Of high aspirations

When one is young, there are few things that appear more desirable than growing older. Once you are old enough, there are few things more depressing than growing even older. I think the person can be considered as truly mature on the day this flip happens. We had put up a couple of numeric balloons with numbers 1 & 6 on Pari's birthday to mark it as her 16th. Not because we consider 16 as anything special, but because the balloons were part of the decorations that the neighbourhood general store owner had recommended and sold to us. Also, because on inflation, they looked nice and went well with our theme. After the party was over, I plucked the number balloons off the wall, bought them home and pasted the 16 in Pari's room. I thought it looked great on her wall. The following evening, I went to Pari's room to run an errand. The numeric balloons looked strange and unsettling. And then I realised that Pari has rotated the 6 to make a 9 and pasted it before the 1. Many of us would offer an arm and a leg to be 16 again, I have a child who can't wait to turn 91. I would appreciate her enthusiasm about life, but for the fact that I would either be long dead and gone or 115 years old. I prefer the former.

Because I am missing her so much..

This is a video we captured a few days before leaving Bangalore. Ignore my unkempt house.. and just watch the miracle that she is!



While we are on Pari, some more pictures. Yesterday was 'Fruit day' in her school and she was the cherry. Below is the cherry that Mausi painted for her. Isn't she terribly lucky to have such a talented Mausi?

Getting crafty..

It is our wedding anniversary tomorrow.. and as always, I have been racking my brains for the past 10 days, for what might be the ideal present. I like to work towards a present, and do not go for off-the-shelf stuff unless unavoidable. Now, this makes the otherwise simple job really complicated, especially since I run low on imagination and creativity. For the record, this will be our 3rd anniversary, and we could not celebrate the first 2. So just to make up for the lost occasions, I wanted to buy the spouse a platinum ring engraved with our names, with a solitaire if the budget allowed. Such was the plan till last week, before my organization axed some 10% of the total work-force. What followed were extremely low spirits and a drastic drop in my budget, from INR 25,000 to a meagre 500 rupees. I was more than willing to slash it further, but for anything less than that, the present would have reduced to a flower plucked from the neighbour's bush.. and they don't even plant roses! To cut a long story short, I decided to get crafty, pun intended :) I had wanted to do some glass painting since when I forget, and used this opportunity to fulfill that longing. After much deliberation, I decided upon a personalized calender with 'glass paintings' on transparent plastic sheets. Its come out looking rather childish, especially because I have done the calendar part manually. It would have looked far better with a printed calendar, there are plenty of cool options available on the internet for that but I just wanted to give it a more personal touch. Come to think of it, I could have got this whole personalized calendar thing made up with no effort, very little time, and markedly cheaper by placing an order on any of those websites and uploading a few family pics but I prefer it this way. No more rambling, here's presenting some pics. I know they are not impressive, but just want to share :)