In the sea, once upon a time, O my Best Beloved, there was a Whale and he ate fishes. He ate the starfish and the garfish, the crab and the dab, the plaice and the dace, the skate and his mate, the mackerel and the pickerel, and the really truly twirly-whirly eel." I too giggled, reading out that quirkily rhymed passage to my daughter, shaded by a mango tree on the JJ School of Art campus. Shopping at Crawford Market, we had happened to find ourselves across it. She was carrying an adored book — Just So Stories by Rudyard Kipling, whose childhood bungalow stands on the grounds of the school where his sculptor father John Lockwood Kipling taught. Surrendering to serendipity, we'd chosen an apt corner to hear nonsense-nuanced Kipling in a happy match of moment to mood. Such episodes needn't be rarities. Fatigued and frustrated though the city leaves us, it holds magic and mystery.

Walk the talk
Enjoy treks suggested by architects Brinda Gaitonde and Abha Bahl.