HAVELI

There were times

There were days

Periods of waiting

By an old fashioned cafeteria

Traditional khuskhus mats in an open cafeteria

Sipping tea from the coffee machine.

A strange marriage of the modern and the old

Business and Creativity blended into Reality.

Rose bushes and a lotus pond

A driveway reminiscent of an ancestral home

A never-ending expanse of wilderness 

where rare birds and solitude sauntered by…

A place for the mind to roam free..

Where sunshine came scampering in

Through the peepholes of the khuskhus mats

Where it did not have to struggle

To sear through the glass window panes of an ivory corporate tower.

Where flowers were not part of a landscaping project;

Where they bloomed like peals of laughter

Snuggled amidst the trees of the wild

Snug in the arms of nature.

As I stepped into my second stint as a management trainee at our campus in Poona, I was taken aback at the rampant beauty of nature in which we worked. After having been thrust, shoved, whisked, swept off by the supposed ‘fast life’ of Mumbai, it was an unexpected sigh of relief to find professional life blend so well in the 700 acres of an untamed, breathtaking natural landscape.

Was it any wonder that our wondrous home-office was loving called the ‘Haveli’?  

While I appreciate the plush interiors of a swank new office building, I miss the old time charm of an innocent Haveli…