Serendipity, Saunter and Faux paz

  Saturday night on the way back from town after meeting an old colleague, my rickshaw wallah is driving at break neck speed. It's raining, the wind feels great but it's dangerous as wet roads are slick and slippery. I ask him to slow down and say I'm in no hurry, he mumbles something and slows down fractionally as we are almost on the service road. But instead of slowing further he hits a pot hole and my arm swings and bruises slightly. Now I raise my voice and sternly ask him, why he isn't slowing down despite asking him to?  He: Internet khatam ho jayega.  Me: What?  He: (again) Internet khatam ho jayega Me: What's that? He: Bara bajne ko hai. App nahi chalega. Map nahi chalega. Hum ko pata nahi hum kahan hai. (It's close to midnight. The app will not work, the map will not work and I don't know where I am)  This sounds so bizzare, so Cindrella-ish! The rickshaw turning into a pumpkin and the rickshaw-wallah's shoes turning to ordinary flip-flops. May...

The forthcoming inauguration of the Interact club  co-sponsored by Rotary eclub One has triggered a spate of memories from my own tryst with the Interact club in the late 80s in suburban Mumbai. I am thinking of the new horizons that are going to open up for the participants of this club and how it is going to shape their lives in so many ways, small and big. I remember waiting for Saturday mid morning meetings of the club and the plans we would make for upcoming events - Teacher's Day, Drawing competitions, Carrom competitions, visiting the installation ceremony at the local Rotary club, meeting the new members of the local Rotaract club, annual picnic, visits to other schools and being part of service projects to keep the town clean, help the elderly with their chores and others. The amazing idea of service above self began to firmly take root.  A small group of us also visited the Annual Interact Jamboree in town where we met Interact club members from many different school...

 The recent announcement about the Reader's Digest UK coming to an end has been gut wrenching. Ever since I remember Reader's Digest was the one constant each month. Every new month, for some afternoons, I would eagerly await the arrival of the postman, as he would bring the month's Reader's Digest. And the day it arrived, for the next few hours I would be devouring as much as I could so I was up to speed with the contents for any discussion that might happen.  The  articles, the adventure stories, the book section, the interesting columns - All in a day's work, humour in uniform, quotable quotes - all collectively opened new worlds to be explored. Not to mention amassing Word Power through the vocabulary quiz. Having read the magazine, the next task would be re-read some things that were interesting- sometimes it was an article about exercise, sometimes about an acting legend, sometimes about a sports personality or an artist, sometimes the wonderful anecdotes and ...

 The huge jamun tree bordered our back yard and was on the boundary of the plot with the family that stayed behind our place. It's branches came up to the terrace and in summer were laden with fruit. We would wait impatiently for the green jamuns to turn purple so we could feast on them. Climbing the tree was a bit challenging as it grew a straight thick trunk till about 6 feet and then forked. So we would use the wooden ladder to climb up to the fork in the trunk and then climb our favourite branches. As the fruit ripened we sat on the branches and ate them. There are always the tell-tale signs of having plucked and eaten jamuns. Purple tongues and finger tips!  But that never deterred us and we knew how to collaborate to bend the branches to pluck the best ones.  Our jamun tree had plump juicy jamuns with their astringent taste that our house help Kunda* did not like much. She would bring us much smaller but sweeter jamuns from her part of the town wrapped in leaves. Th...

There is nothing like bonding over a walk in the botanical gardens in Singapore. Waking up early and pleased with the Universe for giving us an overcast sky but no rain, we started out at a brisk pace. A little into the walk my relatively unfit self and the sultry tropical weather together slowed us down but did nothing to curb our enthusiasm. Soon we were taking in the bird song and the fresh air from the garden as we trudged along. Trying to identify the plants and the bird calls, laughing when they turned out to be something else, it was a morning that was refreshing and rejuvenating. The bamboo and the ferns and the canna and the ficus all vying for attention in the morning light!  Swapping names softly in different languages we couldn't contain our excitement at finding the cannon ball tree.  We came across what looked like a pine cone from the distance but turned out to be something else. Still not sure what it is but not a pine cone surely! We walked to the POW steps an...

The hot summer months were meant for industriously drying different things in the sun and then storing them for use during the rest of the year. The annual sun drying home-factory started around mid-April and continued till the end of May.  (Image Source - Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/openclipart-vectors-30363/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=2024294">OpenClipart-Vectors</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com//?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=2024294">Pixabay</a>) Many different things were sun-dried. Large potatoes were peeled and grated and then dried in the sun. The dried potato gratings would be stored and used through the year to make a fried snack. The ' batatyacha kees"  as it was called in Marathi would be fried to make a quick, spicy  chivda that would taste really good. To make the chivda, sun...

It was the early 2000s and away on the East Coast Road in Chennai, by the bay, there wasn't a library nearby to borrow magazines. We missed our regular quota of Reader's Digest, Chandamama, Champak, Outlook, The Week and other reads. New to the area, I went around asking everyone if they knew of a library nearby, where did they get their books from? I discovered that there was a librarian who visited homes and delivered books. You could keep them for a fortnight and then on his next visit, he would collect those back and leave new ones for you. He charged a nominal sum that we could easily afford to pay and was a very tiny fraction of what it would cost to buy the magazines. The first time we met Mama ( maternal Uncle - it is the usual form of addressing gentlemen much older than you) we realised that he cycled around delivering books and magazines. The cycle was a trusted big, black hero cycle and he carried the books in colourful bags made of thick plastic, that would hand fr...