Sahyadrica

There is a cosmos in every tree, Galaxies blossoming in empty space, Worlds sprouting like leaves. A tree once told me: “ If your place is among the stars, boundless and free, By my roots and ‘neath my shade, I promise thee – In this age or the next –  Is where you will find peace .” The fellowship A conflicted love story of a little wasp is all it took. Of the countless spore-like seeds, one went down a bird’s crop, and came out the other end only to be adopted by a half-a-century-old Peepul tree. Two Bargad leaves sprang to life from one of the many crevices of the Peepul, which stands to the north of a busy police thana . To the west of this new companionship lies a large water tank with a small stone-temple built right under its shade. The land, owned by one malguzar , was primarily a forest slowly being turned to farmlands. After his demise, it would be named Kamta Mal – the village of Kamta Prasad the Malguzar, and a small hamlet where this tree and her companion live ...

Think wasp is a stinging machine? Think again. If you’re a curious naturalist, and are amazed by little natural, but seemingly supernatural, feats all non-humans are capable of, be it your pet dog, cat, the wild tiger, or your unknown companion the ant, you are bound to have understood how closely related we all are albeit the fact that we’ve classified ourselves and made them appear quite distant from us. One of the startlingly familiar features common through almost all, if not the entire, Animal (or Plant) Kingdom, is motherly care. Mother was chosen to be the most beautiful word in English, and indeed it is, for it has a profound meaning incomparable to any – and by this I mean it is universal in (almost) all life. I talked with much enthusiasm in 2010 about a mother wasp I had the fortune to be amazed by. It was an Ammophila wasp (Digger wasp), I had documented in the October heat of 2008, absorbed in ensuring that her offspring received plenty food and protection from...