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.

Gokulashtami 2020

This year we are celebrating Gokulashtami in a much simpler way. 

Made some seedai in the morning with some help from San who also made some maladdoos and looked lovely today..

We did a small pooja and did neivedhiyam and deeparadhanai. 

did I mention she looked absolutely lovely today?

This year, one more person dear to us has reached Krishna.. San's grandpa is one with Krishna now! Was thinking of him, even if it was for a brief moment while doing the deepa aaradhanai. 

The kids have stopped dressing up for functions, but their motivation for dressing up is when someone is going to see them dressed up. Parents don't count on that list. Given COVID times, I understood and gave them a pass. There are a few functions they look forward to.. especially when the star of the show is a cute crawling baby, a cute looking elephant, lighting lamps and bursting fire crackers or simply the excuse of "I cant study today because all my books are with Saraswati ummachi". 

We have passed on what we could to the next generation. Feel happy that my kids are aware of traditions. Right now there are kids growing up in Tamil Nadu as well as a lot of young adults who have managed to develop so much self loathing for their own culture and tradition in the name of secularism that is being pushed in their face. The marketing machinery that has gone into over drive in recent times to do this to so many kids at this scale is mind boggling. 

You can accept another's faith without having to show you gave up on your own! This is so much easier to do and understand, especially when you have a concept of god being in every form, shape, size, color, nature and being open to acceptance. I can understand it being a lot harder for religions where the concept is "my way is the only way". 

"Sarva deva namaskaraha Keshavam prathigachathi" is something we say as part of doing Sandhyavandhanam every day.  When you prostrate yourself in front of any god, it all eventually goes to the same god. It is a beautiful message. 

On a totally tangential note, I have been wearing the same 5 "pocket vechcha T-shirts"  in rotation since the lockdown when going out. Inside the house it has been the 60-day challenge shirts in rotation.  Using Krishna's birthday as an excuse, finally put on a new T-shirt from the collection of unopened gifts. 

This one was courtesy of my FIL/MIL or one of San's uncles. Feels good to wear new clothes every now and then! Apparenlty after eating everything I do look like a blue whale. 

A very happy Gokulashtami to everyone. I know that given the technicality of the calendar a lot of folks celebrate Krishnas birthday in early September this year. An advance Gokulashtami wish to them!  

Allergies in COVID times

The last four months were really good for my lungs. Stayed at home. Was very careful everytime I went to the Sunnyvale Costco, the Cupertino Trader Jo's / Target or the local Trinethra. Always wear a mask, use hand sanitizer very liberally, shower after I come home (not just wash hands, go straight to shower!)

That was pretty much the list of stores visited over 4 months, sometimes once in 7 days or 14 days. 

Apart from that, have had my daily walk around the block either while calling into meetings where I am not front and center but have to be there for an entire hour (most of you know those meetings... where the one day you are not on call, they take your name in vain) or in the late evenings just when the sun starts to go down. 

Two weeks ago things became very difficult. Runny nose, sore throat, blocked nose, difficulty breathing through the nose during the night and end up waking up with a dry mouth, occasional nose bleeds because of too much sneezing which eventually turned into the usual sinus infection. Called the doctor and they promptly told me that I have nothing to worry as I can breathe very well through my mouth. My lungs are still good.. very good.. to the point that once I manage to do the first two breaths of pranayama as part of the daily yoga class, I can keep going. They didn't even bother to ask me to go get tested. 

There was also another thing I observed. The sneezing went into over drive when I shaved after a week. It looks like the cleft below my nose has become super sensitive and I can now shut down when detecting certain smells at much lower levels. 

If not for the daily walk and the 90 minute yoga class everyday, the rest of the day and night is practically spent sitting on one place. So it is not easy to give up the walk because of the allergies. 

The real question was, how can I get this allergies if I wear a mask thoughout the walking! Are pollen smaller than the virus? 

Apparently the Corona virus is 120nm and the size of Pollen is 15-200 um which is 15000 to 200,000 nm. The mask should have blocked the pollen from getting into my nose.Turns out the blooming Lilacs are to blame and when I am sitting in the backyard calling into meetings without a mask, the pollen got me. 

Muddled thorugh the that week and the earlier part of this week working with watery eyes and nose and sounding miserable. Maybe time to take a few days off just to take mind off things and sleep during the day. Staring at a monitor non stop from 8AM to 9PM is also not a good idea. Have decided to go and bring my external monitor from work and move it home. 

If BYSJ was open we would have been going through a summer 60 day challenge. After recovering from that ankle sprain made it 60 days in a row earlier this week.  This would have been my 10th 60 day challenge. In my mind it still is. 

We now have open air classes in the parking lot at the yoga studio. I got to be part of the first ever parking lot class. It was hot, it was not level ground and the sun was directly above us.. but think there were almost 20 of us and we did the class and enjoyed it simply because of the group experience. You have to learn to breathe hard through a mask though, and that was a curveball for me because my mask was not the right mask for this exercise. it was a mask that had already been used for a week and was too soft. A cloth mask or a more rigid mask with some structural strength would have been better.  I almost swallowed my mask during the final breathing exercise. 

There are more classes per week now and more folks are starting to show up. Have been staying put at home content with doing the classes on Zoom or alone to a recording because I was still sneezing like crazy. I have been told there is no chance this is COVID, but others don't. So didn't want to panic my fellow yogis!

My time to participate came again this morning. There is no more sneezing, no runny nose watery eyes etc.. the allergies have gone as of Friday! 

This time went well prepared for the sun and the asphalt in the parking lot. If you saw a guy among a group of yogis who looked like he had just gotten off his camel and looked like a displaced Moroccan, that was me. One beauty of having a lot more clothes during a yoga class is that you sweat more, which was a plus! Thoroughly enjoyed the class.

don't think many of my yoga buddies even recognized me.. they were probably wondering who is the crazy arab who is waving to them..

The allergies and sneezing though presented a very real challenge when trying to do anything outside the house or being able to show my face in video calls. I was not comfortable seeing my own face in that zoom window, so had to say no to a lot of facetime and zoom calls. People get scared even if you sneeze on zoom! that is how much we react or over react to things now. 

The good news is I am back to my usual self and the yoga continues. Now that I have mastered dressing up for parking lot yoga, will be a regular there. 

Wish this COVID blows over and we end up inside the hot room soon enough. A lot of my fellow yogis share the same sentiment. If we are six feet apart and are wearing masks throughout the class, why not just do this inside the hot room?! if anything the fan pushes everything down to the floor! 

Normally we would go to Chat house and celebrate the finishing of a 60 day challenge with some parathas and baturas.. we are in different times now! Hope things open up soon!