Happy Deepavali 2020

 

“When life gives you lemons, make lemonade.”

2020 was the year we had marked for celebrations. Swati was going to turn 18 and graduate from high school. She was going to go to college. We had planned a big send-off party for her combined with a 20^th-anniversary party for us; both sets of grandparents were going to visit; some excellent summer travel was on the cards before we deposited her to college. But the best-laid plans of mice and men can come to naught. The virus did not stop time: Swati did turn 18 and graduate high school. She was accepted into her top choice schools – Harvard, MIT, and Stanford. However, there were no parties, no summer travel, no grandparent visits, and no college, since Swati accepted Harvard but decided to take a gap year. She enlisted in the national guard and is also interning at Wikimedia.

We are still thankful for the memories we created. A quiet, intimate family dinner with Ruchi’s sister’s family to celebrate Swati’s 18th birthday and graduation. No prom, no senior night, no big graduation school event, yet a very heartfelt car parade organized by the city for their high school graduates where the community came out and cheered all the hard work done by the graduating class of 2020.  After each major admit letter, long walks on the dish, the excitement of the family palpable to all the friends that we ran into.

Agastya turned 13, and we celebrated by inviting some of his friends to watch a movie in the backyard. Becoming a teenager is not the same when you are quarantined away from other teenagers. Still, Agastya has been valiantly balancing studies and a social life that is mostly online except for occasional bike rides. Ruchi and Agastya went to Salt Lake City just before the shutdown, where Agastya performed in the Honor choir.

Given the nature of our jobs, we have been one of the lucky few who did not have to endure any economic hardship during these times, and our heart goes out to those who did.  For us, for the most part, life continued with work from home.  We used this time to do some repairs on our wilderness property and spent a lot of time going there almost every other weekend. Ruchi commissioned an artist to do a project on a dead cedar grove. 

We are so glad that we took a trip last winter to Galapagos and Panama City and had a fun time.  Ruchi also made a quick trip to India to attend her cousin’s wedding in Feb, and she is glad that she got to see her whole family. Who knows when we would get back to traveling?

This year reminded us of the unpredictability of life and simple things we took for granted: family, community, social fabric, and democracy. We are truly grateful for these blessings. Also, Ashish and Ruchi clearly can co-exist in the same house, 24 hours a day :-)

Finally, Ashish insists on reporting that he is now an instrument-rated pilot.

To our friends and family celebrating the Festival of Lights, we wish you and your family a fun and safe Deepavali!

Ruchi, Ashish, Swati, Agastya

Deepavali 2019

Happy Deepavali 2019

This was the year of anticipation for us -- we all worked hard for future rewards. Swati will be off to college next year. We started the tradition of celebrating Diwali when Swati was born to introduce our kids and their friends to the Indian culture, so they don’t feel isolated. Now they are getting ready to fly the coop -- how time flies.

Swati’s hard work over high school started to bear results this year. It started out with her research paper (with Wikimedia) being accepted at an academic workshop. She then got an opportunity to direct a play at Mountain View Performing Arts followed by an incredible opportunity to student direct her Gunn HS musical “In the Heights”.  She also made it to the Platinum level at the USACO coding competition and spent the summer at the RSI program doing research on fake news. There were also lots of downs and the way she fought through them also inspired Ruchi and Ashish to work hard and rediscover grit and a love for learning.

Agastya has settled nicely into middle school. He finally got his first electric guitar as a birthday gift and is putting it to good use by playing some fun Hindi songs for his mom. He has promised to give us a performance next Diwali. He still enjoys theatre, choir, and band, but is also seriously getting into math and coding. He has a fantastic group of friends and it is such a pleasure to see them all grow and mature. We are excited, but also a little apprehensive since they will all be teenagers next year, with all that comes with it!

Ruchi joined Accenture as an MD earlier this year and did her first M&A. She is building skills in new areas and still enjoys doing product, engineering, and people management. Ashish’s research is going well, and he is really enjoying geeky discussions with Swati and Agastya. He passed his next level of pilot training (flying solely by instruments) and is always looking for a company to fly with, so do reach out to him if interested.

We took a few short trips this year to explore colleges for Swati starting with LA and also visited Harry Potter at Universal. As a family, we took a short trip to Kauai in December. We went to see the super bloom north of LA in the spring, and it was an out of this world experience to see mile-long patches of the desert ablaze in red and orange. We (minus Swati) also took a week-long trip to Sweden and Norway and enjoyed a lot of great hikes in the fjords.

We are thankful for 2019 and looking forward to the next year.

 Wishing you all a very happy Diwali and a great 2020

-Agastya, Swati, Ruchi, & Ashish.

Happy Deepavali 2018

Happy Deepavali 2018

A year dedicated to health and fitness and a year of enjoying small things

2018 has been a most transformative year for Agastya. He started middle-school and suddenly metamorphosed from a sweet little kid into a total pre-teen. He grew physically, emotionally, and intellectually. We can see him developing a strong personality and a viewpoint of his own. He joined the Boy Scouts this year and went for a week-long Kayak camp where he floated a kayak that he built. He also went to NYC with Ashish for a weekend to celebrate their major birthdays – Agastya’s 10^th and Ashish’s 45^th.

 

Swati turned sixteen. This is her junior year, and she is extremely busy with school, tennis, theater, social life, and academics. College admissions in the US are very opaque, which makes the entire junior class overtly stressed out and overly busy.

After his sabbatical at Stripe, Ashish is back at Stanford, completely focused on his research. One of the papers that he co-wrote a few years back (on Google’s ad auction) won a “Test of Time” award. He also got a private pilot license and has been gallivanting all over California with his instructor and friends in a small Cessna.

Ruchi seriously got into Indian batik and treated the family to many fusion tie-dye + batik shirts. After ten years of planning, Ashish and Ruchi finally went to Napa for a nice dinner and a 30-mile bike ride, sans kids. Ruchi also went to India for a week and took her Mom and Dad on a temple tour.

Our family trips this year were short. We took a 4 day trip to Alaska in the winter but had no luck with the Northern Lights. It was a bone-chilling experience to be there in such cold weather. Agastya completed his 7^th continent as we went to Australia and Bali in the spring. The highlights of that trip were Sydney, Indonesian food, and Komodo dragons. In the summers, we finally took a 4 day trip to Banff for an encore trip. We had gone there when Swati was 2 and had fallen in love with the place, vowing to come back when the kids were older. We could do many of the longer hikes this time.

We continue to enjoy our wooded property with family and friends and look forward to the coming year with excitement. We wish you all a very happy Deepavali and a wonderful new year ahead.

  

With Love,

Agastya, Swati, Ruchi & Ashish.
November 7^th, 2018

Happy Deepavali 2017

Wishing you a Happy Diwali and a Happy New Year

Life moves on and the year passes by, and before you know, it is that time of the year again.  The highlight of this year was a staged reading of “Raavan”. Our whole family got into it. The chief instigator was Swati, who wrote the script, based on Ramayana but written from Raavan’s perspective, reimagining him as a Macbethian figure. The production was immensely successful; the video is at https://youtu.be/eNOgEbARl60 . We are grateful to our friends, family, and the local community for their help in putting together the production.

Other than that, this was a year of small pleasures and continuity, as opposed to any major life changes. After a tempestuous start the year before, Swati has settled into high school life. She has a good social group, is working hard belying all stereotypes of lazy teenagers, and gradually figuring out what she wants in life. Agastya turned 10 and is enjoying his last year at his elementary school. He learned to code last year and has a close-knit group of friends he likes to hang out with.  Ashish has been taking flying lessons and is about to solo. He is currently taking time off from Stanford to spend time at Stripe, which had acquired their startup last year. Ruchi is doing well and enjoying her work, time with family, and herself. Of course, this is probably the calm before the storm as Swati will start looking towards college soon, and Agastya will move to middle school.

 

We took a cruise in Antarctica, which was breathtaking. Both Ruchi’s and Ashish’s parents visited us this year, and we cherished the time we spent with them. Ashish’s parents will be here for Diwali for the first time, a treat for all of us.

In stark contrast to our personal life, we cannot help but feel that this has not been a good year in the country where we made our home 20+ years ago. Politically, the country seems to be fracturing. Natural calamities like hurricanes and wildfires, worse than ever before in our memory, seem like dark portents as opposed to isolated freak events. Our heart and thoughts go out to all who have been affected and have been less fortunate. And it is a reminder that the increase in peace and prosperity during the last 40 years is not something we can ever take for granted; rather we all need to work hard towards leaving our kids a better world than the one we inherited. Please let us know if you have suggestions for concrete things we can do together to make this happen.

Finally, we want to end by honoring and celebrating the life of Ruchi’s Nani (her maternal grandmother) who passed away a few weeks ago. She had a long and full life. Her passing is symbolic in that a whole generation has now passed on; she was the last grandparent that either Ruchi or Ashish had left. Rest in Peace. You surely will be missed!

Sometimes you will never know the true value of a moment until it becomes a memory.

With Love,

Agastya, Swati, Ruchi & Ashish.

October 19^th, 2017

Goel Family wishes you a very happy diwali 2016

Between stimulus and response, there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lie our growth and our freedom ”
Viktor E. Frankl

We are trying to survive being the parents of a high school freshman. Swati, after a rocky start, is finally settling down. She continues to follow her passion for debate and science and explore what she wants to pursue in the future. She challenges us and gives us a great sense of pride at the same time. We call her a quantum particle, as we can’t predict where she will be at a given time.

 

 Agastya continues to grow socially - he is forming deep friendships. He is crazy about playing video games especially Minecraft with his friends. Swati is his biggest source of inspiration and it is too cute to see him defend his sister unconditionally. He is into the Presidential election and it’s hilarious to hear some of his comments.

We have been looking for a wilderness place for years – finally this year we found one and we are excited. Though we have been there only a few times, it does help us unwind and connect with nature. Swati and Agastya enjoyed picking ripened blackberries from the bushes by the creek and floating on the river singing “Bare Necessities”

 

Ashish’s startup became part of Stripe. He will be spending a year at Stripe and is also looking forward to the next phase in his research with his crowdsourced decision-making platform. 

 

Ruchi is doing well and enjoying her work with Watson and finding occasional time to paint.

For the first time in past 14 years, Ashish and I went on a trip to the French Riviera sans kids. We had forgotten what a vacation is like without kids. Do we need to say more? 

 

Some things I wish could have gone better this year – Ashish’s own physical fitness, our parent’s health, and a bit more time for vacation. Well, good goals to have for the coming year!

Here’s to you and yours and to another year of hope, health, and peace. May your hopes be great and joys fulfill you. We wish you every happiness this Diwali and in the years to come.

Agastya, Swati, Ruchi & Ashish.

October 30^th, 2016

Happy Deepavali - 2015

Lost, between 2014 and 2016, one golden year, set with 365 diamond days

No reward is offered, for it is gone forever --- Horace Mann.

Namaste!!

This year will never come back again.  The memories we made during it, however, will live on.

2015 was an unusual year for us, as we explored much previously uncharted territory. It was an especially difficult year for Ruchi because she went through a process of self-actualization.  At the beginning of the year, Ashish and his student caught the startup bug and launched Teapot, which provides APIs for trust and identity. It is currently at a pivotal point – waiting to see where it will land.

Ashish once wrote a poem for Agastya. It went like this:

मुंडे मुस्टण्डे, गली के गुंडे

सुधर जाओ फौरन, वार्ना खाओगे डंडे

It is now coming true. Agastya and his friends run around the neighborhood all day, creating a ruckus. But while he grew more wild in one way, he also became more studious in another. Agastya went from a non-reader to an avid one, finishing the Harry Potter series before his eighth birthday.

Agastya and Swati had a super fun summer. Ruchi took a break from work to hang out with them, and her parents visited from India.  This meant no camps for the kids, a concept which they protested at first but ended up enjoying.

Our family also took two unique trips this year. During the winter holidays, we went to Peru and hiked the Inca trail, which is a 55km trek that goes up to 4200 m altitude. We could not be more proud of our family, especially Agastya, for making it.

In June, we went on safari in Tanzania. The experience we had of seeing millions of animals roaming free is indescribable.

Swati is now taller than Ruchi by a couple of inches, yet in many ways she is still the same as the five-year-old self we remember. She won second place in the science fair this year, and is serving as her school’s co-president.

We as a family also came to this realization – it only takes a little to be happy. We do need to simplify our lives - finding time with each other to just hang around, biking in the neighborhood, do walking in the field etc.

We look forward to next year with an aim to simplify our lives and focus more on ourselves, family, and friends. We all wish you a great festive season and a fun 2016.

                                                                           Ruchi, Ashish, Swati, Agastya

For last year’s words belong to last year’s language, And next year’s words await another voice – T.S. Elliot

Diwali2014

नमस्ते! Namaste!

Another year went by in a jiffy. We want to reflect on the past year by being grateful and thankful to everything we have – truly a beautiful life; having each other for better or worse (married 15 years!), two wonderful kids who are growing up fast, and family and friends who give us love and support but also keep us on the straight and narrow.

We did our fair share of traveling this year. In a fit of weakness on Swati’s 4th birthday, we had promised her a pet when she turned 12, which seemed very far away at the time. But Swati remembered for 8 years, so we went to Hawaii for her 12th birthday to bribe our way out of that promise. Agastya, Swati, and Ashish tried surfing, with moderate success but enormous fun.

In the summer, we went to India for four weeks. It was hot and humid, but we absolutely loved spending time with parents, meeting family and friends, trekking in the Himalayas (which involved getting drenched in monsoon rains and having dozens of leeches all over our hands and feet), and watching kids play cricket. And since we never go to India in the summers, this was the first time in 20 years that we ate mangoes and jamun worth their name.

During the tail end of summer we visited New England, where we biked the postcard-perfect carriage roads in Acadia and hiked the ocean bed at Fundy National Park during their famous 50ft low tide. It was a laid back trip, a perfect way to recharge for the new school year.

This has been a year of change for Ashish as he quit his part-time Twitter position. He was also invited to a White House conference to present his work on the crowdsourced democracy project. Ashish and his students have also been involved in conducting participatory budgeting trials at various cities using their platform.

Agastya did his first theatrical performance in Jungle book and landed in the competitive soccer team and is also doing well in Tennis and Maths. He loves playing pool with his dad, and spends too much time on the ipad.

Swati scored a double whammy this year by being the state winner of the letter about literature and also winning honorary prize at Synopsys Science fair. She is continuing with her passion for theater and is doing Playhouse shows at Children’s Theater. And for those of you who are worried about teenage years, all the horror stories are true!

Ruchi is in a soul-searching mode. We will report what she finds next year!

दीपावली की बहुत बहुत शुभकामनाएं सहित| -

Ruchi, Ashish, Swati & Agastya, October 2014