Hooks, Books & Me

  This is long pending, and nostalgia filled post! Monsoon is an integral part of any Indian household. Everything depends on it – almost everything, inflation too!   And this year we got good rainfall. It was almost always raining! But now that monsoon receded and winter started, I had started missing those cozy, rainy evenings. And voila! We witnessed "Unseasonal" heavy rain this week, and the rain brought back the memories of time spent with my family at our ancestral village, those leisurely evening walks in the drizzling rain, festivities and wild beauties! Monsoon not only brings rain, but it also brings life that was lying dormant beneath dry earth. Rainwater pours fresh energy over the fields in a form of fertile silt. We celebrate monsoon, literally. It brings with it, various festivals that everyone look forward to. These wet months are also a time when distinct varieties of wildflowers (or rather wild beauties) spring up in every corner if you really know where t...

Its been a while (more than a while actually) since I wrote my last post, lot of things are happening here lately. We were so anxiously waiting for 2020 to end, what a disastrous year it had been! Then 2021 arrived, the year where everything, and maybe nothing, might happen! The coronavirus pandemic has bought tectonic change to almost every part of life. But by the end of 2020, things were returning to normal, or new normalcy or so we thought.  To escape the chaos and madness of the pandemic, we even took a quick getaway to Bhandardara during my birthday weekend in January. Bhandardara is one of the best and less commercial hill stations of Maharashtra. We stayed at the MTDC resort overlooking Arthur lake, perfect solace to the drained souls like us. This lake is formed by the dammed up river of Pravara and serves as a reservoir to the Wilson Dam and was formed way back in 1910. We decided to take a trek to Mt. Kalsubai, highest peak of Maharashtra and the highest point on the ...