Welcome 2016! A very Happy New Year!

Time is the most undefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past even while we attempt to define it, and, like the flash of lightning, at once exists and expires.      

Charles Caleb Colton

I begin this year, deliberately, with no resolutions but with a determination to enjoy and cherish life, as I bid a bitter-sweet  farewell to the  year that was! Bye 2015, What a year you have been!

It began with the sweetest event , the birthday of my grand daughter, little Samyuktha, who  turned one on January 5^th, 2015. The two  families came together and celebrated the occasion. And unknown to us, fate was dealing her secret hand. We were getting ready to forge, another new relationship!

That was the first of the three visits last year, of the littlest one! I was witness to every milestone in the first year of her life and like a pupa that struggles to bloom into a butterfly, my little one was driven to walk and run, speak and play! We got to spend  time with our older daughter and grew to love and cherish her more, for the person she has become! We also got to appreciate and value our son in law, who has now become the pillar of our family.

Our younger daughter was married  in a traditional vedic ceremony on November 15^th 2015. It was an occasion we were looking forward to! Yet the joy was mixed with sadness, for she would go far away from home to make a home for herself, with her loving husband.

What followed the wedding in Chennai was something most unexpected. Much has been written and discussed about the deluge. Rains battered  the city for more than a month and Chennai was submerged under water. People suffered in ways they  had never imagined. I was among the fortunate ones. Our compound was filled with water and there was no electricity for three days. I worried that the rains would never stop! My husband returned home on the last flight before the authorities shut down the airport.

There were no roads and streets, only water everywhere. Losses were immense; destruction,  unbelievable. Chennai and her people have bravely limped back. The new year has brought sunshine and cheer,  I hope to the lives of everyone everywhere and specially in Chennai.

But time soon passes. Even the deepest pain eventually loses its edge in the more vivid reality of the present; then, what once was unbearable becomes strangely familiar. And after much familiarity, it assumes the insignificance of just another milestone, ever marking the journey to higher ground.  N. Maria Kwami, Secrets of the Bending Grove.