Clouds in the valley...

  I had woken up today at 6am for a change. After all, it was a Saturday. All foggy, the wintry May morning was anticipating the morning sun to rise, just like me. In the meanwhile, I was getting ready with the excitement of a 10-year-old boy. For I was planning to go to a bookfair. By the time the sun had woke up and warmed the frigid morn, I was ready and walking to the station, all tucked in, in woolly comfort. One metro ride, followed by a train and I was to reach the suburb hosting the fair. Which was nothing too spectacular, let’s be honest. Housed in a somewhat large hall, it was a noble fundraiser - a quarterly affair that raised funds from the sale of used books. As a booklover, though, the event was exciting – the experience of going through piles of books, neatly classified by sections, recognising a few common titles, discovering some never-before-seen titles was stimulating indeed. In the travel section, you could wander through half the globe in a basket laden with ...

You accuse: I am a lazy gardener “For the basil flowers go untrimmed As winter comes near” They will shrivel, you say In the months of misty cold; They will shrink and gnarl These sacral plants of old   But you don’t see autumn’s bees, do you? In winter’s icy cold deluge With no more blooms growing new The basil’s but their last refuge.   I decide the flow of life, in my green abode, For a moments few, the lazy gardener turns a God…   Winter arrives in my garden – and the signs are everywhere, With the advent of chilly bitter days, the tomatoes, pumpkin and okra have all withered away. The little beans and peas are the only ones capable to withstand this cold. Naturally there’s not many flowers left. Except for the holy basil or the tulsi, reminding me of my homeland, and silently teaching me to be as resilient and strong just as the tropical plant itself is putting up a fight in these temperate lands. The plants are full of flowers b...

For those of you into board games, you may have heard of the game, ‘Settlers of Catan’ or more easily and popularly known as Catan. Launched in 1995 by a dental technician, Klaus Teuber (he left his job within years of launching Catan, so popular turned out the game), the game has sold over 40 million copies worldwide, has been translated into 40 languages, has won every single award possible worldwide for a board game, has its own World championship, and has multiple versions including a Star Trek and a Game of Thrones rendition. Beautifully crafted with honeycomb-like hexagons to create the big rectangular land of Catan, the objective of the game is simple – the first player to gain 10 points wins. The unfolding of the game is though, far from simple. There are multiple ways to get to 10 points, but eventually they all boil down to gaining four types of resources – food, wood, rocks and bricks – with which one needs to make roads, build houses and upgrade them to villages, in a way p...