The Second week of May 2010. Weather reports claimed the hottest days in Ahmedabad. I decided to go for short bike ride early in the morning. If I do it anytime during the day I’ll become like popcorn (a tanned one). It had reached 46 degree in the city this week.
Gandhi Ashram is less than 7km from where I stay- a smooth 15 minute ride. I reached ashram at around 7:15 in the morning. (It could have been even earlier, later I felt). There I received a warm welcome from an extremely friendly dog at the gate. He behaved so friendly as if he knew me already. But soon i realised ‘You should not entertain any extra-friendly dogs if you don’t like dog’s saliva on you’. Later I found the dog’s name is ‘Geo’. His name reminded me of somebody i know, whose name is also ‘Geo’ but fortunately this person never shows any such symptoms while being friendly. One of my uncle had a dog named Bush, but again 'fortunately' the dog never had any similarities with his counterpart either- the other ‘Bush’...
I started moving around the Ashram, there were not many people around early in the morning and it was such peaceful place (PEACE and number of people are inversely proportional). This Ashram is along the side of the river (once upon a time) Sabarmati and one can see a long bridge (Gandhi bridge) from there. I wish the river was flowing and there were no concrete jungle on the other side of the river. Accepting the reality, I decided appreciate the 'beauty' of the busy traffic on the bridge through the early morning mist. The distance between the bridge and the Ashram kept the noise of traffic away. The vehicles seemed like small matchboxes moving around.The morning was very pleasant even in the peak of summer. I left the place before it started heating up.
