Last Friday, I got a text message from a school in Gurgaon to collect an appreciation gift for my younger son who won the first prize in a colouring contest that they held at their school and where several schools from Gurgaon participated.

First prize??? That can’t be true, at least genetically, I thought. I never got a first prize in my life. But I had seen Rajit scribbling on and ruining the walls of our drawing room a few times and knew that he had it in him :-) and now with this acknowledgement of his talent I can rest assured that my 3 and half year old is on his way to become India’s Van Gogh. Unless education ruins him he can very well become Van Gogh. At least in his father’s eyes he already is.

More...

Today morning while Ranit and I were on our way to Ranit’s bus stop, he was telling about how disgusting it was to see cow dung lying around in a farm house that he visited with his classmates sometime back during a school trip. He couldn’t make sense of people making cow dung cakes with bare hands. That made me realize how the time has changed and how much fun it used to be for me when I was his age doing the same things that he finds disgusting.

Flashback to late 1980s:

It was a nice sunny day and I was at my maternal grandmothers house in a village called “Pandori Bhainsa Di” which is about 15 KM from the nearest town Dinanagar in Punjab.

Naani(Grandmother) was preparing for some guests or for some festival that was around the corner. I don’t remember the exact occasion but what it meant for us was that entire house needed to be cleaned, sanitised and decorated. It was a kachha house.

More...

Here are couple of interesting historical facts that I learned today.

Paid leaves

Just have a look at the calendar for the month of September 1752. Google September 1752 calendar & see for yourself. You will notice, 11 days are simply missing from the month.

Here’s the explanation,

This was the month during which England shifted from the Roman Julian Calendar to the Gregorian Calendar. A Julian year was 11 days longer than a Gregorian year. So, the King of England decided and ordered 11 days to be wiped off the face of that particular month.

More...

It was pleasure meeting childhood friends from school today after 18 years.

We were expecting at least 10 of our 95 batch mates of KV1 Hindon but only 6 of us could make it for the first reunion. Nevertheless, it was quite a fun and we all had a blast.

After reintroducing ourselves to each other, we were in back-to-school mode in no time and it was fun after that. We gossiped about everyone who was not around, discussed our school time heartbreaks, affairs, who-was-hot-who-was-not and what not.

More...