A very happy Deepavali to every one

2020 is the year of staying at home. Deepavali is a stay at home festival for the morning but in the evening, you go see all your friends and relatives and join them in the firecracker fun.. 

This year it has been a muted affair. The gatherings are smaller and we meet only people in "our bubble" which is a good thing.

We did have new clothes, great eats and some sparklers! San and me teamed up to make a lot of sweets and savories (and she got some guidance from our neighbor on some sweets and they reminded me of my grandma cooking with her aunt Ambulu when we were kids.. they would spend days planning before the cooking started!). We did go solo on some items..

She sparkles better than those sparklers..It was a good thing I adjusted an almost underexposed shot and realized this was actually a good thing!

This is the first Diwali without jr. being present at home. That was constantly in the back of my head and I am not sure how many years it will take for me to realize that you cannot expect to see kids for Diwali or take that for granted anymore! Given every now and then I manage to go to India to celebrate with my parents, know that the kids will come back home after they grow up to celebrate.. maybe more often than I did.

The little one knows of my secret plan to keep her closer to home and continues to roll her eyes everytime I suggest colleges within a 20 mile radius. 

Life comes full circle.. What I did to my parents, my kids will do to me. Good news is that I am already in the "brace" position. 

It is my sincere wish that we get over COVID soon in the coming year! People are still dying and folks are still denying the truth and reality. Diwali or Deepavali is literally the triump of truth over lies, light over darkness.. knowledge is the true illuminator! 

May knowledge and facts make a comeback after this Diwali !! 

For someone who is staying at home, we have done a good job dressing up at every opportunity.. 

Still don't know how my wife is able to handle Jr.'s being away so calmly compared to me. Either she is made of different stuff or she is faking it really well. Have some things to learn and understand.

Once again, wishing you all a wonderful Deepavali/ Diwali!!

31 years later...

31 years ago, I went to college. Being the first grandson on my mothers side and given most of my social interactions were with my maternal grandparents and uncles and aunts who raised me, the entire family was participating in a social experiment.

"Sundaram has never been outside this small area all his life. Sure he can read write and speak Hindi enough to be the official translator for 20+ people crowded in front of the TV every Sunday before Mahabharat starts,  but that doesn't necessarily mean he will survive up north by himself in college!" 

Yours truly was the real life version of Jim Carrey in the Truman show... and I went to Benares to study.. The Hindi didn't help and first year was not what I expected. There were a lot of mistakes mostly on my part which made my first three weeks a crash course on life.  It took a phenomenal effort from my parents and classmates to help me through that year. Something for which I am forever grateful. Being intelligent and being smart are two different things. If anyone needs to understand that in your house, send them to me. Will gladly explain. 

The more time I spent in Benares the more I loved it. Was actually sad to say bye after 4 years. That experience at 16 did help me later in life multiple times as I moved to US for grad school and went from place to place, apartment to apartment and moved to the west coast.  My worldview is all the more supportive when it comes to dealing with people and events thanks to some rude awakenings in my freshman year. 

This weekend, Jr. goes to college. She is the first grandkid on both her mother and fathers side of the family but she has seen more of this world before college compared to me. Hoping she is smart and not called intelligent. This blog has seen her grow up right in front of all our eyes. Time flies because they are mostly good times.  She is a good kid. She is the type of person who will go run towards a problem to help someone when everyone else runs away. I hope she stays that way. 

It was decided by the family on a 3:1 vote that daddy will not be the one to drop her off in college. The logic was that I will cry in front of Jr. or make her feel sentimental and it won't help while saying bye. The little one's words I believe were "Appa is a drama queen! Don't send him. Let him stay here with me and I will manage him".  So San did the college visit. 

The best part of this was that my classmate and chai partner drove 4 hours to help. That is the real blessing.

She now knows a lot more about our college going days than I would have wanted her to know.. but that comes with the territory when uncles share stories.

My sincere hope is that she makes friends in college who will be her lifelong friends.. friends who will help her kids move to college when the time comes! 

After leaving for college I never got to spend more than 2-3 weeks with my parents at any time till to date. If history is any indicator, it will be something similar with this girl unless she comes back to the bay area to find work. 

As a parent, one can always hope. 

Have started a countdown to when she will be home at the end of the semester...

as long as daddy is working on counting something, tracking things in spreadsheets, etc. things will be fine.. cleaned up her room and sorted things out. It will take me a few days to get used to the fact that she is in college, but I am confident of getting through it. All I need to do is go every morning and change that number to a smaller number and take it one day at a time.

All that yoga is going to help! It already is.

International Yoga Day

Wishing all of you some Yoga (or other exercise if you are one of those people who spend more time debating and talking about Yoga, its origins, who started it, who it belongs to today etc. etc. and spends less time doing yoga or exercising) on this day. 

We definitely have more daylight today.. so go use that extra daylight to get exercise.

Sometimes worlds collide and Yoga day and Fathers day are one and the same.. and when the Bifrost opens, I can get to emotionally appeal to the kids to take that photo again.

The darlings did it with a smile!

So

the little one outgrew that shirt and it went to goodwill already.. but Jr. and me still have the same things to wear! 

I was surprised that they could both get into Lotus pose.. thought they would give up! Once they got in the lifting part was not hard.  

Wish they are a lot more active going forward and don't end up having to find Yoga at a much older age.. it is right in front of them now!

Go get some workout done! I for one wish BYSJ opens soon and I can sweat freely for 90 minutes and detox. It has been 99 days of doing yoga alone at home with audio recordings or zoom classes and I made it 90 days out of 99. Given all the craziness that surrounds us, Yoga helps for the 90 minutes and a few hours after class or sometimes an entire day if I just do the yoga and stay away from any electronic devices! 

Based on my personal experience, Yoga works! 

I am not trying to sound like a spokesperson for "alldaysmatter".. but then again, if we treated our parents right, maybe there wouldn't be a "fathers" or "mother" day which seems to be a lowest common denominator and a bare minimum towards parents. We live in a culture where Fathers get a card once a year and that is deemed the right thing to do. Happy there is a day designated for this to bring awareness, but IDY is not the one day you do Yoga and forget about exercise for the rest of the year. I dont want it to end up like another Jan 1st for a lot of folks!

Maybe a day for Yoga is what is needed right now to bring visibility. Eventually, everyday will be yoga day.