Enthralling Trails

Mr Mohan Diwedi is unvarying about his morning walks. He is a senior citizen, he is tall and heftily built. He is a widower who misses the presence of a companion. The walk has been a ritual for him, it brings him close to the world that he aspires to be in. He begins his walk from Golden Tower located in Chinchwad and walks to the Ganapati Temple, which is located in the village of Chinchwad. The walk is almost 3 kilometres long. It leads him to the housing arenas, shopping hubs, and narrow lanes lined with houses that have blossoms of Jasmine, Rose and Hibiscus outside their homes. On returning he walks on to the opposite end where there is a children’s park, it has a walking track that runs along the boundary and a central green lawn. There are numerous flowering plants around and all along the walk. The unprecedented lockdown in the month of March 2020 owing to the pandemic brought in fear, anxiety and antipathy towards fellow human beings. The changes that set in made life...

“I'm planting a tree to teach me to gather strength from my deepest roots.” ― Andrea Koehle  It seemed as if God was infuriated with us. The pandemicCOVID 19 had siphoned Mumbai and Pune and to add to the misery, cyclone Nisarga eyed Maharashtra as its choicest places to make its landfall. There was incessant rainfall for a day before the landfall. We enjoyed the tranquillity that followed a humid summer. The plants beamed with their sparkling leaves, and the flowers skipped, bounced and toyed in joy. The plants grew in large flower pots, they grew beyond their abilities and were the best but their growth was stifled. We felt we would transplant the plants that had grown beyond their means to survive in the flowerpots to a larger green expanse. The priority was for the Christmas plant which was more than three feet tall. My husband was fond of the plant. He said, ‘I will move it to the lawned area in our office’. The plants on the front side were mostly flowering. The...

My husband’s aunt Kakakka turned 90 years old a few months back. She lives in Mumbai and can speak English, Hindi, Konkani, Malayalam, Tamil …and the list is endless. She doesn’t look a year more than seventy. We have always seen her wear bright coloured saris with her curly hair coiled into a tiny bun at the nape of her neck. She is young at heart and not an old soul. These days she has started wearing long gowns but her face has the same vibrant smile with a well-kept set of teeth. Recently her son gifted her a smartphone and the first thing she learnt to use was’WhatsApp’. It gave her a great opportunity to connect with her family in Kerala. She joined the family group and began updating herself. During the lockdown, she also began using video chat. My husband has been her favourite nephew. My husband goes to meet her once in a while and they chat for long hours. Sometimes the conversation goes on till dawn and during these long sessions, she would take my husband through the ...

Ruskin Bond began narrating his stories on All India Radio at 10.10 pm since yesterday. It is an endeavour to keep listeners engaged during the lockdown owing to the COVID 19 Pandemic. We decided to sit in the balcony that faced the garden of the building and listen to Bond. The tiny expanse of the garden would usually have families and kids hustling and bustling noisily but these days there is no one in the vicinity. The uncanny silence helped us listen to the low voice of Bond with clarity as he narrated his story. Bond’s stories revolve around the magic of childhood and this story was no exception. He narrated the story of bonding with his father who would talk about umpteen things when they rambled on the streets of Delhi. The quietness of the night and the narration propelled me to my childhood.  My family was a large one with four siblings and the extended family was much bigger than that. My father had a treasure of stories to narrate. He had one for every...

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Arthur C. Clarke I was waiting for my laptop to download the software named MiKTeX. It seemed to go on endlessly and my memories impelled me to revisit life…. Teaching has been one of the most gratifying experience for an academician. The classroom is a creative site where the teacher can connect with the students bearing numerous personalities. Teaching students in a face to face situation is said to usher joy, contentment and supreme gratification as no day is the same in a classroom. Each batch of students, each concept and each learning happens with a freshness and the experience is always brand new. A good teacher has a unique quality of adapting to the environment and imbibing the environment in her teaching. For example, a Humanities faculty in the Management College imbibes Economics and Finance easily, the one in Performing Arts and Literature starts appreciating the Philosophy and Sociolog...

Mani Pradhan hailed from Shrivardhan in Raigad district of Maharashtra in India. He had retired as an Assistant Commissioner of Income Tax. He was tall, slim and was extremely fair with luxuriant hair on his head. The fair skin had a pink shade displaying good health on the cheerful countenance. He sported a thick moustache that was grey like his hair. He was married to a fair beautiful lady named Aboli. Aboli is an orange coloured flower that is often strung together into strands, sometimes along with white jasmine flowers. These strands of flowers are used to embellish a woman’s hair or offered to deities.  Aboli was short but fair and pretty with long hair that was plaited loosely. She never adorned Aboli flowers though the bushes graced the compound wall of their house. She was calm and had a smiling face just like Mani. The couple had moved to Pune after a few years of their marriage and had lived there long after Mani’s retirement. They bought a flat close to the o...

“There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” ― Mahatma Gandhi It was around five in the evening but the sun's rays were beating harshly with the onset of summer. The massive road was bare, sand blew mutely from the muddy footpath. The eerie silence matched the tranquillity. The puppies playfully ran across the road fearlessly as they had stopped hearing the din of the traffic. The Pandemic caused due to Corona Virus disease had found its way to India. India, a populous country needed to cut down the rate of growth of the infection. This prompted the Indian Government to a lockdown situation all over India for twenty-one days. We have been at home a week before the lockdown too owing to the impact felt in Maharashtra, India.  That evening, a family of four lugged a huge shoddy white bag. The lady carried an infant nestled in her arms, and the man carried the huge white bag while a five-year-old boy lingered behind. ...