Technically it's Boxing Day today as I am recording this Blog, and Christmas Day is just over.
It was lovely to talk to some of you over telephone, to hear from some more of you on email or otherwise, exchanging greetings and warm wishes of love and sentiments and Christmas cheer. As u know, I am in Connecticut for Christmas with the children - so Indira & Manish and Sonal & Keith too join me in reciprocating and wishing y'all and each one of you once again, the Blessings of Christmas with the best compliments of the season, and a very happy new year of 2010 that's round the corner...
It is amazing how members of a rather large family that we are now, have found pockets of warmth and togetherness among manageable groups of immediate loved ones to celebrate as each found fit, the Birth of Jesus our Lord -- Sarah & Daniel with Sonnu at my children's mother's in Morpeth; Bullubai and Bavoji with Sunil and family and Malu, at Maria's with her lovely family in New Jersey; Leela and her family celebrating with others of close and extended family in Dubai; Allan, Nimmi and chidren blessed to be at St Peter's to watch the Pope being knocked down by a woman devotee in distant Rome - while Adele alone with Aunt May in West Port; Meera Ted and Sheila(?) in Grand Rapids with Rohan & Wafa and two little ones - Sabina & Maya; Marissa and Pedro with Carl at his parents' in Minneapolis; Manu & Penny in Muscat, with their children scattered in Seattle, Miami and Manhattan (not sure whether or not they were able to group together for a Christmas togetherness); Nalini and Shalini with their broods together or otherwise in Canada; etc etc.
My heart goes out with prayers too to some among us whom circumstances ordained not to have found the warmth and togetherness with immediate loved ones this season warrants (as is at times my own state some year or the other). I hope even so the New Born Babe of Bethlehem reached out to each in His own way to make it a wonderful Christmas to cherish.
After Mass yesterday, Manish treated us to an eight course celebration lunch at a Spanish Restaurant that bends over backwards to treat him like royalty - a Christmas lunch which included as many different wines to go with the particular and different meal course. The ambience and the amazing luncheon experience made up for my otherwise preferred home meal, I must admit. It took us (including the rather large sized Keith with an expectedly larger appetite than the rest of us), literally four hours to finish the various amazing courses -- that included caviar, to scallop and octopus, to salmon, shrimp and crab, to exotic salads with crispy caramalised walnut and no less crispy bacon on goat-cheese, black olives & mushroom and what have you... to duck breast and lamb chop! .....I could go on and on and still forget mention of many and some more! At the end of it all we had to beg Mario and his team of dedicated-to-our-table waiters to stop or else be prepared to roll us out in wheel barrows to the car!
The rest of the day was spent opening up an array of interesting presents (the chidren unnecessarily spent on getting me - a new laptop(netbook), an antique-in-design swiss watch, a new Panasonic Lumix digital camera with a 2GB SDcard, a sexy new stripe-checked red scarf to cover my rather vulnerable neck and throat etc). The expected gaeity with commensurate hilarity accompanied the frenzied tearing-open of presents, the parading.... and. clicking of the camera shutters for capturing appropriate and inapropriate memories in pictures; all the while the sound of traditional and modern Carols playing in the background, finally followed by movie watching - for the last of which in the end I had no stamina left; that's when I had to crash out and call it a day - don't ask me at what time, for I really wouldn't know.
I hope all you guys reading this had a wonderfull Christmas too. God Bless..
