I dreamt it

England is under the big freeze. I have always dreamt of sitting in a cozy room, with a cup of tea and a book, lying on the sofa and watching a heavy snowfall. Tell me, what do you really feel when your dreams are realised? Do you get lost in the feeling that this can't possibly be true, or that now my dream has been realised, shouldn't I be more happy or omigod, this moment is going to go by soon, let me try n capture it as much as possible (and then loose it in the process) or, does it become an anticlimax, that you had expected so much out of it that the reality failed to match up to your expectation? All these used to happen to me so often, that i dreaded my dreams coming true, i felt it much better to have beautiful dreams than seeing those wonderful dreams coming to dust by becoming reality.
Well, I had a wonderful opportunity to attend a four day course in the Sri Sri Ravishankar's ashram in bangalore and had the good fortune to meet him face to face. What a truly divine experience that was. On the second day of the course, our teacher asked a very relevant question. How long can you keep watching that amazinginly beautiful scenery? An hour or two? How long can you keep watching that snowfall you love? A few minutes? Ah..it was such a relief to see hear these words. Good to hear that this is a universal truth, and that, when you get something that you feel is wonderful and have been longing to have, experience, it is but natural for you to feel a surge of pleasure initially, but you just cannot hug and preserve that feeling forever. You might look back and remember the instantaneous joy that you experienced, but thats all it was. Instantaneous. And after that, you are back to being the person you were, in the same life that you have, with the same people, circumstances you were in!
But if you see yourself as happiness, and you are in joy throughout, then those dreams that you had, when it becomes a reality, just enhances your joy. You learn to accept everything beautiful and relish in your dreams because you know that your essential nature is of joy. All that fear of the dream not living up to your expectation and doubts of whether you are really enjoying yourself of not, is gone. You are enjoying yourself every minute of your day. Your dreams being true jut adds a drop to an already overfilled cup of joy.
Am I making any sense? Have I answered the question I had raised? No? Then please forgive me,I have not yet probably reached the state of zen!!!!, but at where I am now, I am living my dream, and I am truly happy with it!!!!!

Happy birthday, dear

Krithika...who calls herself thithika, who cries 'Ammeeenaaa in the morning, noon and night for me' who when feeling an excess of love grinds her teeth, pulls my eyebrows and yells, 'Achodaaaa'! Who imitates whatever her god like anna's (elder brothers) do and still find it in her to pull their hair and scratch them when irritated, who is the apple of her dad's eye, who looks her best in any dress or without! who does something naughty and then refuses to look into your eye for a while, who broke my cup yesterday and ran out of the kitchen and sat down meekly by my feet, who removes all her dresses in the blink of an eye and wanders around in her birthday suit, who falls asleep in a second when put in her car seat, who says hi and bye to everyone on the road, who cries only when hit by her brothers and sleepy, who is 2 years old, but still wakes up in the middle of the night to have her milk, who just needs her brothers around to be happy and constantly playing, who speaks almost as much as them, who sings and dances so adorably, who has brought the maximum smiles on our faces the past two years, who has given us the best years of our life,
darling Krithika, May you spread this happiness and joy all your long life through, may you be happy and contended all your life through, may your parents and brothers have the good fortune to see you grow as beautiful as you are now, and may god bless this wonderful creation of his.

A week on..

and I am a lil bit tired of the beautiful Apartment we are in and long to move into the house we have rented!! It is beautiful alright, but, it somehow lacks the warmth of the English cottage I have been wanting to live in! Anyway, our furniture is due to arrive day after, and after that begins the huge task of setting up the house, a task I have always enjoyed. Every year after our marraige we have moved houses, and this time, it is a country as well, so, you could call us a sort of moving experts by now! We went to the other place, lets call it FC for now, to arrange all the grociries we had got from India, which was quite a lot, considering that five of us had 30Kg allowance each, most of which were filled with rava, semiya, rice and so on!!!! We have a rented car for the month, Ford Mondeo, and had an inital fight fitting in three car seats at the back. After some shop hopping, we finally settled for two slim car seats (more like booster seats) for Kachi n Kautu and a good car seat for baby! See, what all advantages are there in being the youngest!
I was a bit down the first two days, the climate is freezing and once hubby dear has gone to office, the kids and I are pretty much stuck at home. Now that a few days are gone by and I have managed to see quite a lot of cambridge and taken the kids to a beautiful park by the cam river, and have shopped half the hubby's salary out, I am back in spirits! But truly, nothing like nature and shopping to uplift you, is there?
Kids have adapted really really well. They love the river and go for long walks feeding the ducks and swans. They keep running all the time, so I guess the cold is not an issue at all. I am the only one still wandering around with a frozen face and hands. But over all, its a sea change from my mother land, and I have done fine so far. My brother and his wife are with us, so, probably that helped a lot, but all said and done, I do miss India a lot. I miss its temples, its people, my loved ones and the chatter. I miss the gang in Bangalore and I miss our weekely poker nights. I miss the restaurants and I miss the climate. I miss our unplanned weekend trips and I miss the A2Bs on route to Chennai. I miss...........
Well, I might get over this in a few days, for, the wanderlust in us will kick in and relieve any boredom, but till then, it is a pleasure to blog and crib about how much I miss India.
And it is a pain to think that you can't see the parents when you just feel like it! Other than these minor things (!!) I am enjoying this place quite a lot. Especially the amazing clothes and accessories, and the beautiful English countryside, and the lovely quaint cottages. It is as picturesque as it can get and especially when it snowed yesterday, ahhhh...I melted right out there in the car. Those lovely snowflakes on that beautiful road and river, stirred me as nothing much else has in the recent past. Wish I had a few pictures to share with you, let me take a look...

At Jesus Greens, the part with the river Cam for a boundary


Feels much like Venice, doesn't it? This is just a walk from Jesus Greens and the wooden pathway we are on is right above the river and really really slippery. Kachi fell down three times and I was almost on my butt too!

we are off!!!!!!!!!

We reached Cambridge late yesterday night...still feeling like a Queen with the chauffer driven BMW that came to pick us up at the airport and the wonderful apartment we are in, courtesy of the company. It has a wide balcony with a beautiful view of the cambridge river and furnished very asthetically. Kachi and Kautu were so thrilled with their experience, that they slept together leaving karthik, me and baby the other bigger room. We are still exhausting the welcome pack that we still haven't wandered outside. When our shipment arrives, we will be moving into the house we have taken for rent, so, it is a case of enjoy the good thing while it lasts..I am too tired to even think about opening the door and looking outside, so, sleep, sleep and eat is going to be the manthra for the day!

On route in Dubai
Kids had a blast exploring the airport. Took us more than an hour to reach the departure terminal from the arrival one. I dragged my feet near the duty free shops and the kids dragged theirs all along.


On the flight. Emirates had a wonderful collection of movies, and the guys ended up watching ants and cars throughout. They slept for most of the journey and watched the movies for the rest, so, things were fine for us.


More pics n updates coming on...

The best gift i could give them..

is themselves! What a company and what a sheer delight it is to see them play among themselves. I have often just sat there beside them, watching them play games of make believe, assuming characters and enacting their favorite stories, with a never ending chatter and watching baby's innocent face reflect the moods of her brothers and wondered at the beauty of watching her pick up roles as though she was a year older and silently join her brothers in all their games......and sent a silent prayer of thank you to whoever it is that made me blessed enough to watch the three play and felt that this is the biggest gift i could ever give them...company for life.

They have never needed any one else to play with. They make friends easily, but don't really need them as yet, they are always supporting each other the moment one of them is hurt by an outsider, they make houses and sleep inside it and name them 'kachi,kautu and baby house', they scold me when i reprimand another - baby even cries if one of her brothers are hurt, they have enough numbers to play ring -a roses on their own, they eat competing with each other and even sleep all cuddled up in their house on some days. They are now an entity and baby is no longer a baby to me. She is a part of THEM. I dread the day when the boys will go to school leaving her behind, for she's never been without them for a long period of time. Whatever the future holds, let it at least hold that these three remain together and with the rapport that makes them play for hours on end without a single call for help. This is the silent prayer that i send up everyday and the silent gift that was given to me over the last 3 years.

Amma...your food is yummy!

They say this for a few of their favorite food...Well, like almost everyother kid, they gobble up what they like and hmmm..hawww over the others! So, i try my level best to cook up something their varied taste buds will like. Its better now, since all of them kindof like similar stuff, but a year back, kachi, kautu and baby had their own tastes that were mutually exclusive!! A mothers nightmare!
Here are some stuff they love as of today

1. Pasta with white sauce (I sometimes grate carrots or potatoes, or add finely sliced tomatoes, or at times, put in a vegetable mix to make the white sauce healthier)
2. Birpulao - kachi was asking for this again yesterday! This is a mixture of biryani and pulao...ie, Biriyani without the spices and pulao with briyani base!)
3. Microwaved french fries - which are in reality just potato pieces finely cut and microwaved with butter!
4. chapathi and subzi- as long as the subzi has a tomato base and is non spicy
5. Potato bhajji - deep fried potato with besan coating. They love this, and consume almost half a bottle of tomato sauce.
6. Muesli - yeah..from when did kids start liking my non sugar fat free muesli?? Well, they seem to love it and would have it any time of the day!
7. Brown rice - finely cooked, they like eating it plain, with just ghee and salt. No side dishes allowed.

And i get a praise for any of these, even if it is the muesli that I told them the shop uncle makes! If they don't like something, its just a gentle shake of the head. So, i'll just bask in their praises till they grow up enough to tell me ...mummy, this food s**ks!!

Winds of change

have swept through my land...we had planned a relocation to UK for a while and now its all falling in place!! Karthik has already left and joined work in Cambridge and we hope to get the visa for me and the kids by december mid...Five years and growing up three kids in Bangalore later, we wound up our house and bid goodbye to friends and the city last thursday. In the two weeks after we got his visa, we visited all the favorite hangout places in Bangalore, (they turned out to be mostly hotels!!) brindavan, woodys, krishna cafe, little italy, ramanas and then chilled out in RMZ infinity where we must have spent atleast half our parent life chasing the kids around the fountain and watching them dive and jump from the small inclines, given them dripping icecreams from MacDs and delved into our subs. We hosted all our friends one saturday with almost 10 hours of rigorous Poker (Ah..I was winning till the dinner break, and wosh....lost all my money after that!). We went for dinner to a friends place almost every day and treated others on the rest. We went shopping in the morning, afternoon and night and bought a lot of stuff which made us feel like the newly weds. Wardrobes, cloths, utensils, vaccum cleaner, mixie, grinder..and so on...we are discarding most of our old stuff here and getting new ones...for a new beginning, not that we will not miss the old one, just that a change is always refreshing! Kids are missing their dad and wake up in the middle of the night crying. He came on skype yesterday and had to see Kautu weeping his heart out for him. Krithika and Kachu were fine, they chatted with their dad and kept asking him when he will be applying visa for them!! Now begins our next target, find a good house next to a good school, close to grocery and office and within our budget!! Hah..quite a lot of conditions, huh? Anyway, one thing I am sure of, the house should be isolated enough to give us and the kids the freedom to yell our hearts out!!

Now, thats the update for now, quite a big one, isn't it?