Enthralling Trails

Begin to See the Light “Stories are light. Light is precious in a world so dark. Begin at the beginning. Tell Gregory a story. Make some light.”― Kate DiCamillo ‘Do I have a story for you at the end of the Pandemic year? It has been a year full of stories, some painful, some inspirational, but they have touched us each day. As the year ends and the new year sets in, numerous incidents will move you and perhaps leave a beautiful song of strength, poise and peace. ‘Ma’am, we have a lower portion of Grandma’s house vacant. The tenants have left, and we have been playing there?’ They then showed me a large room, ‘Is this the empty portion of the house?’ The girls yelled in joy and said, ‘It is our room, we have separate cots to sleep, ma’am. We used to share our bed earlier to this. I peered deeply into the house and asked the girls, ‘Where are you now?’, they immediately used my screen to present the whole house. The little girls jumped, giggled, and ran down the stairs. They focussed...

The corner most row house in the housing complex had been lying vacant for quite some time. People were baffled by the rent the house owner quoted for it. It was not palatial but was an independent bungalow lying nestled amidst the numerous flats in the housing society. It was close to the security booth near the main gate. The backyard of the house had a large space which was close to the gate. The front end was on the inner end of the housing complex. One day, a you n g man, a local Politician moved into the house with his wife and two school-going kids. The man was middle-aged, dark, not very tall, he sported a beard and had long hair that fell on his shoulders. The lady was slender, slim and young-looking. They had a daughter who seemed twelve years old and his son nearly sixteen. They attended an English medium school whose school bus picked them on the road just beyond the main gate. The man drove a black Scorpio car and parked it inside the row house. Each day numerous people ca...

Bahadur stood near the gate to greet us with a Salam Sahib. He was extremely short, just around five feet tall with the beginnings of a paunch that was quite contradictory to the post he held. He not very fair, but he had long hands, kind brown eyes and straight black hair. He resembled an Indian in his features and was in his late thirties. The first time I met him, I asked my husband who he was though the uniform he had adorned spoke about his occupation. He said, ‘Bahadur’. I asked him, ‘Wasn’t Bahadur the tall fair man who managed the office’. He said, ‘That Bahadur has gone home and this man is a replacement’ I said, ‘Is this one a substitute or a permanent employee’. My husband was getting annoyed by the wholly of questions, yet he said, ’None of them is permanent, and they are all Bahadur’ I said, ‘Are they brave or are they christened ‘Bahadur’ at birth’. My voice got drowned in the shrill sound of the traffic as my husband walked down the parking to drive the car that we had p...

“The difference between ordinary and extraordinary is that little extra.” ― Jimmy Johnson Aria patted her baby palms filled with oil on Neela’s gown, she looked deep into Neela’s eyes, a smile lit up her oily face and a gust of love bonded them. Neela quickly picked Aria and they looked across the city of multitudes. Aria was Neela’s granddaughter and was just three years old. It was the usual oil massage bath for the child. As they gazed through the crowded towers of the city, Neela was swept back to her childhood.   Neela had a loving mother and four sisters. The house that they lived in was small and the food tasted the yummiest because the aroma wafted through the rooms. They loved to eat the food hot and it tasted the best because there was never any leftovers. Neela was the youngest, perhaps the most foolish. The wisdom and smartness that other children showed weren’t seen in her. She would babble loudly and let out any secret that was told to her. She did not have a great ap...

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 ...