Saturday, December 31, 2016

Happy 2017!

I termed the years 2015 and 2016, years of determination! I guess we as citizens of the world have shown a lot of determination in the past couple of years! However, we are still a long away from being called as humans that we once were!

We have made this world a lot more complicated and made ourselves lot more greedy for everything. We have increased the pace of our lives as like there is no tomorrow. In what we call as success, we have ended up killing lot more people, not just taking their lives, but, also killing them by killing ambitions, aspirations and dreams!

I know all of these are because of our lack of compassion towards our fellow human beings and living beings, in the name of a phrase called "Survival of the fittest!"

Let us show the compassion to our fellow humans and mother nature to make sure this world is a better place to live in!
Let us train our children to have the compassion so that they learn to live and let live.

Let 2017 be an year of Compassion!

Let's Live and let others also live!

Regards,
Raj.

Friday, August 19, 2016

Rio Olympics and India

Olympians from India.

Take pride for the fact that you got in there after all of the "great" support our government, politicians, media, arm chair activists and the so called rich gave!

Take pride for the fact that with all the infrastructure we have in the country for your respective sports, you go us all a representation at the games!

To Me! You are as good as our men and women in uniform representing this great country! That by all means is the medal for all of us! I, for one, very proud of the fact that you had all the courage to get there and represent India, for all the adversaries that you faced! Hats off! You are not just medallions or participants, but rarest of the golds that the country has produced!

Yes am equally proud of the medal ladies and the one that missed by a whisker.. An example of how girls can make a nation proud if only if we let them live by not killing even before they are born!

Not the least... The coaches. If not for your relentless efforts, these boys and girls are not the ones that they are now.

Thanks for inspiring a billion people! That's not an easy task!

Hope the leaders take note of how to represent the country in the parliament and assembly!

- Raj

Thursday, May 26, 2016

My Seeds are my Root!

This is blog is dedicated to both Nilaa and Oviyaa and from both Leela and I. The below write up was kind of our first on Nilaa who was the star of the week in her school. And while we were drafting this, I realized that these kids are the inspiration behind the wild run that am making along with Leela. In today's world, when there is a sacrifice made, we expect that to be recognized. But our kids make a lot of sacrifices without even realizing that they do and yet do not complain on the short of recognition. Without dragging too much below was our account on Nilaa as much as possible. This stems my view on what we leave in our child is more important that what we leave for them! 

- Raj.

Nilaa, the Moon!

Thanks for this opportunity to write about Nilaa, which we have not had it before in our lives!

Right from the birth, she has always been very active and can’t stay idle in a place for more than 2 minutes. To get her to be tired used to be our daily goal at one point in time! It used to be really funny to bathe her, tough to feed her and getting her to bed to make her sleep as always been a tiresome exercise for her mom. However, over the years, she has transformed herself into an independent lady and now does these things all by herself, though sometimes slow. But, rewards and recognition works well with her to get a job done!

She loves to get to her school always. The only complaint that she had about schools was that she misses schools during our transition phases. She probably has a uniqueness in having attended many schools at Chennai and Erode in India, Derby in the UK and now here in Plano, the US!

She just loves being outside of the house wherever it was. Be it in India, in the UK or now in the US, she just wants to head out to the park to ride a bicycle or play with her friends that she had made all by herself in a very short duration. We have seen that she gets into a leadership role quickly and the team responds to her positively! In sports, she wants to be a basketball player.

She loves her family pretty much and are fond of her aunts and cousins. She absolutely adores and takes care of her little sister Oviyaa. Both these girls now have a separate room for themselves and Nilaa takes care of the younger one during the nights! Oviyaa is yet to get to a play school, but Nilaa ensures that she does not miss that. We often get to visualize her class teachers in her mono acts as teaches her little sister, teaching good things in life.

Nilaa is a very good listener, but often pays attention only to things that matters or interests her. She likes to be surprised every now and then. Last summer, exactly during the same week, we made a trip to India from the UK and we kept it as a surprise! She did not realize that she is in India, until we got out of the airport and met with her uncles and aunts awaiting to receive us. She simply loved it.

As with every child and every respective parents, Nilaa being our first child is the meaning of our lives. There are a lot of things and emotions that she gave us for the first time and continues to give us every single day.

More than anything, what we adore about her is the way she has inspired us to embrace changes in life. In the name of opportunity to us, we have challenged her by putting her in different schools, across cities, countries and continents! Yet, she neither complained nor was she bogged down. She had adapted to every environment very seamlessly without ever needing us to help her in transitions. In fact, she had shown us, the parents, that all these challenges are opportunities to explore and learn new things in life. An Inspiration!

True to the meaning of her name, she guides us as a light in our lives! Nilaa is a star to your class and a moon to us. Nilaa literally means moon in our mother tongue Thamizh!
Just to end it on a lighter note, we chose her name over a carom board game!

We love her as our life and are sure Gulledge will take good care of her. Thanks for having her part of this institution and all the best to everyone at Gulledge!

- Leela and Raj