Wife & son are back from India and suddenly a house which looked so empty for last 3-4 weeks is full of excitement all over again. Aryan keeps running up and down the hall, carefully checking all his toys and happy with his reunion with them. He has hardly forgotten any of his toys or even the places where he left them, wonder how much information his small head can store. He also has lot of stories from his India stay. For the first time I heard him trying to speak in Hindi - broken at best, but still it was amazing.
First thing we both did together yesterday evening was to visit his "good" barber and have some haircut. He refused to have his hair cut in India without me for almost 2 months, which meant the barber had a lot to catch up with :-). He also took me to a cake shop and ordered his usuals, in short we had a typical couple of father-son time in the mall. All the while, we were out, he kept talking about his time in India and what all he did etc etc.. kind of a briefing I was looking forward to.
He has resumed his schools from today and was warmly welcomed by his friends as soon as he stepped on to his school bus. All of them were big smiles and so was I.. nice to see him getting integrated to his life straightway. Sometimes it is difficult for us adults to do that after a break ( like getting into office first day after a long vacation !).
Nikita is also back with her usual chores. She was busy opening all the luggage and showing me some of the new stuff she bought in India, mostly dresses for herself. Then came the turn of the papers and filing them correctly, so that we can find them next time when we search for that "missing" document. I helped as much as I could, but most of the time I was just enjoying their presence.
Lilly, our maid, her own stories from India stay and she was quick to point out the amount of dirt on the floor, kitchen ( thanks to my cleaning he he ). So she had her task cut out, to get the house back in the same shape which she left it. She was obviously happy to back to more familiar environment, India stay was definitely a different experience for her.
Its so nice to have them back, house filled with people - its just so different from staying alone. Thank GOD for blessing me with such a sweet family and loving / caring people around me - that's the biggest treasure of life.
The pain has persisted for the most part of this week - making me less effective. It is a constant reminder that something is wrong with my body, which is more bothering me that anything else. Whatever I am doing through out the day, pain is just a breathe away. I was hoping it will go away after couple of good night sleeps and some mid week relaxation. so I kind of forced myself out and stayed home day before yesterday and took plenty of rest - still nothing much changed. It is also not a pain which stops you from doing work, but it is so nagging and sometimes when I change body postures it hurts more. I am guessing this has definitely something to do with my body alignment while sitting in front of PC or TV. Saw a doctor earlier this week and he had also not much to say, except giving some pain killers and asking me to take rest and drink lots of fluid. All those I have been doing pretty much through the week - still it hasn't improved or increased even.
Anyways, lets not keep talking about it. No pain can win me over :-). Yesterday was also a very painful day for other reasons. India were playing Aussies in the cricket one day match and while chasing a mammoth 350 runs, they got so close, yet lost the match by 3 runs. One 20 years old "veteran" ( 20 years in international cricket) and living legend Sachin Tendulkar, go India almost home. He scored 175 in 141 balls, an amazing feat for the 36 years young fella. But close enough is never good enough and now India is down in the series 3-2. Despite all the loss and the pain associated with it, I had never witnessed any run chase like yesterday. India was not out of the game till last over and perhaps till the ball when Praveen Kumar was run out. It was a thrilling match and I am sorry to end up on the losing side. It doesn't take away the genius of Sachin and all the hard work he put in to set this up for India. He displayed some of the best cricketing shots and ability to keep on going for over 45 overs. The kind of shots he played and commitment he displayed, made everyone look smaller in the rest of cricketing world. Cricketers like Sachin are born once in centuries and Indian is blessed to have him in the line up for last 2 decades. He has given countless moments of joy in his career and every run was cheered like hell yesterday as well by the capacity crowd in the Hyderabad stadium. Though he must be feeling terrible - but life moves on and he will be back on field in couple of days taking guard for India in another match.
Match scorecard here - http://www.cricinfo.com/indvaus2009/engine/current/match/416240.html
This is also the last weekend, before family arrives from India. I am eagerly looking forward to Monday 7 AM when I will be at the airport to receive them. Spoke to Aryan today and he is also equally eager to get here and kept repeating, I miss my home, mamma lets go now, its enough. Yes my son, its enough -- please come back now.
It was a bust weekend. India managed to thrash Aussies again, taking 2-1 lead in the 7 match series. As always, I enjoyed every bit of it. Match scorecard here - http://www.cricinfo.com/indvaus2009/engine/match/416238.html
I also had a memorable evening on the birthday. The day started pretty ordinarily and winding off as a regular Friday - work in office, lunch with colleagues and I was wrapping up to leave early. I had no plans for the evening and just got some dinner packed from a local food stall and wanted to have a quiet evening with myself. But it was not destined to be.. someone up there wanted me to have a good time. One of closest friend in MBA days, was in Singapore and he dug out my numbers from somewhere. As surprised as I was to hear from him after almost 5 years, he came down to meet me at my place around 10 pm. He was in town for some meetings and was leaving on Saturday back to India. We got a chance to catch up on the past 5-10 years, time we spent together in the MBA school hostel and the friends and events. It was so much fun. We kept chatting all through the night, with booze off course. He went back to get ready for airport around 6 am in the morning, then I hit the sack. We called some of the old friends we lost touch with for some time and it was just amazing to meet him and spend all that time catching up. We cooked some Maggie and kept the drinking going all through the night - thank GOD for sending him ( sounds too gay isn't it) ! He has also grown up the corporate ladder and is now heading a biz unit as India leader, settled with family and blessed with a girl child. Our lives have taken very similar courses in last decade or so. We used to be the known "drunkards" of the hostel days and so it was almost fitting that we sat and drank through the night, as we met after 5 years.. he he..
Back home, Aryan and Nikita are enjoying time with the grandparents and also getting ready to come back. They would be here by next Monday. I am also getting close to finishing the Mahabharat "watching" on the DVD packs. Keeping busy and waiting for them to return.
