A rather bad August

My apologies to those readers who have been waiting impatiently for the next post. My mother has been ill for more than a week now - fever every day and endless tests unable to confirm what exactly is wrong with her, so we, Pupu and I, have been both harried and worried. Just brought her home from the hospital today, but she is still very weak, and has been advised complete bed rest, than which there could be no worse punishment for her.

The previous week, though, we had a grand time. Another three-day break with a road trip starting Thursday the 10th to Mandarmoni. First time I stayed there instead of Digha, and it's certainly a much quieter place, though the approach road from Shankarpur onwards is in a deplorable condition. We stayed in a pet friendly resort, so Bheblu enjoyed herself. Lucky dog - within the first two years of her life she has seen both mountain and sea! Swarnava was with us, his first trip with Pupu didi, and we had great fun commenting over road and shop- names. We passed by Patna and Mirzapur, I kid you not, and a restaurant called The Second Wife, and a resort called Lonachatar, and a village called Chorpaliye, seeing which Swarnava said we should expect the next hamlet to be called 'Buddhi baare' (I hope Bengalis at least will get the joke). Most of the road was in excellent condition, even the part through the villages adjoining Panchal forest, and the national highway segment from Kharagpur to Belda was a smooth, eight-lane dream. I drove quite a bit, and the drive back on Saturday involved being caught and stopped by a very heavy shower in the afternoon, followed by a thrilling drive through a forest in the dark. Otherwise, as usual, good eating, chatting and sleep, three lovely days in good company and no work...

Read a couple of good books, too. Rebels against the Raj, the new book by Ramachandra Guha, very engrossingly sketches the lives and works of seven Europeans who turned into Indians heart and soul, loved India, and fought against the worst excesses of British rule at great cost to their self-interest. I keep lamenting that there are far too few Indians like that around. The Christie Affair, by Nina de Gramont, published in 2022, is a gripping book of fiction about what might have transpired during the eleven days in 1926 when Agatha Christie went missing, and after coming back, insisted for the rest of her life that she 'couldn't remember'. Very well written indeed, even though the plot is rather far-fetched, and the author has taken liberties with historical facts which would not have been allowed in a sterner age.

Now the horrible sultriness is killing us. We must endure this for another two months at least...