Lost in the Mind Of Others

Another week and we would have spent six months in Nairobi. Time has gone by incredibly fast and it's been so much easier to settle in because of all the friends and family visiting us over the past few months.

The world, or at least my view of it, has changed so much since I was young. I moved around from Naval Base to Naval Base all my growing years and though I enjoyed making new friends everywhere I went it also meant that I lost friends every time I moved. There was no email, facebook, picassa or blogs to help us keep in touch. For a couple of months after moving I would exchange letters with some of the 'good friends' but the number of letters exchanged would reduce drastically with time and what remained were vivid memories and photographs.

When leaving London I was confident of not letting that happen anymore and I have to say I am rather proud to have managed to stay in touch with most. Thanks to technology specially the BlackBerry messenger. What I do feel bad about is not keeping the kids in touch as much. Part of the reason is that Tarana doesn't engage too well on skype. But this does mean that Tarana is losing touch with K, M and S – her first young friends in life. I realized how much I missed having the three of them around Tarana when I saw them in London last month and again when we put up the Christmas tree a few days ago.

The three of them have been part of all the Christmas tree decoration evenings over the last three years. For the first time in three years all our decorations were on the top half of the tree. Usually, the highest decoration would be at K's height, the tallest of the three and us adults would re-decorate the tree after the kids had slept – which was after a big energy boost because of excessive ice-cream / desserts, a few arguments between S and the girls on which film to watch and finally three kids sleeping all over each other on a mattress on the floor with the movie still playing on full volume.

I do miss all the adults around the Christmas tree too. It was a full house this week with the two Robins and R's parents but not half as much enthusiasm as my fun girl friends. Putting decorations up on the tree always bring back memories – of my first Christmas with Robin in Delhi, Khan market and D&F; of P and the red star he got us – the only good memory of the worst house in which we spent our first three months in London; of S and P who made all the London Christmas three decorations so much fun.