Friday, November 05, 2010

Kelva

As much as I hate to love the madness and drudgery of Mumbai, I love to speed out of city limits and peer at it from far away. I like seeing the blue of the sky, uninterrupted by upward scrambling skyscrapers. I like watching cattle amble through fields and people bustle through the weekly market. I like seeing the car lap up black, tarry kilometers as I try to pocket and preserve the green, the blue and the brown.


The drive from Mumbai to Kelva Beach is rather long (120kms), but pleasant. Getting onto NH 8 from Thane is quick and smooth in the early morning. The roads are good, but trucks and lorries of all shapes and sizes lord the roads even at this hour. Hues of gray, brown and blue dominate a major leg of the journey. There is little buzz on either side of the Highway. The concrete stares back at you squarely until you turn right at Manor Naka.











The landscape magically changes. Concrete gives way to an expanse of fields and greenery and a faint smell of the sea.



The four lane highway and the rumbling traffic is left behind. A lazier and prettier stretch, lined with trees yawned ahead, in front of us.
















We finally reach a sleepy village which is Kelwe (in Marathi). The locals seem to be used to see cars revving down their narrow roads. Vada pav and Chai shops dot the roads at corners. Some new ones seemed to have sprouted recently to sell the Diwali goodies. We see colorful roadside carts selling diyas, rangoli, lanterns and crackers. The village houses carry no garish traces of glitter and other luminous monstrosities as their urban counterparts.

Our car trundles down a very narrow, rough patch and we enter what is called 'Kelva Beach Resort.'













There is nothing  good about this resort. Except may be a little bit of aesthetic sense here and there.

The final destination, the beach, sadly too is a let down. There is something distant and unfriendly about the sea here....and the sand doesn't sparkle.
 
For what it's worth, it was worth all the while. The best thing about the Kelva is definitely the drive and the sights en-route.

Tuesday, November 02, 2010

Published!

I believe I'm modest. Quite so.

But I'm taking this one opportunity to be a little immodest.
For shameless self publicity.

(Yes, I can already see some of you out there gawk at my first statement! Hold your tongue!!)

Sharing a link to an article that I wrote, which got published as a cover story in an Indian magazine on School education in India.
http://www.teacherplus.org/cover-story/thinking-about-teach-for-india

Happiness mingled with a small sense of achievement.
Bliss.