New addition to the family

On 22-Aug-2011, we welcomed another member to our family. While we were hoping for a girl, God decided we would be better off with another boy. Aman is thrilled though - he said, he now has someone to play cricket with. Though he got sad when we told him that it would be some time before the baby started even walking, let alone play cricket.

Sleeping blissfully on the hospital bed, after keeping us all awake for 3 nights in a row.


All swathed in soft blue.


Aman watching the baby. Since it was him that wished for a baby brother/sister, we hopefully would not have to deal with any sibling rivalry here.

The 1st snap of the baby, as soon as it was born. Looks so much like Aman looked at birth.

We had girl names ready, since we were almost sure it would be a girl. Now, we need to start looking for boy names. For now, the kid would be called "Appu", as Aman used to address the baby even before it was born.

Thanmathra (Molecule) anyone ???

Last Sunday I am at home, helping my maternal aunt with her packing as she prepares to return back to Bhopal (where she is normally resident) after spending more than a month at Kerala with us. Among her luggage are two baby tortoises caught from the flooded fields behind our home. Her young grandson is an animal lover and wants to have these as pets at Bhopal. Apparently it would cost you 750 bucks to buy one at Bhopal.

I am packing a carton with all kinds of eatables when my niece Divya comes to me and asks, "Biju-uncle, what is the spelling of Giraffe?". I am amused at the question which I find to be trivial, given that it is an easy to spell the word, but I still answer, "G-I-R-A-F-F-E".

"Then why did you write it as G-I-R-A-F" on the puzzle pieces ?", she asks, while laughing.

I am quickly jolted to the context she is referring to. Some months ago I had bought Aman a set of 4 animal-based jigsaw puzzles, consisting of a camel, tiger, giraffe & hippopotamus. Aman is only learning to solve the easier puzzle and since the tougher ones (having more pieces) are a strain even for adults, I decided to mark the correct order of all 4 puzzles on the reverse of each piece as "TIGER 1 of 8"..... to "TIGER 8 of 8".

It seems Divya noticed this marking on the reverse and that is when she saw that I had spelt it as GIRAF. Now that she mentioned this, I tried to think back as to why I wrote the spelling wrong. But could not see any reason behind the spelling mistake. Being a person who is bothered about spelling/grammar even when sending an SMS, this seemed too silly a mistake to make.

Or, can it be written off as a mistake / oversight ? I hope this is not any indication of memory loss or even worse Alzheimers, like depicted in the 2005 Malayalam movie Thanmathra (meaning Molecule). This is a movie to be watched, given the awesome direction and superb acting by all involved, including Mohanlal who plays the pateint so convincingly. Get a DVD when you have couple of hours to spare. Subtitles would help those that dont know Malayalam.

Rains @ Kerala - and stills that convey falling rain

I was at Kerala some weeks ago, combining the weekend with 2 days of work from home, when it was raining like crazy. While I do like the rains, it can become bothersome if you are working(power goes off, can't hear people over the phone due to the roar of the rains etc) and after a few hours of it, I could swear I was done with rains.

A Mallu colleague @ our Chennai office comes on the instant messenger and asks if it is raining. I tell him that nothing seems to be happening other than rain and I am sorta fed up. Ofcourse he being at hot Chennai, the idea of pouring rains makes him home-sick and the least he could do to satisfy his desire is to atleast see it pouring in a snap. He requests me to take a few snaps of the rain, which I am OK with, though I wonder how we can capture rains in a still photo.

Anyway, I step out onto the porch and take these 3 snaps, which I send to all the mallu-crowd at work. One of them replies, "Nice snaps. I could actually see the rains in your snaps and feel it sitting here". Posting below the snaps I took.

When it is raining, it is bliss to sit/lie on the swing, reading a book or drink a cup of tea/coffee.


This was taken around noon, but look how dark it has become.


Wish a still-photo could capture the swaying trees too. :-)