Sahyadrica

With my Northeastern buddy the Horay-bellied Himalayan Squirrel relishing Arunachali oranges. On July 7, 2013, a week after moving to Kanha, I journaled my observation on nature and human-nature interactions in Central India. My first ever memory is of an effervescent girl gently smacking a cow about to feed on someone’s backyard garden. With her brother in one arm, dressed in old school uniform, the barefooted girl led a line of cattle into the forest for grazing. This memory is as fresh as if it occurred only yesterday. She compelled me to look at myself, insecure and closed to the world – her world – shoed, full-sleeved, afraid of ants and mosquitoes, whatnot. That year, malaria, a millennia-old scourge of Central India, especially the hill regions, was particularly bad. Amidst this, from my cocoon, I romanticized the forest village life to my unadjusted unaccustomed infant eyes, and I imprinted on her, whom I ultimately followed, like cattle in a line, to see without rose-tinted gl...