The weekend in US and Ganesh Chaturdhi

21 Sep
Raju Alluri Personal & Family

I am hardly away from home on Ganesh Chaturdhi festival but this year the festival came in the middle of my US trip. However, it came on a weekend, so that I can spend that day with Ravi and Sunitha.

I started after lunch in Bay Area on Friday, the 14th and reached Sunitha’s place in LA by 9.10 in the night. Most of the travel was very smooth, but once we reached LA, traffic was like hell. Highway 5 clogged at Burbank avenue for almost an hour and Highway 60 clogged at a couple of places, the 2nd one being at the intersection of 60 and 71 due to an accident. Srihari, Purnima and Tanvi came along with me.

Both Nidhi and Nikhil fell asleep by the time I reached there. So I couldn’t open their gifts. We had dinner and I drowsed to sleep while having a chat with Ravi.

I woke up at about 4.30 am on Ganesh Chaturdhi day (Saturday) and helped Sunitha a bit in preparing the food specials for the day. Nidhi has a baseball practice scheduled at 10am, so we had to rush thru the pooja while Srihari is still getting ready.

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Nikhil is very unwell this morning, with fever and throwing up. He barely managed to sit at the pooja for a few minutes.

Once Ravi took Nidhi for the baseball game, I went to the Ontrario mall especially to buy some items for kids at Rainforest Cafe. By the time I returned home, it is almost 1pm. Unfortunately, Nidhi’s game postponed to the post lunch hours and they are back to game by the time I am home. I promised Nidhi that I will open the suitcase from India only after she is back from the game. So we opened the goodies (and started eating them 🙂 ) after she is back from the game.

Ravi, Srihari and myself spent the evening with a drive to the Indian store and a nearby dollar store. Nikhil joined us and started feeling better by the night. Once back, we had our dinner and watched a movie for a short while. That is the only chat time I could get with Ravi and Sunitha. Close to midnight, we retired for the day.

Sunday started with a grand breakfast (pesarattu and upma.) Then we had a short photo session, my regular activity during trips :-).

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I also made an MP3 CD for Sunitha and Nikhil enjoyed every part of it, including testing the CD in Sunitha’s Camry. Then I played with kids for about an hour. We played Monster, Dinosaur and a card game too. Nidhi showed me her school fund collection catalogue and she could clearly articulate the purpose.

We had a nice lunch with Prawns Biriyani. We left for Bay Area right after lunch. We reached Bay Area by 7.30pm. After a quick dinner, I headed to the Homewood Studio Suites.

Even though I am away from home for the Ganesh Chaturdhi, spending it with relatives made it a special occasion. Nidhi and Nikhil got more closer to me, now that I have been with them a couple of times within the last 6 months.