Memories Live On

A person goes away.

Creates a void. In your life. Perhaps, in many other lives. Lives that the person touched.

You learn to live on. Gather fortitude. Overcome emotions.

How?

By deriving strength from the memories. Memories of the time spent together, of the adventures, of joy and of the ups and downs of life. Memories of things that the deceased person loved to do. Memories of people and places.

Sharing some of these memories of the person you all knew. 

Many of the pictures pertain to her 70th birthday (which was to be her last!) and the last road trip we did together in May 2024. There are many more pictures, videos and other memorabilia which we couldn't include lest the story should become unwieldy.

Neeta- A Family Person

The 70th Birthday at Bengaluru. Who knew it would be her last? Multiple celebrations happened. Pictures and videos below.

The video of the cake cutting at the Taj follows

Next cake was sent by Neeta's favourite Anand Bhaiya from Sharjah. See the video and her voice below:

And the tastefully decorated cake follows.

Neeta The Traveller

She was Ghumakkad's companion for all the travels in India and overseas. Sharing below few of her travel pictures.

 

She loved mangoes (who doesn't? Well she has an uncle who does not eat mangoes!) specially the ones naturally-ripened from our garden. Sharing a picture of what we had carried to Chennai last year for family and friends.

Neeta The Animal Lover

She loved animals, birds and Nature at large. Sharing two of her pictures below.

Friends Her Lifeline

Neeta loved being with her friends. Be it her school and college friends, or from the Navy (after our marriage) or Harsh's college buddies and spouses, or from the Army and Air Force (after our inter-services appointments) and lastly her 'Kitty' gang! Her face would lit up in the company of friends!

Neeta The Photographer 

Sample one of her frames below

Her Team at Home

They all remember her and offer their respects.

Neeta Lives On

What We Said Earlier...

Sharing below our earlier posts about Neeta. In case you hadn't read it earlier, you may click the links.

Miss You Forever - Eulogies and tributes by family and friends on Neeta's demise in Sep-24.

Balancing Weight of Ghumakkad's Life - What all she loved including online shopping (off-line too!) and mangoes. Written on her 69th birthday.

Spouse's Birthday is Always Special - Posted on her 63rd birthday. What happens after 40 years of married life and more. 

Finally, here is a special video created by Ashi, our daughter. It captures the happy times that Neeta spent with everyone. Thank you Ashi.

We end with a quote about the power of memories which says, "Time moves in one direction, memory in another."

Thanks for being a part of our life. Friends and memories keep us going. Am sure Neeta is watching from wherever she is and giving us a broad smile!

Stay connetced and say a few words before closing the page. It will add to our pleasant memories.

   - Harsh-the-Ghumakkad with inputs from Ashi/ Secunderabad/ 27th May 2025

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Ghumakkad Enters The Teens

Celebration time again. Ghumakkad's blog, your blog, is thirteen! Ghumakkad too is thirteen but with sixty years of wandering around!

Ghumakkad expresses his gratitude to each one of you for this exciting journey together. Like all life on earth, we the human beings are also dependent upon Nature. Ghumakkad too loves Nature. And that is why my tagline on Insta says  'Forever at Peace Outdoors'. Nature is amazing as well as mysterious. A lifetime is not enough to fathom Nature's mysteries like the picture below. The khoj खोज meaning 'the quest' continues.

With the support of our readers worldwide, we have crossed the milestone of half-a-million page views this year. In fact the count now reads 603,000 page views! Eight years ago when we crossed the 100,000 mark, Radhika Sareen one of our regular readers had commented 'You will soon cross a Million mark!' It did not seem attainable becuse it had taken us five years to reach 100,000. A ten-fold growth meant another 50 years. Not in my life time I thought! But now it seems we are getting there! It is the magic created and continued by the readers!

As we said earlier, numbers don't matter for our blog. Being a non-political, non-religious, non-commercial, non-celebrity blog it has limited readership. We are happy with the readers that we have. Your insights and encouragement keeps us going. In fact our readers have been contributing many guest stories to our blog, your blog.

When Fallen, Get Up and Go

This year Ghumakkad lost his travel companion (and life partner too). But Ghumakkad is trying to retain the spirit of the blog. The posts may have been fewer but the show has gone on. Sharing below the post dedicated to Neeta with eulogies from her near and dear ones.

We Will Miss You Forever 

Last year we had shared a snapshot of our content and its variety. We are re-posting it with suitable uodates. Read on.

The Journey

Ghumakkad started as a travel blog. Our inaugural story was a set of eight posts on picturesque Bhutan. Initially the blog was by invitation. Naturally it had very limited page views in the first three years. Once opened to public, more readers enjoyed browsing it. See the graph below which shows the current page views at 603,000 with more than 5600 comments. This is the 643rd Post of our blog.

As we mentioned, last year saw an increase of 153,000 page views as shown in the graph below.

The Content

Our blog has a variety of content with pictures and videos. Some of the themes are listed below with links to connected stories:

• Travelogues like Huka Falls Taupo New Zealand,  A Train journey in USA, Scuba diving at 65, Hiking up the Tiger's Nest in Bhutan, Toddler on a Hike, Veterans Bash In A Train

• Wildlife including The Big Five of Africa, Tigers of Tadoba, Birds of Ranganathittu, Rescuing a Black Winged Stilt, Lakshmi The Tigress Teacher, Ajgar Dadar Preserving the Pythons

• Environment including Trees (Cherry Blossom Nature's Revival, White Jamun?, Neem Trees Under Attack), plants (Friendship With Plants), insects and flowers (Brahma Kamal)

• Online Contest called Kaun Banega Ghumakkad which has completed 80 editions so far! It is though temporarily suspended.
• Lesser-known India series Tunnel Tourism, Belum Caves, Hindola Toran, Devarakonda Fort and more

• Entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship stories like Dreams to Reality, Young Entrepreneurs Bootcamp, Startup Fever Grips VVISM

• Teaching and learning (Ghumakkad is a teacher!) Jeevan Vidya Workshop- A Journey Within,  Yoga Mat With A Bandage, Implementing NEP-2020, real-life case studies and Innovations in A Convocation

• Obituaries of leaders like Ratan Tata,  Dr Abdul Kalam and martyrs like Capt Ravi Shankar

• Motivational posts like This Time of the Year and more during Covid

• Guest stories including those written by our grandchildren (Coyote Gulch Hiking in Stream), Covid survivors (I Got A New Life) and Animal Lovers like Rohini

• Picturesque Quotes having one of our pictures with a famous quote like Claude Monet on Nature and another one by a KBG winner.

• Adventure and Endurance like Ankush Does It The Ironman, Women Hiking in Water

The Readership

Thanks to the wider reach of internet, our blog is read globally. Readers from India account for only 45%, balance coming from across the globe. See the colour coded world map below.

Most Viewed Posts (All time)

Our story on 'Brahma Kamal The Queen of Night' has been read by almost 8000 readers. It shows the readers' interest in environment and Nature related posts.

Capt Ravi Shankar's life story has been read more than 7770 times. We salute his supreme sacrifice

.

See the list of most viewed posts below.

Most viewed posts during the last 12 months are shown below. Our readers have shown a wide preference for the blog posts.

Acknowledgements

There are numerous people who have helped us grow. We place on record our appreciation to the following for their unstinted support.

Trixie Asirvatham our content advisor

Chitra Shanker our advisor on plants, trees, insects and birds

Ramya Sriram logo designer of our KBG Contest

Yella Prakash Rao our ornithologist

We also thank each one of you for your continued support without which Ghumakkad wouldn't have been here! Do give us your feedback to help us improve.

Onwards to the 14th Anniversary of Ghumakkad next year!

Thanks for browsing. Stay connected

   - Harsh-the-Ghumakkad / 21st May 2025/ Secunderabad

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