Dad's letters

I remember when I was in school, in my teenage years, dad had a transfer to a remote place. It was my parents decision then, that mom and I would move to Delhi for my education sake. This was a period of 4 years from my 9th grade to 12th grade. After that dad joined us in Delhi and since then we have been there. My sis was already in a medical school then.


Dad used to write letters from where ever he was. Yes, those were the days of letters. No emails. Of course he used to call, but that would be mostly once a week or something. And I loved to write detailed stuff that could never be done on the phone. Moreover, my dad is a man of a few words. So you cannot talk with him for very long.

So back to the letters. He would be extremely regular in writing. And you would always get a reply to your letter. Always. But the contents of his letter were very predictable. The letter would never be more than half a page long. Sometimes it could even be 4-5 lines. There would be a basic skeleton of the important matter that would repeat much through all the letters. If he had anything new or interesting he'd add a line or two about that. But mostly this.


Dear MyNickName,

Hope you and mom are doing well. I am doing fine too. How is your health? Hope you are eating fruits, juice, milk regularly. Do take care of your and mom's health. How are your studies going on? Work hard. You know time is very important. Put in your best effort.

Rest everything is fine. The weather here is ... I will call you on ...

[Space for anything new and interesting]

Your Papa.

So I guess it boiled down to health, studies and weather... But you know, however predictable it was, I always enjoyed it thoroughly. And he had a beautiful hand writing. He still has. Sometimes I used to play the game of guess what's written before I read the letter. Mom used to laugh at me. And hey... come to think of it, I do miss letter writing sometimes. I mean telephone and email are great, but there is something beautiful about a letter that is not there in this neo digital era of communication.

At the Charlotte Airport - I

This post is more about how and why we were at the Charlotte airport (also why long enough that I could seek it as an oppurtunity to blog). This will be followed by the post which actually is the blog I scribbled while at the airport.

My friend S was at NJ this week and since it was a long weekend and since we have a couple of close friends there, we thought it to be a good idea that I travel and spend the weekend there. So, I landed up in NJ Friday morning. We had a blast with our friends the whole weekend. I want to specifically mention that the friend's apartment we stayed at is on the 29th floor of a building located on the water front of river Hudson. So the view of the New York city across the waters is just breathtaking. You would be paying at least a $1000/- a day if you booked a hotel to get such a view. (I have posted a couple of pictures of the view I clicked last night, the first is a little hazy).


Anyways, after all the fun we had, we headed back to the Newark airport around 1:45pm. Our flight was scheduled to depart at 2:55pm. There was a 1 hour break at Charlotte where we would take the connecting flight at 5:45pm to Raleigh Durham Airport. Well, that was how a simple day would have been. But a simple day it did not have to be. So, just to make our lives interesting, our first flight got delayed by 35 minutes. Well, only as true as it was told to us. When we did board the plane by 3:30 pm and the pilot announced that we are soon going to fly, I had my doubts. And then the soon was understood when we saw 9 planes standing ahead of us waiting to take off. So it would be another some minutes before we would be in the air. The flight eventually departed at 4:45pm. Thankfully it was a short flight. As the plane prepared to land, the airhostess made an announcement informing about all the gates/terminals for the connecting flights. Ours was gate B12. Or that was what I heard.

S heard D12. So, we had a flight in 10 minutes from Charlotte and we werent together on the departure gate. Big deal, we should be able to figure that out, I assured myself. But I could already feel the butterflies in my stomach. In fact, they were growing by the number. Since I wanted to practice being calm, I tried to remember all good sayings of Stephen Covey, Gandhi, Buddha. However, as soon as we landed (and before we got off the plane) what I heard freed me of all my worries. Why you must ask? Because the Murphy's law won again. Just before our flight was about to land at about 5:33pm the airhostess made another announcement "All connecting flights through 5:45pm have departed". All my mind thought at that moment was "?@#!@#!". God solves your hassles in strange ways.

Anyways, thankfully there was another flight to RDU later in the evening (7:40pm) and happily we did manage to get the tickets for it. Of course, the seats were neither Window nor Aisle and we werent going to sit together. At least we dint had to stay the night in Charlotte was what we tried to focus on. So kinda hassle-free in some way, isnt it? Now we had a couple of hours to kill. I always love this idleness. We could do some fly-beating, yawning, watching, eating, waiting and cursing and many other things. Since I wanted to be proactive, I chose to blog (Blogging is proactive for those who do not know). I picked up a piece of paper lying in my handbag and started scribbling with a green pilot pen.