a long day of work that involves patients between the ages of less than ten and over eighty and guess what I find online - a link of the top 25 bloggers in the country based on creativity, relevance and/or popularity. In this list, you will find:
•  Narendra Modi (only the Prime Minister of India)
• Amitabh Bachchan (only the most popular Bollywood actor ever)
• Shekhar Kapur (only a Padma Sree, BAFTA winner et al)
• Chetan Bhagat (only India's most famous author. 'Deti hai to de... nahi to...')
• Rajiv Makhni (only 'da maan' of NDTV)
• Kiran Bedi (yup. That one.)
• Me. (me.)        

Click the pic to view the entire list

If you had told me at the start of October 2014 that I would be living in five star luxury (not once but twice), eating sushi and traditional Keralite kalappams and prawns simultaneously while living across the hall from film celebrities and have it all culminate in me appearing on the same list as the Prime Minister of India, Amitabh Bachchan and Chetan Bhagat, I would have labelled you insane and had you sent to a mental asylum.

When South meets South East: #Kerala based dishes Kalappam with malabar prawn curry and chicken stew alongside mushroom and bellpepper #sushi #Mumbai #GrandHyatt #indian #Japanese #food #foodporn #prawns #India

A photo posted by Roshan Radhakrishnan (@pythoroshan) on Nov 11, 2014 at 9:11am PST

Just goes to show what I have been saying on the blog all year. Keep believing that bad times will pass and keep looking forward to the minor wins every day. Slowly but surely, the tide will turn and you will find only awesome moments all around you.

Now, if you will excuse me, I need to go buy some lottery tickets!