Enthralling Trails

  Starting today ,I need to forget what's gone, appreciate what still remains and look forward to what's coming next. There was a thoughtful stillness in the group. I could hear my loud footsteps which slowly  faded as I slowed my pace, and subsequently I heard the wis est speaking in a drooling sound in Marathi. My  curiosity  made me glance at them. I saw a  group of elderly men  surrounding a man sitting on a bench near the man made lake .The sun was yet to rise but it was dawn ,the tranquillity of the lake ,the serene environment matched the poise of these gentlemen in their maturity. The members of the group varied in the age group of sixty to seventy. I recalled how they congregate early in the morning at the gate of the forest hills,Durga Tekdi. With the transformed pleasant weather, rousing and going for walks has become pleasurable, nevertheless the sun rises well past seven in the morning. A day begun well with an enjoyable fitness exercise well before a sche

Your success is defined by the altitude of your attitude and the magnitude of your aptitude . The fishmonger pulled a fish and started cleaning its scales with a sharp knife.The noise diverted my notice. There were people surrounding her, perhaps to buy fish. The lady shook the motionless fish as she placed it on a stone and slit the head in one jerk. A quiver quavered me. It aggrieved me, prodding an unknown wound in me, pushing me into the past. I remember the incident vividly. There were two white  rats almost four inches big lying in chloroform in a glass bottle given by the lab attender.  Me and Suchi tugged them out and placed them on the  solidified wax in the dissection tray. We had procured these from the school through the lab attender.My sister had got married at Alapuzha in Kerala. Her wedding was appreciated by one and all as my father had achieved the feat of  tagging my sister’s life with my brother in law who was posted at Oman then. The appreciation was for

“Plant seeds of happiness, hope, success, and love; it will all come back to you in abundance. This is the law of nature.”   ―   Steve Maraboli ,     It looked insolently to the other side . It was no longer emerging straight, there was a characteristic bend half way through. Its body had begun to show a distinctive aridness, I wondered, were they wrinkles? It no longer bore the cheerful countenance that it had when I had first  seen it. Its leaves no longer grew to the size they used to .  There were  a few baby leaves borne in the centre at the growing axis which were perhaps too young to apprehend the thorny situation. It was at daybreak when it dawned upon me that my papaya was perhaps suffering from Progeria  a disease causing precocious maturity like Amitabh Bachchan  in the film Paa. The only difference was Amitabh was suffering from a genetic disease while my papaya’s was environmental . I sat at the doorway looking at it fondly as I reminisced the day we went to the Nur

“Just when the caterpillar thought the world was over, it became a butterfly" I t was 8.30 on Thursday morning. The maid had begun mopping prompting my husband to move to the balcony to braze the air and lo behold he was flabbergasted to see lot of  hubbub in the other wis e hushed premises of our housing block. He dragged me  to the terrace even as we saw a cine film equipment vehicle unload the shooting equipment. I looked around to glimpse heads sneak a look through windows. People were in their porches wondering what next. We speculated as to who had given the consent as ours was in totality a residential complex. A few months ago when  the  workers from Aqua -tech  had come for the standard maintenance of the water  tank there had been a burglary in one of the flats . The watchman had been whisked away to the police station by two burly stern looking policemen and released in the afternoon. There was quick appointment of additional staff. There after every one was vig