Outdoors

Steel, an alloy of Iron and carbon is made from Iron ore, limestone and Coke (coal). Steel mills or plants are gigantic and are located far away from the big cities and in face far away from even small cities. Basically, they are far away from any civilisation. Integrated townships are built around steel plants - with all amenities like schools, hospitals, shopping complexes, club houses etc provided for, to ensure that the needs of the employees and their families are taken care of. These gigantic steel plants and colonies, legacies of the Nehruvian socialistic planning era, came up in erstwhile Bihar and the neighbouring mineral rich areas of Orissa and Madhya Pradesh. These colonies grew, thrived and prospered in pre-liberalisation days when the quantity to be produced and consumed both were licensed and regulated by the government thus ensuring a steady flow of work to each of the steel plants. In one such colony, in the midst Central-eastern India, I spent my early childhood.

In those days, every other weekend, my parents, I and a whole lot of friends from our colony, would pile ourselves into cars and would go out on picnics. As kids would long for such days. Waterfalls, reservoirs, dams, lakes, gardens, treks, forest reserves and so on. The place where we stayed was blessed with many natural, non commercial and picturesque spots. There are many pictures of me, as a kid, with a lot of my friends, enjoying these outings. Those were good days! Sigh!

Coming to think of it, I haven't gone back to that city in the past 16 years, since the day I left. I have vivid, graphic memories of all the roads, the houses, the park, my school etc. but they are frozen in time. I have been wanting to go back to see how things have changed. Someday, sooner than later, I will.

This sudden nostalgia trip is because of the pictures below. They reminds me so much of the many weekend trips that I made as a kid.

The above pictures were taken near Nashik on Jan 1, 2010. A bunch of us were sitting here with absolutely no one around, yakking away on life, universe and everything in between as we welcomed the New year.