little one

Dreading that day..

Jr. is part of a student exchange program and is spending the spring break in Asia. Given dads struggles in Asia over the last three years to get around, get the right food etc. and realizing learning Mandarin in your forties is not easy no matter how many languages you already have a grasp of, asked her to take Mandarin in school as the language.

She thought it was a good idea and went with it. Her Chinese is already way way better than mine, given she spends an hour at least on it every day and I spend 20 mintues in the night on days I get a chance. Also that brain is more moldable!  

We dropped her off on a rainy evening to go be part of a 9 day trip to put her Mandarin to test, be with a host family, make new friends and have an experience that she will remember for a long time..

We are going through a partially empty nest syndrome this week. The house feels empty because the mom daughter or sibling fight noises have reduced to nothing! 

I know that I did this to my parents and left the house and have not gone back, but my brother stays with my parents. Not sure if either kid will stay with us the way things are going.

The little one does come and sleep on my hand every now and then. So this morning I told her

"do you want to go to 

Daddys arm college of engineering,

Daddys arm college of Medicine,

Daddys arm college of arts and sciences or

just stay with daddy?"

She gave me a shy smile and said "Daddy, you know I will have to go to College somewhere right? Don't worry, I will come back!"

Know she means it, but things will change. Made that same promise to my mom and went back on it because things changed, I changed. 

Later in the day there was a discussion about that conversation and daddy was being psychoanalyzed and the conclusion was "maybe I am scared of being alone with my wife and worried about getting her undivided attention".. 

Now that day, I dread! Right now anyone she turns her attention to, is under pressure and the three of us take turns. Imagine all the power of that glare concentrated on one person.. I will be like those ants burnt by sunlight being focused by a water drop in one of those National Geographic programs!

It is going to be an interesting time when the kids are off.. 

Birthday with a bang!

Last year I happened to be in India for my birthday and spent the day with my college buddies. It was amazing. These guys made sure I had a great time.. even gave me birthday bum(p)s! 

To top things off, I had a nice glass of Mishrambu that was topped off, and it was the rangeen (colorful) type! Translation : it had bhang.. just enough to make me sing "happy birthday to me" by myself over and over again!  (Let it be known that, by buddy in the picture had the plain version)

 

After that, spent two days with my parents in severe weather conditions and miraculously made it out of Chennai before the heavens opened and shut down the airport! That was last year.. 

This year, the birthday was also celebrated with a literal "bang". On the whole, the day was full of ups and downs. It was one of those work days worth forgeting. Then things took a turn for the better and the evening turned out to be nicer than the morning. One mintue we were at Bhavikas having dinner, all smiles and we came home happy. Wrote a nice post about it, and while I was hitting the Publish button, there was another bang! This time it was an injury, which thankfully ended up being something recoverable. Went from happy to mad to happy to sad every 4 hours. 

We did manage to do a mini trip to LA to meet my sisters family. It was shorter trip compared to original expectations as my long weekend was reduced as I flew out sunday morning.  Spent a day at Universal studios and visited the Malibu temple on the way back home.

Was happy to see my sister and family after almost a year and a half and spend a day and a half with them!

The trip was worth it just for that one Photograph!

It was raining very heavily and we took 8 hours to make it back instead of the usual five. We were all glad to make it back in one piece after that drive. 

Was in two minds that night on going to Asia the next morning, but the family decided that I should be done with work travel for the year and they will manage with help from friends.

That morning my rudhraksha necklace broke and the beads came flying everywhere in the room. With construction going on, my odds of finding all the beadsl were slim. Also thought it was a bad omen of sorts. Given I like to challenge bad omens (pissing off my family and going against bad omens is a habit from childhood), decided that what has to happen will happen. So travel was on.

After searching for the beads everywhere, found 108 of the 109 beads. A rudhraksh is tied to your soul once you wear it for a long time and custom is that it gets burnt with you, when you are cremated.  Also wearing 108 beads instead of the 109 can make one dizzy, or so say spiritual gurus. I had no time to find the lost bead and rushed to the airport with a heavy heart.

There is something special about this necklace. It is made of seeds from the rudhraksh tree and is completely organic material in a silk thread, but it flags in the body scanner at the airport as metal, every time! The TSA agents always look surprised when I pull it out and they ask "is it on a metal thread and I go, NO! Silk thread". Somehow it must be absorbing millimeter waves or is magnetic. Either way, the fact that it absorbs radiation says there is more to it than I know. Maybe someone else who has the time can study the radiation absorbing properties of these beads!

The first thing I did after coming home from Asia, was launch a search for the missing bead, and found it! Tomorrow will be spent in remaking the necklace. 

There were many life lessons learned in the last week.

One : Should enjoy time with family, every chance I can get. All it takes is one mistep and things can go from happy to sad. 

Two: I might think of work as another home and colleagues as an extended family, but it may not be reciprocated. At the end of the day, work remains a means to an end and I should keep that perspective.

Three:  Should trust my gut feel on people and events. Even if my track record is not that great, at least I can own the fall out a 100%

Four: Should always remember Karma! It gets me, all the time!

Could write a chapter or mini book on all four of the above, but there are consequences which I am not going to be comfortable with. So will use the third and fourth lesson and leave it with this blog post!

Two birthdays.. very different experiences. A blog post that describes mood swings should end on a happy note. So here is a photo of the little one I took the day before my birthday which is as cheerful as the world gets for me!

That smile can keep me going to the moon and back.

This year(correction.. two years) I have travelled more than enough miles to go to the moon over hundreds of hours of flying and walking around airports and being driven to airports, hotels etc.    That smile can bring me back from any distance, in an instant!

Fourteen years fly by

Feels like yesterday this girl made me feel different about everything!

when the nurse handed her to me, my whole world changed.. everything started looking different.. like it was being seen through a pink filter! 

She continues to make me realize how wonderful this world is on a day to day basis!

That was her, all of 10 days old, giving me that same challenging look that I was already trained to receive, thanks to her mom!  I knew right then it was going to be 3:1 in the house with San, her mom and Jr. joining in "giving me that look!"... little did I know that it would become 4:1 over time...

My darling is now 14 and two weeks ago Darling 2- the sequel turned 11 ! 

The sequel has had more air time given I started blogging just before she was born. There are a few pictures that never made it before.. thanks to the Sankara Sastri in me, thinking those pictures were not blog worthy.. so here are some photos even the kids have not seen (dug them out of old Memorex CD's in some cases)

 

The sum total of prettiness of the family is a constant is what I used to say.. 

After revisiting that photo from two weeks ago, I stand corrected.. 

The sum total of "prettiness" of the family is increasing.. they are all looking prettier by the day!

Here is to many more years of the kids making me go "awwww"..