The First Few…

“The words printed here are concepts. You must go through the experiences…” - St. Augustine

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Dear Riddhie,

 

I read it somewhere that when you don’t have enough dots to connect, you come out with linear solutions without a broader perspective on the problem. The entire design and way of dealing with problems changes when you have  a broader understanding of the human experience.  I guess it is thus both enriching for the soul and nourishing for the intellect to try out various things and gather all new experiences you can.

Having said the above, let me clarify that this doesn’t permit you to go and be wild and live on the edge all in the name of an experience and I would expect you to be wise enough to take a sound call based on your intelligence to know the difference between what is right and worth giving a shot and what is not.

Coming back to this letter, let me narrate a couple of your first experiences in the last couple of weeks. These are little things and probably do not account for a separate post but nonetheless worthy enough of you being told about them.

THE BOWLING ALLEY: Beginning in a chronological order, the Saturday of February 25, 2012 became your first visit to a bowling alley. To tell you something, I was first introduced to the game of bowling and the concept of a bowling alley through Archie comic books. Back then, during those years of my growing up, very few people around me could relate to the sport. It wasn’t until years later during the early 2000s a couple of humble 4-6 lane alleys mushroomed up in the “global” village of Gurgaon where we would go once in a while. I can still do fairly OK at the sport and when on this particular Saturday your Diana aunty invited us to join them for a game, I was happy to take you along and see how you react to the atmosphere.

However, the flip side was that it was a fairly long drive to the place and you kind of fell asleep on the way. We had a good game and though you only woke up by the end of it, you were delighted at the sight of people around and enjoyed seeing what everyone was up to.

Here are a few of your pictures from the day.

THE BOATING EXCURSION: Actually your very first boat ride was when we took you for sight seeing at the Ellis Island and Statue of Liberty but I guess you were hardly a few months old then and could hardly make out a difference between a car and a boat so in effect this little boat ride we took on April 29, 2012 at the Marsh Creek State Park in PA becomes entitled to be called your first ever boat ride.

I was actually a little apprehensive to take you on board as I was unsure of how you would react to the entire episode and my fears were realized as soon as 15 minutes into the boat ride. You first wanted to stand up from where you were sitting and next wanted to hold onto a side and see water flow by. The next we knew, you were ready to take a dive and jump into the water. Probably you saw the entire lake as a big bath tub and were excited by the volume of water around you. Needless to add that it took us a while to take your mind off the jump and have you enjoy the view around. Somehow we managed to linger on for a few more minutes before deciding to cut short the ride and head ashore. It was interesting to note that once you were out, you wanted to go back in and enjoy the ride all over again. But, for us, I guess we had our lesson and decided not to repeat this until you were a little older to better understand the concept of depths and water bodies and boat rides.

Here are a few pictures from the day.

I am sure in posts ahead I shall have many more ‘firsts’ to talk about and maybe by the time you get to read all this stuff, most of these things would be so tried out that you would have lost interest in perhaps half of these things. Whatever, be the case, I guess I shall keep playing my part and document all I can, while I can :)

 

Love,

Dad.