Cycle of Life

Welcome back, Razia Khan... with rosogollas

Our Club has come to represent a microcosm of the world. People come, people go. The old make way for the new. Some stay for a little longer to keep up the old order. And when their time comes, they too must go. A new lot replaces them. Such is the way of life.
This happens every day in the Club. Santosh Tyagi found the heat so unbearable today that she quit exercising midway and left for home. Nobody stopped her. In fact, this was the cue for Sunita Jajodia to also leave. They were promptly replaced by Monthi Serrao and Kiran Makharia. And the numbers were restored – evenly balanced between male members and ladeej log.
Today was also the day for Razia Khan to mark her return from a holiday in Calcutta.

Happy journey, Monthi Serrao

She was away for more than two weeks. Apparently she had returned to Mumbai yesterday afternoon and first thing this morning, she came running into the Garden with an earthen pot filled with Bengal’s famous rosogollas. It was a promise she had made before leaving. “I came rushing in lest the sweets got bad in the summer heat,” she said.
Razia need not have worried. The rosogollas were wonderfully preserved – neither too spongy, nor too syrupy, they simply melted in the mouth. Some over-greedy old men cheekily remarked that she ought to be sent to Calcutta again – if only to extract another round of those divine delicacy.
A promise was also extracted from Monthi Serrao, who leaves for Mangalore today. She would bring us mud cakes when she returns after two weeks, on May 26. Funny part was that for some time, she could not figure out what a mud cake really is – although she had once treated us to it from an earlier trip to Mangalore. When Srichand Arora advised her to simply get a pile of sun-baked mud (or clay), she readily agreed.
Monthi’s departure to Mangalore coincides with Razia’s return from Calcutta. One goes another comes. And so our numbers remain constant. Such is the way of the Club. The cycle of life continues.
Harish Wadhwa:
Once again, I regret not being regular. Else I would have enjoyed the lovely rasogollas. My fault.
Jagmohan Papneja:
The presence or absence of members could be out of joy or sorrow, pain or pleasure... We accept it all with equanamity.