A family miracle?!!

My dad writes to his baby sister

Hi sis,

Ayesha just showed me the Sai Baba picture from ma's puja room. What do you make of it? Do you think Pam played a prank --- or Lalit did it to freak out Nita and then pretended to believe in it as a way of accomplishing something soul-edifying for mummy? Or was it the work of one of the servants or the old panditji who goes to the pooja room every morning. This sounds too much like the milk drinking ganesha. Or the Virgin Mary weeping tears of blood that as exposed ultimately as a brilliant fraud. But if it makes mom happy, who am I to raise questions?! If word has gotten around, the place must already have become a shrine for Ujahni folks and Saii believers.

Ino

The baby sister responds
AHHHH...my brother the skeptic! Who is actually dying to believe that it really happened - or why the eff would you have written to me:)?

Nah, I don't think Lalit or Pam were behind it - not the servants either, they wouldn't have the intellect - the pandit??? Maybe - but the other thing that makes me want to believe this is the fact that I have actually seen honey and vibhuti drip from Sai Baba's photo in Swaran Bhabi's home as also in Satya and Omi's - long distance miracles of mind over matter perhaps - but still a miracle.

So maybe, just maybe... it's old Sai Baba's way of accomplishing something soul-edifying for mom. Remember how roundly she'd cursed him last year and promised she would never believe in him again or indeed, even pray to him again, for he had let her down by making her suffer the way she had - maybe God simply redeeming himself in the eyes of a woman who believed so implicitly and yet felt so let down - as you say - who are we to question if it makes mom happy and restores her faith!

Love you bro.

Sis:)

Ohhhh boy(s)

This whole falling in love thing was supposed to be easy. I was supposed to lock eyes with someone sitting across from me in a train. A bar. A lecture about global warming. I'd feel a spark and my lips would part magically, revealing a slightly crooked smile and coffee stained teeth. Then candlelight dinner, a first kiss while trying to eat the same piece of spaghetti. He’d profess his undying love for me, get down on one knee, maybe both and ..sigggh.. propose.

Under my fairy tales are stupid exterior, I long for my prince charming and a happily ever after. I want be wooed, oooed and aaaad. Today, a first date is a drink at a noisy bar, after which we eagerly await a text message. And if it comes, we read it over a couple hundred times, interpreting the hundreds of different meanings. Friendly? Flirtatious? It's hard to decipher a tone over a text. Stupid technology.

But the absolute worst part about dating is the fear of "freaking him out." I have to chew on my lower lip every time I feel the gooey words about to escape. A simple" I like you" could be read as, "I want to have your babies right this instant!"

And after dating for a while, we let our guard down and think it's finally safe to use words like munchkin and muffinhead. And while some of us change our relationship status on facebook, they plan their escape.

I've analyzed and dissected them(boys.. men.. men who are still boys ) like an eager Biology student. But I just can’t figure them out.

Weren’t we supposed to be the complicated sex?