Winter Vacation

Mallika Kagzi (c) ensures we stay warm with tea

Today Bijoy Gupta came up with a peculiar demand. “We must declare a winter vacation,” he urged. “This is no weather to exercise. We will all end up in hospital if we continue coming to the Garden in this cold.”
Gupta has been quite erratic of late because of the early morning chill. For a man regarded as not only regular but punctual to a fault for the exercises, this is rather unusual of him. Yesterday, he took the day off and today, he was late by almost half hour. “What can I do?” he smiles weakly. “I just don’t feel like leaving home in the morning.”
Gupta is not alone in skipping the exercises. Today the turnout was barely 15 – just about half our normal number.

Razia Khan does a penguin

Owing to some so-called “northerly winds”, we are going through “the coldest winter in years” with each day turning out to be colder than the previous.
Significantly, at 10 degrees Celsius (or thereabouts), Mumbai is still warmer than other parts of the country where it could even be snowing. But then, in those parts, people are unlikely to leave their homes first thing in the morning, only to laugh their guts out in the cold. We do.
It is another matter that our sartorial tastes have changed while doing so. Most of us are beginning to resemble stuffed gunny bags in rainbow colors. Shekhawat looks like an astronaut

Keeping the pot on the boil... with jokes

in black, all zipped up. Razia Khan is similarly kitted, taking after a lovely penguin as she flaps her arms about during the exercises. Nahid Khan declared she would wear gloves from tomorrow. Rukhsana Khan came up with a still better one: She described herself as the daredevil character of a “Maut ka Kuan act” in some circus show – simply because of her tight fitting leather jacket, two sizes small.
In all this madness, we have one saviour -- Mallika Kagzi. Every day after the exercises, she has been unfailingly treating us to hot tea from home. Nobody has ever asked her to do so. It is out of sheer compassion that she has taken upon herself this chore. In the freezing cold, her tea is verily ambrosia to us – the drink of the gods.
Karun Sharma:
Yes, one of the coldest days in Mumbai. Today I received confirmation to visit Delhi by January-end and it looks scary now. Mallika is real god-like while serving tea to us with such fondness. Another beautiful aspect about her I noticed, was the way she was cleaning up the tea spills so judiciously. Hats off to you, Mallika!