As much as I love running with Nikita (to the extent that I will often run twice in a day to make sure I can join her), nothing tops doing math together.

School has started. And so has our sitting together with a few pieces of paper and a math book. Right now, her school has her attending math classes two grades higher than her actual grade but what I like most is doing math problems from outside the school curriculum.

I am always amazed and impressed by the difference in which math was taught to us versus how they learn it in the US. Even now, when I see how my nephews learn math in India, I realize that the focus is on the formulaic part – with a lot of tests.

Kids in US seem to be lot more focused on actual application of the math concepts. They are more worried about if the kids can translate a real world problem to the correct mathematical formulation rather than solving the formula itself.

Many of the math problems for my daughter encourage them to approximate or estimate, as an example. In India, we had to come to the exact answer to the nth digit if we hoped to get full marks.

I thrived in the India system. I think I would have struggled in the US system.

In any case, this was last evening – by the pool side, understanding rotational speed and linear speed. (At some point of time we had turned the food cart – see next to the fire chimera – upside down to study the big wheels and the small wheels to check the concepts first hand).

Pure joy!

He sat there the entire time staring at us as we had our lunch…

Saw this in Sharmila’s car while cleaning it. I think it is from one of her paintings…

But my first reaction was “She comes with strings attached? Now you tell me?” 🙂

Six years back, just like this, the four of us were sitting exactly at the same spot on a June evening having dinner. Sharmila, Nikita and I had come to drop Natasha at Duke University for a summer program.

Today, almost to the day… same spot… dinner again… now it is Nikita’s turn.

One flew the nest a few years back…
The other one is getting ready for a trial run…

Thank you! Thank you! But it is actually my daughter, Natasha!! 🙂

Sold!…
… for a phone (that too landline) and a car. Those were the demands she had back in Oct 1992 before she would agree to marry me. (To put this in perspective, in those days in the small town we came from, both a phone and a car were novelties and not owned by most). Not one to give in to negotiations too early, I had simple frowned at her. She conceded immediately that it did not have to be very soon – just some time in our married life. I had un-frowned.

Two days later, I told her that we might have to get married earlier – in fact before even she could finish college – and get the passports ready because my company was transferring me to US.

First day, I land in US, my company had a landline and a rental car ready for us.

Easiest sale ever!!

[Sharmila]