My parents.. at their wedding.. photoshopped this from an old torn pic from their wedding album.. Haven't figured out how to colorize it yet..
This one was taken ~20 years ago..
was in grad school at the time.. my sister gave me a large copy of this photo on this trip which I promptly digitized.
This was taken last Thursday.. did try to copy over the background from the 20 year photo to match.. don't even know why I spent a good 20 minutes trying to learn how to do that on photoshop... but it will come in handy sometime in the future!
They are not into saving sweaters... still as long as I am around, they will have pictures and blog posts to see how they are aging gracefully!
It has been 25 years since I was in India for a Deepavali ! You can celebrate all you want in the US of A with family and friends, but somehow nothing comes close to being in India on Deepavali day!
On a whim, got last minute tickets to go to India straight from my business trip and spent the weekend in Chennai. I have spent 3 days with my parents in the last two years and made a promise that will go see them even if it was a solo trip without wife and kids and even if it was only for a weekend. Glad that I made it.
San got me tickets on Air Asia. That was an interesting thing in itself. These guys take the Airbus flying quite literally. It is like a local "bus" ride in the "Air". They take this "low cost airline" concept to an all new level. An unnecessary security check within their own gates to throw out my water bottle and then charge for water on the flight! It was an all time low on my flying experience list. Once I reached Chennai and got a bear hug from my niece, that was temporarily forgotten.
Then I got to see my dad, which was one main reason for going. He has tremors now and is conscious of it. So he doesn't come to the phone or skype often. That said, he manages it pretty well. He knows when he cannot talk and stays silent and is very meditative. When the tremors subside, he is normal and goes about his usual activities.
I taught my nephew how to hold an oothubaththi to a Kuruvi vedi and that experience alone was priceless. The poor kid had fractured his arm and was just out of his cast, but was so hyped up that he was running around the terrace with me in all that excitement.
He reminded me of someone all the time... me!
My niece did my hair and make up as part of Diwali and I sat through it patiently thinking "my sister used to comb my hair for hours, then my kids did it.. you are probably the last one to get the experience of combing my hair as there is not much left to comb these days!"
Fireworks are not the same anymore from when we were kids.. They sell these fireworks where each piece is like a long tube and they are like 4th of July fireworks, expensive and fancy. 500 rupees for just one piece but very nice. The entire city was lit up with these things! It was non stop from every roof top. Just an amazing sight to watch. The smiles on the kids faces.. it is something to see when every kid you walk by is just all smiles!
Here is a video composite of the whole fireworks experience.. this doesn't even come close to being there!
(WARNING : the background noise in this video is very high !)
Then there was the sweets and savories. My mom made sure that 177 yoga classes for the year were nullified in 177 minutes. To summarize "she kept me well fed" for the three days. By day two, I started saying "enough" before she even put anything on my plate, because she would continue to pile it on my plate for a good two seconds after my saying stop! Some things never change. Had just told my brother to lose weight and go do some yoga and he gave me a look and a smile that said "if you live with mom in the house, no amount of yoga is going to get your weight down". He was right. Have put on a good 5 lbs in 3 days!
If you are wondering how come I have eyes only for San.. look no further.. think there is a gene for that which gets passed on..
It has been one hectic but memorable trip!
Heartfelt wishes, belated as they may be, for everyone's lives to be filled with light and happiness!
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?!
