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Starring:
Dad, mom (me), nanamma (dad’s mom), Boys – 12 year old Ky and 8 year old Moksh.

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Continued from Wednesday

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Thursday

I copy hand written notes of a book called Belle Cora onto the computer wondering all the while if I will ever read these notes again. But I keep doing it anyway for the better part of my morning ~ 3 hours. Handwritten notes from 12/04/2014 say, “We could always hear the rhythmic creak of the bed when my aunt was fulfilling her marital obligations.”

In news on Baby boomers: In over the next 5 to 10 years, the US will lose 30 to 40% of its workforce due to retirement. Millennials at Workplace want except work life balance, want to be part of the company and like to mentored by the management and except opportunities to make a difference. A Pew research center in 2015 found that wealthy Americans mostly agree that “poor people today have it easy because they can get government benefits without doing anything in return.”

Jimmy Kimmel tweets “When Donald Trump knows he’s in trouble, he immediately fires back. It’s kind of like when your wife catches you sexting with another woman, and you go, ‘Well, what were you doing looking at my phone?’” LOL.

I note down a quote from an article titled: 9 Quotes From Women Whose Scandals Changed History: “I love my past. I love my present. I’m not ashamed of what I’ve had, and I’m not sad because I have it no longer.” ~ Chéri by Colette, 1920

The Art of Living newsletter urges that in order to blossom wherever I was, I should recite the Lalitha Sahasranama, the thousand names of the Divine mother, which is a joyful, dynamic and scintillating expression of oneself.

Still at my desk, I open a folder of my old journals and find that in March of 2016 I wrote down that I had a weak spot for “white rice, Indian buffets and weekends. I can’t seem to stick to my routine of ab crunches.”

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I suddenly remember that I still have recordings of The History of comedy show on CNN that I haven’t watched yet that I should try to watch tonight. Via Whatsapp, a friend requests me to donate to a father who passed away in a drunk driver crash. His Gofund me says, “RIP Kailash, I will see on the other side. And then we will rock that music system you built. You know I will play Pink Floyd, right? Love you man.” $75,703 of $100k goal, raised by 653 people in 1 day. I ask her if she knows him personally and she says its a forwarded message.

I am listening to a podcast by Tim Ferris and hear a quote I write down. “If your mother believes that you can do anything, then you can absolutely do anything.” – Ricardo Semler

Ricky Kalmon’s newsletter reminds me that, “Stress has an uncanny ability to consume a great deal of our thoughts. Once we let it in, it’s difficult to get rid of it because it overwhelms and dominates our other thoughts.”

After I bring him home from school, I tell Moksh that “nanamma and I will come for his poetry cafe at school tomorrow morning.” And he asks me if she is going to be wearing a saree. I immediately say what’s wrong with that, even though I myself am uncomfortable at that thought. “Saree is a type of dress that Indian women wear, its just another type of cloth that’s wrapped around the body. Moksh, look at Ms. Shurook, she wears a different type of dress than everyone else. Its a religious dress and she chooses to wear it and we all respect that don’t we?”

Moksh is into riddles these days. I am glad I read about Google’s Autodraw this morning and so I hook him up with it. I tell him I will create a blog for him and post his drawings online.

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Later we get up to practice the 10th chapter verses of The Gita (Holy book of the Hindus). I tell him that in order to sustain the Om sound longer, intentional breathing might help increase his lung capacity. He tells me, “The actual sound is not Om, its Aum. If you have longer A sound than mmmm sound, you will be good at math. And if you have short A sound and long mmmmm sound, then you will be creative.” I double down laughing wondering where he learnt this and he tells me his yoga teacher at last year’s summer camp told him that.

As Ky walks in through the front door, Moksh greets him, “Hey cuckoo head Ky. Dumb butt.” Without even putting away his heavy backpack, Ky starts fist fighting and they end up on the living room floor punching each other in their nuts. And this is how they greet each other for the first time they have laid eyes on each other for the day at 4:45pm.

Today, I am desperate to get to our monthly book club meet, because its my only chance to interact with White people on a personal basis. I have to skip the temple in spite of Swami promising us yesterday that Thursday is the day he is going to open my eyes to “The higher power”.

The only guy at the book club is drinking Angry Orchard’s Crisp Apple Hard Cider. We discuss “Where’d You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple”. I find it amusing to see people pronounce the Indian name of the remote office assistant that Bernadette has, “Manjula”. Of course, I don’t mention it because the correct pronunciation is not funny. The discussion moves onto absentee moms and one of the ladies talks about how her mother died of a drug overdose. Haldol is used for sea sickness, but she was addicted to it, they knew about it. Lithium was something else she would take prescription meds for. She chokes up because she can’t seem to stop blaming herself for that. After her mom had died, they found out about numerous orders from Canadadrugs.com. She would sit at home and order out of store catalogs and hoard them at home, many times never opening the boxes that had arrived. She loved lobster tails. One of the moms has bought tickets to Wrestle mania because her boys love it and they were asking her to buy 13$ cereal boxes because their wrestling heroes were advertising them. “Hell no”, she had told them. People magazine is all about puppies, celebrities overcoming depression and weight-loss stories, someone says and laughs.

Everyone is talking about where they have come to Atlanta from. They skip me for apparent reasons (I am here after traveling the farthest from India – 8000 miles). One of them has moved from a suburb of Sacremento, California, where kids stayed and didn’t move, so they were friends for a lot of generations. One of them has moved from New Jersey. Someone is from Knoxville, “there is nothing to do there.” Everyone is from somewhere and not local to Atlanta, someone says before everyone laughs.

Back in bed, I sit and read an article about journaling and think that I should also write about the importance of journaling. I read, “When we move our thoughts from mind to paper, there’s a transformation in clarity: negative events can be seen in a different light; positive experiences can be better cherished.”

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The Indian American Life