Life is easy kya karein

 We had iron buckets in the bathrooms at our home in Jharia. Plastic buckets were not used as they broke easily. We had aluminium buckets which were lighter. We used them to carry water up the staircase from the chamber on the ground floor. Our kitchen had a steel bucket, which was precious. Some people  used an iron rod as a heater for water, and they had one plastic bucket to heat the water. We had a geyser and that too not the instant one. We used to keep the geyser on for a few hours at night, as we were six children bathing at five a.m. before leaving for school. Winters electricity used to go in the night. Some times water was kept in an old aluminium pot on the Chulha, which was dying. Usually the custom was to cool the fire in the Chula at night. We did not keep the fire burning. Everyone and everything was put to rest at night. In our wooden Mandir at home, there was a custom to put our Gods to sleep and wake them up in the morning.  Flowers were removed and Mom's hand kni

 Pratapgad is a fort in the Sahyadris, near Mahabaleshwar, built by Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. 'Pratap' is a Hindi word and it means victory, light, power n majestic all rolled into one. Our idea of victory is not to make a pile of skulls or collect Janeu from the killed people and make a bonfire. The fort is not controlled or run by ASI. It is on the top of the hills with dense forests all around even now. It has a bird's eye view of the whole area, the hill tops, the plains, the valley, the villages beneath n the rivers. It has access to three districts of Maharshtra. Shivaji commissioned the fort in 1655. It was ready in 1657. In 1659, Ahmed Shah Abdali sent Afzal Khan with a huge army to kill Shivaji Maharaj.  Then the story some of us  studied in our History books,  Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj and Afzal Khan had a meeting near Pratapgad and Shivaji killed him with tiger claws. Shivaji Maharaj's army defeated Abdali's army in the Battle of Pratapgad. Garh or G