Sahyadrica

“You have to get lost before you can be found.” ― Jeff Rasley , Bringing Progress to Paradise: What I Got from Giving to a Mountain Village in Nepal The sun setting over your shoulder in a forest wilderness as a dark rainstorm approaches from the east is not the time for you to be out trekking on the cliff of the Western Ghats. But here you are: with your trekking friends and family, battling to conquer the fort, struggling with your inner fears; and here you want to be: beating down the stinging rain, and ever marching on. For you have shed blood and sweat on your way up. For you have prepared to complete this trek, and, more importantly, you have left behind the rat-race which you think life is all about: now, you are not chasing targets, you are chasing your ambition. You are encouraging your friends to tarry with you. You are their emotional leader, and although you know that the light fades and you’re being stalked by a rainstorm, you sit back on a rock to enjoy the view w...

Monsoon is magic. If I have said it already (thrice now), please bear with me. This magic is not the kind we read in books. It is a heightened sense of seeing, of hearing, of smelling, of tasting, of being happy. Of love. It is a heightened sense of knowing: anything natural seems supernatural. Anything supernatural is no less than magic. And monsoon is just that – a heightened sense of everything. To be amidst the deep and dark woods or over the edge of a cliff while the cupid of clouds strike the ground with numerable arrows, is not only our time of happiness. It belongs to all the creatures of this world. Happiness to be alive, to be able to survive, to procreate. During this time of the year, it is monsoon that expands this emotion, even to creatures we so wrongly consider sphexish. A bee pollinating Chlorophytum tuberosum - a monsoon ephemeral As I followed the plants, I followed insects as well. Their lives are intermingled, and I find observing either without t...

It will be wrong if I say I have not spent time (a lot of it) looking at the nimbostratus clouds passing silently from the south-west, waiting for the horns to blow that mark the arrival of monsoon. This we must agree, that monsoon is the epitome of change. It is the most astonishing of all changes. The change is in the air, in the earth, and is ultimately wrought in the mind. And all of this may happen just as you sit and stare out of the window! Monsoon this year did not arrive at its stipulated time. It thundered sparsely. There was no dance of the lights. May I say that Lord Varuna is not happy with what mankind has done to Mother Earth? That he is not in our favour anymore, and would abandon us when he knows we are completely, hopelessly dependent on him? We are all out praying, some loudly, some in their minds, some going to the length of marrying Hoplobatrachus tigerinus , the Indian Bullfrog, in hopes of impressing the Rain God. Today, the interval between two continuo...

This article contains material written on trips made in the months of February to May. However, the events are not represented in a chronological order, but as per the flow of the article. May 26. No one – man or woman – feels an angel when the hot weather is approaching . This year when we were enjoying the coldest February (8 degrees C), the temperatures abruptly rose to 39C on the 27 th of the same month. Such heat-waves are rather infamous in this coastal city, though, and are never welcomed. Yet if you wander away from the urban desert – concreted and paved, harsh on the eyes, burning your soles, and ideal for heat-strokes, you will find the summer angel that Rudyard Kipling only briefly mentioned in the classic Plain Tales from the Hills. I went in search of the angel this summer, and found that she really dwells everywhere in the subtleties of life. If you‘ve ever felt the calm and coolness provided by a tree in the corner of the street, or felt an ethereal breath...