Just came back from a two week stay in my hometown in India. The main purpose of the visit was to see my niece. My brother and sister in Law Ambili have been blessed with a new born baby. Next year when I will see her, she will be able to walk. Maybe then she will call me Uncle? 🙂
In order to see my niece, we had to travel to another part of Kerala to a city called Alapuzha. it’s the home town of Ambili. Once there, I planned to take a photo with my niece. But to no avail..
I don’t how its in Poland. In India once a child is born in the family, relatives and neighbours and in-laws will come to the house in order to visit the kid. They would want to hold the kid, sing songs to it etc. So after aunt no. 1, 2 and 3 would hold the kid, then comes the neighbour. After that uncle no. 1, neighbour number no. 2 and so on. I had to wait half and hour in order to hold my niece. In the end i held the kid for 30 seconds. How can i tell the aunt holding the kid to give it to me? She was enjoying carrying the niece in her hands and adoring it. It would be impolite to tell her ‘excuse me, can You go away so that i can hold my niece?’
I think now that I have a niece, I would have more reasons to call my brother and Ambili. Normally the relationship between me and my brother is limited to one or two WhatsApp messages during the week. I think i understand how people feel, when they say that they have become an aunt or an uncle. Normally i would just say, ‘ OK that’s cool. I am happy for You’. I couldn’t understand their excitement. Now that I finally see my niece, I can understand the feeling. Some one from Your same blood. It’s a good feeling. So after all I am not a heartless person 🙂
Besides seeing my niece, i saw my grandmother who has been not very well after the demise of my grandfather. My grandmother is 84 years old, and she is suffering from memory loss. She mixes up between her sons and grandsons. Now she calls me her son 🙂 It was nice to sit with my grandmother every day and talk with her. I think my mother was also happy. She has been doing her best to be a good daughter all theses years. My grandparents could not have asked for a better daughter. She has been serving them religiously through out their old age.
Happy birthday to me..
12th of January was also my Birthday. Normally while I am in India, i would go to the temple and burn oil lit lamps. The priest at the temple would prepare the lamps in advance. In India birthday is a very low key affair. We would go to the temple and pray on that day. Since i had my flight on the 12th, my mother promised to do it for me and send me the picture. Once I will receive it, I will post it here.
Every year, when I go to India I analyse what is going on in my life and try to find things that I should do better, or avoid in my life. This year was no exception. This is the first time in a long while, where I was in India during my birthday. I would wake up in the middle of my sleep, and quickly analyse if I have any problems in my life, or am i on the right path in life etc etc.. It is almost hysterical. Even I don’t understand it sometimes.
But this year I have noticed one difference. I have become a lot calmer than in the years before. Every year when I would visit India, i would feel like a person without an address. I neither belonged to India, nor to Poland. This time I felt different. I felt that I have an address in Poland. I still feel like my roots are in India. But i felt a calmness washing over me, thinking that I would be safe when I would get back to Poland.
Maybe it is just a matter of a couple of weeks before I would come back to my normal self. Just waiting for the kick from life itself, until I will be on my knees crying for help. 😀 😀