hopscotch

Aai....this is for you! I won second prize in Bal Sahitya (senior) category. The contest was held by CEE on behalf of Environment Department, Maharashtra Govt. The title of the story is "My Mother's Garden".

These photographs are of my mother's garden - her favourite flowers, trees and her final resting place. This is how it looks like in her absence. I have tried to capture various corners of the garden.

This was written for a contest. Results will be declared in June. Wish me Luck. ---- I was home after almost six months. I stood in the veranda with the bag hanging down from my shoulder. The garden looked lush green and neatly manicured. My growing up years have been associated with this place and its transformation from a vacant plot, into a kitchen garden and then in to a 'wildly growing' garden. There were trees, thickets, shrubs, potted plant, cactus, flowering plant, money plant...you name it and we had it. Or rather my mother had it. My parents, who wanted to build a small house, had pooled their meager resources to buy the land. When the house was being built, we (my elder sibling and I) often accompanied our parents to see the construction. The area surrounding the house, looked dusty and barren except for few trees. “Teak! That's teakwood tree,” Aai shrieked loudly. I had looked around to see if anyone had overheard us. “And”, she said pointing to anothe...

Yup! I know lot has been said about the movie. It was sure to do well, right from the moment Aamir Khan decided to produce it. Well, yes, the movie was good. Damn good. Slick, humorous and as 'real' it could get. I thought it was going to be about farmers suicide. But...yes it does talk about the farmer's or A FARMER'S SUICIDE. The farmer, in this case, is Natha. And, his suicide is discussed in DETAIL by the mediawalle from Delhi and also by the regional satraps. The media makes a mockery of his death. And, like all the media reports, exclusives, breaking news - nothing CONCLUSIVE, comes out of it. The movie, I mean. Personally, three scenes touched me. One is that of the farmer, Hari Mahto, who has lost his land because he didn't have the money to repay the loan he took from the bank. He works in a pit now, digging mud. The mud is sold to contractors for meagre Rs 100 per day. He dies. The media, meanwhile, is tracking Natha's death (will he? won't he?...

This is for you Aai … (I had written this sometime back) Aarghhhhh! Not again…where’s the key? I mumbled to myself, digging into the pockets of my bag. I could feel the elusive key as I dug deeper into the bag, but instead of producing it, my fingers touched something soft and prickly. Rose petals…some soft, some crushed and leaves with the thorns intact. The aroma of the petals engulfed my senses. My thoughts went back to the not so distant past. ---- Every trip back home meant coming back with flowers – roses, mogras , jai-jui , lily, raat-rani , marigold…Most of them used to wilt by the time I reached Pune. “What’s the point if they are not going to last long? My bag smells, the flowers make a mess…” I tried telling my mother, hoping to dissuade her from giving me fresh beautiful flowers every Monday morning. It didn’t work of course. “It’s a ‘Best of Luck’ flower. The flower will bring you luck and success in whatever you do,” my mother used to tell me, thrusting another f...