Twenty- five Seven

Christmas gifts for my children

December 25, 2013

It’s the season for good will and good cheer and a time to exchange gifts. Santa’s come and Santa’s gone leaving a trail of goodies in his wake. But still I want to give my children more. For them to have a secure future. I would like to give them

1- The gift of good health in immeasurable quantities because good health is truly your wealth. Healthy people have healthy lives and lead a secure and comfortable life
2- The gift of laughter in good measure to help them see the funny side of life. Very often things don’t turn out the way we expect them to and it helps to be able to laugh at how life turns out. It also helps to be able to make others laugh and lighten their burden too.
3- The gift of wisdom in more than ample measure to help them make right choices. We have the choice to make the choices we make : let us have the wisdom to choose our friends wisely, choose our battles wisely and choose the right path to the life we choose to make.
4- The gift of forebearance in some measure to help them tolerate things they cannot change and the patience to wait till the tide turns in their favour.
5- The gift of love in huge chunks because love truly conquers all.

Aren’t you surprised I’ve not gifted them money, a big house or a great car? Aren’t these the things that make a life secure? Of course, I want my children to have a lot of money, a great big house and a lovely secure job for undoubtedly without these, their life would be miserable but once they have these gifts , the rest will automatically follow.

This post is a part of the 1001 Gifts Activity by HDFC Life in association with BlogAdda.
A Christmas Story

December 25, 2013
Christmas is one of those festivals with a universal appeal and with all the hype of decorations and Santas in shops, children love the idea of getting presents from “Santa” when they wake up in the morning. When the girls were little they would wake up as early as 6 am and eagerly open the presents kept below their beds as we didn’t have a tree for Santa to keep the presents.

One year our little one was decidedly unexcited about the coming festival. I asked her what troubled her and she said “You know cousin N says that there is no Santa Claus. And that he doesn’t get us presents. He says its our mummies and daddies. Is this true?” she asked her little brown eyes welling up with tears. She was all of eight years’ old, the age when most myths are busted. Her older sister already knew who Santa was but gamely played along to keep her little sister happy. I didn’t have the heart to tell her the truth but I still didn’t want to burst her bubble – at least not for one more year. Hoping He would forgive me, I told her very diplomatically, ” Well if you believe in something strongly enough, it comes true.” That seemed to bring back the smile on her face and she went back to her room happy and cheerful.

On Christmas Eve that year she kept out a plate of cookies and a glass of milk on the table near the open window ” For Santa,” she explained to me as she got ready for bed that night. The next morning she got up earlier than ever and was thrilled to bits with the presents that were under her bed.
“See mama, he came!” she told me excitedly.”He even drank up the milk and ate up all the cookies.”

Seeing the sparkle in her eyes, I was happy that I had kept up the charade. The next day in the post there was a special letter for her from Santa Claus, sent from Santa Claus village in Finland. He told her how busy he was that year and how his elves were working round the clock to make sure that no child was forgotten. That letter made her happier than the presents Santa had left for her. She was beaming as she showed me the letter ” Mama, you were right : if you believe in anything hard enough it does really come true!”
Related articles

Why I still believe in Santa Claus (buncheslife.wordpress.com)

Where on earth is Santa Claus …now? (newsnet5.com)

There IS a Santa Claus (alettertomychildren.wordpress.com)
Shopping on a Sunday

December 22, 2013

English: TAKEN DURING WIKIPEDIA TAKES MUMBAI 1 PHOTOWALK (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Today was another free Sunday so I decided to make the most of it at Phoenix Mills. Christmas is celebrated with great commercialism in Mumbai and I love seeing the decorations with snow and reindeers and rosy cheeked Santa Clauses all over the show. With street urchins selling Santa Caps and oddly enough felt reindeer horns even those who don’t want to celebrate Christmas will just have to say Ho Ho ho. There are Christmas Puddings and pre-Christmas lunches, the best in town being the spread laid out by the Yacht Club yesterday afternoon. With turkey and ham and a whole load of goodies, this much awaited club event was a sell out as we discovered when we went to the Club to place an order for some turkey for Christmas. The place was a buzz with satisfied members literally licking their chops as they tottered down the staircase.

Christmas is oddly enough celebrated with great glee in Mumbai – almost as enthusiastically as Diwali. Perhaps it is something to do with the chill in the air and the general feeling of relief that another year is soon coming to a close. I love going out to the shops not necessarily to buy anything but just to see the decorations. The main hall at Palladium was decorated with fairy lights and snow flakes and seemed busier than I’ve seen it for quite a while. I reached there fairly early in the afternoon and the footfalls had just started coming in. By the time I left five hours later there were cars parked all along the ramps of the parking lot! And literally car loads of people were pouring out of the lifts. The central courtyard had some cars and stuff for the children to play on but I felt they looked tacky and quite scary.

The shop I enjoyed visiting the most was the Foodhall on the top floor . This shop which has a lot of gourmet stuff also has a regular grocery section for everyday provisions. But it has a bakery and an Indian sweet sections.It also has a promotional counter where every day new food items are promoted along with a small demonstration and tasting bites. This store will soon go online and will home deliver which is great considering that the worst part of this store is the checkout – it is long and always painful and worse still, if you have frozen food in your cart, it’s bound to melt by the time you get home! So I think I will try the online shopping experience as I’ve been doing these past two months.

Ever since I’ve become housebound and the traffic even more horrendous I’ve been ordering groceries on line. What I find best about this way of shopping is that I can actually keep two or three windows open simulatneously and decide which is the cheaper site to buy from. But the downside is that you get to miss out on the touch and feel experience of shopping – somehow despite all the chaos and mess of the roads and markets, I miss bump and grind experience of Indian shopping ( this is how Mr. Biyani of Foodhall and Pantaloon fame described shopping in his malls often criticised for having narrow aisles and a somewhat tacky feel. However I find shopping online shopping a real boon and have been using localbanya.com and bigbasket.com . Out of the two I prefer localbanya as believe it or not bigbasket had only ONE broom to choose from!