Shreya at 10 growing

Time flies..I remember, about 10 years ago, I saw you when you were born, and look at you now..growing  to a wonderful human being. What I like about you is that you care..you genuine care and help others, be it our family members or animals or even plants.
We had your 10th birthday celebration at our home, and we had invited some of your closest friends. The return gift which you picked for your at your birthday part was a live plan of pink flowers for your friends to carry home and care for. It is such a nice gesture, encouraging people to care for life, care for nature.

Your birthday gift this year was a beginner's guitar. Hope you like it and learn how to play.

Vihaan is 5 now, and is now ready for Kindergarten. He is so different form you. You are sincere, he is not, you are independent, he is not, you are so helpful, he is not :-) . I hope he learns from you and becomes a better student and a sincere person. Since he is only 5, your mother and I give him a lot of freedom, not tell him to study much, let him play. We did the same for you when you were 5. Each kid is different.

These days, I am trying to encourage you to learn chess and python. Chess is by far the best strategy game ever invented and it helps build brain power. Similarly, learning some kind of programming will be helpful for your future science projects, and eventually to a career if you generate interest towards computers.  Your website now has an Artificial intelligence based chatbot. We had fun building this together, where you contributed to the bot by editing questions and answers, whereas, I worked on putting together the technical elements. With the help of my cousin Ravi, I was able to add the chat interface to your site. We will keep adding more character and fun to the bot.

Shortly, we will be moving to a new school for you, to a new place. I know that this is a disruption to a normal life. However, for any improvement, change is necessary. I hope that you like your new school, make new friends and have a better life at our new place.  

Brother decided he does not want to ever grow up

Your little brother is quite a funny character. He is always into cartoons, sometimes its Octonauts, then its superwings, few months ago it was Tayo and sometimes its monster and blaze. You watch my little pony these days, in between studies and meals.

There is little pressure of homework or studies in school, so, life is easy. Even then, seeing you having to do the homework every day perhaps, and go to school for longer hours, lil lucky has decided that he doesn't want to ever grow up. These are good times for him and why would he ever want these times to go away. To his little mind, this makes perfect sense. Why wouldn't it?  He is smart to not ever join the rat-race, going away from his mother, not having enough time to spend with family, his big sister, do homework, not watch his cartoon, not play with his little cars.

When we ask you about what do you want to become when you grow up, you are leaning towards becoming a teacher. At home, you sometimes try to run a school of little kids from the neighborhood and teach them. Teaching, in my opinion is a noble profession, whether its Kg, or Grad school, we always respected our teachers. We should be thankful to anybody who imparts knowledge. Knowledge is power, and it will be even more true going forward.

There were times when civilizations were built on a certain metal, bronze, iron etc. Then, economies were running on Gold, and to some extent Oil. With the knowledge economy taking charge, a cryptocurrency, created out of internet, backed by technology is worth a lot of money. Someone predicted that each unit of bitcoin would be worth a $100,000 dollars in a few years, it shot to about $10,000 recently. It would be worth checking the price of bitcoin, by the time when you turn 18.

Era of social internet

Someone shared a message on whatsapp recently. In  earlier times, one would write a personal diary and keep it private so that no one else reads it. These days, people tend to publish the same on the internet and expect that everyone reads it, like it, give their comments on it.

This is May 2015 and here are the popular things on the internet :

Google - Most widely used search engine
Facebook - Social platform to connect with family and friends
Twitter - Popular micro-blogging platform
Whatsapp - Instant messaging app (bought by Facebook for $19b)
Linkedin - Professional networking platform

When you grow-up and read this, things would change. There will newer things which will be popular, probably more popular than the current list above. We may actually use driverless car, which will probably run on solar power or hydrogen cell, and may never need refueling. We may be able to have computers which would connect with human mind. We may be able to build vacation homes on the Moon or Mars.


It would be interesting to see how things change, but scientists and experts must already be thinking of making the next big invention towards that.

Starting a new life

With this post, I intend to resume the blog which I started when you were born. A lot has changed in our lives since the last post. We now live in a different country, you go to a different school have new friends and a new life which is very different from what we had few months ago. I have lived in many different cities and due to the kind of work I do, you are more than likely to do the same. This gives you many opportunities to meet different people, live at different environments, see the life which is quite dependent on the place it is at. As you are very little, you must not be liking this change which is understandable. However, I believe, the positives outweigh the downside of these moves and provides a much greater learning experience for you at your age. As you grow in your life, you will realize what you would have missed, had we not made these decisions.

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I can’t claim that I hoped for a boy and girl as our children but I believe this combination works out well for us and you siblings. While you being the elder, have been very supportive and protective of your baby brother, which is really very nice of you. He also is very fond of you in his own way. As you grow bigger and wiser, I get less and less worried about you and you brother, even though he is very naughty. Difference between a girl and a boy can be seen when we observe you and him. You try to be nice, well-mannered, courteous, and he is quite the opposite. When I ask something of you, you listen and learn, and he does exactly the opposite. I hope he tries to be like you and learn a bit, but, I also hope that you be a little bit bold, open to learning new things and not cry too much L.

I am writing this post sitting in an airplane at 36000 ft. This is the era of facebook, google, cloud computing and social internet. When I started this blog I was not aware that putting personal information on the internet could be dangerous, but, as we see the kind of identity and internet related fraud happening, I realized that it is not safe to publish specifics about name, location, etc on the internet. This was one of the reasons why I stopped writing for a long time on this blog.

As we have moved to a different country, your mother is learning to drive a car here. She wants to be independent so that she can take you to places you like, classes for your learning, malls, parks and places of interest. It is difficult to learn a new skill for adults, but its surprisingly easy for kids. When I learnt riding a bicycle, I was 10-12 years old, my feet barely reached both the peddles together and me and my brother would go uphill and just try to learn how to balance the handle. We did not have training wheels, helmets, knee guards or any other protective gear. We just learnt on our own. When we had our motorcycle called Vikky-2,  we just learnt on our own. As I grew older, I found it to be increasingly difficult to learn anything. It took me a long time to learn swimming. I bought a keyboard, and I could never learn to play beyond an octet with just one hand. I tried my hand at learning languages, like Japanese and Arabic and had to abandon these efforts due to lack of time. So, being just a 7-8 year old kid, you should use this opportunity to learn new skills, language, sport, art, culture which would add another dimension to your personality.  Imagine you go to a party and you are able to amaze everyone with a magic trick, or able to amuse everyone by singing a song.

At every age, in every civilization, in every culture, a person is successful, not just by his intelligence or physical strength, but by his ability to understand others and shape their opinion towards his desired direction. Ability to influence and command people is arguably the most important aspect which can determine a person’s ability to succeed in most areas of work and public life. This is the reason I always ask you to make new friends, find out more about them so that you develop an ability to understand people and find ways to influence them. As you grow into a teen and an adult, you will most certainly realize how important this is in life.

Bengaluru and Gurgaon Trips -May 2015

In this picture, your cousin brother turned 1, so we traveled to Bengaluru to celebrate his birthday. All of you little kids had a lot of fun. It was just 3 days and I also got to meet one of my school classmates there.

This picture is of you at the Bal bhavan park at Bengaluru. Your gymnastic class helped you to be able to enjoy the slides and swings in the park. Lucky also thoroughly enjoyed.

This was taken on the way to Delhi where we met a family in train, this girl's name was Neha. It was good to travel in train where we met some people on the way, you made friends with them and the long journey was quite enjoyable.

 We went to see the India Gate in Delhi

 Back to Hyderabad at CCD.

Lucky starts walking

Vihaan (Lucky) started to walk yesterday. It was new for him and he probably felt a sense of achievement when he was able to stand on his feet on his own. He tried and did it many times.

He fell many times but on his bum, and being all soft he didn't get cry and started doing again. It was fun to watch him walk a few steps on his own and be happy about it.

Here is a fun video we shot with a cellphone..

https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=10152799388290119

Playful Lucky and Vaishavi's birthday

Its a bright but lazy Saturday evening, your Mom is napping, and Lucky is just busy exploring. These days your interests are mostly into sketching and coloring.

Lucky occupies most of our time and suddenly it feels like you are a big girl now. I keep forgetting that you are barely over 5, just started going to school. Before he was born, all attention was yours and we were treating you as if you were a baby. Things change so fast, before we realize. It feels Lucky was born not so long ago, but he will be 1 year old next month.

At this point I realize that the your nature and his are so very different, makes me believe that some things are by birth, and not necessarily by upbringing. You wake up not so early and rarely without a cry, are picky about food, clothes, etc, whereas he seems to be quite the opposite. As long as his tank is full, he keeps himself busy,  or until he is sleepy.

Yesterday, it was your best friend Vaishnavi's 6th birthday. We bought a nice Barbie for her, a nice dress for you and went to the party.  You were very happy enjoying with your friend.