SPIRIT OF MUMBAI

"I can not travel by the boat. I will be very, very sick. Let's return", cried one of our friend. We were standing at the Gorai Jetty but she did not allow us to buy the boat-tickets. We returned satisfying ourselves, with just the glimpse of the majestic Global Vipassana Pagoda . The impact of that golden glimpse was so strong that I vowed to visit it at the earliest. That was exactly an year ago, 1st January 2015.  Since then, I was craving to visit that grand Golden Pagoda. We were at my sister's home in Borivali to celebrate the new year. My sister suggested, "Let's go to Ganpati Mandir and begin our new year auspiciously with God's blessings". I added, "Yes, let's go to Global Vipassana Pagoda and pray". My nephew finalized with "You both want God's blessings. I and Aditai want boat-ride, Mamma and Papa want all of us to be happy. So let's go to the Global Pagoda by boat". That's India...

The year was 2009; the aam-junta was still busy scrapping on Orkut . I too had an Orkut account but I was more committed to my Blogger Account, ‘Spirit of Mumbai’. After receiving a prize for a blog post, ‘Amchi Mumbai’, I posted the photograph of my prized Chopper-ride on Facebook . And it turned me in to a celebrity overnight... Such is a strong and instant impact of Social Media. Facebook was a novelty then. Most FaceBook_DPs boasted of fancy cars while my DP showed-off a ritzy Helicopter Raven in its full glory, ready to take off at Juhu's Pavan Hans Aerodrome. I was bombarded with Friends-requests and queries regarding the Chopper-ride. Suddenly I was having more than 1000 FB-friends, who were active in various extra-curricular activities. The most fascinating and challenging extra-curricular activity, I loved on Facebook was the Contest. These online contests conducted by various prestigious organizations challenged the creativity, general knowledge, technical knowle...

" Be Positive " ... my mother keeps repeating n number of times. She has passed, with distinction so many life-threatening hurdles since her childhood. I wonder , how she still manages to " Be Positive ". Aai ( my Mother ) always pushes me to go ... give my Best and achieve Excellence. My Aai has the most positive Impact on my life. Flashback  .... January 26 , being Monday-holiday was an extension of lazy-Sunday. As usual I picked up my favorite, 'Hindustan Times' from the stack of 10 newspapers that my father has subscribed for. Thanks to my father, We have this luxury of reading 10 newspapers  daily. We have donated both our TV-sets to an orphanage in VikramGarh so we have more than enough interest and  time for reading. After browsing through the headlines, I extracted HT-Café ( HT's supplement ). ‘Super60’, whopper response to the ‘INDIA COOL CONTEST’ printed next to HT-Café’s masthead caught my eyeballs. But of course, I had emailed an art...