Sunday, November 27, 2011

Family and friends

Some family pictures from the Saturday night party at our house
Photo Courtesy: Souvik Mahapatra




Thursday, November 24, 2011

Playtime

The boys letting out some steam after dinner this evening. The show went on for atleast half an hour!

Sunday, November 20, 2011

A colourful airplane

Kabu is obsessed with airplanes and he loves to paint. Put them together and this is what you get.

(I drew a pencil outline at his request and he did the rest)


He kept warning me that the plane was about to fly off, so I'm glad that I was able to click a photo before that.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Open spaces

I'm frequently asked what I miss most about the US since returning back to India. My answer undoubtedly is "open spaces" which should not be surprising to anyone in Mumbai. However I had hoped that things would be different on the IIT campus.

We live across the street from the IIT gymkhana, yet it is not too accessible to children. It is reserved for students between 5pm-8pm on weekdays and we have been rudely asked to leave the grounds many times. There are other smaller grounds on campus but they are ill maintained. For example, we frequently spot snakes in the Shishu Vihar play ground which is closest to our house.

When I was a kid growing up on the same campus, children would always play in their building compound and grounds were only meant for more organized sports. However, with the large number of cars in every building it has now become dangerous to let children play in the building compound.

So unfortunately, we don't have many options left. Usually, evenings are spent going for walks on the campus road sidewalks with the kids (Kabu usually rides his scooter). Sometimes we go to the guest house which has become the meeting point for most campus kids in the evening (playing on the covered concrete area or on the sloping guest house lawns). On weekends and off-semester days we go to the gymkhana grounds where we play soccer with the kids or just let them run amok.

Friday, November 4, 2011

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Welcoming Zoya

Kabir and Anurag now have a little baby sister! Kakku bua gave birth to beautiful Zoya on October 22nd and we are thrilled to welcome her in our family.
Kabir asked to see Zoya's pictures and came up with a long list of names that he will use to call her (Akshita, Ameena, Riya, Priya...and some other names of girls in his class). He even got to "see" her through a Skype videochat. Anurag, ofcourse, has now been elevated to the status of "bade bhai sahab" now that he too has become a big brother.
Zoya - here's wishing you a long, healthy and happy life! We hope to see you soon.