Life and Spirituality

One of the seven hills of Nainital T he  image on top of this page is one of Nainital town in the Himalayas. My childhood home in Nainital was just around the center of this image, a little to the right, now behind the cloud on the hill.  This was the area where most army families stayed because it was close to the military Cantonment. As a child of four or five I loved to climb up to window height and look at colorful sail boats in the lake. On rainy days there were no boats but it was nice to look at the patterns the rain water made on the window panes. The same hill is shown in clouds in a Picture I snapped a few years ago from the opposite hillside. I spent a lot of time in the spacious open kitchen too, especially at times when mother was away to meet her friend by the name of Tunnu next door, where our wonderful cook and family guide all rolled into one - Hira Lal - who belonged to a nearby town of Almora and had learned his skills and English with a British Brigadier

A Lakeside road in Nainital M y childhood was spent in the beautiful Himalayan Town of Nainital. Aside from its bewitching beauty, there was something else in the town that was even more valuable. The lives of most people were filled with simplicity and goodness and that added to highly stress free and happy atmosphere. It seems that goodness and beauty are frequently two sides of the same coin. Unfortunately this town has not remained so with time and commercialization of the modern age. In later years, I have lived in many parts of the world for education, work and living but never found the same level of goodness prevailing. An increase of greed, lust, anger, jealousy, selfishness vitiates the atmosphere of any town or village and destroys this sense of peace and happiness. When a mind is obsessed with a desire arising out of greed, anger, lust, jealousy, pride etc it has obviously no space or capacity to enjoy the many joyous wonders life has to offer without aski