DIVYATA

       Onam festival of Kerala is a colourful festival, wherein people make " Pukkalam " (i.e. regional/Malayalam word for rangoli/ decorative designs, made on floor) with flower petals and serve "sadhya" (regional word for many food items including "paysam"/Kheer served on banana leaf) to people. The festival is celebrated for 10 days, mainly on the last 04 days. This year, Onam was on September 14th, Saturday, which anyways was a holiday. However, there was a Muslim festival called Milad-un-Nabi/ Prophet Mohammad's b'day on September 16th (Monday). So, there was a chance to make plan to enjoy this weekend.        In the last week of August, my husband expressed his desire to visit Munnar this weekend. It was a pleasent surprise for me. As I am always ready to visit beautiful places, so I agreed. He asked me to check for a hotel for the weekend (Sept 14-15) online. However, he forbade me to book the hotel till next week, fearing that in case of a...

         One fine day in the last week of June, 2024, I was in an official meeting at my office in Nagpur, when my phone bell rang. It was my husband's call. He told me that he had been transferred to Ernakulam. "Ernakulam? Is it in Kerala? How far is it from the Kerala's capital Trivandrum?" I raised so many questions anxiously. I suggested him to request for cancellation of transfer or change of place of transfer....He said that he would surely apply for calcellation or change of transfer place, however the request would not be accepted. He was right. His request was not accepted by his Bank authorities.         Later, I recalled that recently, I had qualified UPSC exam related to my departmental promotion for the post of Section Officer, but the official order for my promotion cum transfer was yet to come. So, I decided to request for transfer to Trivandrum on my promotion. I did the same and meanwhile my husband joined his Ernakulam ...