Back! With more randomness.

Before concerned people start thinking that we have stopped maintaining this blog or we are done with the randomness ... here is a big update on a very random thing that happened in the last few months. (As some of you may know) I had a big viral attack in August and was bed-ridden for 15 days or so. Once that got over, I started having totally random symptoms, like pains in random places in the body, fatigue, loss of breath, weak muscles, blurred vision, bad stomach, funny nose and so on. Although (I know now that) it is nothing life threatening, I have not been 100% for more than 3 months now. We went around consulting all sorts of doctors, from neurologists to gastroenterologists, cardiologists to pulmonologists, ... and nothing was clear. But somewhere in the middle, a noted neurologist noted that I may have "post-viral asthenia". Asthenia is clinical weakness and he said it happens mainly to workaholics (like doctors and not me). It goes up down and goes up; for a month I am feeling 95% and then suddenly for the next I am less than 75%. And thats how it has been for the last 3 months. The doctor says this thing will normalize with exercise (i.e. increasing the body's tolerance levels) and general relaxing. And then there were few other things...

September, we visited Goa. The last Portugese relic in India and the official place to have "fun". We stayed at Taj Exotica, a Portugese style resort (whatever that means) with a private, secluded and clean beach, serene and peaceful environment and great food. So for 4 days, we hogged, slept, went for long beach walks, hogged more, slept more and walked some more. Bliss.




A panorama, with hotel's golf course and all:



The doctor asked us to take one more break and so we went to Chiplun in the coastal Konkan region of the state. The resort had a spectacular view of the river down the valley and it had lots of beautiful lotuses :-). And yes, we hogged again, slept again and walked again.




Randomness: one of the offices has lots of kites circling it. Sometimes they land on the windows sills, make fluttery noises and scratch the glass.


This is when we visited Anandvan, a totally self-sufficient village of lepers. Founded by Baba Amte, the villagers who all suffer from leprosy, make everything from cloth (see the handloom below) to paper, rice to oranges, bicycles to tractors. Nobody is allowed to do nothing (*sigh*) and they make living by selling what they make. Nice encouraging place.


Then came Dasara or Dashera, the day Lord Rama defeated the demon Ravana to reclaim his wife Sita (along with good prevailing over evil in the end and all that stuff). Two of the main features of the festival are the toran (garlands of yellow marigold flowers and green mango leaves) and ravana-dahan (when an effigy of the ten-headed demon Ravana is set afire with crackers and all).



And then comes Diwali or Deepavali, the festival of lights and the biggest festival in India. Here you have the Diwali specialities:

Just fried Shankarpaale...


Rangoli and diyaas (oil lamps)...


And crackers!! Lots of them. Lots of noise and light. Everywhere.






So those have been our last 3 months. Belated "Happy Dasara", "Happy Diwali" and "Happy New Year" to everyone!