Life is easy kya karein

 Lonavla, Khandala, Matheran and Mahabaleshwar.... four places where Mumbaikars head for weekends. They are popular and close by. These four places are on the hills of Sahyadri. Alibaug is another preferred place which has a beach and good coastal cuisine. Lonavla and Khandala are twin towns and sound like sisters too. For years, I used to think Matheran and Mahabaleshwar are also twin towns. I never knew they are in totally different directions. When I was younger, Foreign trips meant Singapore and Bangkok. Later European trips meant London, Paris or Switzerland. No one differentiated between cities and countries. Some countries like Switzerland was more famous than its cities. And when one thought of London, England did not come into the picture. Like Paris was an entity in itself. There was no  difference between Bangkok, Hong Kong or Singapore. Manila and Malaysia were places you learnt to mark on a map during your Geography class. Life was lost between Grasslands, Steppes...

 All the idea of men and romance came from the books I read from the school library. Nancy Drew, Famous Five, The Scarlett Pimpernel, Pride and Prejudice, Black Beauty, D. H. Laurence etc. I used to love the books by Daphne Du Maurier. The setting for love was always European. Further in Mumbai, I started reading Mills and Boon, after eleventh grade. All men and women fought. Man was always tall, dark and piercing eyes. The Man always spoke less. He always had a huge house called some Windermere or Aberdeen or some such British name. All houses had huge gardens, view of the sea or on banks of a lake. There were beautiful flowers in the garden. There was a distance between the hero and heroine. I referred to the lead characters like that, courtesy Bollywood. The girl was always alone or in need or in some dire circumstances . But her spirit was intact.The Man was always a man and never a boy.  The fights and the sarcasm between the boy n the girl was the best part about reading...