We just cannot wait...

Found the little one walking around the house like this today.

Rubber bands, hair clips, fake dangling clip on earrings to match pink fake hair..

Kept saying to myself "God, what have we done! She is brave on the outside but inside she does feel the lack of hair!"

Well, it was a one time deal and it will be forgotten in a month. We can already put a clip through the hair.

Had a heart to heart with the girl and she is okay. Why?

"In two months my hair will be growing faster than Akka and will be longer than Akka! So I am okay. This is just pretend for now"

Now all we can pray for is that it does start to grow faster.

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Understanding WMD's from previous Yugas..

It is always difficult to start explaining why the Muruga idol in the Livermore temple has a "vel" (spear) in his hand or how our favorite elephant headed god Ganesha got that head in the first place when your kids get to watch Dora or Olivia during dinner time instead of grandmas telling them tales which all center around Mount Kailash, Hastinapura and the families of the gods!

Would have been a lot easier to get them started off with Shiva and Parvathi and graduate to Ganesha and Karthikeya and on and on, but one needs study aids!

Now that Jr. is reading comics, half a suitcase on our return trip from India was allocated for books and comics. The books alone weighed close to 25 lbs! A big part of it was this series of bound volumes of Amar Chitra Katha's...

Jr. has already finished Gods and Godesses once and is on the second round trying to figure out who is married to whom. This is very similar to but slightly less complicated than the grandmas watching sun TV serial reruns to figure out how the dude who acted as the girls husband 6 months ago is suddenly playing the role of her brother!

Nevertheless, jr.is now aware of the trinity of gods (brahma, vishnu, shiva) and that shiva's family tree is very straight forward while anything and everything is an avatar of sorts for Vishnu and he has way too many wives. Every now and then when she gets a brainache trying to figure out why Krishna marries 1600 princesses who were all put in prison by Narakasura and how any man could marry 1600 women and be alive when the man in her house cannot handle one woman who bosses over him, she switches to Jataka Tales or Tinkle double digests.

The little one is more of a silent observer and is content with looking at the pictures or having her sister read to her. She is more curious about all the blood and gore depicted in these comics and how killing by the gods is mentioned so casually.

This year we did not celebrate Ganesha Chaturthi because of a death in the family, but we did read all about Ganesha in the ACK's!

Here is to Ganesha!

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Where is GWB?

GWB seems to have gone missing much like old Tamil TV actresses!

Eight years of prime time and then he is not there to defend things like this or this.

The whole thing is depressing.

So many people are losing their jobs here and we all work our tails off trying to make ends meet. A significant part of tax money goes into fighting unnecessary wars instead of ensuring a decent future for us or our kids..

Is it possible that GWB is now a part of the rendition program?

Is it possible that he is in some unnamed eastern European country going through interrogation on how he let all this happen and for what?

Every time I used to see or hear Bush speak about "war on terror" or "winning" the image of Dhritarashtra from the Amar Chitra Katha's flashed in my head!

There were so many ministers in his court who were wise but none wanted to speak up and let the blind king know how Draupathi was being humiliated and wronged in front of everyone..

Looks like the Iraqi vasthra haran was done in front of 100 senators as they all watched as Cheyneyodhana and Rumshasana did their thing.. even the wise Vidhura types like Powell watched out of loyalty for the blind King?!

For the longest time my thought was that the dark complexioned Krishna.. err Obama will finally come to rescue Draupathi.. He is a long time coming!

I do not want to go further with the analogy. Tharoor already did this context switch with the Great Indian Novel!

Strongly recommend Rajaji's Mahabharatha (or even the Amar Chitra Katha version for that matter) to American readers who want to see how the Mahabharata ends.

Tragic really!

One thing is for sure. No point in recapping the Vastra Haran or having to watch reruns of it. So Censoring the images is a good move.

Will try to do our best as a family when it comes to doing some kind of Prayachitam by raising two American kids who believe in peace and not in War, who believe it is possible to serve your country loyally and sincerely without picking up a weapon!

There are people out here who are proud to be American and associate being American with speaking our minds, being able to believe in "the American dream" and be able to speak up. It is a crying shame that we are all tacitly complicit in the Iraq war, because we didn't push our representatives to reason enough before going to war, pay good tax money to fund the war and the troops or not help take this up when the American press failed to do their job!

We are now the Kauravas!

Somehow that does not have a nice ring to it..

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