All the best things in life are free.....

Last three days, I have been having a great time at home with kids and dogs. We had some competition events for the kids on Saturday at school and the whole day went in that. Vishu and Anjali got various prizes for their respective events.

It's a great feeling (an unexplainable one at that!) to see your kids at school and how they interact with their friends and teachers. You immediately think of your school days and compare. I was anyway very proud to see them as I thought they both were good compared to how I was at school.

We played shuttle badminton games - me, Vishu and Anjali. After a lot of permutation and combination the teams have set up as Daddy Vs Kids. As expected, kids team lost every championship we played. However, the kids team won Wii Mario Kart comprehensively beating Daddy's 'bum like a drum'!

We inaugurated our swimming pool for the summer on Sunday - it was great fun to play in the pool with both the monkeys. Vishu has learnt his swimming since last summer and Anjali is still scared of it. That's this summer's plan.

Gave bath to the dogs - a very good connecting experience with them whenever we do it. Biscuit, the gentleman, loves his baths and stands still when we scrub him. Blackie, can not stand the soap on his body. So, it was a hustling exercise with him.

Both the nights, got time to spend with my Jeyanthi on the terrace under the moonlit bright nights - talking about kids, future, Lakshmi, life and all the other stuff that binds us together, while the cats were trying to chase/catch the bats flying around. Nedurburg Shiraz made things very special and precious - (parents with two under-10 and charged up kids know this very well).

Above all, in the last three days I have seen 3 brilliant sunrises in the morning and two awesome sunsets in the evening from my home. All these things are making me remember 'all the best things in life are free' and feel pretty good about the last 3 days.

Then this morning, I saw the watchman at the main gate of the compound when the sun was rising and I was feeling good about the time I was having. Suddenly I started thinking about his kids, the sunrises/sunsets he sees everyday, the food he eats almost everyday sitting on the street in front of his small hut - then wondered what value does he put for the same good things that are free for him too? Probably nothing and he may want to have a bigger house, money to go to movies, have good car/bike, etc.

My head since then is filled with the complexities of life and the conflicts of desires with respect to satisfaction in life........