tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-46658210423341161472024-03-17T11:56:06.128+05:30Sahyadricaof the mountainsUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger209125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-45854182772323136662024-03-09T11:51:00.007+05:302024-03-09T20:51:37.276+05:30Birds of a FeatherBirds 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 birdsUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-47946780945462521122024-02-06T22:19:00.002+05:302024-02-07T17:10:25.559+05:30The Giants of Chhattisgarh: The Elephant in the AlleywayOnce young, wild, and free. Rama.After an introduction to the status of elephants in
central India, focusing on the state
of Chhattisgarh, I started collating available statistics to provide a
summary of elephant populations, deaths due to man-made reasons, and human
fatalities due to elephants, for the country. Much of this data was not actively
provided by the Project Elephant, which it ideallyUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-47836545451325494302023-12-03T11:07:00.005+05:302024-03-11T19:58:41.253+05:30At The Feet Of The GiantsThe Lords of the Grasslands, in Kaziranga National Park.The children’s stories of the ant and the elephant have always
made me wonder what their true relationship is – the versions I heard pinned
the elephant, proud and powerful, against the ant, timid but sharp, the tale
ending with the ant stinging the elephant in a place it cannot reach –
literally and allegorically. In most stories, the ant Unknownnoreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-2000018441808394362023-10-18T20:40:00.004+05:302023-10-21T12:50:58.552+05:30The Giants of Chhattisgarh: An OverviewElephants and Chhattisgarh: An Ongoing HistoryThe elephant population assessment report of India is due for over a year,
and it is likely only next year that we will see the numbers. Much has happened
since the last update in 2017: About 1,160 elephant died in the 2010 decade
mostly due to human-related causes (500 in the last five years alone since the
last report) [1,
2]
– that’s 4% of the 2017Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-69221261144221881702023-08-26T11:16:00.001+05:302023-08-26T11:16:31.378+05:30Barefoot Notes: The Fall of Specialists and the Rise of Generalists, Or, What Ails Urban Insects?Photographing moths in the central Western Ghats. Light curtains are the best way to explore moth diversity.Many years ago, I used to wait for moths to enter my urban
home through the old casement windows, and hover over to photograph them on an
incandescent light. It feels so long ago; today, those windows have changed to
the sliding ones, coupled with a netted window that keeps most insects outUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-42587836977903855402023-04-05T17:34:00.004+05:302023-04-06T20:17:15.798+05:30Sea, Sand, FlippersAn Indian Humpback Dolphin, Sousa plumbea, off the coastal waters, overlooked by Konkan hills.For the first time in
my explorations I find myself wanting to express this feeling, for I am as much
in awe as in search of words. I have always maintained that mountains moved me.
Sahyadrica’s tagline was ‘belonging to the mountains’ – the name itself means
‘of the northern Western Ghats.’ That has Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-29996684410217648102022-11-13T14:22:00.001+05:302022-11-22T21:20:26.376+05:30To Show A TigerA tigress looking at a bird taking off in a meadow of Kanha.After months of musing
over whether a writing break at the onset of winter was affordable, I went for
it and in the process extended the writing break by writing about it. In my
defence, there is a very good reason to do so, for after nearly a decade of
planning and rescheduling and budgeting, my family visited Kanha Tiger Reserve
with Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-19134114518420499622022-09-10T20:51:00.006+05:302022-09-12T19:37:17.820+05:30Barefoot Notes: Beeing in the ShivalikA view of the outer Himalaya - the Shivalik, upwards from the city of Ramnagar in Nainital.As fate would have it,
I would wound around the same road across groves of jamun in the marshes and
stands of sal in the lower hills, by the same shop I fondly remember meeting a lovely
she-dog with light-brown eyes who immediately liked me in return, and up the
mountain roads like I did seven years ago, Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-69157007702551502962022-08-21T16:33:00.004+05:302022-08-21T16:33:49.143+05:30What's Left of the Jungle by Nitin Sekar: a reviewWhat's Left of the Jungle - A Conservation Story, by Nitin Sekar, published by BLOOMSBURY, 2022Having visited the Himalayan
foothill forests only as a tourist, and having only experienced its wildlife research and
conservation aspects through research publications, What’s Left of the Jungle
is a welcoming read on a protected area of West Bengal, where the author who studied
seed-dispersal Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-72229296553815414742022-06-19T15:31:00.003+05:302022-11-13T21:35:52.802+05:30Summertime in the SatpudaThe Satpuda.Long ago, someone told
me – or I read somewhere – I cannot remember which as my memory now fails, but
I remember what was said or written: Himalaya is always the Himalaya, not
Himalayas, and by extension, Satpuda – the seven hills of Mahadeo – are the
Satpuda, not Satpudas. The mountains, it said, are individual entities, the
name should be identified as proper noun, not common noun. Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-33961903077895369482022-01-08T13:13:00.038+05:302022-02-25T19:10:23.196+05:30Barefoot Notes: The Fly on the Wall vs. Our Simulated Universe OR
The fabulous,
fantastic, fascinating fly and our ridiculous, plain fascination for a sickly
computer-simulated life
Allegory on Life and Death (~1598), Joris and Jaccob Hoefnagel. Jacob Hoefnagel, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. There is no escape from reality means the same as there is no world without insects.This uncharacteristic
piece that started as an idea that Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-39963494428975024642021-11-28T09:20:00.004+05:302021-11-28T09:27:23.156+05:30The Corridors Concept: learnings along the wayA tiger crosses a river, beyond the designated Protected Area cover, in the central Indian wilderness, a rare parcel of land that is borderless, just a tad-bit careful about avoiding humans as they too amble along the same river.The process of
population isolation, driven by habitat loss and fragmentation, leads to
population extinctions and reduction in biological diversity (Rosenberg, Noon
&Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-5084270129149678122021-10-24T10:39:00.009+05:302021-11-13T14:06:57.889+05:30The Forest Spirit and the Neo-NaturalistThe mosaic of the central Western Ghats, as viewed from Hassan, KarnatakaTea plantations, shola rainforests, and montane grasslands.That morning wasn’t
any different. That gurgling stream, that timid click of the dancing frog, that
flute-like song of the Indian Scimitar Babbler, that pressure-whistle of the
invisible-under-the-canopy White-bellied Blue Flycatcher, and that low monotonous,
shy Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-807630241169714372021-08-15T09:35:00.003+05:302021-08-15T12:26:35.326+05:30Insect Declines and Case for Long-term Insect Monitoring in IndiaSeparated by 15,000 km, tied to the same fate. Left: Antioch dunes shieldback katydid Neduba extincta, declared extinct by the time of describing the species from the Antioch sand dunes of USA (Rentz, 1977; see archive.org; under CC BY-NC 3.0); Right: Enigmatic tiger beetle Apteroessa grossa (Iconographia Zoologica - Special Collections University of Amsterdam; see&Unknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-84377988624771240672021-07-29T11:37:00.014+05:302021-08-15T12:26:59.494+05:30From Project Tiger to the People’s Tiger A
Commentary on the Decade Past and Decades to Come for Tiger Conservation in
IndiaThis longform
article puts numbers of tigers and allocated budgets of the decade past to
protect tigers into perspective with simple math. It proposes a shift in
attitude from looking merely at numbers to pockets where numbers can increase
and at making this undertaking more participatory in the coming decadeUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-74143397282798555682021-06-27T15:17:00.003+05:302021-06-28T21:10:20.003+05:30The Ants and Elephants of Ecosystem RestorationFrom inside the dung of a macaque a seed sprouts. It will be carried in the swell of this wild Kalu River till it takes hold along the riverbank and bury its roots deep into the earth, making its mark in rewilding the Earth.A zoochorous seed’s
journey
Towards the beginning
of winter when wild grass is heavy with seed, clumps of discarded seedcoats can
be seen at terminals of tiny whitish lines Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-11156801643483439972021-05-22T14:54:00.006+05:302021-05-24T19:27:03.634+05:30Conversations in the time of pandemicWe're not scaremongeringThis is really happening, happening--Idioteque, Kid A, Radiohead, 2002The once-in-a-few-generations calamity of
pandemics has become all too frequent. Zoonotic – species jumping – pandemics are
more recurrent in the last few decades irrespective of their origin in domestic
or wild animals – or labs. The generation under 35 itself has seen or been through more than three Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-42635391860639345992021-04-04T11:43:00.005+05:302021-08-15T21:54:56.865+05:30Of Leaves, Wings, Scales, and Fur, or, A Walk In The WoodsThoreau’s writings,
especially Walking and Walden, have been crucial parts of my young adult life; I
longed to be in the woods, alone, left to my own thoughts amidst nature – well,
doing exactly as Thoreau now comes at a ginormous financial investment, so I
did what I could and continue to do. Over the last ten years since I first read
Walden, I have had plenty of such opportunities – I would addUnknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-11627947981552024672021-02-20T17:17:00.000+05:302021-02-20T17:17:03.628+05:30Behra Bhaloo, Kanwa Bhaloo, and other Bhaloo KindA mother bear and her cubs foraging for termites one fine afternoon.As we huddled around
the fire-stove, two big pots – one of daal and another bhaat – simmering with
flavours and warmth, I held tightly a small cup of black coffee,
eagerly waiting to ask a particular question to our cook who has been a part of
the history of Guru Ghasidas National Park. It was cold and dark. There was a
rustle ofUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-89993411904163609442021-02-02T19:50:00.002+05:302021-02-02T20:10:58.925+05:30BajārI.
That
blue ripple in the tarpaulinpulled
taut in the cool breezethe
first farmer pulls up his sleeves,two
bamboo poles and a few jute stringshold his
shop, his business, his offerings;one
morning among many centuries.The
tilted-goats, the hunched-dogs, the burly-bulls
the
dupatta-women, the dyed-men, their mouthfuls
I stand
in the distance, watching this timeless commotion
watching
dealers Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-59833924789663120422020-11-30T09:51:00.001+05:302020-11-30T20:15:03.593+05:30Winter, or, A Rambunctious RambleThese are three very
disorderly, disjointed, disproportional thoughts that haunted me much before
this year began – since the end of the last year to be exact.
That year, I rambled away after coherently trying to make sense of the world as
a flower-collector saw. While time has taken us a year ahead since, space has
brought us back to where we think time ends and starts anew. Come to think of
it,Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-23381560222614071322020-10-31T12:32:00.006+05:302021-07-19T18:12:25.124+05:30Saunter, or, On the Art of Imagination and PerceptionA dried-up leaf. A
rolled-up leaf. A blotchy leaf. A pooped-upon leaf. After seven months of no
respite, I found myself looking at these enthusiastically. Everything moved.
Everything was something. Something resembled something else. Sometimes,
something tried to be something else. I may have been imagining things, who am
I to blame? The soggy boughs, cloud-diffused skies, a slight mist, a faintUnknownnoreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-3166614346439862052020-09-19T11:50:00.013+05:302021-07-30T18:07:09.329+05:30Summer, or, Biodiversity Within These Four WallsFor the first time I felt it, being stuck
in space, coming unstuck in time.
Summers are always eerily quiet; I think to
myself this exceptionally silent summer of 2020. As I lie in my bed, stuck in a
room dimly lit, staring at the blank ceiling, everything is still. The summer
loo creeps in from invisible gaps, and I imagine it propelling downward from
the ceiling fan, heating up the bottled Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-91039001935912668632020-06-28T08:47:00.008+05:302020-09-27T11:20:24.605+05:30On Creative Nature WritingIt started out as a feelingWhich then grew into a hopeWhich then turned into a quiet thoughtWhich then turned into a quiet wordAnd then that word grew louder and louder'Til it was a battle cry - The Unknownnoreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4665821042334116147.post-49830491108162253202020-05-29T20:19:00.062+05:302022-09-11T11:55:23.165+05:30Snakes and Ladders
Snakes and ladders: the race to curb snakebite
mortalities in Central India
This longform
article covers roughly 150 years of research into snakebite mortalities, snake
envenomation, and the reasons of snakebite-related deaths in central Indian
states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh – known to have among the highest
death rate in India, majorly because of lack of effective medical care/Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1