“A fellow of mediocre talent will remain a mediocrity, whether he travels or not; but one of superior talent (which without impiety I cannot deny that I possess) will go to seed if he always remains in the same place.”
~ Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.
Last February I went to Chennai for a few days and apart from that, I went to New Bombay a few times and went to Kolhapur on a day’s trip. Apart from the Chennai visit, all the other trips were to visit ailing relatives, and friends and were not exactly very inspiring.
2014 on the other hand has started off with a bang with two very exciting trips. The first one was to Chennai again and as was expected very exciting with Ranjan and Manjiri joining me to meet up with all the family. Manjiree was truly impressed with them and has concluded that she has got the best of a weird lot. So much for our pedigree.
The next was earlier this week for a three day trip close by to Khandala for a reunion with some of my class mates from business school and their wives. I had not met a few of them since we graduated in 1967 and the catching up was an amazing experience. Sadly, many could not come due to various reasons and a reckoning also showed that about a third of our class had passed on too.
We stayed and partied at North Point, an Institute founded by one of our classmates and for me, it was a very exciting if somewhat tiring experience with having to climb a lot of stair cases and indulging in some cross-country hiking to go on a picnic, where we flew kites.
Here are some views from my window.
The main entrance to the Institute which will give you an idea of the climbing up and down that it involved.
Among the less strenuous activities was an evening of ghazals by Hasan Ali a Pune singer of great merit. He got so enthused with our enthusiasm that he allowed some of us to sing too and that was hilarious to say the least.
And most important, I drove up to and from Khandala on my own and on return even brought three passengers with me to Pune.
So, I can safely say that having begun on a couple of good traveling gigs and with plans for some more on the anvil, I can safely say that I am unlikely to go to seed at least this coming year.
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