Sahyadrica

Every day around noon, he perches on his favourite, fifteen-year-old neem tree, tugging at a branchlet fallen over his usual seat, but never really trying to get rid of it. This neem tree grows in a pot in the window, three feet from where I sit separated by a reflective glass. He is the calmest of his kind I’ve ever met. He does not call in response to every conversation he overhears, only some. Mostly, though, he is quiet in spite of the constant ruckus all around, and there are a lot of his kind. I didn’t know they could be so – if I may use the word – disciplined, or appreciate solitude. He certainly appears to enjoy it. How do I tell he is calm and relaxed? He hunches down on his toes, sinks his shoulders, and ruffles his crest and neck feathers – looking snug. Sometimes he scratches, shuffles his feathers, stretches his wings one by one, fans his tail and shakes his head – and finally gives a long sigh of satisfaction and relief, I’m willing to believe. Like every ...

Every time I go on a walk – anywhere I go on a walk – if I happen upon a dead or a decaying tree – standing or fallen – I pause a minute or two and look. I look for the peeling bark revealing patterns underneath it, at burrows and pinholes into the sapwood, and pathways carved unto the cambium. I look at the texture of the trunk, the hardened sinewy cellulose-muscles running the length of the heartwood. Trick is to not just see but peer into the tree; at the mineshafts and alleyways carved by dwarvish insects and unassuming fungi. Wood-watching is not exactly like tree-spotting where you observe a living tree. It, too, whether the tree is small or big, takes its own time; the colours and the warts, the creases and crevasses on the cork, gashes on boles, and natural protrusions, all represent a visible record of the tree, after all, leaves are only temporary, and roots invisible. Loggers have their own way of identifying a tree fit to be felled. Botanists often look at the trunk a...

We rode on the most slumber-inducing roads of Kanha Tiger Reserve, cloaked in ancient Sal trees from above and clasped from below by an ephemeral mattress of post-monsoon understory herbs. The stillness of the night lingered on as if it would never let the sun rise over this piece of land, and a pale mist clung to the undergrowth until the warmth of the sun scattered it into bits and pieces. The mist that arose from the crystal waters of Sonder Lake formed communities of rising mist, and slowly drifted landwards, from where they rose higher and mingled into an azure sky. This was a new day. The park was thrown open for tourists after three months of quiescence, and like a newborn baby bird covered in a protective cover of its down feathers, it looked back at us with its thousand and more eyes, in the shape and form of birds, mammals, lizards, and insects, as we arrived in olive-green gypsies to witness this rebirth. A Gaur "toddler" looks curiously at us while his yo...

We’re only a phone call away to rescue snakes from homes before they are killed, and work with the Forest Department on such small rescue missions. But often we hear about a handsome snake only a day after it is killed. The most common incidences of human-snake interactions happen during monsoon, and they are different than most because the incidences of the largest of the snakes  – the Indian Rock Python, Python molursus  –  of central India venturing boldly near human settlements and agriculture fields in search of prey increases. Pythons have fascinated man since a long time, and Forsyth wrote about them to be a “subject of so many wonderful tales” in central India. Forsyth mentions the Indian Rock Python only once in his epic Highlands of Central India as a narration of his encounter with this snake in the forests of central India. His description is rather vivid, as is his reaction, for pythons evoke a great fear and awe in those who see it (pp. 353–354): ...

Bhoolandara is not what you think it is. If you know Hindi, you might guess that it has something to do with bhoolna (meaning, to forget, or to go astray). If you think it means doorway-to-forget-things, you’re pretty close, but not exactly. There is a phenomena called going-in-circles when lost in a forest, I don’t think it has any specific English name (in Maharashtra it is called chakwa , in Madhya Pradesh Bhoolandara ), but research has concluded that we intend to walk in a circle if we’re lost without the sense of direction; why or how, we’re still figuring that out. I’ve never been lost in a forest in true sense, once a friend and I took an off-beaten track with the intentions of exploring something unexplored, but we ended up in a village where we had began. On this occasion, though, we were truly lost – and I might say hopelessly. Dayal (the one who taught us the Mahua vegetable recipe !) and I went off into the forests to explore the monsoon flora and fauna on...