It is Easter morning in 2012 when I start this blog. I see this as a place where you, my reader and I can come to know each other. I hope it is going to be a friendly place like a coffee shop. Where you can kick off your shoes, lean back, sip a steaming cup and indulge in what people call in Bengal an "Adda".
I hope to share some experiences over a life that has crossed the three score and in the middle of the following ten. It has taken me to some unusual places and some interesting times. I like to share some of these with you.
I also feel very good this morning for another reason. One of the goals I set myself in the last couple of years before I was to retire was to be an "interesting grand-father" to our two grand children, Kaavya now 8 and Ameya, now 5. I tried learning things like drawing and painting and playing the piano for the first time in my life. I was lucky to find some very patient teachers. In Pyongyang, that most unusual place in the world where I lived for over three years. I cannot claim much success with these, but the experiences gave me great joy. It was truly the engagement with parts of my brain that had never been used before.
But the real reward came this morning. The kids needed some help to paint T-shirts and I was drawing outlines of butterflies and fishes for them. Ameya, watching critically at my elbow says "Appu, you know, you are such an interesting grand-father". Totally un-tutored and un-provoked. And Kaavya seconds that that "You are so funny and so kind"
Day, month, year, century, made!!!
