A dozen years!

Dear Mantam,

The last one year seems to have gone in a blur. (I won’t say the same about the remaining years). You both have shot up so tall as if in a competition to catch up with your parents’ heights. You secretly even wish to grow much taller than Baba and I. You are both growing through physical transformation as you near puberty. I feel very anxious when I think of all the pain you will have to endure during your menstrual cycles. As much as I am vocal about how I hate periods, I would voluntarily take on all the pains from you in a beat, if I could. But alas! It is yours to endure and I am sure Baba will go through hell to see his daughters suffer.

Enough of period talk, let me move over to how you both have taken up many domestic chores. (Yes yes, I admit to making you do them but hey, these are survival skills and I’m only empowering you to be self-sufficient). Your interest in cooking makes me extremely happy and I share with you too many tips and tricks in the kitchen. I always start or finish with my trademark dialogue ‘Nobody taught me this. I learnt it the hard way. But I’m telling you so that you don’t learnt it by making mistakes’. I do silently chuckle thinking of how I have become my mother. She also had her own set of trademark sentences which I recall every now and then. It warms my heart to think that you both will someday be on your own, away from our shelter and you will also recall some of these moments. I hope that you will remember them fondly and feel a warm sense of comfort. I dunno why I’m fighting an eager tear that’s trying to escape my eye as I type this. I do put up a brave face whenever we think about being empty nesters. But it sure is going to be extremely difficult as we are such a close-knit family that Baba and I never even think of taking vacations without you two.

We love spending time with you both and I like to think that you reciprocate the same feelings. Ever since COVID-19 took over our normal lives, I have been forever grateful that I have the best quaranteam that I could have ever asked for. These three months have been a dream. We sure were anxious with all that was going on in the world (still is) but I think we made the most of the situation. You both have always been adaptive to changing circumstances. And this was no different. Whatever we missed doing, you both made it happen magically within the confines of our home, with whatever was available on hand. You missed going to Timezone to play arcade games. So, you spent a whole day creating an Arcade evening with games that you made from scratch and I just can’t begin to describe how mind-blown we were. We missed going for movies, you created a movie night experience right in our lounge – complete with handmade tickets, popcorn, soft drinks, pizza and even numbered seats. Oh, I forgot to mention about the spiders you served during movie interval. We missed venturing out, so you both came up with the idea of a backyard picnic. We prepared picnic friendly food, camped in our backyard and spent a beautiful day out without stepping away from home. Your passion for DIY and the zeal to have fun come-what-may makes my heart swell with pride. I sincerely hope you will keep it up all through your lives.

I always tell you that I don’t care how much you score in tests but I do care the most if you are a good human being or not. When one of your classmates was left alone by her close friends, you consciously involved her in your group and played with her. When she patched up with her friends and flocked back to her original group, you were just happy for her and did not have an ounce of hard feelings. When one of your friends lost a tooth and you came to know that her parents didn’t leave tooth fairy money under her pillow, you left your gold coin for her in the classroom so that she doesn’t feel disappointed. For one of your friend’s birthday, you came up with a plan with your group of friends to each get a brownie slice from the school canteen and join it together as a makeshift cake to celebrate. You both reminded everyone to get a dollar each but also took extra money from your own pocket just in case some of the friends couldn’t get or forgot to get. You always make such amazing handmade cards and gifts for your friends and loved ones that it melts our heart. Hope you continue to touch many lives and make people feel special and loved.

You both stepped forward to contest in the election for school leader this year. I was very happy that you did irrespective of the results. Mannu, you came quite close to winning but didn’t. Baba and I were relieved as we always live with guilt if one of succeeds in something while the other doesn’t. Although you both have an open mind and always wish your twin the very best, we are worried sick when the balance is skewed! But later in the year, you both got chosen as the SRC of your respective classes. We could express our joy with abandon! You are going to be in high school next year and we don’t know for sure if you both are going to be in the same school or different. We hope that you have a wonderful final year of primary schooling and make beautiful memories that you will cherish. This is also the final year where you are getting picked up and dropped off to school, staying at after school care. Next year is going to be a whole new experience for you and us. We will have to give you a phone as you will start commuting on your own and also will be teenagers! (I’m trying hard to get rid of my own phone addiction so that I can preach to you without feeling guilty myself)

I wanted to write to each of you individually about the unique personalities that you are becoming. This letter has already gotten too long. I will write a separate post soon.

In conclusion, Baba and I must have done something right to be blessed with such gems of daughters. We love you both more than we ever imagined we could. (I might love Laddoo slightly more than you two, but that’s a debate for another day 😀 ) Thank you for being you and we hope you grow up with your hearts on your sleeves, always choose kindness, embrace every opportunity that life throws at you and never shy away from standing up for what is right!

Much love,

Mumma

Day 24 | Bollywood Bash

In this post, I had written about how we had arranged a Bollywood themed birthday party for the twins last year. Here are some pictures and details of the event:

We went ahead with the theme bollywood as we were only inviting very close friends of Mantam’s whose parents are also our friends now. Except for one Nepali family, rest were all Indians. First task on hand was to create the invitations. We had spent a lot of time and energy in making hand made cards and this year, I wanted to keep it simple. I designed the card on the computer using some free templates and filling in the text myself. Then simply printed them out at 10 cents each at Kmart.

Party invitation

Return gifts

Next task was to get the return gifts sorted. Since it was only 5 girls who would be attending the party, I got a few gift boxes and nail stickers from Daiso for under 5$. I added in Nail paints from a set I had bought for 50 cents each and a bangle set (I had brought a lot of bangle sets from India trip, so they came in handy). We also threw in some Indian lollies like Alpenlibe and eclairs. Mantam’s hands were painted with Mehndi patterns the previous night.

 

How can a Bollywood theme party be complete without Mehndi?

 

We booked our favouritest restaurant called Zac’s which serves the most delicious food in Sydney. On the menu was cocktail samosa, paneer and chicken kebabs, Gobi masala, chicken curry, veg and mutton biryani. We set up a chocolate fountain (which I had received as a gift during Secret Santa at office) and I made a cake in the shape of number 8. I topped the cake with chocolate ganache and piped Mehndi designs all over to give the Bollywood feel.

The birthday cake made by moi. One of the cakes was red velvet and the other was celebration chocolate cake

For the decor, we printed out posters of popular Hindi movies and stuck them all over the walls using Blu-Tac adhesives, which were easily removable post party. I printed out the posters of movies with twins as protagonists or with lead dual role. We had also requested the guests to come in Bollywood attire. Now for the games, we gave a Bolly twist to some classic games. I got a Housie / Tambola in Bollywood style online, so instead of numbers the grids had Hindi movie names. Abbas conducted games fully entertaining the guests as he sang songs from the movies, delivered dialogues, danced with some famous moves and made everyone guess the movie names instead of announcing them directly. We transformed the ‘Pin the tail to the donkey’ to the ‘Ek chutki sindoor’ game. I printed out a poster of Deepika Padukone, all the guests were blindfolded and provided with a red marker to draw Sindoor on her forehead. The game was super fun. We also had a Bollywood quiz and guess the celebrity game. At the end we played Bollywood songs and did the customary thumkas, matkas and jhatkas.

A glimpse of the decor

All decked up in Bollywood issshtyle

One of the Bollywood theme Tambola / Housie / Bingo cards

All in all, it was a good party and Mantam enjoyed a lot with their friends.

 

 

Festivals in pictures

As the transformer had burst yesterday, there was no power since yesterday. I had left hopes of posting today as we were spending time in dark till late evening. We were absolutely bugged and decided to step out for dinner. When we came back, the transformer was finally fixed and I am left with very little time to squeeze in the post of the day. Here are the pictures of some festivals that we celebrated in the last year:

Diwali celebrations

One month ahead of Diwali, the apartment’s core committee called for a meeting. Apparently they have been celebrating Diwali every year with some competitions for kids and adults alike. They also erect a stage and organize performances by kids and enthusiastic adults. Responsibilities of different activities were divided among us. Choreographing a dance number for Mantam’s peer group fell into my bucket. I was a bit apprehensive about managing a group of eight kids in the beginning. When we began, everything started falling into place. The most difficult part was the time that we had in hand for preparations. We had only a week, that too a working one! I would come back from office and straight away head to the community hall where the kids would be assembled. After a few rounds of practice, the kids would pester me for a break. If I indulged them with a short break, they would scamper around and make nerve-wracking noise. So, whenever they got tired, I would make them sit down in a circle and make them some play some games. It would be fun, we would all laugh so much and regain energy for some more rounds of rehearsal. The song was Happy Diwali form the movie Home Delivery. It is a peppy number and everyone loved the song and my group’s performance.

There were 3 other groups that performed dance numbers. A bunch of kids also sand two songs taught by my friend AJ’s mom. On the eve of the event, all the ladies of the apartment decided to sing together. The song undisputedly had to be ‘Mile Sure Mera Tumhara’ apt for our context. All of us were away from our roots but celebrating together as a unit. There were also drawing and musical chairs for younger lot of kids, while elders kids had the Diya decoration and treasure hunt contests. Infants weren’t left behind. They were dressed with fancy costumes and brought on to the stage by their parents. Elders were divided into group of fours and asked to give a makeover to one of the group members using newspapers. Abbas, AJ Mom and I made up our team member as an Egyptian Pharoah. There was also a contest for couples where we were asked to dance on a sheet of newspaper, while our legs had to be within the newspaper. As the contest progressed, the level of difficulty kept raising with the newspaper sheet being folded to half. At one point, it wasn’t possible for two people to stand together on the paper, most husbands lifted their wives. I was contemplating to quit as Abbas has never been able to lift me till now. Just then the music began and Abbas jumped like a frog and hugged me with both his legs and hands. I was flabbergasted and everyone laughed till their stomachs hurt!! Abbas and I even participated in the Antakshari and won the second place. Yummy snacks were served at the end of the celebrations.

Sweet memories of this event will stay with us for a long long time to come!

Leaving you with some pictures:

Bulu’s 3rd Birthday

For the uninitiated, Bulu is our blue car who turned 3 on October 28th. Apparently, Bulu had made his preference clear by whispering to one of the girls that he wanted Momma to bake brownies for him on his special day. Dad promptly booked a Spa session at the service station to pamper him.

 

 

 

My birthday in pictures…

Bulu turned 2!

Yeah, way back in Oct 2012. But it never got a mention on this blog. We bought a nice perfume for him as birthday present. Mantam and I baked a cake together. We took the cake to Bulu, opened all his doors, played some music in his music system and cut the cake. Mantam even fed (rubbed) a slice to(on) him. Here are a few pictures: