Rubina Weds Shaun

Last month on Sunday, October 17, Rubina and Shaun were married in Middletown, CT preceded by small, intimate gatherings of the immediate family, the bridal party and some out of town guests on earlier days.  Sheena was the maid of honor and Shaun's sister Shannon was another of the bridesmaids. The wedding and celebrations which were largely planned by Shaun and Rubina went very well.  


Here was something interesting.  Our first preference for the wedding was for a Saturday, but with the Saturdays booked in the venue of our choice we had settled on a Sunday.  It turned out for the best.  After the cold and rain on Friday and a chilly Saturday, the weather improved dramatically and the sun came out to make for a great wedding day.

Rubina and Shaun in their wedding planning did an excellent job of fusing American and Indian traditions.  For example, they combined the Indian / Hindu rituals of circling a sacred fire seven times (with an explanation of its significance in English) with more typical American ceremonies and reciting of vows.  They also wisely kept focus on the primary objective of everyone attending having a good time, rather than getting the proceedings just right.  That all the ceremonies went off smoothly and well was icing on the cake.

One major difference between typical Indian weddings back home and ones in the US is in the size and composition of the guest list.  In India the invitee list is much larger and includes people who are close to the parents, even if they don't know the bridal couple too well.  But in the US as in our case those invited and attending with few exceptions were close to the couple, with the invitations going out from them rather than from the parents.  This distinction can probably help non-Americans understand why the Obama's were not invited to Chelsea Clinton's wedding.

We as Rubina's parents are happy that Rubina and Shaun are so right for each other.  Shaun is a wonderful, caring person with a warm and close knit family that Rubina (and we) immensely enjoy being around.

The couple went for a short but enjoyable honeymoon to New Orleans as they had to return to attend another wedding in Shaun's family the following week.  They're settling down well since, and plan to go on a second phase of their honeymoon trip next year.

Here are some bridal party pictures of the mehndi (henna hand painting) celebration on October 15 and the wedding on October 17.

Sheena's Latest Pastime - Take Two

Three months ago I had talked about daughter Sheena's varied interests including her latest one - aerial silk dancing, and added a YouTube link to her first performance on Feb. 14.

On April 27 she had her second performance. Her improvement is evident, as is the fact that in physical prowess her acorn fell far from the family tree, particularly on my side. I'm talking of her flexibility as well as comfort with heights.

About the first, I'm stiff enough to have caused considerable amusement all around during my few attempts at even the most basic of Yoga poses. I'm happy just to touch my toes and can barely manage to sit cross-legged on the floor for a couple of minutes in our traditional Indian gatherings. Yet Sheena's flexibility has been evident since childhood.

Her second performance is at some height off the ground, and much greater drops haven't bothered her. She showed no nervousness when we both first bungee-jumped in Vegas off a 180 foot platform. That was when I was inwardly frozen with fear. I saw her smiling broadly in a subsequent video of a bungee jump off a bridge to an apparently much deeper drop.

Back to her 2nd aerial silk dancing performance, here's a YouTube link to her video - the image is small but not bad for a night shot taken with her miniature Canon SD780 camera. She has a better close-up version on her Facebook account (for anyone who's her "friend" there.)

Sheena's Varied Interests, Including This Latest One

Most of our US born nephews and nieces were deeply channeled into specific after class activities from early childhood, with heavy investment of time and effort by them as well as their parents. They gained considerable proficiency and competitive accomplishments in their respective pursuits, including debating, ballet, golf, piano recitals, swimming and martial arts.

Our older daughter Sheena wishes we had pushed her more in this way, too. But we like most parents in our circle in India largely let our kids find their own interests, attended their performances and helped transport them to and from their activities.

In this background, Sheena developed a variety of pastimes, some of them quite atypical. In addition to playing musical instruments, singing and dancing she also became very good at chess and its tandem variant "bughouse."

In our trip to Las Vegas a while back she was taken up with bungee jumping off an 18 story high platform. I as dad felt obliged to go first to ensure it was safe. Though I hid it I was paralyzed with fear before my first jump, but Sheena laughed and joked with the operators while following suit.

What's more, she has kept up and expanded her activities since graduating and working in Austin. For a software engineer her pursuits have ranged well beyond the nerdy. She is accomplished in various modern dances, has been part of a women choir, and played Ultimate Frisbee tournaments in three continents.

Six weeks ago we came to know about Sheena's latest interest when Rubina and her fiancee Shaun visited Austin to celebrate Sheena's birthday. As a birthday present Shaun got and helped install an aerial silk rope through Sheena's home ceiling. Since the past few months she took up aerial silk dancing that was new to us. While a beginner, here's the video of her first performance jointly with good friend Sumina.

Thanksgiving at Our Home

A little personal update with some family pics.

I reached Delhi yesterday after taking a flight from Pune. Two weeks back on Nov. 26 we celebrated Thanksgiving at our home in Danbury with family and friends. Rubina and Shaun were the first to arrive from NYC, followed by Sheena on a flight from Austin.

Then Anita's close friends (now mine too :-) ) from New Jersey, Neeta and Sunil Dudani joined us in the evening. They were accompanied by their daughters Sonam and Tanya, and their cousin (also Anita's nephew) Karthik who was visiting from Chicago. The last to arrive was good sport Champa who made it despite having a hectic schedule ahead of her departure the next day for a month long trip to Munich and India.

As in earlier Thanksgivings we followed the meal with a celebration of Rubina's birthday that's close enough date wise. Shaun's folks had their post-Thanksgiving get-together in Massachusetts that was attended by Shaun, Rubina and Sheena who later took a flight back to Austin from Boston. Rubina, Shaun and his sister Shannon briefly stopped at our place on their way back to New York, and Anita had them try on some Indian dresses.

All said, we had a very good, enjoyable weekend, and here are the pictures to show for it.

Rubina's Engagement Update

About six weeks ago we announced to our close family and friends our daughter Rubina's engagement to Shaun Fillion. We are all very happy. I'm repeating the information while adding a couple of updates.

Shaun earned his bachelor's from New York University and his master's from the CIA (not THAT one - this is the California Institute of Arts.) He is now lighting designer in a specialist firm that works on large buildings and high rises in the US and internationally. He is of Irish American descent, and grew up in Bedford, MA, near Boston. Rubina is a graphics editor in the Wall Street Journal since March of 2008.

Last month on October 10 we had Shaun's family (parents Kathy and Tim, and sister Shannon) over at our home in Danbury. We had a great time - though we had met and spent time together over two months ago this was the first time after the official engagement. To my amusement Rubina several months back had described Shaun as "the least cynical guy in New York." His family is as warm and wonderful as he. Here's a link to some pictures from our October get-together:

http://picasaweb.google.com/smadan/ShaunFamilyVisit_101009#

We missed Sheena but she will be joining us over Thanksgiving on Nov. 26 as are Rubina and Shaun. On Saturday, Nov. 28 all three will go to Springfield, MA to meet Shaun's family and extended family for a post-Thanksgiving get-together.

Since last month we've remained in touch with Shaun's family, and along with Rubina and Shaun had been looking for wedding venues and dates. Though I had heard about this all these years, I was still somewhat surprised to see how so many of the wedding places get all booked up over a year in advance. Rubina and Shaun preferred a Fall wedding since the Northeast fall foliage will be a bonus for those attending the ceremony.

The planned wedding will be decent sized by US standards, though small in comparison to typical Indian ones. After visiting a few wedding places, the couple (and Shannon and us parents too) liked one of these a lot that Anita had first located on the internet. It is a mansion south of Hartford, CT, that is under an hour's drive from our Danbury home and quite close to Boston and central Massachusetts area as well where a lot of Shaun's folks stay. It was heavily booked but available on Sunday, October 17, 2010 which should be peak fall season, so we lost no time reserving this place for that day.

So the decision about the place and date has been made. It'll be fun for us all deciding on the mix of ceremonies, plus making other plans and arrangements over the coming months.

Mumbai Pre-Wedding Celebration Pics

Anita and I returned from Delhi to Pune on Jan 4, and Sheena joined us there a day later. Over the next three days all was fine and stable at my in-laws and we then headed to Mumbai to attend the wedding festivities spread over 3 - 4 days of our (Anita's) niece Ira.

Anita and I stayed in Mumbai with her cousin Ashok and were (as usual) very well looked after, while Sheena stayed in the suite in NSCI Club that was reserved for Ira, the bride. There were lots of fun events and we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves. It was also a great opportunity to hang out and reconnect with Anita's extended family and friends.

We (mainly Sheena) took many pictures. I'm adding the link here to the ones taken Jan 8 - 10 in the lead up to the actual wedding day of Jan 11 that will be posted separately. There are 200+ pictures of which a handful have been labeled.

Our Delhi And Shimla Trips

While Rubina couldn't get vacation and accompany us to India on our recent trip, I'm glad that Sheena could do so. Here I'm touching on the Delhi and Shimla legs of our trip with some pictures in the Dec. 28 - 31, '08 period. I seldom think of taking the camera along and using it, and most pics here are thanks to Sheena. A lot of my relatives and close friends are in Delhi, as are close friends and former IAS etc., colleagues in Shimla. Another city we generally visit in north India is Chandigarh, but there wasn't enough time on this trip.

In the late afternoon of Dec. 28th when we flew into Delhi from Pune, I called up my fast friends and IAS batchmates, Rajan Katoch and Jitesh Khosla. True to form they were game to meet over dinner despite the lack of prior notice. Jitesh hosted it in the Delhi 'O' Delhi restaurant of The Habitat Center. It was a fun meeting and great catching up.

The first three pictures in this link are of all of us (Jitesh and wife Rashi, Rajan and wife Kirti, Anita and I, and one includes Sheena who took the other two) after the meal. The remaining five feature Laboni the following morning, the first two with her dad Dharmi, then one by herself and the last two with Sheena. She's amazingly bright and does parents Dharmi and Bidisha proud.

Then Anita, Sheena and I drove up to Shimla. Indu and Yogesh Khanna (IAS '73, retd., now the regulator for the HP Electricity Board) had graciously insisted that we stay with them in Shimla and we spent two very comfortable and enjoyable days with them. On December 30th we visited our still unfinished house in Shimla. Then Anita and Sheena spent the afternoon with Anita's long time friend and former St. Bede's College faculty colleague Anuja Sharma in Theog, and then went shopping in Shimla. I visited friends and former colleagues in the HP Secretariat.

In the evening we headed to a dinner hosted by Yogesh and Indu and attended by old friends who were braving the Shimla winter. (Over half the people we know typically leave for the milder weather of Delhi or other plains.) Again much fun and laughter. In these pictures from our Shimla trip I missed many folks. Among them Anju and Daljit Minhas (our good friend from the IPS) had left our dinner gathering early before we started clicking.

We returned to Delhi late on New Year's eve and hurried to a party in the home of Anu and Ravi Sachdev. Ravi is a good college friend whom Anita and I hadn't met since 1984, and it was even longer since I'd met inveterate world traveler Rahul Sud, another college comrade who was also there. So it was a great reunion. Ravi's son and his daughter-in-law whisked Sheena off to a farm bash attended by about a 150 people and they enjoyed partying past 5 am. Quite remarkable considering that Sheena left for a visit to Sri Lanka that same day.

For Anita and I the remaining two days in Delhi flew by, and included a dinner at the Gymkhana Club with my parents and friends besides smaller gatherings before we returned to Pune on Jan. 4. On our last morning we finally visited the impressive Akshardham Temple in Delhi, currently the largest Hindu Temple in the world. I wish our stay in North India could've been longer but I'm thankful that we can regularly make it there.

American Airlines Bad, Zurich Good

On our way from JFK to Mumbai Anita and I were stranded in our connecting city Zurich for a day. A winter storm in the Northeast US area including New York had ended the previous night. The weather was clear and flights were departing normally when we boarded our 5:25pm American Airlines flight from JFK (New York) to Zurich.

But then there were an hour of cargo loading delays in which time light snow of about half an inch started falling. That led to need for de-icing our plane which was expected to take about 40 minutes as we were 4th in line. Instead, because of equipment failure and other snarl-ups we were on the ground for almost four hours and missed our connecting flight at Zurich.

To our surprise American Airlines miss-classified the entire cause of delay as weather-related. This way their staff escapes responsibility and enables them to cite their rules to avoid taking care of stranded passengers. Their staff at Zurich rebooked us for the same flight the next day without arranging or helping with any accommodation or paying a cent for stay or incidentals.

This was in stark contrast to our experience the previous year with Continental Airlines in Frankfurt where we were stranded for three days for genuine weather related reasons. Continental had put us up in a decent Frankfurt hotel for three days, paid for meals, and took such good care that I had sent them a letter praising their staff.

Back to Zurich, we made friends with a nice couple (New Jersey based, of Indian origin) in the same situation, along with and their remarkably turned out son (born and raised in the US, yet fluent in Marathi) who is a senior at Northwestern University. They contacted friends in Zurich who picked them up and put them up in their picturesque countryside home.

Anita and I also made the best of our halt by checking into a nearby hotel and taking a local train to see Zurich Downtown. It was a great opportunity for our first visit to a Swiss city. Zurich is a much better and enjoyable city than we had expected, combining modernity with rich historical architecture. Though it was a Sunday, the shops were open and there were crowds of revelers because of Christmas time.

Later at night in downtown we came across a devoted Gujerati son taking his visiting parents out for a walk. For dinner he recommended a well known restaurant called HillTL which served very good vegetarian cuisine with a lot of Indian fare. (By remarkable coincidence the next morning these parents were seated just across from us in our flight from Zurich to Mumbai.)

While entering HillTL we greeted a Sikh gent who was coming out. We started chatting and he became so friendly that he accompanied us back into the restaurant, waited as we ate, then gave us a tour of all 3-4 floors of it with a view of its open glass-walled kitchens. He then showed us other parts of Zurich downtown for the next hour or more, and was an excellent guide, filling us in on the background of various shops and landmarks. His name is Paramjit Bharj, and amazingly he's a devout and fully observant Sikh speaking fluent Panjabi even though he hasn't been to India since his birth. He was raised in Uganda and then came to Zurich over 30 years ago when Idi Amin expelled people of non-African origin. He had interesting views and we enjoyed his company.

Posted here are pictures one of a "singing Christmas tree" with live singers making up its branches, then one of Anita in front of this, one of me with Paramjit, and finally of Anita and I together. All in all it turned out well despite the disruption in our travel.

Rubina's Openers At The New York Times

Interesting things have happened since my last post, many of them to do with daughter Rubina. First, she had knee surgery in mid-August and can now largely manage without crutches. More happily she started work as a graphics editor on contract basis at The New York Times on September 4th.

A couple of days earlier she moved into a shared Manhattan apartment in the hip (as I now know) East Village side. It's a 5th floor walk-up so it was pretty brave of her opting for it after the knee surgery, but she managed fine and it's no longer an issue. Helping her move into that (unfurnished) apartment turned out to be easier than I thought. The biggest challenge in Manhattan seems to be to secure a suitable apartment - it's almost like applying for a job, with loads of paperwork. She has two nice room-mates, each having a decent bedroom and good common spaces, so that's worked out well.

But back to the NY Times: as a graphics editor Rubina is a reporter who plans and very often herself makes the pictures (other than photographs) that accompany news stories. It is interesting work and rounds out her journalism experience. And a picture is better than a thousand words..... They didn't waste time utilizing her. In the two weeks since she started Rubina has already had four pieces of her work appear in both the print as well as the online editions.

Here are links to three of her works (the fourth appeared in the September 18 print edition on page A24 but we can't find the URL. It compares and contrasts Hillary Clinton's healthcare plan with that of John Edwards and Barack Obama - so it's useful and interesting, even more so to me.):

- Her first graphic in the paper on September 5 which describes the dichotomy (and commonalities) on Iraq assessment between the two wings of the Bush Administration. It appeared in gray in the newspaper and orange online. It's more text-heavy than her other ones will be... You can see it by clicking "multimedia" after first clicking here.

- Her first credited graphic published on September 9th in Sunday Business. It's on Second Life. Pretty simple, but it involved some reporting because she had to find all the items, take pictures (screen shots), edit them and do some other research. Click on "multimedia" to see "A Luxurious Second Life" but after first clicking and getting to the article here.

- A census snapshot capturing some interesting features of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut states that appeared on September 18th.

In sum Rubina is having a good time, being productive, gaining experience and making us happy in the process. By the way, I'm writing this from Paris, two days before Anita and I return to the US. Enjoyable city with nice people who are more polite to English-only speakers than I'd been led to expect.

Sheena's Mexico Trip And Pictures

Our elder daughter Sheena has always been rather adventurous and fearless, and has some unusual interests.

For example she was very interested in chess while in school and at college, and became quite profficient at it and its bastardized American variant, bug-house. She'd organize or attend all sorts of chess and bug-house tournaments where nerdy boys were the overwhelming majority of participants.

When we were in Las Vegas 10 years ago, to my consternation she wanted to do bungee jumping off a rickety looking steel platform way up in the air. They dropped you from a height equivalent to an 18-storey building down to within 6 ft off the ground. I had to really strive to overcome my fear of heights to check out everything and bungee jump before she did. I was secretly petrified before my first jump, but she chuckled and giggled her way through the whole experience.

But Sheena's favorite game for the past few years has been ultimate frisbee. Though she plays it for fun, she's become quite good at it, and has been outside of the US six times to play in tournaments (twice to Europe, three times to Mexico and once to Canada), aside from inumerable outings within the US. The last time she went on the Memorial Day weekend three weeks ago to San Luis Potosi, Mexico. Her team won the first prize (though I'm sure she'd have enjoyed it immensely even if they came last.)

She sent me the link to the pictures in this tournament. She's included all pictures of hers including those with formidable expressions (beating those when she's arguing with me. :-) ) So you can glimpse the competitive spirit that sometimes lurks beneath that innocently smiling face. She's the one in the last picture in the red tee shirt, beating the other girl to the frisbee.

The Graduate(s)

Yesterday my parents, Anita and I attended our younger daughter Rubina's graduation from the Columbia School of Journalism. Amidst the fun and revelry I found almost all of Rubina's classmates that we met to be remarkably pleasant and friendly. They were bright as I expected of Columbia students, and (from all the hugs enthusiastic hugs exchanged) had warm family ties.

Columbia may have done a good job profiling and selecting the right people into the program but is there also a self-selection dynamic at work here? Journalism is typically a tough career with lousy pay. So it may attract people for whom money is less important, and have a sense of idealism or a passion for sharing their news and views. So could such profession/schools attract more of the "nicer" types? This is analogous to the Anita's belief that school teachers tend to be nice people. Not that all journalists or media are ethical or objective by a long shot. Think Fox News. While in public service in India I saw a couple from The Indian Express (one of whom's now a bureau chief) who concocted news to make sensational headlines and try extorting favors.

So I do have some concerns about the type and nature of media coverage. But at least these graduating students show that many people of good caliber and outlook are entering and sustaining the profession in the US and abroad.

Here are some pictures of the graduation and related events (click left for more.) I'm glad my parents could attend this graduation ceremony - their first in the US. Rubina's in most of them, with a couple of our family (sans Sheena who is in Austin.)
http://www.divshare.com/download/667819-c3b