Pictures and words

Train excerpts My college friend, Amarinder Arora recently posted this on facebook. "Recently, while travelling in the sleeper class coach of a train, I overheard this old man humming the following to (and for) his wife- "फूल सी झलक एक दिखलादे मुझको दिल मेरा खुलके झूमे, कुछ खट्टी कुछ मीठी यादें, सब मॅन में पिरो के सो लूँ" One photograph  instantaneously came in my mind, I was once traveling from Bhopal to Delhi in Bhopal express. This journey was different. This time I was alone, no collegemate along. I woke up early. The sun was rising, spreading straight golden light parallel to the horizon. I saw this old lady sleeping. Her husband was awake and was just staring at her. His eyes were reflecting the sense of love and compassion he had for her.It looked as if he was remembering all the good time he had spent with her and how lucky he was to have her, and how he never wanted to lose her. I took out my camera, asked him if I could ta

Lucky The Magician. The inception of the idea to do a series on the magic show in a small village Mela  (fair) came out of sheer humour. But it turned out to be a different one.  Tapas and I visited the Dhrang  village at the pakistan border, about 40 kms from Bhuj. The village is famous for two things. First its saint,  Saint Mekaran Dada who had a dog named motio and a donkey named Lalio with whom he used to wander into the Rann daily with water and food to quench the thirst and show the direction to the lost travellers.  Second,  A large fair which is held every year on Magh Vad 14 (February-March). Coming back to the point of focus. We explored the fair pretty fairly. The most interesting thing that we came across was a local Magic show. Below is a excerpt from my travel diary about the interesting magic show.                  The Aggarwal family’s roots are from J ammu but they are living in Gujarat since many decades. They say that no one believes that they are Ag

Trip Excerpt: Khadi of Gondal During the end of our 1800 km bike trip across the south Gujarat we visited Gondal. We had an idea that it was the khadi hub of Gujarat. I love khadi and admire Gandhian ideology on khadigram and rural industries. Part:1 7/7/2015 It was our last day to travel to a new destination, next day we had to head back to Bhuj. We left for Rajkot from Junagarh at around 1830 hours. On the way we decided to try our luck and stop at Gondal, there was a risk of us getting no place to sleep or eat since it is a small town. It was dark when we reached there, we were looking for " Udyog Bhart i". Satish, my trip partner knew that Udyog Bharti is the celebrated khadi organisation there, but it closes at 5. We reached Gondal and searched for Udyog Bharti's office. It was closed. There was a guard sitting outside a huge gate. The smaller gate within the huge gate was opened. We were in the traveler's attire and our bike was loaded with