The Crossroads

I found  him The journey of a lifetime has now officially wound down.  We are in England now, staying with our friend Monica in London.  Brinda's plan of having a stayover of a few days has been perfect.  Very little jet lag, slow re-acclimation to life in the West again, and lines that are actually lines and not nine people at the front jostling to nowhere. Warm showers. Logical traffic patterns. Hamburgers. Unfortunately, we miss some things from India already. Family. Friends (especially the kids). The buzz of waking up and the day is completely unpredictable. Crisp dosas. We have nicely spent our time here in London.  We haven't sat around waiting for our flight Sunday.   We've filled the days so well that we cannot even manage to stay awake at night doing some work. The day we flew into London from Bangalore, we dropped off our bags and headed into the city.  A hamburger at a restaurant near Harrod's was well earned....

Last night I had a meeting with the Director of Education at Azim Premji University at 6pm. We met for 1 and 1/2 hours. We talked about the Design Thinking Process and the guide I am creating for teachers. She loved it and had some really good feedback. Here I thought I would tie everything up in a nice little bow and hand off my work to Azim Premji and Indus International but the bow came undone. Instead, I was able to forge ongoing relationships with both affiliations to continue my work in India while getting the guide off the ground at home. I love that I have still will have such a strong connection here in India. Bangalore will be my second home. Today, we packed up all our suitcases and cleaned the house. Well actually John cleaned the house. It is spotless. Thank you John. We had lunch  with our dear friends and were gifted 2 plates by a local artist for our dinning room. We were so touched and so glad that we got a break from packing and thinking about our shift ...

This would have been the traffic has we left later Please keep in mind that it takes 1 1/2 to 2 hours to get into the city so we have to plan ahead. Now we have it down to a science. We left at 7:30am (arrived in a little over an hour!) to beat the traffic and get the best dosas in town by our foodie standards. We wanted to see if the kids have developed our high standards for food. Nope. They ate the dosas nicely but could not really talk about how different these were compared to the store bought dosas mix we buy at home. Oh well. John and I and our driver enjoyed them. After breakfast we walked to a temple that used to be underground but was discovered when a company wanted to build on the land. It was pretty cool. The water in the middle is natural spring water with fish and turtles. Pretty cool temple. JJ wanted so badly to pet one of the turtles and of course he tried. It was a different kind of temple for me. It felt so calm and meditativ...

As Brinda already mentioned, we are saying goodbyes and crossing off items on bucket lists.   For Father’s Day this year, Brinda set me up with a night of beer tasting through Airbnb experiences.   She really took care of me.   Set up the car, put money in my wallet, my only job was to drink beer.   Hmmm.   I think I can do that.   All over India, Bangalore is known for being the brewing capital.   Locals have drunk beer since the arrival of the British to the area.   More recently the reputation of beer capital was mostly built off the fact that United Breweries is headquarted and brews here in Bangalore.   United Breweries is the company that owns Kingfisher.   Like Budweiser (in many ways), Kingfisher brands make up a share of the market of over 90%.   It’s everywhere.   If you ask for a beer in India, you will likely get this.   HQ of United Breweries, home of Kingfisher, aka the evil empire ...

I take a lot of pride in trying to find the perfect card that says exactly what I am feeling, but this year it was pretty difficult to really capture my reflection of you as a father this year. Since Father's Day last year, a lot has happened and has been transformative. Here in India, I was able to watch you come into your own as a father. I mean you have always been an incredible father but being in India you really mastered fatherhood. You got the kids ready for school, you picked them up, you helped them with their homework, you made their favorite foods, and you did  their laundry every day (really ever day!). Aside from those mundane tasks of being a parent, you went deeper. You found JJ a soccer team and Ashram a karate class, you listened to them when they were upset, you meditated with them, and you showed them what it means to be kind and compassionate. With you as their father, leading them through life, they will find their way to becoming kind and compas...