While in India, dug up this gem – my first grade report card!! Note the teacher’s advise on improving my handwriting 🙂 Subsequently, thru the years, other teachers added a few more things for me to improve on… and then the wife came along and added a whole lot more to the list 🙂 but my handwriting never quite improved 🙂 The crowning ignominy was in eighth grade, when my teacher demanded that I practice one page of handwriting every day during summer vacation. I finished the whole assignment in the last two days of vacation. You can only imagine the output 🙂 Much later in life, inspired by my friend Aditya Garg, I picked up calligraphy and went back to fountain pens!! Oh! The irony!!! 🙂

Splashdown!! To Terra Firma… or rather Terra USA. Straight into 4 cups of Starbucks coffee!!! No amount of immigration or custom checks confirm that we are back home as much as the first sip of Starbucks!!! — at John F Kennedy International Airport.

Jayita!!!! One more person I had the privilege of being in elementary school together. Met her (in Dubai) after 36 years (lost contact at the same time as Subir Hore). Last time I saw her, she was digging into a masala dosa with her sister at that dosa shop in Benachity. I had gone with my dad to the shoe shop next door -Nee Shing – to buy shoes for my new school!!! It is absolutely amazing to see how much my elementary school students have succeeded in life. I would like to believe that some of that has rubbed off on me too!!

As we land in Dubai, Nikita looked at Natasha sitting next to her and declared “It has been six hours since we fought. I think that is a record.” 🙂

As we get ready to leave India, I asked Niki what three things will she remember the most from this trip. She said
1. South City mall (biggest mall in Kolkata)
2. Junction mall (biggest mall in Durgapur)
3. Grandparents!!
Oh! Boy!! Somebody is taking after her mother 🙂 🙂 

“Touch of India”. The two sisters get their mehndi done at South City!! 

Nothing says “good old Kolkata” as the grand old trams (streetcars)!!!!!

Guava!! In fact “dnaasa pyara”. After three decades!!
One bite into it and it immediately brought back memories of the big guava tree we had in our first house in Durgapur. Summer vacation afternoons meant me and my siblings climbing up the guava tree (they have very strong branches) and perching ourselves on three limbs and imagine – a la Phineas and Ferb – that we are riding a plane!!! Little did we realize that riding a plane, in reality, would be as unromantic as being squeezed in a small space in a metal tube 31,000 feet up in the air with nothing to see and terrible food to eat. Especially since they do not serve guavas!!! 🙂