Rhythm of Life

It feels like just yesterday, when two freshly minted graduates from UT Austin, landed in this exquisite place in the gorgeous summers of 2009. I instantly fell in love with this beautiful small city of Hillsboro, and my heart used to sing the Bollywood song, "Ye hansi vaadiyan ye khula aasma,  aa gaye hum kaha aye mere saajna...".  We took just a couple of days to set up our elegant newly built Nexus apartment before joining Intel and becoming one of the many Intel couples who we later met in and around the area. Then the life began with many firsts coming our way one after the other. Buying our first car, the Honda Accord coupe , literally 10 days before we came to know that we have started on the journey of becoming parents to our first child. Striving to find a house to buy before the child arrives. Finding our perfect home sweet home, raising our budget by a $100K to get this corner house in the Village at Orenco community, right next to the ...

Birthday Party 2009 It was 00 hrs on 3rd Oct, I was reading the novel, Life of Pi, when Vinita came in the room and wished me Happy Birthday. I was pleasantly surprised to find a decorated yummy vegan chocolate double fudge ganache cake surrounded by candles. I was not yet out of the surprise when Vinita asked me to dress up properly because Aparna and her parents were about to come for the celebration. This refreshed the memories from last year when she surprised me similarly by getting a tasty vegan cake in Austin. I clapped on my birthday song and carried out the rituals. You can find the happy surprise on my unshaved face in the pics as well. While we were talking, Aparna asked me a question about the party next day. Yet another surprise, but this time I realized it. Vinita had called about a 15 people for the birthday party at our home today evening. Happily we slept and woke up pretty late the next morning, amid the online freshly baked wishes from people on skype, gmail an...

Are we in the USA?? It was 11:30 on the Wednesday night of 8 th August 2007 when we (me and my husband Gaurav) found ourselves flying over Austin ….a city we had never been to before …..thousands of miles away from home, it was the strange city that we intended to make ours for our future years to come. The feelings were very mixed. We were landing into the totally strange city in a not so strange for Indians, country, USA . Like most Indians, we had also pictured a glamorous image of America in mind during our childhood and career making years of college. And I think most of you will agree that images made in childhood fantasies are so strongly preserved in our minds always that they refuse to fade away easily, no matter how much we know or have known in reality in our present. So, inspite of all the idea we gained about USA through reading blogs and more than that, the fact that I had been to northern states of US for 4 months before already, we both were experiencing same sense o...