Sahyadrica

[This piece draws its roots from the previous article In Forests Trees Fall , and focuses on the trees particularly of cities with an insight into their existence; their past, present, and, if ever bleak, the future.] I faintly recall the last time I clambered up a tree to fetch a juicy fruit – it was probably more than fifteen years ago, in the heart of a wooded city which was then less a city but more than a town. When I was a kid, I was told that our co-operative housing society boasted largest number of trees of the city – indeed it did, for it was also supposedly the largest co-op housing society of Asia. It had old, really old – some over 25 year old trees; if they stood today they would be nearing their half a century of existence on this planet. Fortunately, a few still stand. And all these trees were, as I later came to realize, exotics – Gulmohar ( Deloix regia ); Copperpod ( Peltophorum pterocarpum ), Rain tree ( Albizia saman ), and Subabul ( Leucaena leucocephala ). ...

There is certain intelligence to animals that can captivate you with their gaze. Owls happen to be one of them. Those who have seen an owl have been enchanted by their gaze forever. Hardly anyone ever forgets seeing their first owl. I’ve mostly seen them in their natural habitats– where they belong – blissfully sitting still in the afternoon sun only to become active during dark, and unfortunately, I’ve seen them where they don’t. The ruckus of Jungle Owlets, a he-owl calling a she-owl, is omnipresent where I live. It is also the most pleasurable to hear, and mystic. Then there are the Spotted Owlets, the phantoms of the night, with their large bulbous eyes they look at you in perseverance. They sit by the streetlights at night and in their wooden caverns by day. And there are Collared Scops Owls, the fairies of the dark, with their cautious deep dark eyes and tufts of horns, sprinting from branch to branch. All of them, in the day, would be solemnly sitting in their respective a...