I must apologise to the readers for skipping the June issue of the Newsletter. It was the first break in over two years. There were a number of reasons, the main ones being an increase in my workload as I had to manage two posts 8 kms apart, my being busy at home due to guests and the enervating heat in Chennai. I hope there will be no more breaks.

Gopalan continues with his humour in Down the memory lane and has written a piece on how our uncle (later his father-in-law) caught a 'thief'.Sudarshan has contributed two pieces as usual- one being Jokes, Quotes and Trivia and the other being Funny stories. Both Gopalan and Sudarshan had sent their contributions for the June issue and my special apologies to them. Prasad has as always come up with an excellent piece on Rats and rice. I have also reproduced Kausalya's article in the Hindu - How green is my valley?, on their visit to Arunachal Pradesh.

Let me again remind everyone about the Archives www.geocities.com/pamrithaarchives, which is a comprehensive authorwise, subjectwise and monthwise archives. It includes everything that was published in the first 28 issues from December 2000 to April 2003 - all the articles, poems, games, photos and everything else. Of course all the close relatives in India can view these in the CD-ROM that I gave them during the family get-together in April.

Since we were extremely busy, neither Amritha nor I found time to write any article. But I have compiled all the other usual features, viz. Crossword Clues , Brain Exercisers and Cryptoquip. Editor's Picks at the bottom of this page contain a cartoon and an interesting link - BBC's Cricket Link which is as good as CricInfo.

The section'FROM THE NET' contains an interesting game that all of us have played as children. This section also has a few interesting and humorous articles.

Enjoy the Newsletter, but do write about it.

Have you visited my redesigned home yet?.... If not, click on www.geocities.com/parthasarathyliveshere

The first feature, as usual, are the old photos.

MEMORIES ARE MADE OF THESE
	This is a photo of Kannan's family about 25 years ago. Don't Prasad, Mukund and Jagan look cute?!
Raghu's wedding photo

I have decided to write my diary differently. It will not be a chronicle of events in their order of occurrence, but will be a collage of thoughts that came to my mind about these two months.

We completed an year in Chennai in May. It has been a busy and mostly satisfying year, one in which we feel have contributed in a number of ways to bringing the family together. Perhaps the most important are the HFA (Hello From Aynavaram) mails that we write every week to Raghu (39 so far)and to the US-based NRIs (23 so far).

If I am asked to make a list of the most depressing places on earth, GH would be right at the top. So we were unhappy when Jaya akka was admitted to GH in June, but she was fortunately discharged within a week.

Aarthi had a busy vacation here for about two months as she learnt two-wheeler driving, had a few visits to the dentist and took up a job with FCB-Ulka, an Ad-agency for three weeks in June. Harish came for a hectic week's visit in June, which we remember more for his delay in leaving for the station. For the train from Chennai Central at 11-45, he left our house in Aynavaram ( 8 kms. away) at 11-23.

Though not a frequent traveller, I went to Bangalore twice (once with Amritha), once each to Mumbai, Vadodara, Madurai and Trichy in the last two months.

Every day 'The Hindu' publishes the temperatures in 20 cities in India and Chennai was the hottest of these on a number of days in May and June, with the mercury touching 45.6 deg C on 22nd May. We were able to sleep only with the AC, ceiling fan and pedestal fan running.

Hema has moved to a nice house in Tambaram near her bank. She works for her bank on weekdays upto 10.00 PM and since the bank works on Saturdays for only half a day, she comes home by 9.30 PM itself.

We have become culturally active and have joined a Sabha. We have attended two concerts in June and will be attending two this month. We also saw four films in May and June - Magic, magic, a Tamil 3-D film (childish) : Parthiban Kanavu in Tamil (good) : Bhoot in Hindi (good) and Nala Damayanthi in Tamil (a good comedy).

We have a new member in our family in Mahesh (Maheshwaran) who is our new peon. Gopal is now a peon in the office at ICF. As Raghu says we are blessed as we have both Maheshwaran and Maheshwari (one of our out-house residents) working for us.

Bye till next month,
anbudan,


14th July 2003