An update

It has been a long time since I entered a post here. Just to update everyone, here is a simple synopsis of things that have happened in my life:
1. I rushed home to make peace with my dying mother in the third week of August.
2. I completed my first month in the new home
3. I went back to Mumbai on my planned fortnight-long holiday from the 17th of September to the 20th. In between, my mum passed away to meet her Maker.
4. Upon returning, within a week, I took my study break to visit the United States of America on my first ever visit. The purpose was to participate in the World Congress of Gastroenterology - where I was to mount, display and answer questions on my scientific poster at the Orange County Convention Center, West Concourse, in Florida, USA. I stayed in a budget hotel for 5 nights and used some of the free days to roam around and visit some of the major city-wide attractions, including Universal Studios and Seaworld.
5. Life has gone back to a relaxation mode and I have resumed my work in the hospital.

And that's pretty much it, insofar as a synopsis goes.  

Brief note on my last month - vacation and fun with family in the U.K.

My family arrived to spend three weeks with me in the UK on the 30th of September. We had a great time travelling across thousands of miles of England, visiting over 10 destinations. We even saw a bit of Scotland. It was three weeks well spent. I returned to my duty on the 18th, but my family stayed with me in Blackpool for a further two days, enjoying the local attractions and going on a spree of shopping. When I finally left them at Manchester airport on the morning of the 21st, it was a bitter-sweet parting. My return to work had already effected a few days earlier, but on those last two days, my heart had been with my dear wife and daughters. When I returned to work on the 21st, I plunged myself again into my work, and it has been over a week now. 

Where did we go? We visited Bath, Oxford, Stonehenge, Castle Comb, London, Cambridge, York, Durham, Edinburgh, Ambleside, Windermere and finally, Blackpool. We also made day trips to Liverpool and my family went to Manchester as well. We also visited Preston to see the Birds of Prey Sanctuary at Turbary Woods and Hadrian's Wall and the Roman Vindalonda Village while we were en route to Edinburgh. Finally, we did a day-long bus trip to the Scottish Highlands to reach the southern end of Loch Ness. A really fantastic schedule - and it all went off without any major hitch. 

There were a few minor issues, though. At Bath, while checking out, I fell down a flight of steps, my large bag following me down the steps and staying just short of landing atop my head. My back took a beating, though, and even as I write this, I still get the odd jolt of pain down the spine. The other setback was that I had a minor scratch on a rented car ... and had to pay some damages to the rental company. Other than these two incidents, a great time was had by us all. 

To read more about this phenomenal trip, do await the link backs from my travel blog. Thank you for your patience. 

To see a few snapshots from the long vacation, do visit this link.

Weekend visit with family to Lavasa, Day 6 and 7 of my Mumbai visit

This was a visit to remember. I booked the Hotel Waterfront Shaw online through www.booking.com. The drive to Lavasa is via the Mumbai-Pune Expressway. Once you reach Wakad, you go off the expressway and go to Lavasa via Hinjawadi. 

The Waterfront Shaw

The promenade

Bridge over the artificial canal

The drive is very straightforward until you reach the final 20 km segment, which is a ghat that you have to drive over to reach village Dasave, where Lavasa has been created by Sharad Pawar. It is an expensive weekend getaway that Punekars come more frequently to - and they don't even stay here overnight. There are plenty of things to do here, such as dining out, visiting a gym, participating in water sports (closed due to monsoons), cycling, indoor sports, etc. 

The hotel itself was excellent in most respects. It is located soon after entering Lavasa (you need to pay INR 200 to the local municipality to enter the resort. They call it parking charges :-P). There are breath-taking views over the valley, and most people come to the top stopping at different places to take photos, admire the valley views and perchance eating corn on the cob (there are at least a hundred outlets on the road where this is sold at exorbitant prices). 

All the structures along the waterfront are similarly designed and it makes for a beautiful view. The hotel is part of the same long chain of buildings. The rooms were actually large, self-contained apartments with a kitchen, a living room and a bedroom. We had booked two adjoining rooms, of course. Although we did not get rooms facing the waterfront, it did not matter as the facilities inside were very good. There are several themed restaurants, and we took the first meal of Saturday and the next days' complimentary breakfast at the American Diner. We took dinner from a smaller place, while we did not get a chance to visit their Indian restaurant, named the Chor Bizarre. There was also a Grandma's Bakes outlet for baked stuff and cakes, and some other outlets (including one that made and served Lebanese food). Just next door was a Cafe Coffee Day, where I had the opportunity to have one cup of coffee late in the evening. 

During the afternoon, we strolled, had hot bhajiyas and tea, cycled on single seat and double-seat tandem bicycles and visited a games center, where we played Table-tennis. 

All in all, it was a weekend well spent. We checked out after breakfast on Sunday and returned to Mumbai by the late afternoon, Hannah and I driving in turns. 

Strung between the rank of a registrar and a house-officer

This is a very candid admission that I am finding the job of being a registrar in the NHS pretty difficult. Although, yes, my skills are improving, I am still not there. I mean that I am still struggling to be recognised as a safe registrar in my department. Things have come to a stage where my departmental head wants me to downgrade to a house-officer level so that I am able to carry on. I have agreed to do so. To help me to understand the complexities of NHS. 

I have even begun to do locum jobs as a house officer. I did two nights in Neonatology at Preston last Friday and Saturday. This was an enjoyable experience for two reasons. I have always enjoyed working in neonatal units - just a personal preference, really. Secondly, the consultant who was with me on both the nights was a real nice guy by the name of Dr. Egbeama. He is a Nigerian Neonatology consultant. I was happy to be guided by him as his entire demeanour was very good. He is supportive and shows the right approach for doing things. The interesting thing is that I was supposed to do just Friday night, but the department needed me for one more night, so I ended up coordinating the second night with my locum agency. This worked out right. I even got a room on the campus to stay the day out. I probably will make some money from these two nights' extra work, but more than the money, it was the exposure to a new setup that I will cherish in time to come.

On Saturday morning as well as on Sunday morning, I spent some time to travel by bus to R K Sweets, the "gujju" eating out place on Plungington Road near the Lancashire University complex. Now, I have reviewed this place on Tripadvisor and on Google Maps, and I must say that it continues to be a top favourite with me. I usually end up purchasing stuff to take back with me to Blackpool. Also, I always have their masala dosa. This time, though, I had a breakfast of Idli sambar chatni on Saturday, and their full lunch thali on Sunday. Both these were marvellous. The lunch thali had kadhi, pulao, puris, 2 vegetables ( I chose paneer mutter and undhiyu) as also a serving of savoury (I had an onion bhajiya) and a sweet (which I exchanged for another savoury, a batata wada). It was a delicious meal.

In other news, back home, it looks like my younger daughter Hannah, who was between jobs for the past month has found herself a new job! She will be working as a social media content writer for a company called Insomniacs. It's good news indeed. Inas and my wife Nishrin are on their usual routines. Mom continues to be all right after a short period of illness last month for which she had to be hospitalised for a few days.

And that's about it. Do continue to visit my blog and comment!

India Visit, Day 10: Final adieus and departure for U.K.

I am now nearing the end of the re-telling of my first short vacation to India from the U.K. It was a very eventful holiday indeed. More than anything, the surprise element added charm and love to the whole thing. I imagine I might have inspired others to do something similar to spice up their own encounters with their near and dear ones. 

I did surprise my family in one more way. I had a tattoo of a traditional tribal design made on my shoulder when I was in the U.K. and when I showed this to my family members, it made them all gasp with shock and pleasure. I would like to share that with you, dear reader. Not their look of surprise, but the tattoo itself:

The final day was spent in packing my bags. There were a host of things I had collected over the last week, a list of which I had made much earlier when I was still in the UK. Among these things were a good quality kadai with a glass lid, some spices and condiments I had missed earlier on my first travel to the UK,, some new clothing that I got stitched while in India, and a lot of miscellaneous stuff. 

Eventually, I left the house at about four o'clock, and reached the airport at around five p.m. in the company of my daughter Hannah. The return flight was at half past nine, and this took me across Asia and Europe till I arrived at Manchester early in the morning on Monday, the 7th of March 2016. 

Hannah and I in the foyer of T2 Terminal of the CSIA

Smiling and cheerful faces hiding the inner pain of parting

This ends the string of posts describing my brief but memorable holiday in India. On to my newer posts about life in UK. Thank you all for reading ...

India Visit, Day 9: Trip to Imagica with brother Murtuza and our children

Today was a highlight day in my India visit as my brother, with his two children Shabbir and Umme-Salma, and I, with my daughters Inas and Hannah, went to Adlabs Imagica - a full-scale adventure park located near Khopoli off the Mumbai-Pune expressway. We were all excited, and the reason I was excited was the fact that I had never been to this park despite my knowing about it since nearly a decade. The great thing about this visit was that I was being allowed in totally free, as I had just had my birthday a few days before. 

We drove to it in my car, reaching there at about nine o'clock. The younger kids of Murtuza were too excited to be there, and no sooner had we entered the park than they had run to the first of the many rides that are available here. When we had entered the park, we were all given some or the other things to wear on our bodies. I got a "Birthday Boy" wristband; my family members, including the brother and all the 4 offspring received "Team member" badges. Over the course of the next few hours, we took one ride after another, until, at about 1 p.m., we sat down near one of the restaurants to have lunch. 

As we did the rides, one thing struck me immediately: this park has everything on the same scale as international adventure parks like the Universal Studios park that my kids and I had visited in January 2014 in Sentosa Island in Singapore! Additionally, the creators of this park had changed the themes to fit them to the Indian culture and Indian stories. A simple show based on a montage of movies shot from a helicopter at different majestic locations in India literally took our breaths away! There were roller-coasters - three in number. I did not have the guts to sit in any of the open ones, but I did sit in one that was inside a dome and in complete darkness. I could feel my insides taking a toss, but I never realised that I had gone through 2, or maybe 3, 360 degree turns inside the space of about 55 seconds! One was supposed to keep one's eyes open to view celestial images (the ride was called a Journey into Space - or something similar, but I did not see anything as I kept my eyes firmly shut in an effort to stay calm under pressure. This ride began with our train moving slowly to a "gate into space", and then the train suddenly zoomed ahead - so fast, in fact, that I felt like screaming. What an experience!

There were fun rides too, such as revolving around a hub seated on what seemed to be cuddly flying elephants, going up and down in a tower (that was scary!), shooting each other with water cannons in a sort of pirate adventure, and a virtual ride in a car that rides and flies across different landscapes of the Imagica ground in an effort to save innocent children from a villain. We, the riders, are in cars that shake and grind to give us a virtual experience while the screen shows us the visuals of what we might have been actually experiencing had our cars been real. The hero we are helping is a cartoonised version of Anil Kapoor as Mr. India, while the villain is Mogambo - played by a cartoonised version of Amrish Puri. This was a very enjoyable ride indeed. 

We finished all the rides (barring one, which closed before we could reach it) at around sunset. Our trip back home was uneventful, and the hectic day ended when we finally reached home around ten p.m. 

There are so many memories we have of this day, but I am sharing some here with you. Enjoy.

India visit, Day 4 and 5: Family dinner at Apoorva and meet-ups

The next few days went by with me doing a lot of stuff that would otherwise be termed minor - like doing chores and running errands, but it helped me organise the pending activities in the house, as all the rest of my family are continually busy with their work and profession. In the evening, on Tuesday the 1st of March, we all went out for dinner. The place we chose is the Apoorva restaurant in Fort. It is one of the most famous, reasonably priced fish food joints in south Mumbai. This time, too, it did not let us down. We had generous portions of starters and a fried fish (surmai) for the main course. Really enjoyed myself.

On Wednesday, I went to meet some of the important family members I did not meet last week, such as my uncle Moiz Sawliwala. He is nearly 90 but continues to be mentally sharp and active. I also had a chance to meet a few others - on the road, while shopping or moving into the market. One such person was my cousin Masuma Pacha. She is the daughter of my mum's first cousin. It was a pleasure meeting her near Crawford Market with her daughter Munira.

There was great interaction between me and some of my neighbours. This is especially true of Iqbal Bhinderwala, who is my immediate neighbour. He and his family have been a source of great support to me and my family. The next is Mr and Mrs Subair and Sabina Sawliwala. I met with them and their very pretty daughter Zahra. Finally, I had a long meeting with the Karmalawalas, my third-floor neighbours, whom I went to visit to commiserate on my behalf as they had a double loss of both their parents last month within the space of a few hours. Here, I also met their elder daughter Tasneem, who is in India from the UK. She lives with her husband in Liverpool.

In addition to these people, I also met with the neighbours of my mum when I went to visit her. One of the people I met was Razia Shakir, who is the daughter of Mr and Mrs Yusuf Sihorwala. She lives in Dubai, and meeting her by chance after nearly 3 decades was an amazing thing.

India Visit, Day 3: A family visit

I made my statutory visit to the home of my sister in law, who recently lost her husband to an unexpected, short illness. Pappu bhaiya we called him. 

He leaves behind his wife, Balwinder, a son and his wife, and their toddler son Vansh, apart from my wife, Kamaljeet (Nishrin), his sister and some other relatives. The visit was statutory because my brother in law passed away just over 3 weeks ago. It was a sad home, and there was nothing much to say. I tried to bring some cheer to their family by taking some toys and stuff for Vansh, but there really wasn't much I could do to alleviate the sense of loss the entire household suffered from. 

May Waheguru rest his soul in peace. 

India Visit: Day 2, Unravelling the surprise

Today would be the BIG day. I woke up really early and dressed up. The aim was to travel to Tungarli by bus and reach the place where the entire Savliwala family was gathered for an annual get-together. There, I would surprise everyone by presenting myself. Buses to Pune leave from near Dadar. The first Shivneri A/C bus would start at a quarter past five a.m. Accordingly, I left my house at half past four, reaching the Dadar bus stand at five a.m. The bus was loading already. I purchased my seat, then visited a local stall to get a cup of tea. The journey started on time, and I got off at the Khandala bypass at a little after half past seven. From here, I got a rickshaw to take me to the bungalow where the family had got together the previous morning. 

Imagine the shock those on the verandah got when they saw me alighting outside the gate of the bungalow! They almost shouted my name, and within the next thirty seconds, all the family, including my own sweet wife and daughters had come out running to greet me. Disbelief was writ large on their faces, but they all were smiling and cheering me when they realised that it was indeed me and not someone else who had come calling on them as they lazily woke up to a cheerful Sunday morning. One of the major talking points was their awe at how much I had reduced, and how much more fit I looked. My friend (and cousin) Salim Dadla was joyous at meeting me, and my uncle Abbas Dadla came over to get a photo with me, saying that he wanted to be in a photo with me because I was his favourite nephew ;-)!

The rest of the day passed meeting with everyone, playing games on the outside ground, joining the family for a delicious lunch, taking pictures, and fraternising with the elders of the family. Here are a few of those memories:

With my beloved wife, Nishrin (Guddi Kamaljeet)

Add caption

With Shenaz Dadla

Abbasuncle Dadla

My mother

With Inas

All the young and pretty women

The scenic environment

Creative climb

My younger brothers Murtuza (above) and Kaizar (middle)

It was at about noon that Nishrin had to leave us as she had some customers booked at her salon in Mumbai in the evening. The rest of us left at about 5 in the evening. My own family and that of Murtuza with our mum travelled in a hired car driven by a professional driver. We stopped at a food mall on the way, but arrived without any incident by ten in the evening. We first dropped mum at her place, and then, drove to Mazgaon where Murtuza and his wife and kids alighted first, followed by a drive to my own place where we relinquished the car and reached our home safely at about half past ten. It had indeed been a landmark day!

What the surprise was

Nearly a fortnight later, I am ready to continue writing my blog as I was too busy to sit down and write. As many of you are already following me on the social media, you all may have guessed that the surprise I spoke about on my previous entry was my completely unannounced but well-planned visit to my home-town for 10 days starting 26th February 2016.

Hannah, my daughter, and I had discussed the possibility of my visiting Mumbai a few months ago; in fact, she was the one who had broached it. I had said it would not be possible as it would be too quick to ask for a holiday after my joining the new job in November 2015. She had got reconciled to this, but I began to think, why not. When I came to know that my entire family would be on a trip to a family get-together on the last weekend in February, I spoke to the doctor who arranges off-days and vacations in our department. I told him I needed some days off which could be deducted from my annual quota of vacations. He agreed with the dates I proposed. Once he sanctioned this, I booked my flight tickets and proceeded with the plan to visit India. 

A major incident occurred in early February which could have toppled the apple-cart. My brother-in-law suddenly passed away. My own family's participation in the larger get-together was dicey, as my wife Nishrin was suddenly bereaved. Over the next few weeks, the loss dulled somewhat, and many of my cousins, including those who had planned the get-together convinced Nishrin to, in fact, join in the do. As the day of the do neared, so did the day for me to fly. I finally took the host couple (actually, the ones who did all the arrangements for the do)  into confidence. I told them that I needed the address of the bungalow they had hired for the do, as I was planning to reach there as a surprise. The couple, Salim and Samira, were pleasantly shocked when I shared the news with them, as they had, sort of, accepted the fact that I wasn't going to be among the family at the meeting. They promised to keep the secret. 

A few days before the actual event of the get-together, my family announced in our extended family group (on Whatsapp) that their participation was on. I knew now that my trip and its objective of a secret arrival was going to be a success. I flew to India on the evening of the 26th, arriving via Abu Dhabi on a Etihad jump flight on the afternoon of the 27th. I had broken the news to my neighbour, who usually have a set of spare keys to my house. They had coordinated my arrival with me so beautifully! And had kept the secret as well. Had I not confided in them, I would have had no way to enter my own home on my arrival! 

All the chips fell in place, then, and I arrived to a locked house at about half past two on the Saturday, My immediate task was to dump my luggage and proceed immediately to a social event organised by World Vision India, a non-governmental Christian organisation that I am a part of as I have adopted some poor kids through their agency. They were having a big Mumbai Partners' Meet at a public auditorium in Bandra. I was supposed to meet my Mumbai-based adoptees here between 2 and 3 p.m. Although I was running late, I did manage to reach a few minutes after three, when the kids I had adopted were about to leave, having waited for me for over an hour with their mothers. I met them then, and had photos taken of our meeting ... but that's another story. 

I will end this entry here, and continue my visit experiences over the next several entries. Do read on. 

Thanks for visiting my blog ... do put in your thoughts into the comments section.