Holidays are here

The children are coming home tomorrow. So, I decided to take off from work for the rest of the year. It has been a busy year with many projects, dead lines, change of job, sudden serious stroke of my ex-boss, and so on. Yesterday was my last day at work. After checking off the “to dos”, after sending one email with my sincere best wishes for the holidays and the New Year to a long list of coworkers and friends from the business world, I shut down my office computer and headed home. The office computer will get some rest too. So, here I am on a Friday posting my thoughts.

The strange part is that in spite of all the bad news world wide, in spite of frustrations showing on my face at times, personally it has been a good year. Our older daughter got her doctorate (and a job), her fiancé got a faculty position at the University of Chicago Law School, younger daughter finished her pre-med year at Columbia University rather successfully, her boy friend (a doctoral candidate too) presented a paper in Paris, France (and both had a nice trip to Paris), my wife and I had a great vacation in the summer in Boston-New York area (and met many friends and relatives), my niece’s adorable baby boy had his 1^st birthday in California, we had a great Thanksgiving dinner (a first for my mother-in-law), and so on.

Now, it’s the holiday season and time to ring out the old and ring in the new. I added more lights (my wife brought some more yesterday) today in the front yard. I hope I can keep doing this for a long time so that when the children come home our place will always be bright as it has been since their childhood. Obviously, they will have their own children some day and they will decorate their own house and spend time with their own children. That’s the way it is supposed to be. So, in time perhaps they will not be able to spend as much time during such holiday season. However, I hope to keep the holiday lights on for them as long as I can. Happy holidays to our children. Happiness to all the children of the world. Let the holiday lights brighten the hearts of every soul and fill their hearts with love. Peace, Love, and Joy to the world!

Our World

Massacre in a mall in Omaha, Nebraska, suicide by a Dalit woman in Madhya Pradesh, India for lack of justice (who was raped twice by the rich & the powerful), killing in Nandigram, West Bengal, anarchy in Beltola, Guwahati with mob justice, monks in jail in Myanmar, suffering in Gaza strip for stoppage of supply from Israel, military democracy (!) in Pakistan, forgotten Darfur in Africa, cyclone in Bangladesh, homeless Dalai Lama, burning Iraq – what a world we live in! Six billion people (and growing), shrinking forest, human-animal conflict, hole in the ozone layer, growing disparity, growing chaos – do we need a course correction urgently? And how? Who will lead us all to that heaven on earth?