Parents

Parents are returning to India from my brother’s home today. This was a totally unplanned visit. Its a long story, they travelled with my brother’s family in summer to support as my brother’s family had an emergency while we all were in India.

Amma is still not able to come to terms with the fact that she left to US while I was in India. However, she was okay as she already made all the podi’s (masala powders) for me and packed them neatly. I stayed at the in-laws for 3 weeks and the way my extended maternal family tried to fill in the gap of Amma is commendable. My aunt came to see me with fresh milk that was just milked few hours ago. Her daughter packed sweets and savories for me to take back to US. My cousin visited us the day we were returning to US with sweet box and jasmine flowers. He actually chased our car and met us on our way to the airport. I am truly blessed.

And I went off track!!! Coming back, as LHB has turned into a troublesome monster after India trip and we couldn’t just handle him and kids had two more weeks of holidays before school starts and winter was approaching soon, parents visited us in late August and spent some time with kids to make up for the time missed in India. It deserves a separate post about what we did in that one month visit. They flew back to brother’s before winter started and today they are flying back to their own nest back home.

It is going to take a week or two for my brother’s family to cope up with the absence of parents. It seems yesterday evening my nephew dusted the chess board to have one last game with thatha and niece baked special cookies for Patti. The poor kids are going to come to an empty home after school today. At least Amma will live with them virtually in the form of food. As always, she has cooked up a storm and stored neatly in the refrigerator. This lady and her energy and spirit. Wish I inherit at least half of that to be called as her daughter. This is what I received from the brother in middle of the night their local time yesterday! I could totally feel this pain.

The crux of the message is “He has listed all the food he ate this week, that his tummy is aching from eating all that food and today the heart also joined the tummy and heart aches as parents are returning to India”.

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