This is one hilarious family!!!
Last night, it was pretty late by the time I came home from Milwaukee. I had a quick dinner and went off to sleep.

Early this morning, I woke up and was making coffee for the family when I noticed what the two daughters have been up to! In one of those rare moments of sisterly collaboration, Natasha – who is home from New York – and Nikita have put some some Christmas wish lists on the refrigerator. I wish I could say there was no selfish desire behind this.

What is really funny is the content in the lists… Looks like Natasha wants some colorful pens (that is sooooo me) and a few books. It also says – “any one book” lest we thought she is crazy thinking she wants more than one book. And get this – permission to dye her hair!! An 18 year old asking for permission??? I must have done something right!!

Niki – spoken like Niki – went straight to the point – money! And another dog!! And no Saturday math!!! And if she got all that, she was down with some world peace and all that mundane stuff!!!

Sharmila, no doubt, worn by a whole day of the two sisters under the same roof just wants peace and serenity. To which one of them wrote “No promises”!!

And finally dad had a clean slate, till somebody – and I am going to go out on a limb and suggest Nikita – wrote down her impression of daddy really wants – get this – “Facebook Likes” apparently!!!

Somewhere Zuckerberg must be high fiving himself!!!

Nikita had to go to a friend’s party. Apparently, the dress code was “ugly sweater”. After finishing up some math with her, I told her that she probably should get upstairs and get ready and asked her which sweater was she planning to wear. She went upstairs and after about ten minutes came back to ask me what I thought of it.

It took me a second to realize that she had taken one of her sweaters and had duct taped a good size mirror to it. It took me more than a second to figure out how it was supposed to be “ugly”. Then it hit me!!!

That was outrageously funny, wicked smart and really, really mean at the same time. And such are the days that she really makes me proud of her 🙂

As many of you know, I enjoy going to a grocery store with roughly the same level of fervor as I enjoy having a hole in my head. I guess today was one of those “you gotta have a hole in your head” kind of day since Sharmila asked me to pick up something from an Indian grocery store which was close to where I was meeting a friend.

Now, let me tell you something. If there is one thing that confuses me more than a grocery store, it is an Indian grocery store. At least in a normal grocery store, I can wander around listlessly with not a clue where to find the stuff but nobody would be any the wiser since they are big stores and I usually do not run into anybody I know. In an Indian grocery store, somehow, there will always be somebody who will walk up to me and address me by my first name. Which, experience has taught me, is a strong indicator that I have met them before and ought to be addressing them back by their first names too. Except that, for the life of me, I would not remember where I had met them, what their names were and why do I even know them. In the bargain, I would also forget which aisles I had already visited and eliminated as possibilities and would have to start from square one (which is usually the lane left of the entrance door) again!

But I was impressed this time with the precision of Sharmila’s instructions. Absolutely no room for doubts or errors. As a result, most of those people who would have otherwise recognized me did not do so today since I was walking around like a zombie with my head down staring at the iPhone. I am fairly sure they thought I was some idiot playing Pokemon Go in the Indian grocery store.

On the upside though, that was an well executed shopping exercise for me. Kept following step by step and after I bounced off a couple of counters – muck like a snooker ball bouncing off the edges – I was quickly shot out of the store into the parking lot with a couple of fresh chicken tikka masala boxes in tow!

Like I said, I am very impressed with the precision of her instructions. I think she is about a few parentheses and a couple of well placed comments away from writing out some good computer code!!