Gir-The forest

We backpacked and left for Gir a day brfore Diwali this year. It was a trip in pursuit of seeing a lioness and her cubs spotted near Devaliya. We stayed in tents at a farm and enjoyed the forest air. For the three days that we were there, all of us cozied upto warm bon fires in the night listening to forest noises and watching starlit skies. We were also fortunate to watch the local Siddi tribal dance.

Although we pursued the Asiatic patiently through the forests, our efforts were in vain. Nonetheless, it has made us more determined to go back. We did see pug marks and lot of deer. Apart from that, peacocks were aplenty. We also managed to catch a glimse of a lounging marsh crocodile and a wild cat alongwith a few sambar.

Travelling by road, we felt that the govt. ought to look in to providing proper food arrangements along highways. This could be done in lieu with the locals of intermittent villages so that even they are profitted by this and travellers dont face a lack of local cuisine.

It is a pity to resort to highway hotels and stale bhajiyas when travel needs to be liberating.

Well Gir, look out for us! We'll be back!!

Providence

The fat guy, perched on his tiny scooter, leaned precariously over his equally fat shoulder where a mobile sat, cramped between his ear and neck. He was in the middle of the busy street, his speed fluctuating along with his natters on the mobile. I watched him, hoping for his fall where he would probably learn his lesson for good. But he moved aside to create way for an ambulance which was loud enough for him. 

I have always wondered at the ambiguity of these circumstances, wherein a fall is inevitable, an accident unavoidable and yet providence escapes them by a mere fraction, blessing them not with nine more lives but a nineteen hundred wretched ones probably.

If only destiny is so kind to a mother who lovingly tries to cradle her stillborn or to a student who stands at the altar contemplating suicide after flunking an exam set by a flawed education system.

If only.

The World's a Wide Web now...

It’s a fascinating world out there on the world wide web. If you aren’t disciplined in your attitude towards life, you can be easily addicted and it will be no different than any other substance abuse.

The WWW takes into its internal depths, allowing you to search virtual avenues, explore and learn thereby creating a labyrinth which starts to slowly seep into your frame of mind, like any other knowledge source. So much so that at times you may want to simply DEL certain doings in your real life and woah!, you realize how false the virtual world really is!

Although it’s delicious secrets are laid open to us easily, it comes at a cost. If you can consciously avoid vulgarity in real life, the virtual world is always dishing it out to you, take it or not. One can escape to the jungle to beat the crudity of life, but the internet would be a wrong place to find solitude. It provides and then infests one with a restless mania for more….and one will always come out of it wanting.

Then you need to employ net nannies to protect your kids from the ever deranging smut offered via the net.

Hmm…Can’t live with it….Can’t live without!!

A Thousand Splendid Suns

The thing that hit me most about the book is the raw emotion of women and the brutalities that a man can impose. The trauma of everyday life amidst a strife torn Afghanistan alongwith mundane routines of skinning fish and cleaning beans, rearing children, experiencing nostalgic joys of a once beautiful land and learning to live with the present day trauma..very vivid yet disturbing.

All of us know the facts..its in the news and around us...yet its another land, another world....
Khaled Hosseni really touches upon those little trivia in everyday life which we hardly consider important, but must treat as blessings.

Lovely book..n if one has loved The Kite Runner...this one too is a gem...and leaves you entwined with the lives of Mariam n Laila long after the book is back on the shelf.