Month: April 2005

Some of you might remember my crib about the situation of electricity cuts in the city, a couple of days ago the government arbitrarily decided to make it worse for our city. This led to the local paper, yesterday, publishing a long list of phone numbers of all the people who make these decisions and asked the public to call all of them and give them a earful!

And lo! a miracle happened – it actually worked!! so many people called up all those that the additional load shedding was withdrawn with immediate effect and criteria will be laid out for cities and load shedding done accordingly.

There is always some hope!

I am not fortunate enough to be able to be in a jungle over weekend or just be able to live in a jungle. However that did not deter me from enjoying the thrill of a predators hunt, the hunter becoming the hunted becoming the hunted or experiencing the joys of new life being nurtured.

Yesterday morning we took a bunch of 7 to 11 year old kids for a bird watching walk to the nearby VNIT campus. This was not supposed to be a serious activity considering the fact that it is very difficult to keep kids quite and also was not expected to last long as the kids were anticipated to tire out very soon in even in the early morning sun. We started at 6:30am and were done by a few minutes past 7am having spotted about 24 varieties of birds. Just as we were on the edge between the shrub land and road I heard a very tiny ‘cheep cheep’ sound…. Lo behold! right in front of me was a nest of a Purple Sunbird, one of India’s smallest but also a very beautiful bird. I was able to get a picture of the male in all his iridescent beauty despite shooting through a wire fence. I also got a couple of pictures of him feeding the tiny chicks. All of them – shots of a life time, that I will treasure forever!

In case you are curious – yes, the female also shares the caring duties but she was more busy trying to mimic a broken wing to distract me. I did not get any decent pictures of her…. well some other day!

We returned home with me gloating over the pictures and a grin which nothing could wipe of my face. The children were playing outside while Swati fixed them some breakfast. My attention was drawn to a Praying Mantis as I was just settling to observe it hunt the hunter became the hunted. The Praying Mantis was preyed upon by a Garden Lizard. The flurry of activity attracted a Black Drongo who thought that the Garden Lizard was a pretty good meal! The whole drama was played out so fast that all I could capture was the Garden Lizard with the Mantis in its mouth.

Rest of the day was largely inconsequential as was the long end of the day discussion between me and Swati about the long term road map for SANIsoft.

It just went by with me not getting much done. Well to be honest there is no weekend for me (and many of us) – Just a Sunday or worse…

The morning was spent going to a building site looking our prospective sometime in the distant future new home. Not much about it – too far, too expensive, too little has been done – in one word we just said “No”. Which was almost a relief, because I dread that someday we will find our perfect dream house of the future and will not be able to afford it in the present, also I do not want to abandon where we live right now – agreed it is small but thats what I have called as home throughout my life!!

We returned to a lunch of Mutter Parathas with Aasim muttering how Sundays should be reserved for better things in lunch – “better” in this context can read be as “any thing non-veg”.

I did manage to find some time to play with Using Gmail as a Spam Filter, post processing a few of the insect photographs and finding out the correct names of all the Dragonflies that I have accumulated.

The redeemer for the day was dinner at a newly opened Italian restaurant…

Jebe tora DAka —– na shuNile kehi
jabAba pAilu nAhi’n |
jIbana ra pathe —- bimukha na hoi
chAlu ekAkinI hoi

Jebe tora sAthe —- na kahile kathA
bhaya re gale durei |
prAna kholA kathA — hasa hasa muhe’n
kahu ekAkinI hoi

ghana jangala re —- ghaDi-sandhi beLe
na chAhi’n le Jebe kehi |
pathara kantaka —- raktima pAde
daLu ekAkinI hoi

jhaDa jhanjA beLe — andhAra rAti re
duAra na khole kehi |
bajrAnaLa shikhA — hruda pinjara re
jALu ekAkinI hoi

Ekla Chalo Re – a poem by Rabindranath Tagore

English translation:

If they answer not to thy call walk alone,
If they are afraid and cower mutely facing the wall,

O thou of evil luck,
open thy mind and speak out alone.

If they turn away, and desert you when crossing the wilderness,
O thou of evil luck,
trample the thorns under thy tread,
and along the blood-lined track travel alone.

If they do not hold up the light when the night is troubled with storm,
O thou of evil luck,
with the thunder flame of pain ignite thy own heart
and let it burn alone.

Yesterday, the mercury after being hesitant for a few days finally crossed 40 and stood at a maximum of 40.2°C, though for now the nights are still pleasantly cool at below 20°C.

Summer is the most harsh season in Nagpur, in fact it is harsh for most of central India, temperatures will now progressively and rapidly rise and hover around 43 to 46°C for next 45 to 60 days. Yes feet blistering hot, though not hot enough to fry an egg on the pavement in reality, you can really boil an egg if you just put it in a closed metal container and put it out in the sun for an afternoon. Add to it a hot local wind which blows called “lou” which can give you a heat stroke within minutes if you are not careful enough to take precautions.

The atmosphere however is very dry so you do not swelter in the sticky heat like you do in places like Mumbai or Chennai and because it is dry ‘Dessert’ coolers work very well and can easily maintain a temperature of around 18 to 19°C. I particularly love the smell of fresh khus pads used in these coolers. Summer also is the season for my favourite fruits Mango and Watermelons (no puns intended). Nothing to beat the pleasure of eating raw mango slices with salt, freshly picked from the trees in the garden. As children we use to roam the streets raiding the mango trees in the neighbourhood and getting shouted at for throwing stones 😀

Another Summer favourite are the Mogra Flowers, the sweet scent of which fill the air every morning.

It was worth waking up at 5:30am on a Sunday morning for this – more than 30 varieties of water birds spotted in a single location of half a square kilometer within 45 min! This spot is at “Koradi Lake” a small patch of marsh land about 8km form our home. The most astonishing fact is that it is right besides a busy road!

I have never seen this big a congregation of Purple Moor-hens in a single place. I have a single frame 6mp picture which looks almost like an artists rendition you find in the books, a double page spread used to illustrate flora and fauna of place… I very sorely missed my much awaited TC20e, these birds know that 200mm is too short for them 😉

I did manage to get a lot of pretty dragonflies though – Blue, Striped like a tiger and some which I have not yet put up on the site, again these are taken via the 200mm zoom rather than 105mm Macro – Yeah! crazy!! – Now that the rumours of D50 and D70S are confirmed Swati is keen on a second camera body (perhaps D50 body only will be really cheap), changing lenses in the field is almost impossible.

But no sweat on lost opportunities all the birds we spotted are resident birds the migratory ones are all long gone. It is said that there are at least 3 more sites within and around the city and about ¾ of all the Indian Birds can be spotted right here in Nagpur!

While returning, on recommendation of Jaimesh, we got the most tender mutton from one of the shops there. The lunch was Kheema cooked by Swati using a recipe of her own and hot parathas. There after we watched the 1973 Nasir Hussain classic “Yadon Ki Barat”