Even my father used to celebrate my birthday with so much fun and frolic. Around 400 guests were invited, even the cake was of three levels. And the very next day, all the extra gulab jamuns were distributed to the whole locality. Both of them were eager to offer anything to others ,on the contrary, they did not have enough for themselves but still they were helpful to everyone.

I remember when we were young, we always had a new trip planned for our summer vacations. My father used to book Maruti van and ambassador UHD 999, for our trip. We have been to Jammu (Vaishno Devi), Agra, Delhi, Nainital, Ranikhet etc. He always used to invite one of our family friends with us to enjoy. There were so many families in our locality. But my parents had a strong bonding with Raj uncle and his mother, we used to call her BIJI. He had three children, two sons and one daughter whom we treat as our own brothers and sisters. They were raju, babu and gudiya.

BIJI was the person who was like my mom’s mother in law and mother also. She taught my mom all Punjabi recipies .Eventually my mom was the grand master chef in almost all her recipies . As she belonged to a Tamilian family, she already knew all south Indian dishes but my dad also taught her a lot.

My mom is very beautiful with long black hair, kajal in her eyes , a big round red bindi , sindoor on her forehead with all studded jewellery and a good starched cotton saree (during summers) she used to put every day . She was a good house wife and an excellent and responsible mother too. But as our home was far from our school, she was not happy to get up early in the morning so mostly she gave bread omelet, bread jam in our lunch boxes. All three of us were enjoying our young days. I remember, there was Nauchandi Mela in Meerut in the last week of April and our daddy used to take us there every year. It was so much fun there. We enjoyed Giant wheels, circus etc. there.