2010 -- Something for Everyone!

You couldn't describe our 2010 as lethargic. Shobhita and Sarvesh were all over the place, blending sports, music and hiking, with their own creative masterpieces like statuseque snowmen, intricate craftworks for the festival of Navarathri, and scrumptious cuisine for Thanksgiving. And of course levity and farce was never far away (see photo right from the Big Apple Circus).

Now "zero years" (those ending in "oh") will forever bring female milestones to the Sundarams. 2010 was a true special one, with Chitra completing her fourth decade, while Shobhita scaled the dizzy heights of ten. Well Chitra might have looked for a low-key late March day, but she reckoned without the plotters-extraodinaire in her family, who stunned her with a surprise party (the biggest surprise being how we pulled it off, given the ravaging storm that knocked our power out for 5 days just before the event!). Friends convened from near and far, and Chitra's parents happily made the trip from India making it a trans-continental event. And one for the ages with some quite priceless reactions from Chitra, particularly when we showcased the video of her which Vijay had painstakingly compiled. Although he veritably risked life and limb in enlisting Chitra's office bosses to partake in the royal roastings!

After all those pulse-raging escapades we were all ready to chill out on vacation. As ever, our exploits centred around the history and the great outdoors, with a serene week in the State Parks of Pennsylvannia in April, walking in the footsteps of Washington's Army at Valley Forge, tip-toeing through the tulips of Longwood Gardens, and re-living the Battle of Gettysburg (and quite fittingly, there were plenty of civil wars of our own courtesy of Shobhita and Sarvesh!). On a grander scale, Chitra and Vijay managed to sneak off to Europe (sans kids!) in August for a sumptuous week of Vienna architecture, river-hugging bike rides, high Alpine trekking, and a birding tour that took us right up to the Hungarian border at the location of the 1956 revolution. There is a saying (obviously of Austrian extraction) that "Austria is Switzerland ... only with history and culture". Having spent a little time in Zurich (which has its own charm), I would have to agree. The Hapsburg Royal family left more than their fair share of imperial wonders, while some of the trails and vistas sent our jaws almost subterranean.

The kids also flexed their sporting muscles aplenty with Sarvesh serving notice to any budding bullies, earning his Karate Orange belt, and reaching the cusp of his Green milestone. While Shobhi's tennis progressed apace, serving like a gazelle and generally running her parents ragged around the court. And both discovered the joys of countryside bike riding, braving the high summer heat and cruising through the dazzling Fall foliage. Not to forget their initiation on skis, which they took to with rare alacrity. Shobhita was elegance personified weaving nonchalantly down the slopes, while Sarvesh as ever was more mercurial, blending text book watchful turns, with sporadic self-styled kamikaze descents down the Black Diamonds!

But enough of my ramblings. Why don't you check out the thrills and spills for yourself in our musical video and photo tributes to the year ...