Pankaj Desai's Blogs

  The condolence meeting was a serious gathering as was expected. Her husband – an orthopedic surgeon in the city had suddenly died of heart attack. It was a shocking death which added to the solemnity of the occasion. He must be in his late forties - still very young. She sat leading and facing the mourners. They were in early mid-life. Still nothing was well settled and the entire apple-cart of her life had turned turtle. The pain and challenges that she now faced with two young children was impossible in words. Her eyes got misty intermittently. As a wife and husband, both of them had got along very well. They were a fine couple. A tall lady very good-looking in her youth, she was my senior and always had a very healing presence. She was very skillful and competent in her work. She was not strict but was well accomplished in getting all the work done. Solemn condolence meeting         I went early in the meeting. My connection with her was never f...

  We will call him Pravin. Pravin’s father was a farmer. They owned a piece of land in the village, a cow and two buffaloes. His parents’ lives taught him all good values and soft skills. He got his primary schooling in his village. His brilliance was obvious right from his early school days. His father encouraged him to study further. But that was going to be a challenge. The middle and high school was in the town about 5 km away and there was a river between the two villages. Getting admission to that school was not difficult. But commuting in monsoon was going to be a problem. In other months there was a very shallow strip. It was used for walking through the river. But in the monsoon season when the river would be flowing bank to bank, it would mean swimming through. Walking through, Swimming through and sometimes running through      So much was his enthusiasm to study further that walking through, swimming through and sometimes running through didn’t bother h...