Sahyadrica

“Remember what the dormouse said…” Waking up to the loud call of the chicken ( Gallus domesticus ) is so common for us that even clocks come with prerecorded calls as alarm. The call belongs to the male fowl, the cock – it is the quintessential bird and the omnipresent sound of the Indian countryside. It is only when you have lived long enough in the countryside that you realise this call is not typical of mornings. It is driven more by the presence of the hens around, and if there is a brood around, a cock might sing all night. Today, the koo-kuduk-koo of the chicken is recognized more by a watch’s alarm and the chicken itself for what it is – food – than for its historic association with humans. This history is quite interesting, an important chapter in the book of mankind, no less: How the hunter-gatherers observed wild fowl life history to not only hunt – they are still hunted – but to capture them live and breed and tame them and keep them around settlements which are found t...

Where the mountains will hide your sorrow And the rivers guide your spirit The river that flows by the town I live in has many lives, many avatars, many names, many stories, many legends, many worlds. The town I associate with has its own legend, of great gods fighting over the love of two, spilling blood into the river, giving it the name the City of Blood. So goes the story, one of the many, as the river traverses from the high reaches of the Himalaya, gushing down the plains is a vast braided expanse, a river taking a hundred forms, no, a hundred-thousand. But it is not this river that carried me here. It was another, much smaller, much lesser known. This river I speak of is yet to speak to me, but I’ve learned that without it the air doesn’t move, the ground doesn’t breathe, the rain doesn’t fall, the elephants don’t walk. And indeed, hell hath no fury like its floods. Rivers, small or big, carry stories. They are its memories. The difference lies is how we perceive them. O...

Birds of a Fig: a pair of Great Hornbills and a friend, Yellow-footed Green Pigeon on chilubor gos. It is a spectacle of nature Come summer monsoon winter Naturalists flocking together: Birds of a feather. A tree and a tree make not a forest A bird without bough nests not A deer without shade has no rest Mere eyes cannot express the lost. And if there are no forests standing The birds songless flying The deer kinless wandering What is man but a soulless being It is the essence of nature To express what we feel see hear A naturalist without pen and paper: A bird without feather. Whenever opportunity arises, I explore nature in ways I did not earlier: by letting go of things I wish to see and seeing what others see. It takes some resolve to let go of the urge to see what one intends to see. To reach here, I am just beginning to see things as they present themselves, abstaining from treasure-hunting, the way of the hunter, to living in the moment, the...