Tomichan Matheikal's blog

Maggie and I returned home yesterday after a brief journey in Shimla and nearby places of tourist interest.  A full day has passed after the visit and I am not able to write anything worthwhile about the visit.  It was not at all inspiring in any way.  Except for the mountains and their natural beauty.  But nature alone cannot satisfy any tourist.  The people matter. Child in Chail   And here is one person who caught our interest.  Our driver had stopped the car on the way back from Chail to Shimla in his own village market to talk to his people.  Maggie and I continued to sit in the car.  We saw this little girl sitting all alone on the veranda of a nearly-dilapidated building.  She was eating a tiny piece of watermelon.  Maggie called her and smiled at her.  She didn’t care two hoots for smiles.  In fact, she looked more indifferent than scared.  Maggie went out of the car and approached her.  She asked some questions and eventually managed to extract a smile from

Pratap got into the old style elevator of the 14-storey building in Connaught Place.  He was going to pay the premium of his Relevance Life Insurance at the office on the 8 th floor.  Built during the days of the British Raj, the building which looked quite ghostly had elevators with grille doors.  Pratap drew both the grilles shut and pressed on number 8 on the panel.  As the lift was about to raise itself with a thud, a shabbily dressed man with a grisly beard crept into it through the grille. “How did you that?” asked Pratap whose rationalism couldn’t accept a solid body making its way through iron bars. “I am a ghost,” said the fellow traveller. “Oh, I see.”  Pratap looked at the guy with his rationalist eye and wondered what this phenomenon could be.  E=mc 2 .  Mass can be converted into energy.  But not this way.  Pratap was still exercising his rational brain when the ghost started sobbing louder than the noise produced by the crawling lift. “Hey,” said Pr