New Year new normal

April 14th is Tamil New Year. The past couple of days/weeks have also been filled with spring celebrations from Easter to Passover to New Year in Sri Lanka (Aluth Avuruthu), Cambodia (Chol Chnam Thmey), Laos (Songkan / Pi Mai Lao), Thailand (Songkran), Nepal (Bikram Samwat / Vaishak Ek) and Burma (Thingyan). Across various communities in …

My rosy bubble..

Dec 20th is my dad's birthday and thanks to technology, despite living on the other side of the world, I am able to wish him "in person" from tens of thousands of miles away. My kids, husband and I did the same thing last week when my mom turned 70 on Dec 13th. Happy birthday …

Celebrating 150 years of Gandhi

This October 2nd marks the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, the father of India. Growing up October 2nd, also known as Gandhi Jayanti, was a national holiday, as in a day off, in India. "Cleanliness" was associated with Gandhiji, so the local and national politicians took the ceremonial photo with a broom and some …

No longer fresh off the boat..

With Lilly Singh's debut on late night comedy last night, Indian Americans/Canadians have hit main stream TV. Move over Slum Dog Millionaire! In the past couple of years Netflix and Amazon Prime have been my go to for non Bollywood Indian content. Ofcourse there was Quantico as well, especially since my husband is a DIEHARD …

Beyond “The Tiger”

Today, Karthik and I got to go the BMW PGA Golf Championships at the Medina Country Club.We got to witness the masters like Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy, Oosthuizen, Webb Simpson, Dustin Johnson etc. Until this summer golf to me was synonymous with Tiger Woods and Phil Mikelson and one or two famous golfers. I knew …

My first day of 3rd grade

The day is finally here, the day I have waited for all summer long, the first day of the school year! My older one woke up early this morning (7am vs 9/10 am), got ready and took the customary 1st day of 3rd grade picture. This was probably the first year I didn't shed my …

Sunday shenanigans

Ever since my older daughter has been 1, we have been video chatting with the grandparents almost every weekend and with other family and friends ever so often. Since I was in India for the past 1.5 months, video chats were limited to a few with the husband and some friends in Chicago. Settling back …

Balance

After a two month trip away from home, I am struggling to get back into a routine. So when my yoga instructor said the theme for the class is balance, both inside and outside class, it resonated with me in more ways than one.In class that day, the most basic poses were hard as my …

Shine on you crazy diamond

I just heard that a dear friend, Harini Ganesan, lost her battle to cancer yesterday. She was feisty and she fought hard for the last 4 years but eventually succumbed. When I said to her husband, I am glad her suffering is over, he immediately corrected me saying there was pain but no suffering. She …

Shine bright like a diamond

Diamonds are a girl's best friend, and mine too but unfortunately my pocket doesn't think so. Thankfully I have the metaphorical diamonds, moms and motherly figures in my life that I am very grateful for. Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers and mother figures. The modern Mother's day began in the United States, at …