I hope that you all had a wonderful Xmas. I didn’t get around to writing this earlier as I was away for a month until late December and then there was so much to catch up with at work. But it’s now time again to reflect upon the past year – be happy about the positives and learn from the experiences, good or bad.
As with all years, the year starts off with a bang – after all the festivities and gatherings have come to an end, it’s down to reality and tax returns deadlines and year end reporting pressures. Both boys were down at Xmas, having been skiing after their university ended, so as always it was nice to catch up as a family.
This year was a milestone birthday for me – we celebrated by going to the Royal festival Hall for a concert – something that I’d always wanted to do and then had a small gathering of friends at home for Valentines day. Finally we kept a gathering at my mum’s house for all the family, as my mum had become virtually housebound as she could barely walk. The boys came down for this last event and had even written a poem for me which was very touching and quite funny- they are finally inheriting my talents! It was an emotional day for me – part of me happy and part of me sad, missing Kaka and wishing he could have been there to share this day.
In February also a few days after the party at mum’s we had to say goodbye to my cousin’s wife Panna who had been battling cancer for some time and had managed to overcome that but passed away due to an infection.
Immediately after the year end reporting season, Hitesh and I went skiing to Serre chevalier – this time with Ricky (my cousin’s son) and some of his friends – all around 20 years younger than us and expert skiers. The skiing was wonderful but extremely tiring as we were skiing really fast almost non stop. Hitesh had been carrying an injury and the first day he had to stop as it was too painful. However when you only have 6 days of skiing a year, it’s a bit of a waste even to stop for a half a day and so he decided the next day to go for it – mind over matter and managed to ski fine the rest of the trip – he was in agony afterwards every night though, but the ice packs made it bearable!
In April, over Easter we had booked a country house in Wales for the long weekend. The house accommodated over 60 people and was a fully catered venue serving only vegetarian food. Bena had managed to get the booking due to someone cancelling and we decided to form a group (FLAG –friends (and family) leisure activity group). We had organised ice breaker sessions, yoga, pilates , cardio exercises pre breakfast , morning and afternoon walks, quiz night, dancing , cards etc.
The venue was absolutely gorgeous, the staff very accommodating, the food wonderful and everyone had a fabulous time. Watch out for the next trip in May 2011! Hitesh had organised a long walk on one of the days to scale the highest peak in South Wales and as it had snowed a few days earlier, the hills looked like they had some sprinkling of snow. However when we climbed, we found out we were walking in about 12 inches of snow – absolutely wonderful but very treacherous as well especially since one of the walkers in the group was almost blind and had to be helped every step of the way.
In May we had my cousin Gulab’s son’s wedding – Hitesh could only attend a couple of the functions as he was off to Turkey for his annual golfing pilgrimage. The wedding was in Manchester and as my mum was still finding it really difficult to walk, she only attended the London functions. It was another poignant reminder of those who’d passed away especially Gulab’s wife Panna who’d passed away in February and of course Kaka whose presence we miss at any family gathering.
June was coming up fast and with it the first anniversary of Kaka’s death. We kept a bhajan in his memory but not all the grandchildren could attend due to exams etc. It was a happier moment, everyone now coming to terms with Kaka and so we are now celebrating his life and cherishing our memories. The hurt is finally healing even for my mum who is coming to terms with living on her own and coping – she is also getting better physically which helps.
For the summer, Arjun had applied to go to the US to work as a camp counsellor and Nikhil had managed to secure an internship at RBS but in Edinburgh. So both boys were out for the summer – Arjun for almost 12 weeks and Nikhil for 6. And so it was just the 2 of us – alone again.
A friend of ours had a ski apartment in Les Arcs and had invited us for a week in the summer – The apartment slept 6 and Shaila was going to be there by herself, Bena and Vipul came was well. We drove there – the alps completely different in the summer and had a wonderful time. We enjoyed lots of hill walking, archery, boules , golf – the scenery was spectacular –alpine trees, waterfalls and enjoyed picking fresh strawberries, raspberries, blueberries, wild spinach etc.
10 days after our French trip was went to the US to meet up with Arjun and visit my sister Niru and her family as well as Hitesh’s brother Harshad and his family. Arjun had had a fabulous summer –he got nominated for counsellor of the year and came a close second. He had won over his campers as well as the other counsellors and youth leaders , had made some life long friends and revelled in the experience.
We enjoyed getting to hear all his stories and also had a fun time catching up with family in Maryland and Atlanta including seeing my nephew Raju’s little daughter Devika.
Nikhil in the meantime was really enjoying Edinburgh especially with the festival full swing. He was working for a former Maths lecturer who had studied at Cambridge and so he was learning a lot – He’d been given a project on arriving at the optimum sample size of cases to test in respect of defaults and initially he found the whole task extremely daunting – however by the end of the first week , he was settling in and enjoying the challenge and apparently at the end of his internship gave a brilliant presentation which was attended by some senior risk people. He enjoyed it so much that he decided he wanted to work in risk management.
So the summer came and went with Arjun barely spending a week at home before he had to go off to Uni again for badminton training etc. He has become the 1st team captain for badminton and the social secretary for squash so aside from the academic and sporting commitments, he has to deal with these issues. However it is wonderful to see how he has grown and developed taking all these pressures in his stride and actually delivering results. The badminton is going well – they are currently in the premier league so a lot of strong competition.
Nikhil meantime went back to Uni, and started out on his final year – how the time has flown!. And he also turned 21 in October. I had sent him 21 blank charity cheques for £21 each along with a story about how he had to become debt free and donate to charity or he couldn’t turn 21 ( plagiarised from an earlier story I wrote when he was 4 about having his birthday cancelled if he didn’t sleep by himself). Unfortunately the parcel never arrived – So I had to e-mail the story to him and he really loved it saying it brought back memories of when he was little!
Over the summer, we started planning a trip to India – this was the 3rd time for Bena – she and Vipul were due to fly out to India but after kaka became so ill, she didn’t want to go in case anything happened before she returned ; the 2nd time they were planning to go with Manjula and Mahesh and booked for May this year but of course we had the Icelandic volcano which put an end to that trip. And so she started planning another trip – 3rd time lucky – this time we had a wedding to go to and it was going to be 6 – the 3 sisters and their spouses. We planned to go North and visit Nainital, Kausani Ranikhet, Rishikesh , Missouries, Amritsar as well as Khajuraho. Bena had done all the planning and we had booked our plane tickets –we were just waiting for the wedding dates before booking the trains but then they advised that the wedding was going to be moved from Jaipur to Mumbai – this was bit of a blow as our plane tickets were in and out of Delhi – so Bena had to replan the whole trip – still sticking to our original itinerary .
The trip was great – it was month of travelling but we visited some wonderful places including the golden Temple and Akshardham and went white water rafting , and trekking in Rishikesh. The wedding was also wonderful – so much variety of Jain food, and lots of family that we met up with from Mumbai and india as well as from Uk and Australia.
Following the india trip we had a stopover in Kuwait which initially was not welcomed by me as I was due to go back to work on Monday – however, not only did we have the best hotel in Kuwait – pure 5* luxury with lovely food including best of all lots of fresh juices
But we would never have landed on Sunday anyway since Heathrow was closed due to snow. It was incredible – it had snowed heavily in England and the airports were shut. However on Monday we did manage to take off (only half an hour’s delay) and due to a medical emergency on board probably managed to get priority landing . The airport was still pretty inactive, only a few flights taking off and landing but luckily ours was one of them.
We came back to an England covered in snow yet again as towards the end of the previous year – the garden was completely covered in a blanket of snow – it all looked very pretty.
I managed to get in to work as intended on Tuesday which was a surprise and shock for all my colleagues who had been taking bets on when I would actually make it back to the country.
And so we had a white Xmas – well it didn’t actually snow on the day , but we had snow in the garden. We spent Xmas day chilling at home and catching up with the boys – arjun had been home for over a week by himself studying hard. – Nikhil had gone skiing with the uni crowd and only just came back on xmas eve.
So the boys are home for the holidays – Arjun waiting on internship applications – he’s managed to get KPMG but is holding out for an investment bank; Nikhil is waiting for graduate applications – he has a final round at RBS in January and is waiting for some other banks.
They are both doing well at University – playing lots of sports as well as working hard I’m told. Hitesh continues with his coaching and the Herts under 15 team are doing really well. The curtain business is really slow due to the recession biting but he’s got his badminton to occupy him. Work continues to be a challenge, more and more requirements coming and making my job ever more stressful – don’t they realise I want to retire shortly? Still I continue working compressed hours so at least I have another day to catch up with personal issues.
I hope you all have a wonderful New year celebration and wishing you all good health, happiness, and peace in 2011.
Hasmita Shah 