Great grandma visits and binge eating..

On our 5 day India trip, we managed to visit all great grandparents, thanks to some efficient auto rickshaws..

my maternal grandma is 90+ and her mind is very active. She is unable ot walk and she no longer asks me "when will my time come". she has been asking me that since my grandpa passed away almost 10 years ago. She has come to realize that no one knows.. and is now reading books to pass her time. She blessed us with all her heart!

San's grandparents are also pushing 90 and they are doing okay given their age. Walkers, hearing aids, etc. A slow methodical life and an approach of taking it one day at a time. Some lessons for San and me there.. Grandpa told me that till a few years ago he was doing yoga regularly including Nauli but now he is not able to. He is still active given his age and is a role model for all of us.

The best part was that they were the couple honored during my fathers sadhabhishgam as part of the "dhambati pooja" and given I was doing the pooja in proxy for my dad who could not bend down, it was a great honor! Will write a separate post on the function and what we did as part of it.. 

Then there was the eating in three places..

We went to watch Toy Story movie at the mall in 3D.. it has been some time since I saw anything in 3D given the massive headaches I get for days after watching any 3D movie.. but the kids wanted to go together somewhere and an Air conditioned theater was a good idea! After the movie the kids decided based on reviews that the best place that would accomodate everyones menu requests was Haven Sampoorna right near Phoenix mall in Velachery. It was an interesting place. I got my butter naan and side dishes and the kids who wanted pasta, got their pasta.. food was good. service was good. ambience was funny.. 

 Here is PIchchai Sundar with Sundar PIchchai... (kid you not, this was the photo right behind my chair)

you have no idea how many jokes I have to put up with ever since this guy became Google CEO. We are both the same age, went to similar schools and the same IIT coaching class in Chennai, think he also studied metallurgy, went to work for semi conductor companies ... I stayed in Semi and am traveling back and forth to Asia.. he moved to software and management..and probably has a lot of things going for him that I simply don't have or want.. but the jokes, they keep on coming.. So it was only fitting that I ended up below that photo! 

The sceond place we ate was Amethyst.. again nice ambience, relatively quiet and excellent food.. we went for evening coffee/ tea with San's cousin and brother's family who also happened to be visiting and ended up eating a lot of stuff..

The last place we went to was in Matsya in Adayar.. on a previous trip we had gone to another Matsya branch.. this was closer to where we stayed. It was also a nice place (we didnt take pictures). It was raining in Chennai that evening and we were all not our best when we got there. The funny thing with Ola/ Auto etc. is that they drop you off at the location but on the opposite side of the street and there is no way to cross over for a good kilometer either way! So we walked around a flyover for 25 minutes to get to the place. The dinner was great though. They had an amazing variety of dosas and cricket matches playing on 4 different TV's.. so I got to watch cricket and eat dosas.. 

That was pretty much all the activities we did outside of the function. 

Still waiting for photos from the function itself...

Missing San's maternal grandma who passed away recently as I write this post. We would always make a visit to see her as well. She passed away three months ago. 

Great grandparents are precious.. the way things are going, not a lot of kids get to see their great grandparents! 

Good times in Chennai

The Chennai visit also got us a chance to go visit the great grand parents for the kids, go visit temples, feed the crows before eating every morning.. little things that define Chennai life for the rest of the family that we enjoy when we go there.. 

First stop as usual was Kabali temple... 

We did the usual veggie shopping, goli soda drinking, and walking around the Mylapore area thing that puts some memory markers in their respective places.. 

A single photo that captures that evening..

Then there was a miracle. My mother and Jr. went to the local temple and overheard the local priest tell a bunch of folks that given the solar eclipse coming this year on the same day we change our threads, a section of folks who follow the Yajur Veda should change their threads in July. While the oldies in the family were debating the technicalities of doing "aavani avittam" outside the month of Aavani, I jumped at it. Have not been able to do this with my dad or brother in 25 years! So this was a sun moon and earth given chance. 

The changing of thread was followed by some yummy food and the rest of the afternoon was spent taking a nice nap! To me this ceremony is about renewing a commitment to learning and keeping an open mind. Have learned a lot of new things last year about myself, folks around me and the world in general and have continued to realize that there is more to learn and all this learning still wont help you because something is always going to come way out of left field and knock all this learning meaningless. 

We did the usual rounds visiting friends and family and also did some shopping for the kids. The great grand parents are all managing their health issues and pushing onwards in their late eighties or early nineties.

We wrapped the trip up with a visit to Kaleidozone, a place where kids and adults can do Virtual reality games. Basically they have a nice set up with VR goggles and some interesting games.

The rates were reasonable and we spent more than an hour there followed by a nice dinner at a Delhi food restaurant and before you could say "I miss Chennai"... I had to fly back!

Don't know when the next time would be to visit Chennai, alone or with family. Here is to hoping it is sooner than later...

When the skies cleared just for us..

During the Thanksgiving week, which seems like ages ago, I got to visit India. First stop was Varanasi for our class reunion for two days. Then I got to spend the next 4 days in Chennai.

The trip was interesting from start to finish. When we landed in Chennai from Varanasi, the airport had 600+ stranded passengers with the access roads to the airport being closed and a "no taxis" sign greeting us. Luckily my friends dad who had started 6 hours earlier to get to the airport made it past the closure on one side. We went through waterlogged roads and a very interesting route to get back to my brothers place. 

But a miracle happened. It had rained for 17 days before that. The next 72 hours saw only slight drizzles. We did not even use an umbrella. And on the one day San and the kids came to visit Chennai, the sun came out! 

They are really lucky angels.

We jumped from one auto rickshaw into another and were pretty much on the go that day. It also happened to be my star birthday and the previous night we had celebrated Kaarthigai deepam! You can see the contrast between celebrating this in Cupertino and Chennai. 

The highlight of the trip was to see my grandma, who is not doing well after her surgery. I was glad that the kids got to talk to her, sing for her and get to take a selfie with Grandma.

I also got to spend 4 days with my parents after almost a year and a half. It is very difficult to see my dad's physical abilities deteriorate over time. His hands are constantly shaking and so are his lower jaw. The docs say "it is part of old age"... I was quoting Bikram and saying "never too old, never too sick..." but don't think it registered with my parents. 

We also got to visit San's granparents. They got hit with the rains a lot worse than my brothers area. It is amazing how resilient they are. Hoping some of that resiliant gene has transferred to our kids in case they need it some day!

This photograph was taking on Kaarthigai deepam. 

The one day that the sun came out, the schools reopened. We asked my nephew to bunk school on that day to be with us and he obliged. The next day he did make it to school but what happened after that was epic rains and the city was badly hit.

A day after I left, there was so much rain that the airport was flooded and shut down. There was some real luck guiding me through this trip!

Do not know when the next trip will be, so till then we look back at memories.. here is those 4 wonderful days crammed into 7 minutes of video!

Still missing everyone in Chennai, more than ever after editing this video! 

It has been a month since this trip already. We have to make it to India on a more regular basis for longer times. Maybe we will have a better shot at it in 2016?!

A happy day!

While the torture of going through another round of antibiotics and all the side effects that come with it are going on, there was a happy day in the middle of all this.

My parents made it to the US in one piece after 10 years!

They did not get the hang of life in the US on their first trip. After much convincing they were this close to making it here three years ago before health concerns forced both of them to stay back.

Now they are finally here and will be staying for till Jr.'s 10th birthday!

The last time they were here, it was to celebrate her first birthday..

They were both weak and tired and were harassed by the Immigration / TSA dudes and that was shocking to them. They were the last ones out of their flight to make it out! I was sweating outside because it had been almost 3 hours since their plane landed and they did not show up. Didn't know how to reach them inside either.

Fortunately, one of the wheel chair dudes told me that they were sent to the "New Immigration counter" instead of the "line". The first thing my dad told me after getting in the van was "The guy who checked my passport was rude for no reason and the guy who checked my suitcase crumpled up ironed clothes for no reason. They have no respect for older people!"

How do you answer that one? Told him that TSA folks are usually guys who cannot be employed anywhere else. This is all about "Jobs" and the economy. I may have been rude to all TSA people with that comment but if one thing is going to unite Americans all over, it will probably be a healthy hatred for the TSA's harassment of non threatening folks. It has been 24 hours and they have gotten over it (I hope).

The kids are very happy with the grandparents being in the house. They are listening to young daddy stories. Stories which really need to be fact checked because daddy has a reasonably strong memory and grandma's versions seem to be way off base from the truth.. Nevertheless, as long as daddy's IQ in days of yore is getting a facelift, not complaining.

"Your father used to do an entire math book in one hour!". Eat your food. Your dad was the fastest at eating his lunch in the whole neighborhood!

The kids look at daddy with new found admiration.. Well this doesn't happen often! So soaking it up!

Have a resolution to
- get back in the hot room
- get to a gum specialist and figure out why there are recurring gum infections which lead to antibiotics which lead to killing all good bacteria in the stomach which lead to taking tablets with "bacteria" in them and losing 15 days of Yoga!

One thing is obvious. This is a spiral of good or bad and these days it goes uphill or downhill pretty fast!

If there is good health, there is regular exercise, good food, weight control, more exercise and so on
If there is bad health, there is no exercise, irregular food or sick food, no weight control and even less exercise

Time to change the trend tomorrow!

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Training day

The girls did not stop at being "just like thatha". They wanted to copy Madras paati (grandma) as well. They figured out that the grandparents went ecstatic when they were being followed around and used that to good advantage to win the good graces of grandma.

Here is Jr. insisting on learning how to peel and cut onions from Grandma.

Initially she was happy and within a few minutes she regret the decision. Cutting tomatoes would have been a better choice.

In spite of being all teary eyed, she finished the job and made Grandma and me proud!

The copying did not stop with the onion cutting. It went on and on, from buying little wire baskets, filling them with random things and carrying them everywhere to keeping a giant size bindi with kumgumam(vermillion).

Both Jr. and the little one adapted really well this time. They ate at roadside dabas, used eastern style restrooms behind these highway dabas where even the grandparents who are resident desis were having second thoughts. They made it relatively easier for daddy this time compared to the last trip (especially since my right hand is still not a 100% and it is very difficult to carry the little one everywhere).

In another year, things will be even better if both of them eat by themselves and their mom trains them to eat pani pooris without making a mess. Then daddy can relax in the house and encourage all three of them to go eat out!

The plan is there.. just have to keep working on it.

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