Tales from a Travelling salesman

Wanderlust 2021  I am blessed with wanderlust from my boyhood. An elderly aunt of mine took me on my first train journey to Mumbai was when I was 11. We arrived on a gloomy, rainy day in 1962. A war was simmering with China. Shammi Kapoor’s all-time hit film ‘Professor’ was running to a packed house at Novelty in Grant road where we stayed.  As we disembarked from Saurashtra Mail, I had no way of knowing that this travel will turn into a lifelong wanderlust for me, that an old aunt with whom I came I would soon lose to cancer.  Life restricted my boyhood wanderlust to places around my small hometown, a cycle trip to a dam nearby, a family picnic by camel cart to a distant park or temple. The farthest travel from home in my memory was to Rajkot, mere 50 miles in 1965 when Pakistan tried bombing our hometown and failed miserably.  These outings had sown seeds to see more, dream more, travel more, choose a path of unending journey. At 18, I traveled to Mumbai with two ...

Radio musings  Radio did not appeal to me even when I saw it the first time, perhaps at my parents’ home next-door. I lived with an aunt of my father who never bought a radio as all kinds of people filled her sprawling estate to entertain her. I was too young to worry about songs or news or whatever else radio relayed those days. I had my friends, marbles, a cricket bat, my manservant and aunt who doted on me. My elder brother playing his favorite songs loudly on the radio, much to the chagrin of everyone around; is the only memory of the large and ugly device I have.  Radio entered my life surreptitiously during India’s wars with China and Pakistan when I was a boy scout. No one really explained to me why they were all huddled around a radio listening to the endless newscasts and random patriotic songs. At 11 and 12, no one really cares about who bombed whom. Patriotism had not yet entered my young psyche. I remained indifferent to the radio, by now beloved of the rest of the...