GWYNNE SPOKE HER HEART OUT.

Fathers Day 2008 was ruled by two things. None of  the reasons being the fathers in the house . The ladies ruled this too. First the fantastic lunch by Grandma Ruth and Gwynne with that speech in which literally she talked her heart out for her dad and all the patriarchal people in her life.

Grand ma Ruth reminded me of aaji and the purity of gwynne's emotions in her speech left everyone in the room with teary red eyes but showed how close the family was. Probably in U.S this is why people dont socialize that much coz they have these big and wonderful families.

The 16yr old kept on crying and laughing. She has that energy everyone needs in their family. 

U made my day Gwynne will remember that speech always forever....keep smiling.

The days of Red evenings and Black Rock Shade---Arches

Some introductions are meant to be magical , to be everlasting. Magical Arches,moab and nothing there was everlasting as far as their physical existence is concerned but arches surely left some everlasting images of how magnificent can Arches formed by nature be. It all started with planning it for Nishant by Suju.(or in earlier posts su..ja..ta).

One of my best friends here Sujata will be getting engaged to Nishant soon. She wanted us (who this US is made of is a question that will be answered real soon) to meet him and go for an outing. The best way she combined both and made it all as effective as she could.
I have to write this down about the pic on the left. After this i am so sure i can be a bollywood photographer.




As expected Sujata and Nishant make a wonderful pair.
OK now the US part
Me, Raga Madhuri, SADHAASIVAM KAMALANAADHAN (i seriously hope u dont mistake this name with the personality of this guy),
Hima Bindu, Madhuri or lambi madhuri(hehehe).

(in Pic- Me, Nishant, Suju, Raga madhuri, Kamal, Bindu, Madhuri)

So a big huge Dodge Van which fitted all the groceries in its storage spaces as if it was a monster with insatiable appetite. It surely was a monster that needed a lot of food. The van and 6 of us full ticket and 1 half ticket kamal set out of salt lake city heading for Arches,Moab,Utah. To give you a better idea of the group short description follow.

1) Nishant :- Amazing photographer. Learnt a lot from him on this trip..
2) Sujata :- Kid ! one word can describe her but further she has a mithun ascent in which she talks with everyone just to be a cool dudy ( dudy is female dude) And is afraid of ghosts.. this girl canoed with me for 1 whole day and night and i didnt knew that before. she wasnt afraid then or covered it up really well i guess hehe.
3) Raga:- The delicate one.Reminds me of my mother. She is so typically a girl. But the best part is shes honest about it and knows whats right for her.
4) Hima Bindu:- another fluffy kid.. The most candid smile I have ever seen in a grown up. Doesnt talk much but feels everything perfectly in the same way.
5)Madhuri or Lambi Madhuri:- One word description Attitude! hehe she should be named PINKY everything has to be pink for her. if given a chance she would paint her husband pink! her house pink, her doggy pink. and her hair pink! (Kiddin madhuri). She seriously wants to be rich VERY RICH!.....very headstrong or atleast likes to believe that(hehe)..and on weekends she is generally in dallas with her sis ...believe me almost EVERY SINGLE WEEKEND from SLC to Dallas...amzingly close to her sis i guess.

DID I FORGET SOMEONE
oh
oh
oh
the big guy
6)SADHAASIVAM KAMALANAADHAN:- This guy is going to get killed by someone for his witty untimely sometimes wrongly timed one liners.. madhuri demonstrated that my throwing away his cap. Get the signals fast buddy u dont wanna die without marrying. But seriously Best one liners ever.

UFFFF u guys are so interesting..bout me I kept on annoying everyone with my hyper hiker drive. the hiking drive was not satisfied! But Time I spend with the gang is something engraved on the book called life for life.


Now the About arches and the Points we saw

"AT ARCHES YOU ARE LOOKING AT SOMETHING VERY MAGNIFICENT BUT NOT PERMANENT"-Anurag (as if m a big philosopher or somehting but thats what i told everyone)

The first pic is of Delicate Arch. It is a symbol on utah number plates. It features almost everywhere. though we saw it from a distance coz of the DELICATE ARCHes oh sorry DELICATE DARLINGS in our groups who didnt want to hike that much.(kiddin guys) the view was mesmerizing. and as I said above engraved. Me and L.madhuri were specially keen on goin to this point. But we saw many other points which made up for this miss.
On our way back we saw BALANCED ROCK. Its amazing what WIND,ICE And COLORADO (river) have done to this place.and the girls had their fun too.

Next we were here.hmm we saw 3 gossips (all u gossip lovers its just a name of rock), Some faces that could only be seen by Nishant and sometimes Raga.if you can make out look at 2 lions in the next one and Nishant says he saw 3.


As we Indians always do we got late for preparing the dinner and the night was freezing!. we planned for the barbecue paneer tikka. and man the food was just destroyed by the freezing cold. but we enjoyed lighting up the charcoal together trying everything we could. Thus WE made it all worth it!.
somehow we ate not till our stomach's satisfaction but till our hands remained unfrozen. but the paneer tikka was good when warm (yo me!).Thus somehow ended the first day.

Next day we the Indians made our country proud again. We were late by i dont know how many hours. But still had time to cover all the points.

When we drove through the valley I had the funniest incident my singing could cause. I was singing kind of silent songs and raga and kamal slept with their head in the same direction.or let me put it this way They Fell Asleep When I was Singing! man... that was embarassing...[:)].

Then we reached landscape arch trail pretty small trek to something very huge. the pic below

then we went to tunnel arch and then pine tree arch thats where my soon to be famous(someday may be) bollywood style pic was taken I was behind lizards all the time before this .... observed their behaviour saw about 5 types of lizards on the trip. Some of them i had only seen on discovery.some of them had this very typical habit of lying as flat as possible to camouflage themselves. about the ecology read further.

so we came back had lunch and went on to the next point double arch and windows....the best part of the whole trip

Hima had fever, Sujata had a head ache, Nishant wanted to stay with the girls....GUYS u missed the best part!( and i wont let you forget that) hehehohohahaha..
While walking towards double arch we saw an interesting fight of lizards by the road side. 2 males were fighting for a female. the best hing was RagaMadhuri and Lambi madhuri(hehe) who didnt like lizards were standing there literally asking questions as to why they were fighting... Amazing power nature demonstrates in its small ways.Its upto us how sensitive we are towards what she has to offer. So we reached double arch me and L.madhuri climbed it. We had the best pic there.

view was spectacular. and setting sun made it all the more beautiful and unforgettable. The red rocks were starting to show us the beauty they had. the play of shadows had begun with the sun wanting to reach its daily destination(the horizon) soon.

So after our fun there we left for windows this time everyone joined us. The effect this sunlight was giving was something I had never seen in my life ,everything turned red. On the other hand we had all sorts of fun posing, beating up the kid . Madhuri threw his cap to show how iriitated she was :) but kamal and his oneliners never stopped. I got to be akbar for a pic And all the mean people said I looked like "AKBAR-The Farmer" Bad joke guys. a few pics
(Pics By Nishant)
To watch the sun go down many couples gathered there. Our couple though was too DISTURBED by our presence!.hehe..I dont blame you guys!

We had dinner at an Italian restaurant I have never seen so much food go waste from a dinner table. This time it did. I stuffed myself as much as i could with the cheese pizza. When we all returned we all got into one tent and discussed all the pics taken was fun!

Next day last day All the planning going haywire as usual. We left the place very late. But made a good decision.
Nishant after getting directions from his friend decided to take a road parellel to colarado river...amazing drive.and we talked all along the road about likes, dislikes, strengths, weaknesses. I loved every bit of itcoz i was asking all the questions.hehehohohahaha again :)
some views on this road were just way too good to be missed.some of them are



Finally tired souls returned home. Satisfied with what had we had experienced and thankful for the time we could spend together.
Thanks Nishant for driving us all the way!
thanks gang nice trip to a wonderful place!
best of luck Nishant and Sujata.

Mummy ke hath ka khana- the difference. My point of view

"Anu wadhla jevayla ye"( anu lunch (mostly) is served ,come and have it) and she will say it until she doesnt see me eating it.
I always said to my mom I can take it by myself but " tu jevha wadhtes tevha tat bharlela watat ani pot bharel yachi khatri hote" ( meaning- but when she served it I felt my plate was complete and satisfaction of my tummy guaranteed) . This is one of the differences... isnt it wonderful how you realise every small thing in life means so much more than it seems to be.

Mom used to sit there with a paper sometimes I had to make her sit there or talk to me when i was having lunch.. she used to unknowingly watch my reactions on whether or not i liked it and whether or not i am eating properly.. be it exam day, busy hour, getting late to work ...2 rotis with whatever he had was on either on the table or in her hand literally running behind ( i used to be embarrassed but she never did feel anything ,she always concentrated on how she can feed her son). I miss that but mam lucky I had that once in my life...


Standing by the table when she made something special waiting for the reaction how I or piyu liked it. As if she didnt know it was good but we were her taste buds.. I told her its great and piyu told her its not good coz it was not mutton! even if she didnt remember to smile the sigh of satisfaction could be seen all over her face.... that is MA KE HATH KA KHANA....

I could eat that food less salt less chilly less everything with all that love and expectation she had from her food.. I could feel her presence in her food. More than the food the affection love the motherly emotion of care ...of like feeding her own part who now thinks differently is what MOTHERS FOOD is all about. Its always like coming from her heart from her chest . Never did she mix the effort she put in to make the dish perfect technically with the emotion with which it is served. Thats mother thats what mothers do.. they prepare it with expertise and serve it with love.

now the diffrence between the food we now eat and what mom made...when I make it I make it to be technically perfect I make it to prove it to myself that its not very difficult. I call upon friends to share the food and the emotion of a family. and sometimes to test if other people think the same way about the food. coz I seldom taste my own food before serving. Its all about what we are learning more than with what emotion we are serving it. Thats the difference in my mom's food and mine. or anyones mom's food and the food they now prepare..I should not even compare the two but this was just to show how we can differentiate

Ti bharleli plate varnat la tup, bhaji plate madhe wadhleli
kadhi garam kadhi thanda polya, to cooker madhun ghyava lagnara bhat, parat ghyavi lagnari ki parat milnari bhaji, ajun havi mhantla ani nasli ki aai cha to chehra, saglya goshti kashya agdi datun yetat ani sangtat ki ghadhdya ka motha zalas !

( that ful plate, with butter on dal,and curry in plate, sometimes cold sometimes hot rotis, the rice that i had to take from the cooker, the curry that i had to refill my plate with, ( the candid discipline in it), when i say i want more sometimes and there isnt enough of it, coz it was just for taste that she made it, the sorry face that she so hated to show us showed up (even if it didnt matter to us it meant a world to her)... I remember everything and say to my self why did i ever had to grow up..

:D
this what they say when they say mom ke hath ka khana bohot yaad ata hai...