Tag: postaday

So, It’s June

It took me over a week to note that in writing, but I think June is the best month of the year. I know some bloggers do a month-to-month post about the month itself, but I’m not one of them. I just happen to like June better than any other month.

June

It’s no surprise why: just look out the window. It’s been an awful summer, and it’s so good to plunge into the smooth breeze after the scorching heat. June is the only month when people are happy to leave the house in the morning or ride a bike in the park after sun down. It’s the month in between the mangoes and the monsoons. It’s neither this nor that, but it’s got the best of both seasons.

It feels great to wake every morning without your t-shirt clinging to your perspiring back. Or to not want to sit inside the refrigerator all day. It’s liberating, in a whole new sense, to step out of the house without drenching yourself in an “ice-cool” talcum powder that never works as well as they do in commercials.

What’s better than June weather? It’s cool in the morning, it’s cool in the evening, and it’s cool at night. The sun comes up when he wants to and smiles all day long. And all of a sudden, is something goes amiss, it rains. With no warning at all, just like in life. And then we’re smiling again, and staying up a little late.

Even the sun resonates with us this month. So much so that the sun has his heads in the clouds, while we have ours in the iCloud. Ain’t it wonderful to walk all day with the clouds looking over us?

I like July too, but that’s another month altogether.

The Great Adventure

It’s June now, but I’d still like to think March was recent. Having said that, I’d give anything to revisit my recent visit to the western borders of India. I’ve written quite a lot of my travels, and spoken about it even more. To be honest, I brought back over a thousand photos, and I needed a way to flaunt them.

adventure

But it wasn’t just about the charming sights and endless stream of photos. There were so many new things I had to get used to, and I did. It wasn’t easy being thrown into a vehicle with five others and travelling uphill with my head swirling. But I got used to it. I had no choice, but I enjoyed it too.

And we travelled with kids. Small kids, infants, even. That was my tipping point. I wasn’t keen on having kids on the trip, because they have a tendency to ruin it for the rest of us. And sure enough, there were a few tears, a few tantrums, and plenty of throwing up incidents I’d rather erase from my memory. It’s not something I liked or would recommend, but I got used to it. I just had to accept the fact that we were a party of twenty four, including three senior citizens and five kids, braving a temperature as low as -6˚C.

I hated having to give up the window seats and making small conversation every time we stopped for tea. But when I look back at the whole trip, I have nothing but memories I cherish. I enjoyed every bit of it. It was hard at first, and I had my own inertia to overcome, but once I did, I saw how beautiful even mundane things like a steep U bend became. It brought me closer to the people I travelled with. I hadn’t expected to meet a sixty-five year old eager to jump into a freezing lake. It showed me a different side of the people I thought I knew. I hadn’t liked the idea of travelling with my colleagues’ parents, but I had judged too soon. Because by the time we returned, they had became as close to me as my own parents.

It was an adventure of a lifetime.

The Unwanted

Sometimes, we get so caught up in our own worlds that we miss the little things around us. Like in a flower show, all we see are well-watered flowers, settled in protective enclosures. But there are other stuff around that aren’t as noticeable. Like a broken twig, or a timid squirrel scurrying through dense feet.

It was quite the same when we went on a trip to Kodaikanal.  We stayed in a hotel with bountiful linen, wooden windows, and sumptuous meals enough to make anyone drowsy. And there was also the most beautiful scenery around us. Flowers of all kinds, huddled in bunches, and pruned to perfection. But there were a few extras as well. Little petals peeking through the rocks, braving the gardener’s sharp shears.

They were the unwanted, the ones the world could do without. They were the spares.

spare