The
red-whiskered bulbul parents built their nest in a cove of a pruned tree whose
newly sprouted leaves gave the little space a roof. After the fledglings were
born, they flew hither-thither all day long, gathering food and shoving the
half-chewed stuff down their tiny, wide-open beaks. We watched them grow. No
feathers, no strength, only hunger was visible. One day, the nest was empty.
Cat-paw prints told us what had happened. Sad. Can’t hate the cat. She’s
pregnant, too. The empty nest is a reminder that Nature can be cruel.
Across the
drive, a snake slithered. I ran down with the mobile-phone to click a picture.
But it disappeared into the soil before I reached it. A few days before that, I
was poking my fingers to check on some saplings housed in plastic bags. In
complete silence, about twelve baby snakes wriggled out of some undergrowth or
crevices and fled to safety. I did the same, in another direction. Snakes
(presumably) and I (definitely) are both safe, touch wood. Lesson learnt: not
to mess with Nature unless shoed/clad properly. To be hypnotized by these
graceful, scaled creatures, one should see baby cobras: they can ‘stand’ up,
and when they do, they look like upright noodles.
The giant,
wild, maybe eighty-odd-year-old mango that gave hundreds of ungrafted, very
sweet, fibrous (we call them ‘hairy’) fruit is now generously protecting my
neighbourhood slum from the pelting drops. No one plucked those mangoes.
Squirrels, birds, the breeze detached them from the stems and they fell to the
ground, sometimes injured, sometimes intact. I gathered those that fell into my
compound, once in the morning and then again in the evening. I got about ten
every day. Those with worms got composted, those without such ‘guests’ were consumed.
Ditto with the bhinnda solan (also called kokum) a month ago when the sun was
at its bullying worst.
Weeds can be
charming. All of them appear simultaneously, almost overnight, some in
not-so-obvious places like under the tyres of a parked vehicle. The vivid blue
and yellow flowers are tiny. I see under the magnifying glass how pretty they
are and marvel at their strength: they don’t bow to the downpour. Bigger shrubs
do. Tall trees pay obeisance by throwing down leaves, twigs, even a branch or four.
The soil in my
village has laterite rubble in some places. In others, there’s clayey, sticky,
gooey stuff that won’t let go of a foot if one stupidly puts it down on it. I’m
the ‘one’. Have lost many a chappal to the slush… then retrieved it with a handy
pipe or sturdy forked danda kept for the purpose.
Umbrellas are
useless in downpours. The rain hasn’t a clue that it isn’t supposed to splash
off the ground and ruin trouser edges. Nor does it respect plastic sheets
wrapped around waists or raincoats. Hair doesn’t get wet under an umbrella,
that’s true, but it gets very, very damp and is a stylist’s delight: there’s a
lot, I’m told, that can be done with moist tresses.
Inside cupboards
is a sight which, in my school-days when I learned and drew diagrams about such
things, I could only imagine: moulds and fungi that begin as a frosty layer and
end up smelly, ruining clothes and moods.
Bathroom and
kitchen drains are great for investigating worms from the benign and useful
earthworms to the scary, hairy red centipedes with a hundred black feet and an
awful bite.
Underneath and
behind cabinets flourish ants. Big black ones, mainly, plus a few million tiny
cousins. They have queens with colonies. They lay and hatch eggs. They train
young workers, procreate to make more of them, and several generations set up a
civilization of sorts, unobtrusively. One day, a few stragglers were spied. I took
out a drawer, then the full cabinet and horrors: behind it, between it and the
wall was a living carpet of ants. Moving, rushing, working, systematically,
invisibly (until now) creating a world under my kitchen platform. Bless ‘em
anti-insect repellents, efficient and handy chemicals. I’m a nature-lover, yea,
but I don’t like intruders with intentions of permanent encroachment. I used
the pesticide sparingly at first. There was havoc in the Ant Co-operative
Housing Colony. Some went helter with their eggs, others skelter with
foodstuff, duty-bound ones surround Queen Ant. I wished I was camera-savvy. That
would have made a horror-film, a hit, no less. It’s when I realised that they
were winning the battle with me that I used the spray-astra with a vengeance.
When I was sweeping up the casualties, I felt bad, but only slightly,
temporarily. I know Nature forgives quite a bit and forgets such incidents
faster than I like. I’ll face another such battle sooner rather than later, and
periodically through the monsoons.
About the
local floods. The Panchayat followed a plan the government had made, dug a
trench, a narrow canal to guide rainwater into a larger one to eventually
connect it to fields/river far away. Trouble is, not one person imagined that
the job had to be completed. Well begun is half done, they say. Exactly.
Halfway up the gutter, where the half-done part ends, the mud gave way under
water finding its course. The stream thus created respected neither fence nor
wall and covered plots and bhaats with dead rats/cats/piglets and plenty of
plastic and thermacole. The low-lying fields welcomed the garbage. Some sweet
day the garbage will become a landfill and the owner will sell it to a builder.
People who buy expensive flats may just about have a clue what surrounds the
foundation of their precious property… old knickers, sandals, broken bits of
all sorts of rubbish.
The trees love
the grey clouds. They know the monsoons are here. The Met Department says this
rain is from a cyclonic depression… the trees don’t care for the explanation.
In spite of discomforts and misadventures, it’s happiness time. The
‘mud-perfume’ is heady. Bring out the chai-pakodas.
The monsoons
have arrived.
Feedback:
sheelajaywant@yahoo.co.in
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