Happy Holidays

So papa took a vacation after a long time and we had a lot of good fun. First we went to Maa's native place - Fatehgarh. There i was really happy to meet my cousin Bulbul. Finally, i am no longer the youngest one in the family. This is actually good as now i can be a small baby or a big girl depending on situation :). I also enjoyed running around the vast mustard fields and riding a tractor.




























We then went to the Corbett National Park. It is a large tiger reserve near Nainital - there are around 165 tigers in the park. We stayed in a nice resort. We went in a Jeep safari inside the jungle. It was a nice ride and good fun but unfortunately we did not see any Tigers. Not wanting to give up, we took another safari, this time on an elephant and went to areas where Jeep could not go. However, no tigers this time also :(. All we got to see were some birds and deers (although many different types). Though a little disappointing because we could not see tigers, the resort was fun - there was bonfire, music and games in the evenings.

New Friend and Trip to the Zoo

I have a new friend - Shums. We have good time playing together on the swings. We even go together to the school.

I also had a nice weekend. We (Bua, Mummy, Papa) along with Shums (and his parents) went for a picnic to the Delhi Zoo. It was lot of fun because I got to see the real animals about whom i'd only heard stories or seen them only in pictures. Papa also took that naughty pic of a bear :)

I love Colors

I think my sense of colours and drawing has improved a lot. I can identify all major colors now as well has create some great drawings. Here are some examples of different drawing styles: finger printing, onion printing, capsicum printing and lady's finger printing.

Goodbye Great Grandma

After all the festivities, here's a sad news. My great grandama (Papa's nani) passed away. Everyone was quite sad and upset. She had not been keeping well for quite some time and in a way it was good for her. I am happy though that i (and mummy and papa) met her when she was alive just 1 day earlier.
On the brighter side, I got to meet many relatives who I'd never met.
May her soul rest in peace. Goodbye Great Grandma.

Happy Diwali

Happy Diwali to everyone. Diwali (also Deepavali) is a festival of lights and a major Indian festival. There is colourful lighting everywhere and people burst crackers. It marks the return of Lord Rama after 14 years of exile.

I also had a good time. We went to my grandparents' place and enjoyed the festivities. I am scared of crackers but thoroughly enjoyed the lights and sweets.

I stayed on till Bhaiya Dooj, an important festival that signifies bond between brothers and sisters. All our relatives came but unfortunately papa could not get a leave and so he had to go.

School Admissions

From next year, I will be going to a big school and my parents have been running around for school admissions. It is very competitive here - the schools interview kids as well as their parents. My parents were anxious that what would my mood be when i'm interviewed but fortunately they did not put any pressure on me to learn anything new. In fact my dad just taught me to push back if the interviewing teachers asked me too much. He taught me to ask the teacher to spell "che-ko-slo-vakia" . I know he borrowed this idea from somewhere but heck it was fun learning this. Anyways i did not need to resort to this because the questions asked were pretty simple and i'm glad i cleared all the interviews.

I'd most likely be going to the Amity School in Noida.

Festivities Everywhere

The festival season has arrived and Delhi is all decked up. First, it was Durga Puja which is a big festival in many parts of India. In Delhi also, there are beautiful pandals set up with huge idols of Godess Durga and many cultural events take place. In our apartments also, they celebrated it for about 10 days and there were all kinds of events for kids. In between there was Eid also which was also great fun because there were some really nice cultural events in our apartments.

Also coinciding with Durga Puja was Navratris, and Ramlila culminating into Vijayadashmi (also known as Dusshera). During Ramilila, the story of Ramayana is enacted dramatically at many places and i really enjoyed seeing Lord Rama, Sita and Hanuman. I, in fact bought Hanuman's "gada" :)

My First Report Card

So last Saturday, there was a parents' orientation organized by our school. The objective was to give tips to parents on how to deal with us. One of the suggestions they gave was not to allow us kids to watch TV. How ridiculous! Can you imagine kinds not watching cartoons? But sadly my parents seem to agree with that and they keep reminding me not to watch the TV. We'll see how long this lasts :)



BTW, the teacher had this apple on my file. I think it is what they call a Report Card. This would then be my first one.

School, Swimming and Fitness

Okay so good things come to an end and so did my summer holidays. However, the fun has not ended.










My new school is called Gaia. It's a nice play school with lots of toys, space to run around, ducks, cats and rabbits.






I've also become a fitness freak and if ma or papa have to use the tread mill, I make sure they let me do it before them.







I also regularly go for a swim. Ma and Papa also both go along. Ma is an expert swimmer but I
and Papa are learning. I think i am a faster learner than papa is but then i suspect he does not concentrate fully on swimming ;). I have learned to manage to float just within 3 days. Wow what an achievement.

Other than swimming and enriching my vocabulary, i'm majoring in colors and dresses. As soon as i step out of the house, i start commenting about everybody's dresses – kind of dress and their color as if some kind of exam is going on. I guess that really embarrasses my parents but who cares..i have loads of fun.

I just love shopping and believe in carrying my own bags.

Summer Holidays

This was a long summer holiday and I had a lot of fun. Since i can't yet write, I and Papa kept pestering Ma about writing my exploits. Finally we got her to write this account of my visit to maternal grandparents that turned out to be a perfect holiday. Though i don't go to school yet (okay i've started school but this was a holiday before my first school), this trip seemed like a typical summer vacation that my parents were used to when they were kids and i am already looking forward to the next one.

Since now i have become talkative and can speak full sentences, i proved to be a house full of entertainment for everyone around. It was my first exposure to rural life and i thoroughly enjoyed it. I made couple of friends (shraddha, parul, surabhi, kanchan, ramji, gopalji, megha (my favorite- whom i adored) and they pampered me like a princess. I didn't need any toys to play with but enjoyed playing games like catch me if u can, hide and seek etc. My version of catch me if u can is – one of my friends, typically the one whom i felt would be able to carry me on his/her back (most of the times that was parul didi) would carry me on their back and then i would catch other people...(heights of laziness- inherited from my papa!!). Late evenings were mainly spent listening to stories, read by either my ma or one of my friends. If anyone else who read the book, didn't have the same intonation or pronunciation as my ma, i would presume they didn't know how to read and immediately snatch the book from them even if that was papa, nana or bua or mausi. Now i don't take chances, so the first thing i do before giving the book is to ask them if they know how to read :-).
About my snacking - i would go to my neighbor's place and if by any chance they forgot to offer me to eat something, i would force them into offering me goodies to eat by saying...”i'm really hungry and haven't eaten since ages.” This taught me to eat all kind of veggies and pulses.
From thereon i moved to my great grandma's place...this was no less enjoyable than my granny's place. Here again i met other couple of friends (Ambar, gauri, teju, madhav and ojhas). I learned new set of games here – wwf card games, computer games ( i don't undserstand much about them but i pretend as if i'm a professional).

To top it all, there was a new addition in the family. I loved being promoted to being a big girl and loved the idea of myself being called Divija didi. WOW that sounds great.

Finally my holidays came to an end and i was back at my parent's place. Though i was happy to meet my paternal grandparents but i felt lonely. For days altogether my stories about my holidays are still not over.


Here are some more photos from my trip.

Weddings in Delhi

After moving to Delhi, one major thing i've noticed in Delhi is a "Delhi Wedding". They are huge and very different from the ones in south of India. The weddings in Delhi go on for many days and there are many functions before and after the wedding day. I still do not know the meaning of each of those functions but what is common in these functions is good food, dhingchak clothes and loads of fun apart from the fact that I get to meet relatives.

The first wedding I attended was of Shekhar uncle. He lives near naani's house. So we stayed at Naani's house and attended many of the functions. I just loved the large wedding hall because i got to run around with Nana running behind me. I also danced a lot. While I stayed at Nani's house, i got a lot of gifts also. I wanted a guitar and maa got me this. She told me it's a guitar but i'm not sure. The shop keeper told me the name of instrument is Gopee Chand.



Then I also went to Deepti Bua's marriage. This was straight out of a bollywood film with choreographed dance performances and other colourful things.

The wedding procession is called Baraat. The groom - Ankit was sitting on a chariot with people dancing in front of the chariot.









The baraat reached the venue which itself was huge and in a beautifully laid out lawn. There was a rotating platform in the middle of the lawn. The bride and groom converged on the platform from opposite sides. I had never seen anything similar before. In fact, my father and even dadaji had not seen anything like this before :)




There was a DJ and a dance floor. I think this is one thing in which thankfully i am not like my father because i like dancing. I also manage to get dadaji on the floor and make him dance to my tunes :)

I also had great fun with all my chachus. In fact my
maa was complaining that when we go to a marriage i ignore them because that way i can get others to spoil me.