AFOVA New Letter 2 of Year 2021

Section 6 - Memoirs CV 2 No. 02 / 2021 Page 134 of 332 of the temple before I had time to say “Varadaraja” and with hands full of hot prashad which took care of breakfast. When I tried to thank him, he brushed it off saying it was nothing compared to what I had done. Charity pays and many a times many fold. Cometh the hour Cometh the man. The young priest was the man for this hour. He is a Thathachari and that family is the hereditary trustee of this ancient temple. More importantly we felt it was a very auspicious start to our Golden jubilee. I had butterflies in my stomach and this experience assuaged it. The trip to Poona from Bangalore was on expected lines, good fun, joyous and relaxed. The stay at the Maratha Light Infantry mess sent me up a few notches in Guru’s and Naina’s mind. He was relieved that he had not booked the 5 star hotel. The mess was like a resort and the ante-room and dining halls were like museums, not surprising since Marathas have been in existence since 1768 and are the senior most, light infantry. Golden Jubilee celebrations were spectacular and the four days of revelry left everyone exasperated but not exhausted. It went through without a glitch and I heaved a sigh of relief. Downside to it is that I did not get to mingle around as much. With the kind of happiness and bonhomie generated everyone including me was over the moon. The hard work in putting it together was worth the trouble. Our farewell lunch of “G”olden jubilee was at the combined services mess at the RSI (Rajendra Sinhji Institute) golf course. Brig Chawla spouse of E batch Chandralekha took the pains to organise it beautifully and the setting (sitting) was super. We were driving off on our return journey from there after lunch. It was surprising that in spite of my sustained efforts to seek knowledge about driving to the Konkan coast from Poona from various sources, it drew zilch information. I realised later that many have not taken the risk to take this drive because of logistics. Since not much of logistics available about hitting the Konkan coast from anyone in Poona, I decided we would drive to Mahabaleshwar and take it from there. Thomas Philip and Savitri were part of the touring party. Tommy was quite game to take the risk of an unplanned trip. I asked Brig Chawla about staying in Mahabaleshwar and he had it all. He suggested that I ring up Col Dabholkar “after siesta time” for accommodation at The Club in Mahabaleshwar. We left at 2:30 from Poona. At 4:30, I rang up Col Dabholkar and he was nice enough to say “I think we would be able to accommodate”. We drove into The Club and what accommodation it was. Each of us had a suite with two bedrooms and two bathrooms, like a large two room apartment, apart from the veranda. The Club itself is still, in the days of the Raj. The man of this hour was Brig Harish Chawla.