Ritika Ruminates

Kerala trip for my family was like the ever-cancelled friends' goa trip. After having to be cancelled 4 times, it finally took life.  Our Kerala trip covered 4 places- Poovar, Ashtamudi, Thekkady and Munnar. Being a member, all our stays were (had to be) in Club Mahindra Resorts in the aforementioned places. Best was we got to cover 3 terrains in a single trip- beach, backwaters and mountains. We de-boarded at Thiruvananthapuram Railway Station and went to Padmanabhaswamy Temple. The architecture & design of the temple was surely alluring to me. Temple has a dress code- women have to wear sarees and men have to wear mundu or dhoti, bare-chested. Salwar sets or other modern dresses are not allowed; so women may have to change into a saree or wear mundu (1 round of it). As someone allergic to temples and religious places, and rules on top of it, I wished to just pray from outside, but ummm. After sweating profusely in the line, I was just happy to get the darshan and leave th...

Clicked by - Aarti Yadav My former friend introduced me to the habit of reading. When I was around 9 years old, she would bring encyclopedias for us to read. We read the encyclopedias at either our homes or the society terrace. Encyclopedias on various subjects brought us together- we would read and discuss various facts and information. In some ways, reading encyclopedias gave us a sense of acceptance in each other, which we both kind of desired, from society (I would be ridiculed for stammering and she was socially excluded due to her half-Chinese heritage). Seeing my interest, even my parents agreed to buy me encyclopedias to read, all of which I have kept safely even after 12-13 years. Encyclopedias somewhere even gave me my first friend of life, even though the friendship didn't last long. My habit of reading encyclopedias got broken a little bit after she had to leave the city without any notice (got to know later that it was probably due to her parents' divorce). I still...