This is what we feel about you, ...
• Written by Shashi
You entered our lives at times different,
By choice of nature, chance, your preferment.
We've experienced you variously,
How you've lifted us we share commonly.
Shylaja, Shylaya, Shalu, Paapu.
We would be much the poorer without you.
You are comfort, safety, happiness,
Our life is a garden with your presence.
Seed of friends' circles in Pune and Sydney,
Great gangs in AMP, Tibco, Infy, and BP.
You're care personified, friendship defined,
Pulling us in with your big heart and mind.
We sense you're classy, someone with substance,
Simple beauty at any distance.
How you're inside heightens your outer glow
Through your empathy and care, we all grow.
You of green thumb, patient plant whispering,
Intuitive cook with a range astounding,
With fine sense of harmony and colour,
You decorate, stitch, do much that's stellar.
Doyen of a home uncluttered and chaste,
Friend of repair, sworn enemy of waste.
To attack a problem, you're always game,
Your energy puts laziness to shame.
Health and fitness maven, champ of the new,
Your never give up, always say can do.
You learn constantly, keep growing in life,
And we get rewarded with pleasures rife.
You're at once modern and traditional,
A meld of spiritual and rational,
With honesty and duty ingrained deep,
We turn better as in your world we steep.
Loving daughter, wrote to father daily,
Gets her mother, cares for her tenderly.
Perfect form of wife and mom, we're lucky,
You're Home for Preetika, Tarun, and me.
We love you for who you are, our Shalu,
And because we feel how you love us too.
For many more decades, scores of us,
May your sunflower glow shine strong on us.
