Sahyadrica

Harvester Ants, Trichomyrmex  sp., rush in and out of their underground nest carrying grass seeds and husks. If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now It’s just a spring clean for the May Queen Part I: Ants It is no exaggeration when one says that ants are the ultimate animals shaping the world. But no one says it openly or publicly. The very few who write are read by the fewer few who really read only about ants and all things ants do. And ants do everything a man or an elephant does. So, between making a statement calling ants ultimate and having no one to attest to, I’m left only with my fascination for ants to try to back up the bold claim. Anyone who likes any particular organism calls it the ultimate – of course the redwoods are ultimate, the tiger is ultimate, the elephant – ultimate, the woodpecker, the king cobra, so on. Ants are not merely ultimate in that sense. They’re not big or colourful or, in vertebratalist sense, individualistic and intelligent...

The 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 symbolised the underdog who triumphed over the elephant, rarely did they both work together or become friends. Long after, I started working on the concept of ants to elephants, and not merely because they rhyme. Through the tales and their scale, they represent most of the animals I grew up watching and admiring and studying, but in this case, it was simply connecting two organisms I am passionate about, insects and elephants. Come to think about it, plants to elephants encompass a much larger scope under this philosophy. On various occasions, I explored insects and elephants independently. ...