My Trysts With Life

4 th -9 th September 2016, District Chamoli: After a lot of coaxing, rescheduling and deliberation the plan was finalised. Me, a few colleagues and some strangers were on our way to the famed, “Valley of Flowers” trek, comprising the valley, the highest Gurudwara in the word- Hemkund Sahib and the holy Badrinath temple. Indiahikes- a group which organises treks, was our go to option, as none of us had any previous trekking experience. A lot of mails, rigorous exercise regimes and thousands of WhatsApp messages later, we all reached Haridwar, the common point for the entire group, finally 27 in number. An interesting part of the human psychology caught my attention- how on the basis of a few messages, we start making mental pictures of people. Someone appeared like an all knowledgeable know it all, someone a newbie, a lady looked bossy and a few others had some or the other tags associated with them- without actually knowing how they were! We basically end up scrutinising pe...

Rudrapur: Panting my lungs out, I was on my way back from the morning jog (when kids start calling you uncle, you get that urge to stay fit!). One would not think of any significant thing to happen at this hour, but my dear old friend “Life” always has a small trick down its sleeve. I normally go to a local stadium near my place, which is frequented by a number of people. The road leading to the pathway is normally littered with all sorts of people- chatting midwives, young lads of CISF sweating it out, young ones running in groups, and “uncles” like me (alas!) who with their headphones in are running with an eye on their waistline. This daily routine was however disrupted today by a pleasingly unfamiliar sight- comprising a lady (possibly 25-26 by the looks of her), an old Sikh man (surely around 75) and a white coloured two wheeler. The young lady was apparently instructing something to her father apparently. He had the look of a man not too sure of what he was doing- and t...