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| Bihari Milwani (l) presents Santosh Tyagi a welcome gift |
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| Shekhawat (c) shows press clippings on his gaushala project |
The question marked her comeback in the Garden.
Santosh’s reappearance was greeted by a round of applause and after the exercises, Bihari Milwani presented her with a lovely welcome gift – a personalized desktop photograph embellished in classic Gurmukhi calligraphy along the border.
The credit for getting Santosh to the Garden today goes to Razia Khan. All these days we had tried and failed to make even telephonic contact with her (ref post of March 12) and yesterday, Razia simply dropped by at Santosh’s place after attending the cremation ceremony at Bijoy Gupta’s house close by.
“I insisted she better get back to the Garden routine every morning, or else she would be doing herself more harm than good,” Razia narrated. “She had no explanation to offer for remaining cooped in her house for days on end.”
We too could have similarly persuaded Santosh earlier, but none of us wanted to ‘disturb’ her. We presumed she would be preoccupied nursing her son, Manoj back to health following his recent hospitalization.
“More than anybody else, Manoj has been the one to insist that I step out of the house and to not abandon my exercise routine,” Santosh explained. “But what to do – call it inertia, mental block, lethargy, fear… somehow I could not get myself to leave home. I have even taken the lift down and within minutes, returned to my bedroom!”
As a minor diversion, Shekhawat fished out a bunch of press clippings on a massive gaushala (cow shelter) project his family is sponsoring in their village in Rajasthan. It was launched earlier this month in the presence of his son and grandson (all in Rajput finery replete with pink turbans) and the event was widely covered by the local media. “We already have 200 cows in the shelter,” Shekhawat informed proudly.
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