Folks are in town

Mom

Dad

Diwali

It’s nice to have family in town .

Goodbye to Pune

My uncle in Pune, whom I stayed with over Diwali weekend, is a military engineer with the Indian army. I guess one of the best parts about his choice of employer is that whatever location in India his work takes him, the accomodation is usually pretty sweet.

Diwali partying on Friday night left everybody a bit tired, so Saturday morning left me with some time on my own to take pictures around the house.

Here’s a view from the side window.

I mean, a painting that one of my cousins did a while back

Eventually everyone got down to their regular work. Grandma (Nani) was busy with her regular morning prayers.

Richa was busy prepping for her MD exams.

Even the gardener was busy ripping out weeds.

So I figured it was time for me to get out and keep busy too. I spent most of the day with my aunt and cousin bro, exploring Pune as they went around finishing up their shopping.

Think of Pune like a pocket of Bombay; same young crowd, same cool places, but a lot smaller.

Sunday was “Bhai Dhooj”, a festival two days after Diwali in which brothers are reminded to be good brothers and sisters get to stuff sweets in their mouth.

It was a good day to talk to my grandma and cousins about the five years worth of stuff we had to catch up on.

It was unfortunately also the day for me to catch a bus back to Hyderabad. So on Sunday night I said goodbye to everyone, and hopped on an “Omar Travels” Volvo back to Hyderabad.

I guess the dude next to me had a tiring weekend too, because he took the liberty of leaning over and falling asleep on my shoulder while snoring with his mouth open. I guess it didn’t help that my CD player’s batteries died and the A/C wasn’t working.

But the definite highlight of the night was our bathroom stop at 2am, where the bathroom was a wall in the middle of nowhere that everyone lined up to pee against. A wall that smelled so bad that when I stepped off the bus I got tears in my eyes and felt like throwing up. I never thought I’d be so happy to be back in Hyderabad

But I was. And it was good to see that HK movie star was doing much better. We finished our weekend by swapping stories, sharing pictures, and plowing through some VCDs and some much needed homemade pasta.

Less than a month left to go now! Even less for Lu Ahmed and 40. Time to make the most of it.

Pune Fireworks

Fire hazards. Safety precautions. Open flames next to trees and telephone wires.

It’s nice not having to worry about certain things while in India

After putting lights up all around the house and finishing up our Diwali prayers, we got to work on the fun stuff.

This next one rises up really high, which I wish I could capture better on film.

It’s an “Anar”, for all you Hindi-speaking fans out there. This one is a regular little twirling firework that my aunt didn’t have much fear lighting…

…I guess the sparks just knew to stay back far enough.

You can’t help but be all smiles when there’s things catching fire all around you.

And with a final light of the Anar…

…it was show over.

What do you think Richa, pictures turned out okay?

I tried my hand at setting up some shots with cool lighting…

…but then abandoned all the fancy photography stuff in favour of regular family shot stuff.

So Diwali 2004 came to an end. Lu should have some sweet pics of firework explosions up, make sure to check em out. As for me, the rest of the weekend was spent mainly just talking to Grandma, so not many pictures to share. But there was some exploring around town too, so more on that tomorrow.

Festival of Lights

Hey! How’s it going. My name’s Rohit. This is my blog. A quick re-introduction because it’s been like a week since I wrote.

So I’m in India. With a HK movie star. You might remember that we were in Bombay a little while back. I don’t think I completely finished the story on that one, but I think we had just about wrapped up. Some more shopping…

…sightseeing…

And we were back in Hyderabad. A week of work later, we decided to stick around town for the weekend of Nov 6th. There was a trip to the museum…

…the new mall…

…a brief catch up with my awesome Bhabi…

…and some bouncing around town to the coffee shop and the movie theatre. Do I sound like I’m skipping details? Cuz I am. Because this past weekend was Diwali, so let’s talk about that.

So last Thursday, I hopped on a bus to Pune to celebrate with family. Each of the 4 TCS coops was in a different city for this weekend, which kept things from being as fun as they could have I guess. Louis was all set to head to Pune too, but it looks like another infection wanted to keep him in the city. Stupid infection.

In any case, he’s feeling better now so we should be fine for our travels together this coming weekend. Anyhow, back to Diwali. Back to Pune.

Pune is an awesome town just a couple of hours away from Bombay. University crowd, clean streets, overall not a bad place to be.

But I guess all that’s second to having a chance to spend a weekend with your grandma.

The worst part about growing up out of India is being away from your grandparents. So the chance to spend even a few days together means a lot.

To mark the occasion, we blew stuff up.

Well, fireworks, specfically. Diwali is the festival of lights, so we spent Friday night putting up lights in and around the house.

Ashu Bhaiya started with the kitchen…

And then we kinda took it from there…

How’s this for careful Diya placement.

Fireworks came next. Fireworks on the blog tomorrow.

Gone til November (15th)

In a few minutes, I’ll be heading out of the office and to Secundarabad, where I’ll be catching a bus to visit my relatives for the Diwali long weekend. Since Diwali is tomorrow, and Eid is on Friday, we’ve got ourselves a 4 day long-weekend here.

Sweet

But unfortunately, the HK movie star will be staying in Hyderabad for it, since he’s got to spend some time recovering from a bacterial infection.

So let’s wish the movie star a happy recovery, and everybody else a Happy Diwali/Eid Mubarak/whatever else you may be celebrating. Have a nice weekend