Enthralling Trails

“It's not how much we give but how much love we put into giving.”   ―   Mother Teres a He sat on the bench in the garden looking at nothing, his attention focused nowhere. He was dressed in bermudas and a loose checks shirt which made him appear like a  school boy. There was a lady too, in a frock with a walker trying hard to move. The gates were closed  but the inner shutters were open. The outer gates were huge with the upper portion made of Iron bars which let a visitor look in. There was stillness which reminded me of fear, death and other ghastly things. I wished I had not come here. Everyone craves to visit a fun  filled place  booming with joy and laughter,’ may be a place where there are new shops or malls inaugurated or where there are carnivals and fairs, a place where people flock. But no one longed to be  here. The loneliness was profound with the rustle of leaves,and the groaning sound of a few vehicles passing by. These are t...

“and yet she was leaving the world as a woman who had love and been loved back. she was leaving it as a friend, a companion, a guardian. a mother. a person of consequence at last.”   ―   Khaled Hosseini  She held the round board with a stand displaying ‘Stop’ sign ,with her other hand she directed where we had to stop. We wondered whether we were in the wrong place as our minds were accustomed to a man stopping us rather than lady, but she stood there bearing a mature demeanour as we halted where she had directed us to. We have been to this fuel filling station commonly known as the petrol pump for the past eleven years . Each time we visited we found something new here. In the initial years this was the best petrol pump as the other one at Nigdi was always crowded. With the growth in the infra structure of the place and the population many petrol pumps and CNG centres have mushroomed up. This had a super bazaar too for a few years. My son was a little boy and s...

Discipline trains the tremendously important habit of mind control and positive thinking- Robin Sharma He gazed intently oblivious of his surroundings. He seemed proud of his accomplishment, and I felt the pride turning into arrogance as we glanced curiously, perhaps there were a few appreciating looks too. He and his sister were sitting on a small couch in a corner of a nondescript beauty parlour just beyond our lane. He was about nine years old and his sister must have been eight years old. They were in their school uniforms which had the school emblem on the shirt and on their tie. Their uniform was a combination of shades of sky blue and dark blue.Their school bags were lying on the floor near the couch . The boy was peering deeply into the touch screen mobile while the girl kept glancing around prying to know more. Both were fair and well built for their age. They seemed intelligent and responded well  to my questions but the boy never looked up. His attention was pai...

People grow old only by deserting their ideals and outgrowing the consciousness of their youth. Years wrinkle the skin but to give up enthusiasm wrinkles the soul…….Dr. L.F.Phelan The sweetmeat proprietor stood in the corner ,  his thoughts focussed towards a young lad who sat on the manager’s chair. There were helpers who were busy stuffing Balushahi, an Indian confectionery in packets. The shop was owned by the sweetmeat retailer who is a Balushahi specialist. I came to know this through the printed wrap of the packet in which they pack the savouries. The shop was crammed with a variety of snacks, hot and sweet. There were sweetmeats being made. A few were lying open to cool down. It was evening and the shop was brimming with people. We picked our favourite Ding laddoo which is particularly healthy for winters as it has the gum of plants, a kind of resin, as we stood near the counter.  I was looking for telltale signs to know who the young man was. He resembled the own...

  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 exerci...

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 ap...

“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 fondl...