Happy 24th Anniversary to our new home!!! Today, 24 years ago I landed in Australia immigrating from India with just $500 borrowed money in my pocket. With no job, I had to learn to survive just eating a packet of Mcdonald fries every day and a coke for the first 3 weeks, savouring every chip for as long as I could. I simply had to survive. Although I had no material possession that I could be proud of, however, I had something which I was very very lucky to have which was so priceless even then and was only to become even more priceless in years to come and no words to describe what this mean for me even now after so many years. This possession of mine is none other than my priceless Manisha Chaubal-Menon who is such a rare gem, I would trade off anything else to keep her happy. If I smile today, If I am strong today, If I am indebted to anyone, If I have to pick one person to show my gratitude for everything I have achieved today is all because of her selfless love towards me. It simply amazes me how inspite of how difficult a day she may have had, how tough it would have been to deal with her own physical challenges from time to time, how tiring and demanding it can be raising two young teen aged boys Rishi Chaubal-Menon and Hrithik Chaubal-Menon on her own with me being away, she has never meant anything else other than selfless love towards making sure I am doing well. Manisha, words cannot express enough my gratitude and love towards you and hence thought of trying to capture my thoughts here. Happy 24th anniversary to us for an awesome journey we have had in a new country making this our new home. What an amazing ride it has been. With no money,moments of lows, moments of highs , sleeping on a simple mattress with flattened cardboard boxes underneath to protect us from the cold, Telephone directory as our dining table and us having candle light dinner. Our very first piece of our own furniture, a bed with moving slats under the bed which we had to adjust every few minutes . Sharing just one small bedroom in a 2 bedroom apartment owned by someone else and literally confined to this bedroom with our mattress being our place to sit, our place to sleep as the room was only that big to accommodate this mattress. Those anxious moments @ 2am in the morning where you had still not come back from work and I was pacing up and down only for you to tell me you were being stalked. Those moments where I was held up at gun point in my job which I dearly wanted to hold onto as I had no choice. Loved it, enjoyed every bit of it and I just want to say thank you Manisha, for being an awesome friend, an amazing partner, a great mentor, a great soul mate. Raising a toast for you with a glass of champagne in my hand, as I think this calls for a celebration after an amazing 24 years in an amazing country which we now call it home and have given us things we could never have dreamt of. Lots of love....
Posted on: Tue, 28 Oct 2014 17:29:46 +0000