Kashmir Kaput

What began with a bang, ended in a whimper this morning. Plans for the Kashmir trip were given a quiet burial with Hari Singh Shekhawat today declaring that not a single member has yet paid the token sum of Rs10,000 to confirm his/her participation.
“Doesn’t look like anybody is interested,” he concluded. “The idea was to set out before the monsoon. Now where is the time to collect the money, pay the security deposit, complete all formalities and apply for a railway coach? The monsoon is due in the first week of June and the Railways require clear 30 days to confirm our booking. Not possible!”
At least nobody can now blame Shekhawat for abruptly calling off the trip, since he had all along, for the past one week, been reminding people to make up their minds. Mumtaz Jahan had been equally insistent, coming every day and briefing us (see previous posts). Significantly, she did not show up this morning.
Meanwhile, the Babanis – Renu and Kishor – returned from their Shirdi trip and as always, distributed prasad from the Sai Baba temple. Funnily, this time many members insisted on picking out the soft reodis, at the exclusion of all else. Maybe it had something to do with difficulty in chewing the hard stuff. But it was quite amusing to watch Harish Wadhwa helping out with the ‘draw of lots’, vigorously shaking the prasad container and everyone else waiting to pounce on the reodis. Here, Ramila Mistry appears to have got lucky.
Indeed, people can be ruthlessly selective, even with so-called 'divine food'!
Renu Babani's PICSPEAK:
"Oh My God! What are they searching for? Trust me, there is no hidden treasure."
Harish Wadhwa:
There were none left as most of them were already cherry-picked. We were only trying to hunt for the accidental leftovers and ended up finding just two, which were quickly pounced upon by Ramila-ji. Renu-ji watched all this in amusement not knowing how to react to all this. Hey, by the way those revadis were superb.