My World of Food and Travel

Image source: Wikipedia I have realized that it’s a bad idea to write ‘stay tuned’ at the end of a travel story which I had been too lazy to complete. Because, that next part just doesn’t get to see the light of the day. I had started Wayanad Diaries and Shillong Trip with much fanfare and signed off each with a happy and excited ‘stay tuned!’ Till now, I haven’t been able to start the sequels. Bad idea, I tell you. To be fair, I had opened a Word file to write about my Shillong trip, but suddenly my mind went elsewhere. My mind has the attention span of, let’s say, a goldfish. Or a squirrel, if you prefer. It veered away from the blue hills of Shillong and started thinking about Sainik Farms and the time that I had spent there. So, since the file was already open, I ended up writing about Sainik Farms in Delhi. Poor reader, you.  I had stayed in a medium sized farmhouse in Sainik Farms, towards the south of Delhi, for two years while pursuing my MBA. It was a PG acco...

Image source: www.fineartamerica.com I have a somewhat morbid fascination towards ghost stories, though I am not sure if I feel the same towards ghosts as well. I remember spending quite a few nights swapping ghost stories in the company of cousins, college friends, hostel mates and others. On separate occasions, of course, and spanning several phases of my life, from childhood to present.  The fact that I moved my residence several times also helped to substantiate my collection of ghost stories. Each place that I stayed in fed me more such stories, vouched for their authenticity by the story-teller. At every late-night gathering I would wait with eager anticipation for one of the guests to start with an account involving the paranormal. More often than not, we would be sitting around a bonfire and all of us would take turns to relate such a tale. I recall I was sitting absolutely quiet as a new bride, just a few hours into marriage, and all it took for the husband’s cousi...

(Image source: www.pxleyes.com) Time for another jungle tale after a long time. A real spooky one at that! I am surprised that I haven’t written about this yet. This had revealed quite a different world to me then! Like all my jungle tales, it took place in the early 80s when I was a kid living it out in Manas Wildlife Sanctuary. Electricity was categorically erratic in the jungle then, to the point of being almost non-existent, and we would see oil lamps burning more brightly than the electric bulbs overhead. Our kitchen was separate from the main bungalow, which stood on wooden stilts, and was located at ground level. Come evening, Ma and her domestic help Ranjan would disappear into the dark awning of the kitchen below. They would chop, stir and work their magic while I sat expectantly on the verandah of our bungalow, facing the kitchen. I would see shadowy figures move about in the flickering light of the oil lamp. Somehow, ghostly imaginations eluded me at that time and ...