Wayfarer's window!

 A heart-wrenching week just went by. Two young lives were lost to epic battles with deadly diseases.  The first, an eighteen-year-young boy. I dare call him a man. He had fought valiantly with years of drug addiction in a hideous locality known for petty crime. When he was finally admitted to the rehab center, he caught the ominous tuberculosis. When I met him, the disease had spread across his lungs and into his brain. My last-moment diagnosis and advice to rush him to the hospital was help too little and too late! The second, a young man, just in his late twenties. A software engineer, with a plump job. A very eligible bachelor. Handsome, tall, fair, and full of life. Till colon cancer got him and drained every bit of life slowly and wickedly from him. The last unit of my blood did little to save him, as I witnessed his final breaths and last heartbeats on the monitor. The families were heartbroken. The mothers were incessant in their cries, unable and unwilling to comprehe...

Meghalaya was an unlikely choice for a family vacation in the middle of winter, around the corner of the new year. Yet, with all the usual clouds, rain, and mist swept away, we got to enjoy the sunniest side of the wettest places on Earth!  Well known for their natural beauty, the twin hills of Khasi and Jaintya, folded like a thick skirt of mother nature, soaked in embellishments of lakes, creeks, streams, gorges, valleys, plateaus, and cliffs. The most amazing were the refreshing waterfalls, the ancient caves with fossils, the knotted living root bridges, and the crystal clear Umngot river in Dawki as it meandered from between the twin hills into the plains of Bangladesh. Here's my list of top picks from the wonderful short trip to Meghalaya.  The amazing sun-rise and sun-set views, a heady cocktail of sun's warmth with the nip of the crisp winter breeze.  The views from the tops of trees which could be climbed through a maze of narrow bamboo walks.  A humming tree...