We were, we are and we always will be "The SuperAwesome Family !! "

Dear SuperAwesome's, 

As I sit down to pen this, the smell of the soil from the raindrops that God surprisingly blessed us with last night, makes me want to relive an entire monsoon with all of You - like a child, all over again. :)  

While there is no rewind button to our existence, I'm glad we all had a chance to create new memories for time immemorial ! 

The five days spent together cannot possibly be captured in a twenty minute movie and neither can our experiences as a family, but the journey of those five days has been reflective of how all of our lives have panned out so far...

On our way, we've soaked it all in..!! 

Those long winding roads, at times gave us a sight of the deep dark valleys - never making us forget, how we were trapped into those at one point in time. 

Somewhere along the road, we got a  glimpse of the treacherous mountains - always reminding us of how vehemently we've bounced back, standing tall with all our might and pride today. 

We stood by to witness the waves, banging against those rocky stones on the beach, the noise they made, the splashes of salty water they left - bringing back flashes of some of our biggest disagreements - but eventually, even they retreated to unite with the ocean ! 

Sometimes the water currents were so strong, as though trying hard, to remind us of how we all needed to get back into motion to save ourselves from sinking in grief. 

The other times when we swam with the waves, brought back joys of the times we've showed confidence in traversing unknown territories and banishing our own fears..!! 

With every experience we've had over this vacation, there has been a parallel to the time we've both - failed and triumphed in our lives, together as one family !  

Fortunately, we are all the descendants of a legacy richest in its values and beliefs - the elder generation has served to be the best "Cheerleaders" one could ever ask for, while we battled it out on life's playground. 

It is not so much for the money, or the fame, or the power and neither the perceived notion of success that we have strived for. These, I'm glad each of us have, in one magnitude or the other, achieved as a by-product while we were focussed on looking out for each other.  

Our Family propels me to live for those moments when I turn back and I know for sure -  "I will see You All" with clapping hands and smiling faces, cheering me on... into the next day, the next chapter, the next challenge - reassuring me of a better tomorrow with all of your heart ! 

You may not hold my fingers any longer, but I do feel Your humble touch every step of my way ! 

And I'm glad our next generations will enjoy this very feeling - the feeling called "Family". A place where I belong, You belong, We All belong and the ones to be welcome Will belong... ! 

A place where "We feel at Home" will never be built with four walls - it will go on to become our abode only when, we will continue to have each others company - for Now and Forever ! 

" Each one for Everyone - Stay SuperAwesome ! " 

P.S : Here is the short film compiled by Abhi -  

Click on this link - best watched on the laptop or the TV screen - bigger the screen, more the fun. 

Scripted & contributed to by All of Us, where we ALL are the stars, the Celebrities of our own lives ! Time to sit back, relax and prepare for the next Block Buster Hit of the Year 2021 ! 

Cheers to MySuperAwesome Family ! :)   

Year 2006 : The year of the Serial Blasts

I hold a new surname, a new residence address, a new email and a newer email signature. From being 'Sayli S. Mahajan' I am now 'Sayli A. Yadav' ! Well, like any new bride, these were some of the most simplistic things, I had to get accustomed to. The more complicated ones, as they did in each bride's case, unfolded, as I spent time with my new found family and more often than not, willingly integrated them in my lifestyle. So effortlessly, that when I visited my parents for the first time post marriage, my mother said - "Everything from the nails of your toes to the strand of your hair is a changed Sayli!" And I had'nt even realised that the transformation was so swift. As a mother she could only stand back, admire and take pride in the new version of her daughter - as flamboyant as ever, less of a rebel and god-willingly, a little domesticated - Just the right balance of salt n sugar in a glass of lemonade!

As I observed the run up to the marriage on both the sides, my very neutral lense, couldn’t ever overlook one fact - it does not matter if you have a son or a daughter. The truth is, if you are born in an Indian middle-class family, chances are that the parents will slowly start to plan for their children's marriage as much as they did for paying up for their education. While the mode of funding the gold purchases was selling stocks for my parents, for my in-laws it was in exchange of the bits they accumulated on each 'Gurupushyamrut' / the three and a half auspicious mahurats of (Gudi Padwa, Akshaya Tritiya, Dassera, Dhanteras).

Throughout our courtship and the year that followed, one thing was very evident - Abhi and Me took a liking to great clothes, exotic food, dignifying simplest of days, wining n dining and basically spending our way to credit card bills through the tons of shopping n pub-hopping we did. We never really discussed money or finances. Until one day, we had an ugly discovery over our financial priorities being dramatically misplaced in each others views - Abhi wanting to buy a brand new car and me wanting to invest in a house! My shock only amplified, when he mentioned he intended on buying a new 'Honda City' as his first ever car ! We had obviously discussed his fondness and dreams of owning one, while we courted. But I had never imagined it to be our first big purchase in the initial year of marriage.

The tussle was fairly evident to the extent that my mother-in-law had to get involved. My father played it down and made it all seem so trivial stating - it's not as if you're staying on rent, neither as if you have no roof on your heads, so buying a house could wait. He went onto say, that for any normal man Abhi's age, owing a car is a very identifiable dream! At this point I thought to myself - why should his words come as a surprise, after all, here is man who himself had changed 5 cars in a span of less than one and a half decade! Also, one of the reasons I had fallen in love with Abhi, also had a lot to do with the fact that my Dad took a liking to him first and I would never doubt his choice of what "goodness" meant! So it wasn’t any surprise that I took his word for it and was more than happy to contribute my minuscule bit towards our first big buy !

So here we were in the middle of 2006, looking at our sparkling new 'liability' and making future plans of building a new 'asset' !

Life is not all Black and White. The beauty of 'Life' lies in making sense of the Grey's in the background 😉! 

A picture taken with our Silver Honda City - at the onset of Abhi's Birthday in 2007 outside the SOHO Toscana Lounge in Kalyaninagar...

Year 2005 : Smitten forever…!

It had almost been, a year being away from home and I had already made yet another painful transition from Secunderabad to Chennai, leaving behind a girl gang I had come to love in a matter of days of staying together. It was heart wrenching, settling farther away from home, paying for every single thing from drinking water to laundry ! But I soon started to find solace in a place where I never had to bathe with 'Hot' water, where I would wake up and go for a jog by the beach, return to do an intense ab workout, put on the Gayatri Mantra as I got ready for work, devotedly light up an essence stick and a diya to do my daily pooja as I soaked in the power of the hyms and was all recharged to take on the day in my stride !

I had come to love myself, to love the city and to B.L.A.Z.I.N.G.L.Y love my routine, which I thought, was the most balanced life I've ever lived ! I remember telling my mother, that I wouldn’t mind marrying a south Indian and settling down to retire by the beach side in Chennai.  She said it's not going to be long before you start to feel home sick - and like always, she was right !

Just as quickly as I had fallen in love with my new found freedom, it was time to un-settle myself, with the thought of getting married and it being arranged, just meant I was flying back home sooner ! I was leaving behind memories of half a year, of being surrounded by peers - almost all of the seniors in the integration practise had returned/were being posted abroad for long/short term stints working with onsite clients. Which also meant, I was surrounded by at least a dozen folks who were sitting on high net worth's just 2.5 or 3 years into their careers..!

I've never been happy being dumbfounded while others carried on with intellectual conversations. And when men make money, they talk a lot about where to put their pennies. If not participate/contribute to those conversations, I had to at the least, comprehend the jargon around stock market investing and the likes ! This was the anniversary year of me being a tax-paying citizen of my country. Introducing myself to investments was relatively easy - I just familiarised myself with the tax declaration form and had a long hard look at section 80C. I then started to research each instrument in my free time from PPF/VPF, NSC, ULIP, ELSS, Endowment plans to even Home Loans. A lot of websites came to my rescue - from moneycontrol to valueresearch, from personalfinance to msn money. My leisure reading on weekends was dedicated to picking up and reading magazines like Outlook Money (apart from the ones on GoodHomes and Good Housekeeping).

Working in Tidel park in Chennai, made it easier to gain access to a broker - Centrum Finance was located on  the 1st floor of the same building where I worked for a while. These guys were the first ones to help me with investing in tax savings mutual funds -a.k.a ELSS.

There were three close friends who critiqued my investing decisions at that point in time:

Seema : She believed that buying NSCs from a Chennai post office was a bad idea, since I may not be in Chennai when it matures - I was never going to return to the Teynampet Post Office to redeem the investment six years on.

Krunal : Who felt insurance and investment should be separate and I should instead, start to build up a decent equity portfolio. 

Santosh : Who felt a ULIP investment was expensive when compared with the total contribution vs. the administrative charges and future returns.

I have a lot to thank them for, for contributing to those views! But like always, I went ahead with my gut. 

It truly proved to be one landmark year mixed with lessons in investing to experiences of being Smitten - by someone Tall, Dark and Handsome. Literally my knight in shining armor, the one I had pictured in my mind as a young school girl, a gentleman who charmed me with his quiet demeanor, who sat in my room as a stranger and said "its ok if you can't think of anything to share, you can call me if you wish to speak.. once you are ok." - and I thought "Wow ! This has got to be Him !! Here is my Prince Charming! Finally !! 😃"  

Abhi and me courted each other for 9 long months before we tied the knot on December 25th and ended 2005 with eternal vows !

Yes, I digressed - it was supposed to be a post on my financial timeline, but 2005 was a landmark year, which can never be complete without the mention of a love story that began, the mention of "The" man who took my heart away and a year that taught me that everyone from my friends to my mother were indeed right !

A picture taken at Ravi n Rasika's wedding reception in January of 2008 !