Musings

 A short trip to a small town in Himachal Pradesh (HP)  turned out to be a huge eye opener for me. I feel like the boy in the famous story who shows his father a village from his point of view to show what 'rich' really means. Being born and brought up in Mumbai I always felt that 'Mumbaikar's' have it all - simplicity as well as being fancy. Yet, Nahan (the place I visited in HP) taught me what being 'real' is - no showing off, just being pure unadulterated 'human'.  To build up the context better - imagine a single old lady all by herself in a city. We will get our sympathies out and work out al possible schemes to keep her safe, but will hardly do anything beyond that. A simple 'take care' will seal our conversations with the elderly. However in Nahan, I saw friends and neighbours never say ' take care' but are personifications of  "I will take care". I know some of you may remember I had a blog post on a similar feeling ...

 Last few weeks have been particularly painful for the likes of me - where 'we' the nuclear family become an extended family of the place where our spouses work. The fraternity of any service becomes a close knit one - with all the baggage's of any typical family. We celebrate together, we cheer together, we gossip together (separately) and yes we also we mourn together.  The man at the helm of affairs of the Indian Coast Guard Director General, had an unexpected call from the heavens and he went away just at the snap of a finger. Imagine someone leaving the house in a perfect condition and coming back in a casket?  Hardly had we gotten over this loss that, we heard that an ALH (Advanced Light Helicopter) who was on the way to save someone from a merchant ship had to ditch it's course mid way and land in to the vast sea. Precious lives lost again. Incidentally the same ALH had saved close to 67 lives in a flood situation, just few days back. Unfortunately there was no s...