After getting my parents to get in touch with some of their (and our) original roots, it will be my turn to get in touch with my roots. Every time our daughters travel with us to India, we get all their cousins (and their families) together at a resort near Kolkata for a couple of days. Not that they understand each other’s language much but it is amazing to watch how they can converse without much of a support from a language. The most interesting part is watching them learn each other’s culture and practices.

This time the daughters are not with me. So, I am going to do to myself what I do to them. My mom had five siblings. All those six of them have about thirteen kids. Discounting my brother, sister and myself, I have ten cousins. I have not seen two of them in my entire life. I got to see two of them for the first time six months back and two more for the first time after about twenty five years last year.

This time, my brother and I have invited all of them to have a great get together of all our cousins and their families (from my mom’s side) at a resort near Kolkata. Many of them, like me, have not seen each other for a long long time…. sometimes ever!!!

This one is going to be real interesting!!! Realizing an otherwise stranger is actually my blood relative is not something I experience too often!!