This blog is also about travels. So let me talk about our recent trip to Sankarpur. Here was a beach in West Bengal, right next door to Digha almost, which was clean, unpolluted and uncrowded. For the first time in my life, I drove on the beach right next to the waves. Red crabs were scuttling away everywhere, much to the glee of the children. And plenty of shells. My son, Riju, enjoyed the waves tremendously. We did too.
Our accommodation was also neat. It was a cottage run by the West Bengal Fisheries department. Very new (inaugurated in December 2005) and very nice and clean. Quite large as well. We drank endless beers, vodkas and whiskeys on its spacious verandah. And of course, the machh bhaja... simply divine! If a tad expensive.
A friend's daughter (6-year-old) liked the place so much that she insisted she be brought here every time we plan a vacation. Riju did not disagree. But then he is usually the one to make such a demand at each place that we visit. He even wanted to stay on in the dirty and overcrowded Digha.
Of parenthood, angst, and travels
1 comment:
Sankarpur...the name is now a synonym for bliss as far as I am concerned. Frankly, I didn't think one can have so much fun four hours from Kolkata, in around 40 degrees of heat and that too in government accommodation!! What has our world (read West Bengal) come to!!
Though I loved the waves, the drive on the beach and the mid-morning pigging out on pomfret fries (with my daughter attacking the fish like a 'piranha' according to Mitul), what I cherish most are the night-time, after-dinner, after-bedtime-for-kids addas! By then we were suitably tanked up with Whiskey, Vodka, Beer and endless cigarettes. The talk would invariably veer towards three men - Ray, Kishore Kumar and Bacchhan. The discussions were passionate if not terribly intellectual (thank god for that), and were suitably punctuated by relevant songs, which were started impromptu, often by two people, singing the same song at the same time, without any prior discussion.
On the last day, when two of us were 'planning' an early retreat, this question came up at 2.30 am - will we still be drinking whiskey, smoking cigarettes, discussing Ray and singing Kishore on a beachside when we are 60...70...80... I guess we will and I think that's a better plan than all the pension schemes ever invented by LIC!
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