Author: Tarique Sani

Yeah! It is bigger – it was always big – and FWIW size does matter

Are you sad as well?

“Modern day Americans are often trapped in lousy, disappointing, soul crushing careers. If they are not divorced already, their marriages are on the rocks. They live far outside of their means, rack up thousands of dollars of debt, and then they work overtime to pay for the toys they never have time to play with. They dedicate their lives to pleasing ungrateful children who won’t amount to much more than they did. Hours of their downtime is spent in front of the television, switching from reality show to reality show, because it is easier to watch other people live life than it is to live their own. In a rare moment of creativity, they might write a secret out on a postcard and send it to a website because they don’t have a single person in real life that they trust enough to share their fears with. They feel all of this on top of the usual human maladies of sickness, death and grief.”

From: https://www.violentacres.com/archives/169/most-people-are-depressed-for-a-very-good-reason

How long before this is true about us Indians? or are we already there?

Comments, reflections, denials and proving me wrong most welcome…

First Guest

So when should a new house be considered lived in? cooking for the first time, sleeping for the first time? being locked out for the first time? No!

It is when you host your first guest and the first guest at our new house is someone whom we have been inviting to Nagpur ever since we met almost 8 years ago – Atul (yes as in Atul Chitnis 🙂 ) Atul was in Ahmedabad and needs to be in Mumbai on Monday so he decided to hop over to Nagpur for the weekend.

Now that Atul is here we need wifi all over and we discovered that in trying to make the walls crack proof we have made ourselves a Faraday cage of sorts – even with enhanced output using dd-wrt we cannot cross floors very well 🙁 – the garden though has got nice connectivity….

Sighting of the day.

It has rained throughout the night and the dry area of the pond has been turned into an excellent wading ground overnight. A pair of Bronze Wing Jacanas are the latest members for our yard list.

Sightings of the day….

Since past few days we have been seeing birds which are #1 usually not so readily seen #2 not seen in places we have seen them… also all the sightings have been incidental

23rd Saturday – Spotted owlet near an ice cream parlour
24th Sunday – Dusky Craig Martins in our driveway
25th Monday – Little Grebe in the pond behind the new house
26th Tuesday – Common Hawk Cuckoo aka Brain fever bird sitting low on a wire while driving back to home

The most surprising for me was the brain fever bird because tracking it down in the field can be really really tricky, you can hear it all over but can’t see it, in fact this is the closest I have ever seen it, since I had a wee bit of doubt regarding its identification, it called out in its trade mark voice just as we stopped the car….

Fly baby fly!

Woke up early yesterday morning despite a late night on Saturday and sat at the doorsteps waiting for the newspaper, perhaps it was sub conscious realization that there are very few Sunday mornings that I will get here now perhaps a couple more….

It was nice to know that the neighborhood birds  have not completely forgotten me and were there promptly to give me company. After a leisurely scan of the papers, fueled by some coffee I walked around to check out what else was interesting  –  apart from a male Paradise flycatcher nothing much.

The later part of the morning was spent watching the Animatrix DVD which I had managed to pick up and then talking with Aasim about the possibilities in a Matrix world. By the time we finished it was time for some yummilicious Biryani from Swati.

I don’t really know where the rest of afternoon went,  except  Aasim occasionally coming in to demonstrate some Yoyo tricks (and failing most of the times)

Around 4 O clock in the afternoon Swati stepped out to call Aasim only to discover that a pair of Dusky Craig Martins were collecting mud for their nest from our driveway, if you are into bird watching you would know that these birds are seen more often flying than sitting and it is definitely rare to have them sit within a few feet – I could get a full-frame shot with just 200mm

The drizzle which had started around 10am turned into a steady downpour by evening – Monsoon had hit Nagpur – Finally. This time it arrived with a whimper and did not give us a chance to do our usual going around the city and getting wet in the first rain after which we use to stop at the favorite Samosawala and have piping hot Samosas.

I was regretting this at the dinner table – when there was a knock at the door,  a friend had got Biryani! and not just any Biryani it was Hyderabadi Biryani flown in straight from Paradise, Hyderabad

Ahhh… for small pleasures of life

Once you promise

Once you promise you have to…  the little girl chimed , She was one of Aasim’s friend asking for his bicycle for herself to ride. The sincerity with which she pleaded stuck with me.

So as I had promised myself that I will update this journal more often here is it…  Earlier this week we returned from Pattaya after a reasonably successful weekend business visit.  We had  the Sunday to ourselves so we shopped for… Thai spices!!  Swati could manage to procure a decent spice kit,  hmmm  I wonder if there is a proper word for a “spice kit”? We also got a whole lot of cloth things – they are much cheaper in Thailand

Other than that things are still in a flux, Monsoon has still not hit Nagpur except for a few showers which in a way is good – the exteriors are being painted.

My programmers have turned the SANIsoft blog into a place to put ‘notes to themselves’ – which though not the sole purpose is generating a lot of traffic. People do get stuck and frustrated on small things which once known make you bang your head – here is a selection…

Just re-read the above and like the previous entry this too ‘looks’  forced  but  I don’t want to worry about that for now

Vulture at Wadi!

Today, after lunch, myself and Swati decided to explore the neighborhood of the new place. As I have written earlier it is surrounded by rich birding ground.

After walking about 500m we were already seeing birds like Yellow wattled lapwing, Red winged Bush lark, Black breasted finch lark, Rain quail….

Well it is their habitat and while other bird watchers have to trek long to see these we realize that we are fortunate – then it happened once again!!

Coming over the horizon I spotted a huge bird flying towards us, Once again I gasped “Vulture” and Swati  said “Can’t be …”

But as it soared above us there was no doubt it was an Indian long billed vulture! Unfortunately this time I did not have a camera 🙁 but I guess this is not the last time, we are on to something  here !

Emerging from the limbo

After nearly 3 weeks of grueling 18 hour days, yesterday was a day when we did not have things lined up to be completed before the day end… in fact we had nothing lined up.

Aasim returned from Delhi on Saturday evening; suddenly grown-up in some ways – 20 days is the longest he has stayed away from us but we were glad that he was enjoying with his uncles while we were overloaded with work.

Entire this year up till now has been driven by a single goal – getting the new home+office completed!  Every other activity including bird watching and photography was put on hold, not only because there was so much to do but also because for the first time we were executing a project which depended on future cashflow projections.

After seemingly everything has been listed and accounted and then a margin added, things turn up which inflate your budget – this we were warned of by many people.  However  I am extremely relieved to say that though things did turn up there were enough areas where we had over budgeted and the final tally is going to be within the estimate which we made in November 2006. There were some scary moments but thanks to each of our clients every projected payment came through and then some more… …

While the office shifted on 1st of this month, shifting the home to the new house will still take a few weeks but we are there for all practical purposes – shifting is like making a software live – no matter how many tests you did – there are always bugs,  you can only minimize the number. For the office too there have been minor irritants like water leaking from a couple of places in the glazed windows, condensation on AC dripping when humidity is 80% but they appear to have been solved for now.

A couple of days ago we noticed that there is a brood of 3 just of of nest Shikra chicks which play in the garden – it is fun to watch them as they play aerial  tag, scream for parents or just hop around utterly unafraid. Coming Sunday I intend to go around the forest which is almost encircles the new house…

We have also been busy writing on the SANIsoft blog in the past few days

Yes, I do intend to update this journal more often