Look, its a girl!

This is for all those who have asked me whether my baby is a girl or a boy!!!

Notice the earrings? We got her ears pierced on 22nd oct!

OOps I missed it again…

Diya – Eleven months..

Diya with her grand-father (our kaaku) during Narayan-Puja

Missed it thanks to the chaos prevailing at home, with wedding preparations going on, pending shopping trips and ‘Pujas’

Arranged marriage

How much can you make out about a person through his pictures? A lot, if you would have asked Heena. Or perhaps that was the only way she could have sketched the kind of person she was going to marry. She had met him only once with a dozen other relatives for company. He was well dressed and it was the only comforting thought for her. The request for his photo albums was not received too positively by her as well as his relatives. For them, even  the thought of letting them alone in a room for five minutes was scandalous enough. As she browsed through the pictures, she found herself getting relaxed enough to manage a smile. Aarif was a smart guy, probably very popular in his social circle. He loved swimming and rock climbing. And it seemed that he was not as conservative as the rest of his family. He mingled freely with girls, laughed and danced with them. Not a bad prospect at all, considering that she had wanted a similar lifestyle for herself too. All that remained was a hope that this doesn’t turn out to be just an illusion like it did in case of her friend Aanya who married the person she knew and loved. Her more liberal friends ridiculed her for allowing her parents to choose her groom even in this era of freedom. But she was sure that this was no different from their idea of a love marriage. After all you don’t know a person completely until you start living with him/her. A few meetings, a shared cup of coffee is no different than hearing the family gossips about him or looking at the pictures like she did. Both have their risks of getting cheated. And so, she allowed herself to be led into a fate of which she had gathered knowledge as much as she could. The known and the unknown elements lent their own charm to the new life she was about to step into.

There is something special about weddings –

They give you hope for a new life ahead.

Oh and on a more shallow note, they give you ample opportunities to shop and splurge, let you be what you are not (glamor and all!), beautify the bitching that goes around, justify family politics and also let your mind go numb with the chatter that takes up the entire space in the house 🙂

I think my mother in law is hiding something from me

Else how would you explain the normal and ordinary dish like ‘aloo-beans’ tasting so heavenly when cooked by her? Secret ingredient??

Parenting is

God’s way of letting us learn and relearn life with all its nuances…

Distance

She checked his Orkut account daily. It helped in painting the picture of the new life he had entered. Through the pictures posted, she could construct the place he lived in, meet his new friends, know what new places he had visited and what new dishes he tried. He had requested her not to keep in touch, but she could not keep herself from snooping around. It was the only thing which helped her survive the void that his departure had created.