Vijay Basrur

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Came across a lovely quote by Ralph Waldo Emerson on this post by Gotham Gal

To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children; to earn the appreciation of honest critics and the betrayal of false friends; to appreciate beauty; to find the best in others; to leave the world a bit better, whether by a healthy child, a garden patch, or a redeemed social condition; to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded

Tags: quotes

Happy Birthday Mom

My Mom celebrated her birthday yesterday. It was special on two counts. Firstly both her grandchildren were around to wish her Happy Birthday in the morning and most importantly it was her first birthday after the heart attack.

Considering that the doctors had given her outside of a 15% chance of battling the cardiac arrest, it is nothing less than a miracle that she’s made it back at an amazing pace. Her cardiologist is pleasantly surprised and is actually considering offering my Mom the brand ambassador role for his clinic (just kidding)

It is not easy to battle the pain, accept the fact that you have no memory of 14 days of your life, muster up the courage and strength to get back on your feet and prepare yourself for a second life. Not only has Mom done all of this, the fact that makes us immensely proud of her is that she’s done it with a smile. While she attributes the smile to constantly having her grandchildren around, we know that she’s made of something else.

She has inspired many, in every role that she has played in life. Daughter, wife, sister-in-law, teacher, mother, mother-in-law, social activist, philanthropist & grandmother. She has given it her best and handled each role with the same amount of dedication & love. All of this manifested in the entire world calling to check on her progress from the day she was hospitalized and many of family & friends offering prayers for her recovery.

By the grace of God, she is doing pretty well now and after a fairly hectic daily schedule before she was hospitalized, we are glad that Mom is finally agreeing to slow down, relax and start enjoying life. Her brain however continues to function at an abnormally fast pace, much to our amusement.

Here’s wishing many more Happy Birthdays for Mom

Tags: family, mom

Test from Wordmobi

Trying out something cool. Managed to install Wordmobi on my Nokia phone. Works like a charm. Hopefully this should empower me to blog when I am mobile. Now to see if I can actually keep blogging!

Posted by Wordmobi

My first Scuba Diving experience

I decided to scuba dive at one of the beaches off Arbatax. Though I was a bit apprehensive about doing it (the breathing through the mouth kinda got be thinking) once I saw others do it, I was raring to go.

It was an incredible experience being underwater & watching all the fish swimming so close. I got a wee bit uncomfortable towards the end and decided to bail out a few mins before the session ended. The video grab makes it great to relive those moments

The entire photo set is available at http://www.flickr.com/photos/basrur/sets/72157621967840887/detail/

Tags: holiday, scuba

Balloon Seller

I’ve been meaning to write about this experience some time back but it just slipped by.

There is a balloon seller who stands at the corner of the road near my Mom’s place. He is there every single day from 7:30 pm to 9 pm. A simple guy who is quite cordial and makes some amazing types of balloon. We usually buy a balloon or two from him whenever my nephew demands it.

For Mansi’s birthday, we wanted to put up some balloons and thought about him. So Snehal approached him a few days before with the offer of putting up about 30-40 odd balloons in the afternoon. He agreed and said he would come before 4 pm for sure. He requested for an advance. We agreed. But since he didn’t have any contact information we were a bit worried if he would pull a fast one on us. He said if he has taken money, he has given his word and won’t let us down.

On the day of Mansi’s birthday he didn’t turn up till 2 pm and that got us a bit worried since we were banking on him. Thankfully he rang the bell at about 3 pm and was very apologetic about the delay. We were quite fine with it since he had said that he would take about 20 minutes to blow 40 ballons.

So he came in, sat down on the floor and started blowing away. Upon a casual chat where I checked if was keeping very busy and therefore got late, he replied with a sad face that he lost his son the day before and was tied up with some last rites.

My jaw dropped and I was shocked. Did I hear him right? So I double checked. He repeated the same thing again with some more details. It turned out that his son went to help out to clean the drainage system for the muncipal authorities, slipped and got drowned in it.

Snehal heard him from the kitchen and came out with a expression of shock. We both stood there, looking at the ballon seller, in silence. We were in that state for over 2-3 minutes. I gathered the courage to tell him that it was really fine if he wanted to go back and the balloons were not really that important. But he insisted that his word was more important that anything. Since he had taken the money he didn’t want to let us down.

I cried. I wanted to touch his feet.

Moments like these make life worth living. God bless him with more happiness than he dreams of.

Tags: inspirations

Animation institutes bullcrap

Disney owns Pixar so they are technically one comapny.

And what does Disney & Pixar like animation companies mean? are there many of those? and in India?

These guys are kidding with the careers of the kids who sign up.

Tags: animation, bullcrap

Birthdays

Birthdays are always so special, especially if its ours or at least someone who’s close in the family. But when you get invited for a birthday party its a different thing altogether.

When we were kids getting invited to a birthday party was a thrill with no expectations. The fare was pretty standard. A samosa, some chips, some games, cake, a drink and if you were lucky, something to take back home, balloons/pencil/eraser or something very simplistic.

These days birthdays tend to be events. There is an elaborate menu, professional decorators, sometimes professional venues like Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, professional entertainers and highly customized expensive return gifts. Somehow though the thrill still prevails for children, the expectations keep increasing.

We (both my wife & me) don’t like it. We would rather keep things simple. For our daughter’s first birthday we took her to an orphanage and donated necessary things on her behalf. Just the experience moves you to tears and makes you thankful to God for everything you have in life. In the evening we had a small gathering with close family. So far so good.

Now that vacations are over & school has reopened, all of Mansi’s friends (or fans) are back and demanded a party. Most of them are from our building and dote over Mansi every evening when she goes for her evening stroll. So we were faced with this task of hosting a birthday party for kids.

We wanted to do something different. While we picked up small gifts for everyone, Snehal did something really interesting. She managed to involve a few kids in the party planning. 2 kids helped out in making hand made cards. 2 of them were responsible for decoration (which is basically choosing what goes where, not the doing part). One of them suggested we add something sweet in the menu. We made veg/cheese sandwiches, corn/cheese balls, chips & custard/jelly.

The party was fun. The kids had a lot of fun dancing & playing games. Some even took home prizes. The food didn’t interest them that much but the all of them were very eager to get their return gift. The curiosity & the smiles on their faces are a pleasure to watch. So all in all it was a great albeit tiring evening.

While we are sure these parties will get bigger as Mansi grows older, there are a few things we are hoping to continue, on Mansi’s birthday, as time goes by

• Visit any Orphanage (we are hoping to do this twice every year). Try and inculcate the joy of sharing.
• We would urge her to give away something precious on her birthday so that she doesn’t get attached to materialistic things as she grows up.
• Relive the simplistic things in life, with her friends if required. Something like a picnic, a double decker bus ride (I hope they are still around), a visit to the beach (with bhelpuri) etc.
• Enjoy the day. Let her do whatever she wants to but make sure its safe

Amen!

Tags: birthdays, mansi