Little Bits Of Life

 I have been fascinated with libraries for the longest time that I can remember. As school going kids, we had to buy at least one of the four books recommended apart from course material. And at the end of term, we had a reading quiz competition where the teacher basically prepared a short quiz of 40 questions from those 4 books, that you were able to answer only if you had read the books thoroughly. So, that ensured that you not only read your book but exchanged the books you’re your classmates. And one of the books was always in Hindi. I dreaded to read because that did not come naturally to me as our mode of education was almost entirely in English. What started as reading just 4 books annually in class 3 or 4 soon turned to lending books from school library that were issued for a period of 2 weeks to eventually making my own library card for the Central library in my city. My mom is a huge reader and would always encourage (and still does) me to go to the library and let me pic...

It has been an idle day. The rain has been pouring on and off over the city for the last 48 hours now. Since I live on the top floor of my building, and fortunately my window opens to the city side, I have the luxury of not being bothered by the moving traffic and seeing just the cars, roads, and entrances of houses for view. My balcony overlooks the city center to the mountain on the other side which has a few houses scattered here and there. The city in ancient time was fortified and the remains of the outer city wall is next to my place of stay. There are two towers which are nearly the same height as our building. In the past two months alone that I have been here, I have seen the terrain change already. The mountains were brown initially or occasionally covered in a white blanket of snow and one could only see the houses as far as one could. I would not call them eye sore because most of them are idyllic old houses, with traditional red and brown slant rooftops, and timber frami...