Life is a journey..Enjoy the ride

It’s been just over a week since the Malin tragedy near Pune,

Almost 160 people lost their lives in a landslide,

The rescue and relief operations were really challenging as I witnessed on television,

However, I did not know just a week since then I would witness a landslide in person.

What a day we had until then,

A day when 13 of us from office decided to go on a trek to Sinhagad fort in Pune,

The journey with colleagues along with the scenery on the way was so amazing,

For selecting such a location for the trek, for our colleague we were all praising.

The trek was not difficult,

However, the time taken was long and hence was hectic,

Some folks decided to give up and cut the journey short.

However, after a little over 2 hours of steep climbing we finally reached the fort,

Reaching there we felt we were in paradise,
We just forgot all our tiredness and were enjoying nature in all its glory,
The cool breeze and the beautiful scenery from up above was not something we witnessed every day,
After an hour and more we finally decided to go away.

Just as we almost reached the exit of the fort,
What we witnessed just took us all by shock,
6-7 huge boulders along with mud just decided to give away,
From a height of about 100 feet and at a distance of 25 feet from us they came crashing all the way.

For the next 10 minutes no one moved an inch,
As we were still left in shock and did not know if more landslides would follow,
After that all groups at the exit of the fort decided to move out slowly one by one,
Our hearts then were probably beating for each other as one.

We had witnessed 2 different sides of nature just within a few hours,
We decided it was better to take a vehicle down for the return journey,
However, we saw more landslides had occurred on the way,
A few of us were silently praying, while some shared jokes to lighten the mood and keep fear away.

We safely reached down and were really relieved a lot,
Had a good meal and then decided to rest before leaving for the day,
Wish we could reflect just on the happy moments that we shared on this trip,
However, memories of witnessing a landslide are not something I can easily skip.

(Had accidentally deleted this post from August 2014)

Today's times

We always keep talking about how proud we are to be part of our culture. However, what values are we leaving for the future generation? If you pick up the paper or watch the news, the only thing you can read about is violence, rapes, thefts, murder, religious intolerance, fanaticism, corruption, what one should eat and not, etc. The list simply goes on.

I am sure most of us would not want to see any of these things in our society. However, the fact is none of these issues seem to be on the downward trail.  

Some of us might think and say we are many times better than our neighboring countries or countries with much bigger issues of religious extremism. However, that’s no excuse for us to start getting tolerant of the issues that we see in today’s society.

We have a central government with absolute majority, which came into power on the promise of development. If they desire, they can bring most issues under control if not eliminate them. The initial signs are not encouraging. Only time will tell how they perform and take our country forward or two steps back.

                                                                      - From an unhappy reader and viewer of today