The blue sky

I am travelling to Mumbai and Pune in the next week and I am feeling just like a small kid, who goes on a summer vacation to his/her grand mom’s place. Both my grand mom’s are awaiting my arrival and I will be also meeting my in-laws after many days. So I am looking forward to a partially good summer vacation (am working, am not on leave). Mumbai is a hot and humid and sultry city, but it is also true that it is the liveliest city, I have ever seen.  I spent 23 years of my life in Mumbai, to be precise, in a small central suburb, called Dombivli. But my grandmother stays in central Mumbai and so I have grown up watching the beaches and the queen’s necklace and the hanging gardens. As soon as the exams were over, I rushed to my aaji’s place and spent the entire summer vacation over there. She stayed in a chawl, where the toilets were outside the house and some 10 families shared it. She had Gujrathi neighbors and I was very close to the Joshi family. There were 3 kids in that fami...

6th May was a birthday of my close friend, Sudhir. He and his wife invited me and Koustubh for dinner at a nice restaurant near my office. Sudhir, Koustubh and I are friends from the time we all started first in HP. We have still kept in touch after we moved out from HP. We meet on birthdays, anniversaries or just like that for tea or dinner. Sudhir and his wife picked me up in their I 20 car and Shubhangi, his wife was driving the car. She looked so cool and confident and very much in control. Sudhir was sitting next to her and giving her directions. He hasn't yet learned to drive. In fact all of us have not learnt driving till now because we travel regularly in office shuttles and do not want to take the risk and tension driving our ways in the Bangalore traffic. Shubhangi is from Pune and driving comes inherently to Punekars because driving is as important as breathing there :-) Koustubh and I are from Mumbai and hence always travelled by trains to colleges and never thought...

Today it rained like crazy in many parts of Bangalore. These were the pre-monsoon showers, I suppose. Bangalore gets rain for almost 8 months in a year and the weather is cool for most of the months. And today it seemed as if it the rain would never stop. We were in the canteen of our office and the canteen is on the last floor. It has an enormous hood, covering the entire floor to protect the people from rain and the sun. The rains were so heavy that we weren't able to hear each other's voices. We just sat there sipping tea and I became nostalgic. Rains remind me of those days, when I was studying in college. Degree college got over by 12 pm and then I came home, studied, watched TV and did whatever I liked. Whenever it started raining, I sat on the sofa in my living room and watched the rains from the grills of the window. My aaji gave me hot tea and kanda bhaji (onion rings) and I talked to her about her childhood days and rainy seasons she saw and experi...

I am feeling very sad and down since past 2 days. I was in high spirits as I was travelling to Mumbai on coming Saturday for my dear brother-in-law’s wedding and all of a sudden those plans crashed and my mood went for a toss. It happens many times in life that we look forward to something very eagerly and since long and in a moment, everything just seems to be white-washed. Something like this happened to me. I was happy at the thought that I would meet everybody at the wedding, meet my brother-in-law and his beautiful wife, but now that cannot happen. I share a very special bond with this brother-in-law of mine, who is actually my husband’s cousin brother. I am not a very relative friendly person as I have very bad experiences with my immediate relatives and so I keep all relatives at safe distance and they also do not bother to interfere in my life. Being in Bangalore is the biggest advantage in this regards. But this boy was very different. He had come to Bangalore for job and w...

Today is Mother's day and I have been seeing so many messages on my cell and my Facebook about it's celebration. There are so many advertisements on Television and on Radio too. What is the fuss about? Is Mother something to be thought of and celebrated only once a year? No, I do not think so personally. Everyday which I live and celebrate is the celebration of my mother too because I am in this world because of her. So, instead of wishing her today exclusively, I see to it that I talk to her daily and celebrate our bond almost daily by sharing and talking. She has been my constant source of energy, she gives me strength when I am down and cheers me up when I think, there is nowhere to go. She is a people person and always has her radiant smile ready to charm strangers too. She has friends in almost all age groups and in all the trains she travels to office. She is always smiling and happy and enthusiastic to take up anything in life. She loves trekking and goes to her fa...

My brother-in-law moved to the UK a few weeks back and it was his birthday on 19th April. Birthdays for me are celebration times, if they are of my close friends or family and no matter how far I am from them physically, I make it a point to make their day more special on that particular day by sending them greeting cards or book marks or hand made candles or by just sending them mails with personal message. But as my bil was away in the UK, I couldn't send anything of my trademark gifts and I sought the help of my school friend, Deven, who is settled in UK since past 6 years now. I wanted to gift my bil flowers, but when I had a look at some sites, I found the prices to be unnecessarily exorbitant and so dropped the idea. Deven suggested I gift him chocolates or any other gift which could reach him easily without any hassles. So, I zeroed upon a nice chocolate box from the link, Deven had suggested me and he very promptly took it ahead. ...

स्नेहल आणि मी एकाच प्रोजेक्ट मध्ये काम करत होतो, पण वेगवेगळ्या ठिकाणी बसून. मी बंगलोर ला  होते  आणि  ती  हैदराबाद  ला. पण  ती  आणि  मी,  डोंबिवली  ह्या  मुंबई  च्या  जवळ  असलेल्या  एका  छोट्या  शहरातून  असल्यामुळे, आमची पटकन मैत्री झाली आणि आम्ही भरपूर बोलायला लागलो, कामाबद्दल आणि कामा व्यतरिक्त सुद्धा! माझ्या नवऱ्याचं नाव अतुल, माझा प्रेम विवाह झालेला, नुकतच लग्न झाल्यामुळे, अतुल नावाच्या कोड्याला ओळखायला खूप वेळ लागला मला. प्रेम करणं वेगळं आणि त्या प्रेमाबरोबर २४ तास राहणं वेगळं. मी रोज काही न काहीतरी कुरबुर करायचे स्नेहलकडे आणि ती अगदी तल्लीन होऊन ऐकायची आणि मला समजवायचा प्रयत्न करायची.  मी जेव्हा कधी तिच्याकडे तिच्या लग्नाचा विषय काढायचे, ती टाळायची आणि नंतर एक दिवस तिने एक गौप्यास्पोट केला !! स्नेहल: लिनी, मला तुला काहीतरी सांगायचा आहे. मी: हो बोल की. स्नेहल:  अगं तू जेव्हा जेव्हा अतुलचं नाव घ्यायचीस तेव्हा तेव्हा तुला मला सांगावसं वाटत होते, पण राहून जायचं. माझ्या होणारया ...

Atul and I love nature and going to Jungle Lodges Resort is one of our favorite things to do. But as JLR as become too costly and we have almost covered the best of them, we haven't visited it from past 2 years. But then the yearning to be with nature continues and this time, we got a chance to go to the Queen of hill stations, Ooty. Ooty is 310 kms by drive from Bangalore and we reached there by afternoon. The hotel was Holiday Inn, one of the best known in India. It was located on a hill top and the small town of Ooty was visible from there. We could see green hills all over, which were I suppose tea gardens. It was so calm and serene there that we sat for hours looking at those beautiful hills. We saw a variety of birds and flowers in the gardens of the hotel itself. Silence ruled there and it was indeed like some silence therapy taking place on me and healing me from the mental and physical stress which I was experiencing in a mega city like Bangalore. While at work, we har...