The end of a remarkable year

2005 can definitely be said to be the most eventful year in our life. At the beginning of this year, no one could have predicted (except God of course) where we would be at the end of it. We were invited to a New Year eve party in Bergen, Norway. In January 2005, I did not even know the name of this city. Norway only meant Oslo, midnight sun, and fjords. But this is life. You do not know where it is going to take you!

I have not written for a very long time. In fact, I am trying to complete this post when the new year is already 10 days old. I feel bad because I have forgotten so many moments which will never return again. In fact, I have that thought about all the time past when I never recorded anything. It is so good to relive old tales. I know life is ephemeral, and you never know when it will be over, but still, this is all we have at the moment. Of course, we are asked to rise above to a different philosophical level and embrace God, but after all, as human beings, we like to connect to fellow humans and the associated good and bad things. It is amazing how we can become happy or sad based on our interactions with friends and loved ones.

Well, enough of this...once we left the United States and took the eventful Alitalia flight (may be details about that some other time...the positive thing was the presence of Rajul at the airport and the fact that we did not have to wait a minute for the connection), we landed in Delhi after 3 long years. We eventually ended up staying in India for 2 and a half months. This is the longest I have been there for many many years (in fact, someone recently asked me when was the last time I spent Christmas in India and that was 8 years ago!). This is the bad part about staying abroad. You get many things but then you miss many things as well. In any case, the long stay in India was quite nice. There were many challenges, I must say - primarily because we were quite used to our independence and therefore, some adjustment problems cropped in. But overall, I am glad we were there and spent some quality time. Prarthna got to enjoy her grandparents and they got to enjoy her. I know I will probably come back to some aspects of the stay later but I want to get something on board and start talking about now because right now, there is enough to report about Prarthna every day. She is so cute, learns things day and night, and her activities are so much fun.

We were lucky that we got to attend diwaker bhaiya's housewarming and of course, celebrate Prarthna's first birthday! That was a landmark day for the first grandchild in the family and we enjoyed it. It was a bittersweet occasion as we left the next day for an unknown land - Norway. Getting the visa was somewhat difficult but it worked out fine in the end. Olav was very helpful and it was great that we all could come together. Now in hindsight I think that it would have been extremely difficult if I had come alone! God really worked wonders for us there as we have heard some stories about the long wait for family visas.

This is to be continued...