Chennai Heat

Saturday 24th May 2008
I love the sun. Don't get me wrong. My idea of a perfect holiday, no a perfect day, is a bright blue sky and a golden orb of fire blazing down upon everything, especially me.

Well, the Chennai Summer sun is something completely different - it is debilitatingly, unendingly, burningly hot. You take a breath, and you can feel the tiny airways in your lungs screaming for mercy from the firebreath you just took. On the first of May, the month of Fire begins. It does not end until the beginning of June. Even then, it is not really a respite, just more muggy humidity and more exhaustion and electricity overload. On that subject - power cuts are becoming more and more the norm rather than the exception. We have recently had a new a/c installed in the sitting room (B could not cope with the minute amounts of cool air from the old one!) However, no-one thought to tell us that the voltage coming into the house from the central Electricity Board was verging on 150 instead of 240 watts. Result - no a/c working, madam! this is even more frustrating as tempers run high in this sort of weather.

I think we should all take a lesson from the cows, bullocks and stray dogs in the Boat Club neighbourhood and simply plop down in the nearest bit of shade, and try a bit of shut-eye for the most part of the day. Moving, standing and even walking are left until the Big Ball of Fire in the Sky dips below the horizon!

Diwali Celebrations at School

Hi Everyone,

Well, every year, the parents at Nikhil's school club together and sponsor and organise a Diwali Event which includes families feasting, dancing and fireworks!

The main part is the dancing - we had a live band playing, and the best part was that we had Germans, French, Japanese, Finnish, Dutch, Korean, Indian American - in fact 26 different nationalities are represented at the school and I am pretty sure most of them were on the floor doing garba and then dandiya raas!!! Awesome!

Nikhil and Rhea were dressed in Indian clothes just like Biren and I and both kids were really getting into the swing of things! In the photo above, Nikhil is with a Korean, an american and an Indian friend, and they have all just learnt how to do the indian dances! they were twirling and whirling around the school gymnasium with such enthusiasm - it was fantastic! Rhea was looking so cute with her belly sticking out and she kept spinning around and around and then loving falling on the floor in dizzy abandon!! Biren was thoroughly jet-lagged having just returned from the UK thatmorning and was trying so hard to keep his eyes open! A real angel for even coming there! I had helped organise the event along with a committee of mums, so was busy trying to make sure things went smoothly and everyone enjoyed themselves and keep an eye on my kids at the same time!!!

I hope Diwali went well for each and every one of you and maybe next year we will all be together.

Sejal
5th Nov 2006