Skip to main content

Posts

Showing posts from May, 2007

Face-to-Face with human kindness

My Grandfather, Dr. Indramani Malhotra a.k.a. Indermani Shastri passed away at the very beginning of Uttarayana (ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uttarayana ), early morning of January 15th this year. So it was some days after Makar Sakranti when we went to Haridwar with almost the entire Malhotra clan. My father was offering the last prayers when we were strolling on the stairs on the banks of river Ganga and commenting upon the Hindu rites that cause a lot of non-biodegradable stuff being piously poured into the river Ganga. A lot of kites were flying overhead, some just a few feets above the fast-flowing river. It was a beautiful sight, with the bright kites and their reflections in the clean water. It was very crowded with many people offering pooja's for the same purpose as us. Apart from the pundits and the bereaved families, a few cows and a lot of monkeys were also lurking around. Monkeys were very aggressive and though they were afraid of coming down to the Pooja grounds,