Sahyadrica

Thrung Thrung Karma Our world is full of bird-whisperers. They wander alone, sometimes they are followed by the likes of me – often with a camera – to listen and watch and be amazed by their art. I follow Phurpa who walks a few yards ahead of me, his hands behind his back signalling me to stop or follow, talking to birds. His presence conjures birds from nothing. It is not a cheap trick, for hidden in his skill is a learning we need to take heed of: in this world of whisperings, habitats disappear in front of our eyes; birdsong lost to machines crushing stones and digging sand and felling wood; everything is being concretized or paved over – bird nests and bird bones. Following him into the mountain valley, I stumbled upon a bird among birds in a place among places in a year of years. *** Act I. The Sedge A river takes birth in a glacial lake somewhere beneath Chiumo and Nyegi Kangtsang, two of the tallest peaks of the Eastern Himalaya. It flows between ragged wind-swept snow-dus...

Dunglagepu the tallest. It’s not like I discovered mountains or spirituality that I write this. It’s that I discovered that a place is to be greeted as an individual. I met one on a short trip to the base of the higher Himalaya where the night-time cold had just about dropped to zero. The days were warm, hot even on a climb of a few hundred meters, and mornings and evenings cold. On a clear day, a few cottony clouds clung to the snowless mountains – the winter snow had not begun – the sunshine nourishing my skin. Meeting a place by happenstance is increasingly rare in this world. A place which simply accepts you, talks to you, and leaves a lasting impression that quite, even if subtly, changes you – how I have yearned to meet if not search for one. Writing about meeting one is tough. It is always overwhelming to describe somebody, a place is perhaps the most complex persona to describe, be it a garden, a grove, or a landscape. An autumn in the mountains. Some places ought to be as th...

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 ...