International Yoga Day

Wishing all of you some Yoga (or other exercise if you are one of those people who spend more time debating and talking about Yoga, its origins, who started it, who it belongs to today etc. etc. and spends less time doing yoga or exercising) on this day. 

We definitely have more daylight today.. so go use that extra daylight to get exercise.

Sometimes worlds collide and Yoga day and Fathers day are one and the same.. and when the Bifrost opens, I can get to emotionally appeal to the kids to take that photo again.

The darlings did it with a smile!

So

the little one outgrew that shirt and it went to goodwill already.. but Jr. and me still have the same things to wear! 

I was surprised that they could both get into Lotus pose.. thought they would give up! Once they got in the lifting part was not hard.  

Wish they are a lot more active going forward and don't end up having to find Yoga at a much older age.. it is right in front of them now!

Go get some workout done! I for one wish BYSJ opens soon and I can sweat freely for 90 minutes and detox. It has been 99 days of doing yoga alone at home with audio recordings or zoom classes and I made it 90 days out of 99. Given all the craziness that surrounds us, Yoga helps for the 90 minutes and a few hours after class or sometimes an entire day if I just do the yoga and stay away from any electronic devices! 

Based on my personal experience, Yoga works! 

I am not trying to sound like a spokesperson for "alldaysmatter".. but then again, if we treated our parents right, maybe there wouldn't be a "fathers" or "mother" day which seems to be a lowest common denominator and a bare minimum towards parents. We live in a culture where Fathers get a card once a year and that is deemed the right thing to do. Happy there is a day designated for this to bring awareness, but IDY is not the one day you do Yoga and forget about exercise for the rest of the year. I dont want it to end up like another Jan 1st for a lot of folks!

Maybe a day for Yoga is what is needed right now to bring visibility. Eventually, everyday will be yoga day. 

some cool yoga tips

My teachers say some things very casually as corrections and move on during Yoga class.. usually at the studio, we have the opportunity to discuss these lightbulb moments right after class.

I have had so many such moments where a certain word is used by a teacher for the first time by way of a second level explanation to what they are asking us to do and that one word switch clicks in the head.

Now that yoga classes have become isolated affairs, it is not easy to have such live discussions. However, there is a forum where we are still fortunate enough to post comments and photos videos to get clarifications.

Today we had yet another zoom yoga class at BYSJ. While in class, our teacher Michelle casually mentions "Sundar, press your knees closer to each other" and she went on to correct someone else.. she is seeing me as a small thumbnail and gives me a correction that was very profound for me..

it makes it so much easier to lift up in toe stand when you compact the base. it was like my floor was solid and in one piece and I had no worries of my leg unraveling during a perpendicular movement..

If I lost you in the previous sentence... especially if you dont do toe stands, dont worry, you are not alone. That is every yoga class for me!  I get lost easily..

Before class we got to chat with teachers and one of the great tips from the forum was for a stretching pose "pachimottanasana". 

my ankle is off the ground.. it is not visible in the photograph.... and my knee is locked.. I am just bow legged so you see that gap in the floor above the knee. 

Jr. helped shoot these videos of me explaining my lightbulb moments from todays yoga class.. she has inherited the sarasm gene from me, as you can clearly tell from the video. 

She will be missed when she goes to college. No one else in this house is willing to do yoga videos for me. 

I have been a mess mentally thanks to all the recent news and I became the "red chitti" version of myself on social media trying to mock the world for what it is. In the process I trolled myself pretty badly and this class has brought me back to sanity!

It has been a very busy work week and I could not even go out for walks or do yoga many times this week, thanks to the recovering ankle and meetings that have pretty much been round the clock. That did not help my mental state either. 

Tomorrow I plan to do a lot more yoga and walk and even bike a little to make up for last weeks inactivity.

The world definitely becomes a better and bearable place with yoga! Seriously think Yoga should be available as a course for people in law enforcement.. It will also help people who are trying to rehabilitate if made available. 

I am so not ready for this

Today my little girl walked into the house wearing long earings.. something I ahve not seen her wear before. So asked her for a portrait picture and she was okay.

Think she sees me as a hopeless person who is coming to terms with the fact that she will be going to college soon. Understanding facts and accepting them are two different things, even if it means you have gone through this experiene before on the other side. It is not much different from being a college kid who drove around everywhere on a bicycle, wishing the car drivers were more careful and when you get behind the wheel, wishing the cyclists were more careful.. or being an engineer wishing your manager grasped what your thought process was and suddenly managing a large group and wishing the engineers knew the larger constraints.. every story has a side.. and this time I want to go find that episode of Barney called Happy Mad Silly Sad.. to cheer myself up. 

Jr. was a bigtime Barney fan. However she was not the one who introduced me to Barney.. it was my college senior Vish's daughter Harita who would make me watch Barney with her everytime I visited their apartment. Then Barney was forgotten only to be played three times a day .. because Barney was the key to open Jr.'s mouth to feed her! Eventually he was replaced by the Metti Oli title song which I recorded on a VHS cassette and had to play it 5 times to finish dinner. We could not watch it past the 5th time or you would have seen headlines like "sunnyvale parents in murder suicide after being forced to watch tamil soap opera title song 1000 times a month"..  Thankfully we are past all that.. or are we?! 

We digress as usual. Now another digress about the digress..

Yours truly has been on a wait list to attend a Vipasana medidation course. It is not easy to get into this one. It was highly recommended by my yoga teacher friends. They are eagerly awaiting to see if this will help me. . It is a course where you are not allowed to speak or make eye contact with people.. My family has already started a pool of sorts on which day of the course, they will be kicking me out and accepting that their practice has failed. Readers of the blog already know how highly my family regards my ability to go on about random topics.. or my general aimlessness when it comes to conversation..

Where were we?  Jr., Earings, College, Portrait, College, Barney, rambling.. okay.. back to portraits.

Jr. was just a few months old. She was able to hold her head. We had just started taking her out to public places. Day 40 we took her to Livermore temple. Then we went for a drive along route 1. That following winter was cold. So we spent time at Great mall.. walking the entire mall with her in a stroller.. and we came across this portrait setup in the middle of the mall. We went for it. They were hesitant about a child this small.. but we were literally holding her from behind (but the hand was covered with a cloth). It was like a magic trick. She was looking at mom and grandma and smiling.. The original hangs on a frame in my office.. this is a photo of the photo.. 

Even today sometimes that is the Jr. I see.. always smiling..  and just like that she is not a kid anymore! 

Went searching for some old photos and realized that the hard drive on which they were stored is corrupted. Have to find a way to back them up more reliably. Those WD passport drives are probably guaranteed for 10 years.. time flies! 

These screensavers are going to make things more difficult, as the kids go to college. 

Right now it is not just the kids growing up.. I am growing up as well. . . 

Screen time

It has been sometime since I came back to blog about anything. Life has been interesting as usual. A recent business trip that ended up with delayed flights, a missed connection, multiple subseqent delayed flights all in an effort to just  return home made me weak and tired. Also ended up with a virus which left me with a lasting eye infection for a good 10 days post all other symptoms. 

Doctors advice was to minimize staring at the screen.. so work had to be done in intense installments between eye drop sessions, driving was difficult, Yoga attendance became sporadic, social media took a break as did this blog.

The last three days have been better. I am back online with some self restraint. 

While all this was going on, the kids started school last week. The little girl who made us toil every morning just to go to kindergarten, is now a senior at high school..

The little one is also now a high schooler and that puts things in a different perspective! 

Had taken these pictures last week but never got a chance to download and edit them.. 

We are getting into the routine for this year. There is a lot less driving given Jr. drives herself. 

One theme that keeps coming back in the house is "daddy is getting old"..

We are all getting old. Also this "if you do all this yoga, how come you are sick?" discussion. Traveling in dirty airplanes can be a risky thing for anyone. 

Then there is the "if you do all this yoga, why do you get angry?". No one said you will be emotionless if you do Yoga. You get to control the anger faster, at least that is what I am striving for. 

The kids are still on daddy's side on all these arguments. Will have a tough time when they are not around as there will be no one to take my side.

Mentally preparing for it starting this year. 

Possibilities - a conversation

We were talking about the election results while driving back from school, when Jr. is suddenly all moping.. 

Me : What happened now?

Jr. : Everyone in my class will get to vote in the next election except me! I am the only one who will not be 18 by Voting day in 2020. Do you know how bad that makes me feel?

Me : you will get to vote in 2022. Big deal

Jr. : Who wants their first vote to be in a midterm election? 

Me : If I were you, I would be happy to vote in any election. Reminded her of the story I had already told her about my voting experience...

Back story: The only time I got to vote in India being an Indian citizen was when I happened to come home to Chennai from Varanasi and it was election time. I went to the booth and the guy there told me "you have already voted. now disappear before something bad happens to you!". My grandpa scolded me for going to the booth alone, instead of showing some rightful indignation. That was when I was 18 (Chandrasekar was Prime Minister..it was a short lived tenure). I came to the US when I was 20 and the next time I actually voted was in 2006 as a US citizen in a midterm election and voted for Arnold Schwarzenegger! Have not missed voting since then. No one has told me that I have already voted or turned me back. I drop my mail in ballot at the Cupertino City hall a few weeks ahead of the election and can even track my vote. However I do hear that people go through things like what I went through in India, even today in the US elections in many places. 

Back to our conversation..

Jr. : Could you not have conceived me two weeks earlier? This is all your and amma's fault that I don't get to vote. 

I was suddenly silent and upset. There are people these days who schedule C-sections so their kids are born on an auspicious birth star, a certain Chinese zodiac year, before Dec 31st so they can claim a dependent on their tax return, etc. etc. ( know of all above cases).. but trying to beat the voting cutoff?! That is new!

Then I thought,  she was not a planned C-section. Her poor mom pushed and pushed all day and finally after she almost came out, she got stuck and it ended up an emergency C-section. 

Me : You were two weeks late and past your due date. Your origial due date was Deepavali, but you showed no signs of coming out. We were in the hosptal instead where your mom had to go through a baby stress test. You were under no stress. So they sent us back home. If this is anyones fault, it is your own. You should have been on time! 

I knew that was mean, but there comes a time in a mans life when he is just plain tired of being the fall guy. 

Later I tried to make up for the outburst... with some luck.

Midterms are important.. sometimes even more important than the Presidential elections.. please keep saying that people. I have other reasons to support that statement now.

As long as Jr. takes her vote seriously, I am a very happy and proud father!