A very happy Deepavali to all of you

Wishing everyone a belated Happy Deepavali!!!

Hope everyone had a great time on Friday night and yesterday. Here in Cupertino, the celebration is still going on..

We did get to wear new clothes, have vadai, paayasam, bakshanam from friends, have fun with some mathaapu (sparklers), watch a new release movie(daddy was sent to the theater on a cheer up mission) and have a fun time with family.

We also had a marathon session on the phone calling/receiving calls from all relatives on the land line, the Vonage phone and two cell phones!

Diwali was much needed in this household. It cheered me up a lot, enough to bring the kid in me out to have some fun! Seeing daddy happy, mommy and the kids cheered up as well.

Have a lot of things to catch up on with what is left of the weekend. Here are some photos.

Here's to lighting up all the darkness in our lives!

ps. Watched "Aadhavan". Vadivelu was at his best, but the movie was so-so. One of those movies where you watch the first half and if you walk out of the theater in the second half, you are really not going to miss anything.

.

From one thread to another..

Ones commitment to learning may be directly measured by ones receding hairline and loss of hair density.

You live, you learn. You learn more, you live less?

There has been a lot of learning on the personal and professional front in the last year. At least that is the annual Avani-avittam report!

Granted the regular sandhyavandanam is restricted to twice a month, plus some days when I feel like it and it is done in the bathroom for the most part, but the avani-avittam thread changing is always done.

Reminds you of good things from the past, and somehow deep down tells you that as long as you keep the learning process alive, all will be well. This ceremony always brings about mixed feelings. It becomes a once a year atonement event, but one has to look past feeling bad for not doing rituals and prayers everyday and go with "work is worship" and "worship is just more worship"!

Vedic learning is not going to feed the kids and it is a given that the concepts have to be fit to context.

My only take on the "being a brahmin" part is somehow we were taught that "knowledge is power". It is very much possible that this is an over simplified myopic filtered view of the caste system scaling down to affect me as to who I am....and this is not the first time this is being said in this blog. At least that view has remained consistent over four plus years of blogging..

In my understanding of 7th grade history of India, we were taught that there were four classes of people who had different interpretations of power and their roles in the world. They were valued in society for their quest for

a. knowledge
b. power, control, territory
c. money and all things material
d. a daily paycheck

Roughly translated for today's urbanite, you would aspire to be CTO, CEO, CFO or a dude doing the actual execution of work... today you can beat the system and be anything you want to be, as long as you don't get stereotyped!

Considering my parents were not well to do and the only thing they pushed me to do was to get grades and their biggest achievement (prior to their getting me married to their top seed pick aka San) was performing our Upanayanam ceremony in a grand way, the choice was very clear. Study and you will get somewhere in life and be valued for something.

That has been sent into deep permanent memory somewhere. So this year the commitment to learning has been extended by another year.

As usual, some pictures..

The little one was slightly upset that there was no "bell ringing" involved in today's occasion, but was consoled once she saw the good eats.

It was just daddy doing prayers and everyone getting to eat vadai, paayasam and sweet poli.

The paayasam was very very yummy and this post ends on that note..and we go eat some more paayasam.

.

Fantasy of Lights - Vasona Park

One of the local parks here (Vasona park in Los Gatos) has a Fantasy of Lights event where they put nice Christmas light displays and you drive through them at <5 miles per hour with the matching music to go on a local radio station.

The light displays were amazing! The kids were initially entertained, but they were not happy with the open passenger side window. While it accomodated the photo/videographer, it made the van too cold for their liking. This was followed by questions like

"how much longer do we have to drive like this?"
"are we going to stay here forever?"

etc. etc..

It is a good idea to teach your kids a few patience lessons before taking them on this drive...

Here is a video and some photos of the trip.

Thoroughly enjoyable!!

.

Lights, Camera, Action

First the lights..

Now the camera..

May the godess Lakshmi (more specifically Sowbaghyalakshmi!) bless this house with a new lens in the coming year!

Okay, okay.. that was not the cameras fault. It was an accident! After taking pictures of the outside lights, on a tripod the extended family requested a group shot. Without realizing that it was on manual mode with 0.8 seconds at F/4.0! and on self timer, placed the tripod and this is what we get. Still does not hurt to ask the godess, right?!

That photo, came in handy! This is the first group photo with all the unrecognizable ladies published on the blog!

Now for the action...

My BIL, who is celebrating his Thalai Deepavali (first deepavali as a "hubby"), came up with this one. He was trying "night shot" mode, thereby giving this second picture, which would normally make the reject pile, find extensive use on this blog to show what was happening without having to do any photoshop to black out faces. This ensures that the folks seeking anonymity are happy and makes me happy as well (I get to post some photos!)

Happiness, is watching great looking happy women celebrate in style...

This was another candid classic from the BIL who is now trigger happy with his new Nikon D40 (Edited to chop off what remained of the recognizable faces. Ladies, my apologies! Next year will make sure all of you turn the other way so we dont have to do this).

That picture pretty much gives a brief overview of this years deepavali saree selections namely:

asattu karuppu with arakku border
mayil kazhuththu color with segappu border
deep magenta with gold border
etc. etc.. (colors which are undescribable, untranslateable and untransliterable in english)

The kids really enjoyed it!

We had a blast this year!

This Deepavali was much needed in this household which has otherwise become very gloomy in its outlook.. Time to think positive at home, at blogger, at everything!

Here's to the "lighter" side of life!

.

Wishing you a happy....

Indian Independence day to all Desis (In India, abroad, at heart)

Aavani Avittam for the "poonal" boys,

Varalakshmi pooja to the "saradu" girls,

and wishing all relatives(close and far, who read this blog), on the birth of Bharat, my new nephew!

Recently it has been good news in a row or bad news in a row.

I am sure the astrologers will have a nice explanation for that.

This weekend has been a good festive one!

yours truly,

Princess Daddy and Style Missy.

.