Turning 31!

Hello beautiful people!! How are you enjoying the love season?

It was my birthday on the 14th, I turned 31 this year!

My eldest sis, brother-in-law and darling niece visited us from Oxford over the weekend; it was so much fun! I am the youngest of us three sisters and reasonably younger to both of them to have always been pampered silly. I vividly remember the day before each of my birthdays; my sisters would act so funny, huddle up, go into our grandmother's room to be talking to each other in hushed tones, give me a silly smile if I bumped into them, wait for me to go off to bed; only to secretly prepare the prettiest birthday tray for me with hand-drawn cards and goodies.

This is what my birthday tray looked like this year....a darling red pull, a bag of MAC goodies and the prettiest hand-drawn birthday card from my niece....to name a few.

They call me 'Tota' at home (tota in Bengali means parrot):))

It was a beautifully bright and warm day.....

we had a sumptuous Cantonese lunch at a restaurant overlooking lake Geneva,

followed by a visit to the Musée d'ethnographie de Genève

to see 'Le regard de Kannon' or the 'Kannon's gaze' exhibition. The show was sublime, the budhhist chants would go off in the hall every time we turned the prayer wheels installation.

The 'Kannon' has such a powerful and awe-inspiring form; the statuetes, the ancient Japanese thangkas, the Buddhist artefacts collected from all over the world and the prayers in the background and completely transformed the energy of the show.

It felt like we were in a Buddhist monastery in Tibet.

A generous sprinkling of La Durée macarons made the Valentine's experience complete!

Moving on, here is an interview that I did recently with creative writer Barnali Saha

based in Nashville; it was published in the online magazine 'Palki'(Bengali for palanquin).

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Thank you Barnali, Kausik and the Palki team for doing this!

I am off now you guys, I have some printing and shipping to do tomorrow morning!

Stay tuned for a give-away in my next post!

**Love and hugs and big thanks to each one of you for making last year so precious**