Tales from a Travelling salesman

Journeys that I miss The scantily occupied train is hurling me down towards my destination north of Mumbai. It is a Saturday and Ganesh festival has commenced already. Only retired people like me prefer a daytime train journey. The compartment I travel is flooded with sunlight, while I enjoy a cup of tea brought in my thermos flask with 60 ml of single malt and my eccentricity added into it. In a moving object like a train, such pleasure multiplies. In an unusual occurrence, I am staying for 10 days where I am heading. A restless soul, I never stay any place for more than a few days. I am carrying with me, a Kindle loaded with a dozen books, a laptop, a few books, my walking shoes, a walking stick, 6 miniature whiskey bottles, and a bag full of clothes. Growing old, I am carrying more clothes with an obsession to change them a few times a day. My travel obsession made me carry a torchlight, alarm clock, and a sewing kit in my bag. I stopped this practice after some of my hosts began to...

  Reminiscing hometown     History says this about Jamnagar.   “Deeply impressed by a hare found to be brave enough to turn on the hunting dogs and putting them to flight, the king, Jam Rawal thought that if this land can breed such hares, the men born here would be superior to other men. He went on to make this place his capital.”   On the 7th day of the rainy month of August 1540 AD, on the banks of two rivers Rangmati and Nagmati, he laid the foundation of his new capital and named it Nawanagar (new town). Nawanagar eventually came to be known as Jamnagar meaning the town of the Jams. It is this town -now over 450 years old- that belongs to me, and I belong to it.   Many young men like me left this town in search of their destiny at a young age. The town did not have much to offer by way of the future in the difficult decade of the 1970s. We set out one by one, with teary eyes, crossing the bridge over river Rangmati in search of new pasture, greener or ...