Enthralling Trails

“ In the cherry blossom's shade  there's no such thing  as a stranger.”  ―  Kobayashi Issa The recent bomb blast at a Concert in Manchester has been ostracized by everyone in the world. The news spoke about the loss of eight year old Saffie Rose Roussos, who never had a clue that the event would be the last one in her life. The news said that the little girl was beautiful in every aspect of the word and was loved by everyone for the warmth and gentleness. She had an imaginative panache, and was soft and unpretentious. Saffie’s picture and her qualities shoved my thoughts to Isabelle in the small village in Tyrol . The locale could be compared to a paradise owing to its greenery, cleanliness, with majestic snow capped peaks of Alps overlooking the valley far and wide. The place was interspersed with fields and beautiful cottages which were tastefully decorated with tulips, tables with fresh flowers, tiny handcrafted carts filled with flowering plants and ...

“My dad had limitations. That's what my good-hearted mom always told us. He had limitations, but he meant no harm. It was kind of her to say, but he did do harm.”   ―   Gillian Flynn Anjali was a chartered accountant and had a grown up married daughter. Having fulfilled her duties religiously she put in greater efforts and time into her job. Her job was a second home for her, perhaps a family. It is so for most of the people. One enters a job with apprehensions as a young employee. The job then has  a  lot of expectations, as a youngster the binding makes one dislike being tied up. One yearns for the carefree college days, yet the money and priorities, make the job an inseparable part with embellishments and trouncing of life.  Nine year old Nipun was Anjali’s next door neighbour , the family had moved in a few years back after the resident owners sold it to them. Anjali met little Nipun many times on holidays as he would prance around with his aunt in...

“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.”   ―   Mahatma Gandhi Ankush kept watching the crowd skip, hop, bogie and dance spilling colours . They took pleasure in getting drenched in the colourful water, but his eyes were focussed on the square holy place where the effigy of holi was burnt last night. He had seen the crowd gather last night around the effigy, which was like a triangular cone that was painfully made from the dried stalks of wood by the gardener and  a few other employees of the apartments. This year, the environmentally conscious crowd had gathered, dried cow dung cakes to sustain the  burnt effigy for a longer time. The effigy wasn’t very large, but would definitely burn long enough . It was surrounded by bricks from the garden. The gardener was given the task of cleaning the lawns and watering the garden to keep it cool. It was a social event, a gathering after six months, to ...

“To be heroic is to be courageous enough to die for something; to be inspirational is to be crazy enough to live a little.”   ―   Criss Jami It was a bright morning, the Balewadi stadium at Mahalunge in Pune was spotted with engineering students from all over India .  The largest group belonged to the MIT Academy of Engineering, Alandi who were coordinating the National Robocon in association with Doordarshan and today was the final day of the show. The huge expanse of land, the bountiful greenery and the sports arenas intermittently created  pulsating hues for the onlookers. The occasion had led numerous future engineers all over India to the air conditioned Badminton court. The court was definitely one of the largest in Ind ia , but the  stars were the  newly created Robots by 150 teams from all over Ind ia . The winner would represent the International Robocon, 2017 at Tokyo in  Japan . The teams were from IITs NITs, and many other re...

“I like life, it's wonderous and chaotic and somewhere in the middle I've created a safe place to do my thing in the world ~ I can't ask for much more & I am already so thankful when everything I got”   ―   Nikki Rowe A day without food is understandable, but a day devoid of a cup of tea seems hard to begin. Winters have a propensity to be special with a cup of hot ginger tea. We have often seen  tea  carts on wheels in the homes of the rich, and  the poor man’s tea made on the wheels. A hawker selling tea, rolls his cart wheel early in the morning to brew tea for the early risers. He  usually has biscuits, rusk and a few other eatables in glass bottles to attract on goers . Some  of these people have become rich overnight owing to the art of concocting a rich and enjoyable tea. One of them who has been highly successful is ‘KaKa’, an old man who owns a  stall of ‘Vada Paav’ and tea. The ‘Va da ’ is a ball of boiled, mashed, spice...