There is a place in my hometown I had been searching for a few years back. A place among the trees and the sun and beautiful in all capacity. The mountains fascinated me for a degree of obscurity they brought. I did find that place when I started wandering the forests around a local hill on the top of which was situated a small fort and a temple. I was looking for privacy of-course, even in this town rare in human samples compared to the city but I was also looking for a spot to call my own, somewhere once I connect to a person, could bring them here and show them how worth it was.

One of such other places is the Waghai botanical garden one encounters on the road to Saputara. I have visited this place many times over the years. This has always been during family trips and never alone did I muster enough will to visit this beautiful tapestry nestled among the mountains of South Gujarat. I have fond memories of this place and in my mind, it only fires a sense of romanticism whenever a recall takes place. The botanical garden is big, to say the least and by all accounts much removed from the normal patterns of urbanity and pace. Being a stop so calming to the senses on the way to this hill-station, visitors on the way there usually stop here for a break. Most people usually confine themselves to the gardens just right near the entrance and find the inner forests and the lot of trees and plants rather boring abstracting it away it to a singular green (also people don’t seem to like walking that much). But these are the most rewarding zones of the entire place. The trees and the plants are painstakingly labeled with their names and use, well-maintained and lovingly taken care of by the local gardeners there. Someday I will come here, lay back, work the gardens and write a book.

Yesterday while visiting my nani I realized how much rooted I am in Bombay due to family history. My maternal grandparents lived in Bombay until my nana’s retirement who was a math teacher there. My mother grew up in Bombay most her childhood and adolescence and did here college there until she got married and settled here. We still have many family friends there. Why it was disorienting to listen to is because here I am in Bombay thinking myself completely isolated, thinking of the life I am living as far removed from everything going on here. Just the knowledge this is not so was comforting somehow.

See you tomorrow,
Avi.