Fortnightly Round Up

The year 2018 started off on a happy note with SFV community gathering in large numbers for a gala New Year eve.  Since then a host of activities seem lined up.

Lohri, the festival to mark the harvest of rabi crop in the North, was celebrated with equal verve in SFV, to the accompaniment of scintillating Punjabi folk tunes to which one just cannot resist giving a gentle hip movement, to say the least. Others went for a full blast Punjabi bhangra. It was a nice evening with couple, young and old, offering puffed rice to the bonfire before taking a round or two of it. It was very well attended and everyone enjoyed the happy-go-lucky Punjabi dance as well.

It is also Pongal in Tamil Nadu.  Orissa and Assam also celebrate it as a day of harvest festival, as I learn. In any case it is Makar Sankranti all over India. Again, it is on this day that pilgrims from all over India walk barefoot miles over to have a darshan of Lord Ayyappa in the mountainous Sabarimala.

SFV is equally busy on another front – commercial though. Sobha Developers have put out their stock Now or Never sale - for the N’th time. We learn the last flat in Alder is sold out, and this event on 13 and 14 Jan is for one that is coming up diagonally opposite Ebony, in 25 floors, if the corridor news is correct. One Ebony resident who specifically selected the forest-view side, is ill at ease at the prospect of having to face every morning a 25-storey concrete jungle. He is painting his drawing room to give it a dense forest look, no doubt an apology for compensation. Yes, he is, no joke.

That reminds me. Right behind the swimming pool, and in direct view from Maple 3, …5 and …6 series balconies, the erstwhile labour camp area is being cleaned up giving rise to a fear if another apartment complex in the offing.

Amidst this flagrant human invasion into their domain many reptiles, hitherto minding their own business, have begun to show up in the complex in their bid to move to safer areas. The other day it was the turn of russel viper, a venomous snake in the area where days before we celebrated the New Year Eve. Fortunately, some worker in the complex captured it in a bag and relocated it to a safer destination.

And today, my friend Sanjay Saxena, who has a knack of spotting them, took snaps of a full-grown snake mounting a tree on the other side of the Joggers park wall. In fact there were two of them. He guesses them to be python. No wonder more morning walkers have switched allegiance to the Alder cycling area route.

Quite undaunted, attempts continue unabated to dislocate the bees to anywhere outside the complex. The honey collected in the process, unadulterated as the promoters call it, is being sold to residents. The last booty was shared this evening.

The volleyball ground in Alder has been brimming with activities. Last week it was a throw-ball league match. There were many spectators, each supporting the spouse or mother. One person asked me, “So, Sir, which team have you come to support?”  “The underdogs,” I said. “But there is none, both are scoring neck to neck,” he quipped.

To end on a personal note, I had asked for old editions of Motu Patlu comics for one of my grandsons. Apparently it has been discontinued long back. So I rang up the publisher in Delhi. He returned the call to say he could lay his hands on six or seven titles, and asked me to remit payment through Paytm. With my limited knowledge I did. When I telephoned him to confirm I have paid, he clarified that, instead of paying his company, I have recharged his mobile. Nonetheless, he would send me the books, he reassured me. But I had to receive them by 18^th, and he had charged me only for Registered post. Gracious as he was, he again agreed he would send them by courier instead. Doesn’t it reinforce the age-old saying that all human beings are born good - it is only circumstances that turn them bad or indifferent.

V V Sundaram

Maple 3195

13 January 2018