Off we go!!

Cruising along…

The day is finally here. The bags are packed, confirmations have been printed out, rides have been planned and nails have been done  The much awaited and planned vacation happens today. With 3 more families joining the mix, the excitement has tripled. Taking a week long break to enjoy a wonderful journey with the mad mad crowd. Will be back to tell you all about it in a week.

In the meanwhile have a good weekend and week!!

A quick prayer to the icon who introduced break dancing to the world and gave us some wonderful music. RIP, Michael Jackson.

Random Musings

You know it’s the best you can give the kids when you return home from work to see them enjoying a board game with grandpa and grandma.

You know your baby is not quite all grown up when she says “Amma, the dentist told me she will get my “panasonic” done tomorrow when the actual word is panorex (who cares if she is almost as tall as me, fits into my shoe size & feels all grown up? She is still my baby!!)

You know the little one is breaking rules when he hurries to grab the remote and turn the TV off just as he hears mom’s keys jingle on the door knob. He then proceeds to give her a big hug and attempts to cover up for his mistake by saying, he watched TV for just one extra hour.

You realize how wonderful it is to step into the kids room late in the night when you notice the lights still on, only to find both of them lying on their sides, reading a book each under their cozy comforter.

You are ready to face the day when you tip toe into the room the kids share before leaving for work and see them fast asleep from the warmth of their bodies snuggled together (even though shortly after they wake up they are constantly bickering back and forth!)

Mujhse Dosti Karoge

Friends to me are those who…

• Am most comfortable with
• Love spending time with
• Can say the darnest things without the fear of losing them
• Can drink, eat and live and vacation with at anytime
• Always have the time for and am ever willing to lend a ear and shoulder when in need
• Someone you can trust with your innermost thoughts
• Think of as extended family
• When I call or see them years later can start right where we left off
• One that I can laugh and cry with overs our joys and sorrows
• Share a rant and listen to one as the situation warrants
• and most importantly someone I would love to spend time with day after day, week after week, year and year and still love every moment spent in their company and eagerly look forward to more fun times.

Anything less and that person is all but an acqaintance that I meet as part of life. A random comment over the weekend made me realize that even if you have one such friend, you are truly blessed. It is after all not in the number of acquaintances but depth of friendship that makes true friendship transcend time and last through generations sometimes.

Toy Tales

When you love your little boy who loves spiderman, superman, batman and idolizes them for their extraordinary powers and finds his joy playing with them ALL the time, you are left to enjoy accept the lovely company of these very same folks at the most private moments as well…

That’s spiderman keeping watch in our shower and batman in the second picture waiting to take off in his batmobile just in case we indulge in unacceptable behaviour

Love Hate Relationship

Memories of childhood include vivid memories of my dad driving us two girls to the cricket field to watch him play for his team. Cricket was and still is my dad’s passion, his first and undying love. He had his heart set to playing professional cricket but didn’t get the support and backing needed back in the days from his own parent. He was forced to choose a desk job and providing a stable living for his family over being a professional cricketer. He made his peace by spending his years playing for his employer. He would drive each weekend to a ground and would be more than willing to get us girls off mom’s hair and give her some much needed peace and quiet and at the same time not incur her wrath of having to deal with him gone the entire day even during the weekend. He is a lover of all sports and raised us girls to love and appreciate sports in general. So regardless of the kind of sport, the growing up years were filled with hours spent in front of the idiot box battling over who preferred Gavaskar over Kapil Dev,  Steffi Graf over Sabatini, Bjorg over McEnroe and the likes.

Dad was mighty thrilled when the OH entered our lives. OH had played cricket most of his school and college years and loved the sport just as much. He like us was very much into all kinds of sports and conversation was always easy at home between him and dad. When the OH and I made our own home in a land far away, there was not much connection to the world of cricket. Neither did the satellite companies that telecast live cricket nor the internet that brings the games into your family room existed back in the days of the dinosaur era. Hence cricket in our home was replaced by hours of watching basketball, football or any other sport that was played in this side of the world. Slowly the passion for cricket started to ebb and there was very little we knew about the newer crop of players who thrived in the sport.

Fast forward a few more years and we made our move to the city we currently reside in. The weather is gorgeous and extremely conducive to year round sports. With the advent of satellite television and the internet, access to cricket was significantly easier. The number of fellow country men who played the sport were significantly higher in this city and soon we were introduced to teams that played league matches with other local teams. It didn’t take long for the OH to get addicted to getting back into playing the sport. He enjoys every moment in the field and religiously makes his way to the game every weekend. He is more than willing to drive the kids around to their various extra curricular activities over the weekend just as long as it does not conflict with his playing time.

Given that this conflict always meant that the burden of running helter skelter with the kids and their various activities fell on my shoulders and the fact that many years had passed with no contact to the sport, your truly had lost the passion for the sport over the years. There just wasn’t the motivation to get back into the love of the game since it became a huge part of our lives and my stressful weekends. Just the fact that a sport that I had loved all through my childhood had turned out to be the one thing that would take the OH away and leave me with all the running around. Over the years, I have accepted the fact that it is something that he truly enjoys and I don’t harass bug him much about. We do our best to work around it and are mostly successful except for those occasional times when I end up having to be at 3 different locations at one time.

It makes me sad that I just can’t bring myself to love the game that once was such a big part of my life. When I watch my siblings living in a country where the sport is popular enjoy the game just the way we used to as kids, there is a twinge of sadness over my loss of this love. While we were kids, in spite of our mamoth efforts to get mom to sit with us and watch cricket on the TV, we were never successful in either teaching her or getting her to enjoy it with us. Many years later, it ironically makes sense. The game to her represented the same it does for me now. It took her husband and kids away each weekend and there was no reason for her to love something that week after week was the cause of her angst.

Maybe someday when the OH is done playing the sport and the kids are all grown up, I will come to love the sport with all my heart, just like the good old days…

Something old…

…something new, something borrowed and something blue is a phrase I have often heard during weddings and always thought was a lovely custom. I got to experience a part of this during my recent trip back home. Having lived in the same home from birth till the day I left the country following my marriage, it took me a long time to accept any other place I lived in as home. Thanks to the OH being a student when we married, we had our fair share of moves and relocations before settling in one location and one house for more than a few years. Three apartments, one house and six years of marriage later, we moved into the house that would eventually make us feel like home. It was with mixed emotions that we moved into the home we live in now after having lived 7 years in the home that finally gave us a sense of home in a country far far away from where we grew up.

Over the years I have realized that even though we have come to look at our new home as home, the one I was born and raised in will always have a special place and will always be accompanied with wonderful memories and nostalgia. Just the thought of the home and the parents and every single item in the house brings a smile to the face and a joy to the stride even in the most stressful and trying times. This past trip back in Decemeber was something akin to a trip down memory lane since it was the first time that all three siblings were back at home together with their respective spouses and babies spending time with grandma and grandpa. There was lots of laughter, fun, fights and memories. Grandpa & grandma were convinced that with the three siblings together, now was the time to have us pick the stuff that we wanted for our homes from their possessions. They were eager to part with handover some of the invaluable pieces of furniture and trinkets that represented such a big part of our childhood memories to us and watch it being cherished in our homes.Even as it made us sisters mad at grandma and grandpa for wanting to clean house, we were unable to fight their logic and reasoning behind wanting to keep it simple from their perspective. They weren’t getting any younger and wanted to ensure that things close to their hearts were in the hands of their loved ones.

Given that all three siblings live in a different country, we picked a few things that would be relatively easy to transport and hold as tokens of something old that came down to us through generations, that we one day hope will find the same value & sentiments for our kids. The last few days of our trip was filled with frantic attempts to find shipping agents who would transport these priced belonging safely to a whole different continent.

I was going to write about this as part of my post on the plants that have found their way into our home, but thanks to the rapid aging process, it is not just the head that has gathered a fair amount of gray, it is the cells within too that are fast degenarating, causing rapid loss of memory. It took someone with a vested interest to point out my folly and I thought it was only fair that I make appropriate amends. 15 years after the wedding and many moves later, this wonderful table adorns my house bringing back memories of my grandparents, parents and a childhood filled with happy memories – something old indeed. The table belonged to my grandfather and has been in the family for atleast 50 years. It is part of our home now and hopefully will continue to bring joy and rich memories to our lives long into our future. The plant is an addition to the home from IKEA  for a touch of new against the old

Food for thought

It could be because it’s friday or maybe it’s because I have invited a few people for dinner tonight or it just maybe my growing interest in trying new recipes or it just might be my off late addiction to food blogs. Regardless of the reason, I found this link on My Diverse Kitchen to The Indian Vegetarian 100 on Nupur’s blog and thought this would be a fun exercise to take on. 

She requires us to:

• Copy the entire list, along with these instructions, into your blog post
• Bold the foods that you have tried
• Strike out the foods you would never try
• Tell us your score in the comments
• If you wish to, make your own list or add to this one.

 

So here is Nupur’s 100 with my scores!

1. Ripe mangoes  

2. Curd rice

3. Chaat

4. Phulka

5. Puran poli
 

6. Boiled Peanuts

7. Samosa
 

8. Stuffed baby eggplants

9. Aviyal

10. Stuffed paratha
 

11. Masala chai

12. Tirphal

13. Murukku

14. Curry leaves

15. Banana chips fried in coconut oil

16. Jaggery

17. Vada pav

18. Tender coconut water

19. Paneer

20. Madras filter coffee – Now this one I probably never will have.

21. Boondi laddoo

22. Boondi raita

23. Navratan korma

24. Kokum

25. Masala peanuts

26. A home-cooked Indian vegetarian meal

27. Sugarcane juice

28. Sabudana/sago in any form

29. Horsegram

30. Maggi noodles

31. Podi with rice and ghee

32. Roomali roti

33. Bitter gourd

34. Nylon sev

35. Vegetable biryani

36. Thali at a restaurant

37. Plantain flower

38. Undhiyu

39. Nimbu pani

40. Papad

41. Kotthu parotta

42. Panch phoran

43. Drumsticks

44. Indian “French toast”

45. Sarson ka saag

46. Bhakri

47. Pav bhaji

48. Sitaphal

49. Glucose biscuits

50. Sprouts

51. Chole-bhature

52. Amla

53. Tomato “omelet”

54. A wedding feast

55. Grilled corn on the cob with lemon juice, salt and chilli powder

56. Cadbury’s fruit and nut chocolate

57. Sai bhaji

58. Solkadi

59. Indian-Chinese meal

60. Jalebi

61. Black forest cake

62. Bharwa bhindi

63. Kashmiri saffron

64. Misal

65. Ripe jackfruit

66. Idli-chutney

67. ‘Tadgola’ (This is ”nongu” just in case you are wondering!)

68. Bhut jolokia

69. Baby mango pickle

70. Meal off a banana leaf

71. Falooda

72. Moong khichdi

73. Bebinca

74. Daal baati

75. Methi greens

76. Basundi

77. Gunpowder

78. Appam-stew

79. Sweet lemon pickle

80. Ridge gourd

81. Bisi bele bhath

82. Coconut burfi

83. Caramel custard

84. Thecha (Green chilli garlic chutney – yuck!!)

85. Rasam

86. Baingan bharta

87. Mysore pak

88. Punjabi wadi

89. Chhunda – Sweet Mango pickle. Not unless I am forced to

90. Dal makhani

91. Paper dosa

92. Gongura

93. Hand-churned butter

94. Pakoda

95. Curd chillies

96. Mustard oil

97. Fresh cashews

98. Tomato pickle

99. Rajma-chawal

100. Chaas

My score – 90%. I was pretty impressed. Didn’t think I’d go that high considering am not at all adventurous when it comes to trying new food. Anyone who finds this interesting is welcome to try this. I enjoyed learning about the few that I had no idea what they even were.

She turns 30 today…

If you are wondering who she is…

She is the one who …

• was the first to get a piggy back ride on my back
• hung on to me for dear life with my bag of books between her and me and her bags of books on her back as I cycled the two of us to school and back
• has said the darnest things as a kid that will haunt her for life (yes she will kill me if I give any more details!!)
• was there to fill the void that my older sibling left to get married
• waited impatiently for me to send audio tapes detailing my brand new life from my new home while she responded in kind with tapes from home to help me live in my land of nostalgia
• was fortunate enough to have siblings fight for her to have priveleges that they weren’t privy to
• doted on her nieces and nephews and played a biiiig part in raising them and giving them a world of love
• has infinite patience compared to the miniscule amount I possess
• chose to spend a lovely part of her life with me at my home for which I am eternally thankful
• was there each day when Raul started school to ensure he had a familiar face in brand new surroundings. So smitten was she by him and fearful of his tears that she hardly left his side and waited outside his class for the entire duration. That she had to be kicked out of the school by the teacher who was convinced that Raul would never adjust with her around is a whole different story
• Not only guarded Raul at school but was part of his many firsts – including his first crazy haircut that she gave him herself!!
• endured words & thoughts she inadvertantly heard and showed resilience beyond her age
• got me into a ton of trouble for guarding her secrets and still does (hee hee!!)
• after being married for 7 years will not give us the complete secrets details of her courtship :)
• gave me much joy by making my dream come true – of having someone close to me live in the same country as me only to steal my joy a few years later by moving far far away from me
• is a complete opposite of me and yet so similar – she is not a talker to my non stop chatter persona, she is not a physical person but has never hestitated to give me the warmest hugs
• knows how to reach me any time of the day and will pick up the phone day or night when in need
• will share her feelings and thoughts to me and patiently listen to all the garbage I dish out as advice
• spends many a nights when we can peel away from kids gossiping and indulging in girl talk
• has her own quirks and is gracious enough to look sheepish when they are pointed out to her
• will not hesitate to remind me of the times when I am turning out to be like my mom or dad
• I can share pretty much anything without the fear of being judged…

Happy Birthday sis!! Welcome to the 30s. Hope you enjoy your time here and wishing you many many more happy returns of the day and many many more fun memories:)

Stop to smell the flowers – smile – and say Thank you!!

Been meaning to write this for a couple of days now but have learned over the years that it helps to mull, and let the thoughts sink in prior to putting them on paper. Yes, I understand that means that it is an edited version but sometimes the unabridged can cause unintentional pain and heartache that can be avoided when your emotions are more in control and your mental state is where in you can still be honest but at the same time cautious with your words.

Something over the weekend brought with it the rude awakening to get off the high horse and take the time to spend some time focusing on the things that truly matter. I, for one can get irritated by the simplest of things and much as I hate myself for it and train myself to take a deep breath and step back, am not always successful. While we live in our little cocoon of petty likes and dislikes, the one above has a funny way of telling you that life is way too short and way too important to get hung up over insignificant sqaubbles. It is not like he takes a loud speaker and screams in your ear but sends shivers down your spine in subtle ways. He then leaves it upto you to give it some thoughts to draw your own conclusions.

Life is not about what he did and she did, what he said and she said, how he felt and she felt, who is in control and who isn’t, who loves who and who doesn’t. Life, you realize is about doing what you can do best, love unconditionally, enjoy every moment of happiness that you are presented with, accept the obstacles that come your way, take time to tell the people you love that you love them and laugh & be happy as much as possible. Life isn’t about worrying over what you don’t have but about relishing what you do have. A friend mentioned over the weekend that we spend an inordinate amount of time at work which probably is fairly low in our priorities as compared to family and friends while we spend the least amount of time with the ones we love. This obviously may not be true to everyone but atleast is for some of us. Yet there are times when we come home from work and snap at the kids for no reason other than mental & physical exhaustion.

The OH & I often talk about taking the kids for some volunteer activities and teaching them to value what they do have in life. We tell them how fortunate they are to have the life they do and yet we forget the very same fact often enough in our lives. We get carried away by the minutia and don’t see the our lives for what it truly is and can be. We are constantly wishing/chasing/wanting things that we mostly don’t need. And then it takes this giant billboard that gets your attention and makes you realize to stop and take a minute to appreciate what you do have and thank the power above for providing you with all that you are provided with today.

Why am I rambling on? Just so that someday when I am down and get bogged down and upset by the trivial things, I have a place to go and gently remind myself that sometimes, I need to stop, learn to let go, smile and say thank you for what I do have and am blessed with.