25 | January | 2017 | Between my littles and me

Wowww is all I can say about last year’s India trip. It is one of the memorable trip that I will cherish forever. M and I took turns, had an overlap of one week and kept kids at India for 7 weeks last summer.

There were are lot of firsts in this trip. We landed at Trichy airport and went straight to my hometown Thanjavur. Sneaked out to chennai for 3 days in the first week with parents in tow and spent the rest of the 3.5 weeks at Thanjavur. It was the first time I got to spend extended time with my brother at parent’s home after about 15 years!!! We roamed around the city with 4 kids every other evening, watched Kabali night show with my father (he dozed off even before the title was over and promptly woke up for the climax!!). Driving in the small town at 1am after the movie was a different experience.

Visited my native village (it was a painful trip with most of my previous generation not there anymore) , toggled between the parents and in-laws constantly, went to a book fair in local, read Jayakanthan’s tamil novel “Sila nerangalil sila manidhargal”, spent most evening chatting with neighbors/relatives sitting in easy chair at front porch, visited local temples numerous times to attend all that pooja arranged by Amma. At some point Adi wakes up to ask “Are we eating non vegetarian for lunch today?” and gets very excited if we reply with “yes”. Her theory is then it means we are not going to any temple today!!! I warned Amma clearly to take it easy during future visits.

I travelled back alone and the next 3 weeks of living alone in US seemed like a year. WhatsApp and Skype kept me closer to kids though.

Some pictures: