My maiden visit to Darjeeling planned diligently over a few weeks of frenzy, just after the first wave of pandemic eased a bit, started from the Gurudwara bus stop location in Kolkata, where we boarded a Volvo bus and reached Siliguri early next morning.
The car driver who took us to Darjeeling from Siliguri was very amiable. At my prodding he talked about interesting things hardly known to the tourists travelling the place for the first time. As we stopped at the roadside breakfast corner, he gave an account of the Cheetahs coming down from the hills and temporarily taking shelter in tea gardens for giving birth to their babies. He also told us, during the journey, as the hills and the tea estates came into view, about brow-antlered deer bred in Coochbehar, who are then released in forests around Darjeeling.

The man could see a lady putting something inside a bottle, and throwing it away into the swirling seawater receding from the shore before going away.

The other day I got a mail from Bill Aitken, famous travel writer and biographer: “Trust you are well and finding life full of wonder and meaningful. Our Apso Kabir (pet dog) passed away suddenly in summer, probably from eating a dead bird which had eaten a poisonous fruit. I immediately recruited a new puppy called Freddie, this time a large breed. She is a beautiful and intelligent golden Labrador and already at 7 months weighs 30 kilos…”
While writing the rejoinder, my memory associated with the dog came flooding back.

If I am on the road, happen to be discussing with someone the merits of a book I have just read and liked, I often lose sight of obstructions and bump into people. One of the books that made me forget which side of the street I was on is The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho.
I read The Alchemist long after it was first published in 1988. I heard about it making waves, found it in every bookshop I visited, but somehow looking at the cover page and the blurbs, found nothing that appealed to me. I often wondered what lay within this slim volume that had the world at its feet.

He was accelerating down the left flank, toeing the ball forward exactly the same length each time, as though there’s a hidden magnet controlling his touch with the ball.

Ridiculing
Is the first part
Of their strategy.
Their remarks
Like barbed arrows
Will target
The very core
Of your being.
But you must steel yourself
Against such hurts.

“What am I doing, bursting into paint? I am a writer; I ought to stick to ink. I have found my medium of expression; why at the age of forty, should I want to try another?” D H Lawrence, contrary to what he says here, had taken to painting much earlier in life, when he was at the fringe of adolescence.

The writer and I met at Victoria Memorial during a lit-fest. I waited till he finished with the autograph hunters. He’s a coffee-man. We sneaked into Flurys.
You often speak to ruins and they speak back. Is that true?

Along the once-much-too-familiar
But now skidding-into-oblivion route,
That reeked of scenes
Emblazoned on the gateway of my heart,
I beat on my hooves,
After eons of time, it seemed.

A little patch of red white and pink plant fronting a shanty made me stop in my tracks.
Do you tend to this plant? I asked the shack-dweller, a recluse.