Life

Lost in woods      She looked here and there helplessly but no one was around. In hills it is difficult to get help. The local population is very less, that too distributed sparsely across various villages. She had no idea where she was. She had left Nainital at four in the evening and she was trying to make it to Ramnagar that same evening. She had a quarterly meet of her company at a resort in Ramnagar, famous for its Jim Corbett National Park . Now there were many beautiful resorts in Ramnagar one after the other, where tourists flocked for their wild-life adventures. These resorts on the bank of the river Kosi made a perfect destination for weddings and conference for corporate. Everything was going fine when on third day of her conference she decided to break loose and visit her aunt in Nainital. Her aunt had insisted that she stay overnight as it was not safe to drive in hills in evening. But the road was so good and drive so scenic she ignored all warnings and

The first day of bride It was her first morning in the house as ‘the new bride’. She was hesitant and terrified as to what were the systems in this unknown place. She tried to reach for her mobile in the dark and actually knocked off the steel plate on the side stool of bed. The plate went flying with an erring irritating sound and luckily landed on the nearby carpet. She thought “Damm….not a good start. Thank God the carpet was there otherwise the whole house would have been awake.” In the dim mobile light she saw Avinash sleeping like a baby, oblivious to all the worries in the world which had been bothering her since days. “Why only females have to leave their parents and house to come to unknown world? If there is anything called ‘reincarnation’ I would like Avinash to be my wife and I should be the husband in next life.” A smile crossed her lips at this funny thought. She was not sure how she was going to survive in this alien house for even fifteen days. Where she m

Airports are fancy places, resembling miniature ‘shopping-malls’. Jazz and glitzy, people are seen in their best attires at airports. It’s something beyond comfort, mostly about style and luxury. Air-crew seems to be the smartest people on earth while air-hostess represents one’s role model for makeup and etiquette. ‘Grooming’ is the word which defines this industry. One can see people in their so called ‘style-diversity’. Business travelers and frequent-flyers, all dressed formally rolling their executive stroller-bags, students in latest hip-hop styles and housewives as if all dressed-up for parties. Some tourists and vacationing beings are seen in holiday mood with Bermudas, t-shirts and bathroom slippers. She noticed that whenever she traveled by train she took out her most comfortable and sober clothes along with flip-flop for travel. But whenever she traveled via plane it was like getting ready for a party. This time she was traveling from New Delhi to Mumbai for a

She was like the “the new girl in the city” but she had started falling in love with it. Though a metropolitan but Kolkata had its own culture. On one side, the bustling traffic with trams on the road and hand-rickshaw pullers from the Victorian times gave a rustic feel to the city, on the other side the developing New Town areas with its malls and high rise buildings gave competition to cities like Gurgaon and Noida.   She was amazed to see that the old ambassador car, which can rarely be spotted anywhere in India, form an eminent part of Kolkata in the form of ‘yellow-cabs’. She found herself beaming with excitement when she first came out on Howrah station and spotted the famous Howrah bridge right in front of her. If Mumbai and Delhi boast of their sea, Kolkata stand humble there with its sacred “Ganga”. Even the peculiar road-side lamps reminded her of British times. On her way to hotel she couldn’t believe her eyes when she spotted the ‘the white Victoria Memorial’ in all