The Curry Affair

  As simple and non-complicated it sounds, places, yes: non-living state of matter ‘places’, have the capability to evoke so many emotions. This other day, I happened to accompany my mom to her college, where she has spent the last 30 years of her life imparting to students, what she knows best: Chemistry Lessons (joking, she is the best at everything:P). The moment our car crossed the humongous, yet very beautifully maintained playground, I had a surprisingly quick flashback to the time me and my sister spent at the very same place 20 years back. The same grass, the same trees, the same walls; albeit the grass a bit greener, the trees a bit taller and the walls more maintained and higher. But that was not the contrast I was more absorbed upon. It was overwhelming to trickle in the realisation of how quickly we grew up ; from worrying about how to sneak in a 10 rupee crispie to buy our favourite notebook and a small bag of chips to share and ultimately fight upon, to now worrying about

  It is Day Two at the Jaipur Literature Festival. An afternoon, post lunch session is about to commence. The hustle and bustle is slowly settling in, the commotion is giving way to structure, and avid readers and fans are making their way towards their favourite authors’ sessions. I make way to mine, and some formidable planning meant that I could get a decent seat for the session (planning here, read as: carefully crafted festival itinerary, hand-written for each of the four days of the festival I attended, in a dedicated pocket diary, just like old times:P). There are still a few minutes to the start of the session, enough for me to observe that the row in front of me had a well seated group of three young kids. One of the three suddenly pops from her seat, probably to grab something to eat. She is now well gone for five odd minutes, her peers have ‘booked’ her seat, and I suddenly hear a small shriek from one of the festival organisers. She is directing a lady with a young baby in