Through My Eyes

                        It was a lazy Sunday afternoon in the month of January. My wife was scrolling through the newspaper as always when the colorful advertisement of the Dubai Shopping Festival caught her attention. “Shopping”, which is every women’s favorite pass-time, with a festival in a foreign land was enough to grasp her attention. She started googling about it to find out more. And of-course that became our next vacation plan!!! Who can go against the wishes of the “Home Minister”! Dubai Shopping Festival is an annual month-long event put together by the Dubai Festivals and Retail Establishment which is part of Dubai’s Department of Tourism. During the festival, shops offer discount on their merchandise, daily car raffles and prize drawings are held to win items such as gold and cars and there is fireworks display. There are also several family activities to ...

Our daughter and son in law invited us to visit the United States of America. We were very excited to visit our 3 year old granddaughter. However we required Visa to travel to USA. Our children started working on training us to face the visa interview. We felt like we were kids preparing for exams again. But we had strict teachers this time. We travelled from Bangalore to Chennai for the interview. The interview was during morning hours and we reached the Visa office ahead of time. There was a long queue. Our preferred language for the interview was Hindi. The queue for Hindi language wasn't as crowded. When our turn came for the interview, we were greeted by an American officer and he said "Namaste" to our surprise. He then asked us a few questions in Hindi. My wife, being a Hindi teacher told the officer "your Hindi is very good!". He probably didn't expect this from the interviewee and laughed aloud "Ha Ha Ha". He then looked into his computer ...