Walk on Alpha Loop on the last day of the lights. Highlight of the evening? The three llamas !!

Used my years of experience to get beaten hollow by a neophyte!!

Unlike bowling, I managed to hold my own in this. But, just barely!!

They donned the scarves pretty much all day, looking rather distinguished, if I may add!

I am not terribly sure what the roots are, but for as long as I can remember, the Christmas lunch in the Roy household has been a bit of an unusual feature in America. It is one of those “one doctor out of ten doctors approve” kind of diets – “luchi” (deep fried, puffed bread), “aloor dum” (potato curry) and “payas” (milk-based, sweet rice pudding). And then from time to time, there is the occasional “begun bhaja” (fried eggplant) or “dim-er curry” (egg curry).

Basically, it is a phantasmagoria of your LDL-inducing, BP-raising, sugar-heightening, but delectable-to-the-tongue sort of lunch. In short, a traditional Bengali lunch. Sans the “golda chingri” (jumbo shrimp), I guess!!

It used to be Sharmila who would do the honors. Then the girls took over the kitchen from her. And for the last two years, the nephew has joined forces to make a distinctly young-adult event of “moida makha” (making the dough), “luchi bela” (rolling the dough), and “luchi bhaja” (frying the dough).

Sitting on my sofa, I could count the number of “luchis” swelling to their fullest potential by the “Yippees” emanating from the kitchen end of the house.

Later, I was narrating a similar event to my nephew from over four decades ago. The competition among my siblings and me that day was to see who could roll the “luchi” with the rolling pin into a perfect circle like Mom would. My brother (my audience’s dad) fared the worst with the “luchi,” which looked dangerously close to the map of Africa. Undeterred, he showed up with the compass from his geometry box!!

If it were not for the self goals, he might have won!

In the arcade, of course! He successfully uprooted half of Paris!

Still, most of the time, he insisted on driving between the lamp posts and fence and leave the wide road open to others!

Predictably, Jay Jay, he and I went to Chiringa. But then we did something cool. Both of us put our AirPod Maxes on and sound sharing on and then listened to some wide genres of music on the iPad – from Kalbeliya of Rajasthan to Kamarey of Kurdistan!! Like every other day, we shut the bar down!!

A hallmark of my time with the nephew is how much we laugh together. This morning, he woke up late and sat down next to me on the sofa. I looked at him and his outstretched tufts of hair and commented “choolta khara hoye gechhe” (your hair has risen up!).

“Hmmm… signal aasche!!” (yes, I am receiving signal!!), he quipped!

… some putt putt golf!

It was his power versus my finesse. Mostly an inconclusive draw!

He is putting in the flags of the countries on the world map to designate the countries I have been to!