Avatar and on to Christmas with Family

The reason I’m not doing a full-fledged post on Avatar is because I didn’t like it. It was painfully long, boring, and the last 45 minutes or so were very Bollywoodish – one man taking on & defeating an entire army of villains, a miniscule clan armed with bows & arrows taking on the might of a humungous army with the most sophisticated weapons at its disposal & winning, and all that. I feel the movie is way over-hyped, and if rumors that James Cameron spent ten years making this movie are true, then well, I think those ten years were a waste for a good part. Because the special effects were all that the movie had to offer, to me at least.

Christmas was spent with family. It was a last minute decision to travel home, and I’m so glad I did. It had been more than a year since I last visited my parents (though they kept visiting me every 2-3 months, individually if not always together) and this trip made me feel terrible about being such an inattentive daughter to my parents. The three days that I was home, their entire lives revolved around me. Feeding me to the gills with all my favorite food (so what’s new with Indian moms?), making sure my every need was taken care of without me having to move an inch, making sure I was warm and my throat protected at all times, given that the temperature dipped to 6-7 degrees at night & hovered around 15-16 degrees at mid-day and my throat being exceptionally vulnerable to the cold.

Sometimes, it’s only when you spend time with your parents that you realize how much you mean to them, that they’re possibly the only people in the whole world who love you unconditionally and without expectations of being loved the same amount in return, how it’s always OK that you couldn’t do something that they’d requested you to do for them, and how even a short periodic visit by you can light up their lives. Parents really are mind-blowing people and mine never get their due from me, I know, because of the sheer fact that I must live in a different city than them. They want me to be back for Holi and I’m already scouting for tickets.

In the meantime, thanks Mum for the amazing gajar ka halwa (made with full cream milk, condensed milk, ghee, cashews & raisins :) and the plum cake. And thanks Dad for taking the trouble to dress up, complete with a blazer, to come pick me up from the airport.