Our family has Mom Meena (yup, that's her pic on the right), Dad Atish and three of the bestest kids in the whole world --- Aprotim, Anupam and Mohima.
Our initials are AMAMA. If you say it with the correct intonation, it sounds as if you are saying YesYes in Tamil which is our Mother tongue. If you said it really fast it could sound like MyMother in our Father tongue, Bengali.We kids speak Americanese, a dialect of English. Sometimes, in a playful mood, we will also regale our parents by speaking yet another dialect of the language --- Indlish. We sing Hindi, Bengali and Tamil songs (besides the native jim-bang). We older boys love to act in plays and have even done roles in Bengali. Oh, our baby sister will, too, we are sure, when she's old enough to be in plays. In the meantime, she is practicing, all the time, with her six septillion Barbies (and one Ken!) for whom she makes up plays and sitcoms and even musicals.
We often are blessed with the company of Paati and Thatha when they can spare the time to be with their US grandchildren. That is, when they are not busy spoiling their grandkids in Delhi, visiting their g'kids in Tokyo or adoring their Yol g'kids in the mountains of Himachal Pradesh (a beautiful part of the country, by the way, which we heartily recommend to anyone, easily comparable to more famous locales like Shimla, Darjeeling and so on). (Kannan mama has now moved to Delhi from Yol, but we liked Yol so much that we didn't feel like updating the last paragraph :-)
"Jet Set Paati", has been, fortunately, quite the globe-flier (nobody actually globe-trots anymore, do they?) and indeed courageously flew here once just before the Gulf War began.
Sometimes Thatha has also visited, but not enough. When Thatha-Paati are both here, the adults have fun late into the double-digit hours of the night playing 5-person Canasta which is a game that Baba played when everybody thought he was doing a Masters in Business Administration. He also played some Bridge.
We try to visit Dida and Dadu in Calcutta every now and then. Unfortunately, the only time we can go for any length of time is in summer because that's when our schools close. Usually, it is too hot to go sight-seeing in that climate. So apart from a few drive-by-viewings of Victoria Memorial and Howrah Bridge (Oh the crowds!) and the Underground subway and so on, we mostly enjoy Dida and Dadu's stories. When Kaku can spare time from his busy doctor's schedule in the Army, he rushes down to be with his Bhaipos and niece and Boudi, luckily for us.
One summer, we went to see Mount Abu, mostly because Baba wanted to show us kids the hillstation town in which he grew up and his St. Mary's High School where he studied for the eight years before joining college. Dida, Dadu and Kaku came, of course, and we had a very nice time there with the Survey Of India uncles treating us like royalty.
We live on the outskirts of Washington, DC the Capital of the USA. For many years, we were in Burke, Virginia and are now in Oakton, Virgina.
Another summer, we went for a train trip from the Washington DC area to the vicinities of Philadelphia and Connecticut and Boston and finally up to Vermont. Going to Vermont was really cool although this was a summer trip - hordes of people usually go to Vermont in fall (because all the trees turn to gold) or in winter (because all the mountains turn white). It was fun and we brought back one nice picture.
We have an album of pictures, but not all are viewable by casual accessors of this Website. Here's a cool 600KB picture of our home.
Our web site is under construction and probably will never stop being so since there are upto five people at work on it. So far, there is little time being spent on this time-consuming task, but we do have our own net.address, so it is a start, isn't it?