Christmas Passed and Presents

Well, that's Christmas gone for another year - now we're into the birthday season. I had mine yesterday, today is my mother-in-law's and San's is on the second of January. It will be interesting to monitor the cake situation: previous years have seen the same cake recycled for all three of us. When I was younger it was not unheard of to see a half eaten Christmas cake with the 'Merry Christmas' plastic signage replaced by a 'Happy Birthday' version. This year things look hopeful: I have not one, but two cakes. One even has my name on it.

San and I went out for dinner for my birthday. Soup, chicken and mutton currys, rotis, poppadoms, salad and lassis all for a programmer pleasing 256 Rupees. Splendid. I had a salt lassi whilst San had sweet. They like their sugar over here, and that brings us to the subject of tea. It's sounds strange but I find it hard to find a good cup of tea in India. Good meaning one that I like - the locals seem to be quite happy with their chai. The desi brew always has plenty of milk and a couple of teaspoons of sugar. Sounds not too bad? After all, some misguided people in the UK are known to like a sweet cup. Make that two teaspoons in a demi-tasse cup - ew! Anyway, after making enough fuss I got a box of darjeeling leaves and a teapot for my birthday. Much better. Intriguingly the tea leaves came with a free bar of soap attached - a money saving combination that I believe even Tesco have yet to discover. I intend to travel to Darjeeling at some point in the future: it looks very scenic.

As for Christmas, it was Roshni who received all the presents. She made sure to open them in strictly descending order of size, the largest one eliciting a 'wow!'. The bulk of the presents made up a wooden jungle safari set comprising of: a base, jeep, four dolls and various wild beasts. It did not take long for the dolls eviction. The base was soon swarming with lions and giraffes, whilst elephants had taken over the jeep. Happily the dolls regained control in time for bed and Roshni tucked them all in, and despite the obvious problems of scale she wanted to join them there.