Dhruva’s birthday was special. ♥

You might think that is what I say about all my clients and shoots, (you’re not too far off from the truth, hehe), but, really, Dhruva’s birthday was really special.

I’ve known Nivedita (Nive) since college, and apart from various run-ins at college for everything except studies, my strongest memory of Nive is her in the UK, me at a friend’s place in Chennai, wide awake at 2 AM IST (or something such ungodly hour), waiting for the newest season of Sherlock to release, and fangirling and screaming about every tiny little detail as we watched it ‘together.’ Somewhere between this and exchanging messages about how her ‘Poochi Pandi’ was kicking all around her tummy, her family opened up to let me be a small part of their circle. One month after Poochi Pandi was born, renamed to Dhruva, I was delivering the entire set of valaikaapu pictures to her, and she tells me to mark my calendar for the next year, because her family had decided unanimously that I was to shoot when kutti Dru turned one. I still have a message from her (after I was surprised at someone booking me this early for a birthday) that says that her chitthi told her to book me 3 days after Dru kutti was born. And I’ve waited in quiet anticipation for an entire year to be able to shoot this wonderful family again. :)

And this party was almost everything I like in a birthday party for a kid - amazon delivery boxes covered with colour paper to spell out Dru’s name, a bunch of balloons for the kids to play around with, dinosaur stickers and everything Dru likes on the cake, mum and dad’s engagement board repurposed and turned into a blackboard to announce the birthday party, every tiny little decor item put together by Nive and her army of cousins, locally sourced flowers that do not induce a head ache, some lip-smacking food, and about 50 friends and family members, almost all of whom have been around the entire time to see Dru been born and grow up. :)

I’d like to happily add that Dru has now gone through several mottais, has bequeathed the strength of Baahubali (he moves actual heavy furniture around the house, I’ve seen it on video, I swear), wakes up as early as his mum, makes his folks blare ‘Bum bum tam tam’ at 6 in the morning, ‘Ammudu, let’s do kummudu’ on loop from 5 AM to 7 AM on weekends, demands his mother dance with him with her helmet on if she’d like to be let back inside the house after work, and ensures she stays fit as a fiddle with no gym whatsoever.

Nive also tells me he falls asleep to Krishnashtakam and other such beautiful pieces every single day when he does go to sleep, so here, hit play on this as you scroll down to look at the pictures. :)