The glass hopper

Why do you stand on that shiny door of glass?

Come join us in this patch of cool green grass

Said friends of the ‘hopper who foolishly stood

Open, unguarded as ‘hoppers never should



Come, be among us, among your own kind

Hopping and hiding, are you out of your mind?

Who ever saw a hopper standing out in the sun

On a glass door, mind you, in view of everyone



From there you’re visible as food from all sides

Known enemies will eat you as an aside

Don’t be victim to anonymous claws

A flash will change you from an ‘is’ to ‘was’



The glass hopper stood its ground resolute

It spoke aloud from where it shouldn’t have stood

“Obviously, you things haven’t read the book

‘Alternate Lifestyles – A Critical Look’



The author, a ‘hopper, advises on style

In keeping with looking and feeling fine

It talks about fashion and organized space

And the safety and joy of swinging in space



I’ve spent time in places that smell amiss

And attract strange creatures and things that hiss

And ants with objectionable burial rites

And appear from nowhere to nibble your sides



So, erudite and apart the ‘hopper preened

On a shining glass standing tall in the green

Come, I invite you all to my new find

Then we’ll know who’s really out of their mind


His friends shrugged, slowly giving vent

How could they help one so intent

On being seen by evil bird or rodent

They sighed ‘some book’, as they went



A crow on a nearby branch did caw

The glass hopper pretended to ignore

Though he’d gone quite cold with fright

He appeared heroic in the glinting sunlight



But the crow looked at him and grimaced

Green things on glass were not to his taste

Besides the glass panes of nowadays

Slide open and shut in unexpected ways



A big fat rat looked up from the floor

It wasn’t going anywhere near that door

It smarted at how it made the tail sore

As it scuttled past just the day before


The ‘hopper was peeved by the facial display

Relief gave way as deep Insult took sway

The 'hopper fell prey to this quagmire of feelings
But sudden changes had started occurring




His platform, his pedestal, the glass door shook

And before you could shout ‘ohmyGod! Look’

The door smoothly slid apart with the hopper in its nook

The poor ‘hopper was jammed like a page in a book



Wedged between door and jamb

As the door slid shut instead of banged

It lay there in a troublesome mess

Causing the cleaner much distress



The other ‘hoppers looked on in surprise

Taken aback by the untimely demise

They checked the referred book – an original edition

Doors only swung shut when that book was written



They scoured later editions on the topic to find

That the anon author had in fact been so kind

As to strongly suggest that hoppers avoid

Doors that instead of swinging shut, slide



So, the intrepid hopper now late

Had chanced upon this unfortunate fate

By reading a book of style fact, not fiction

Hardbound, shining but of previous edition

Holiday in Thekkady - 1

The date: May 22nd, 2010. We landed in hot sultry Cochin and took the 5 and a half hour drive to Thekkady.
The route is green – with a vengeance. Houses sprout up on tree branches and tree trunks, from certain angles :) Picture this green, green, brown tree trunk, green, green, brown tree trunk, pinkyellowpurple, green, green, brown tree trunk, fluorescent green and yellow, rainbow stripes, green, green, brown tree trunk, lavenderwhite, orangepurple, darkblueandwhite…

By the time we reached our hotel it was 7 p.m. and dark and cool. Note the time of year as I say this – we had just come from very hot, sweaty Mumbai to very hot Cochin to this complete climate contrast. Hotels in Thekkady are not fitted with an AC. The temperature remains cool through the year.

The next morning was a visit to the Spice Plantation. Ho hum, a walk in a park. This is a privately owned estate that has government permission to open its gates to visitors. The estate grows a huge variety of medicinal plants, spices and coffee. This is an ornamental plant - Angel’s Trumpet - it's larger than my palm.

The climate is excellent for exotic plants. This is the Bird of Paradise – an orchid that was imported from Brazil and grows better here. It can grow up to 4 feet in height and is used for decorating wedding halls of the super-rich (poor plant).

We went past the nest of a weaver bird – this bird has a ‘swayamvae’ (husband choosing) that would make us eat our hearts out. When it is time to nest, the male builds nests with place for rooms and picks twigs and soft material to make for plush interiors. They catch fireflies and attach them into the nest for light. The female of the species goes from house to house to check construction quality, electricity availability and interior design and finally chooses the guy with the best house. Thus spared of housing loans and EMIs the weaver bird gets settled to married life in a housing society with neighbours of its own kind.

We came across a little pond of water with a basking turtle in the centre. As we watched the turtle, something blue flashed in the water. We looked closer to find tiny, um tadpoles? No, guppy fish.

This is the Kerala Government's response to the threat of chikungunya and dengue. Guppy fish are happy to live off the larvae of mosquitoes and nip into a big chunk of the mosquito’s population expansion program. These fish are natives of Trinidad and were imported to India and freed into the fresh water. The flash of blue is from the tail of the male as it tries to attract attention. The trouble with the male of this species is that they devour everything, including their young without a blink.

Good news is, they breed rapidly, so fast that despite all that devouring there are always enough guppies in the water. In fact, the female of the species frees the eggs into the water in batches to increase the rate of survival. The male is comfortable with this regular food supply.

There was a cinnamon tree stripped off its bark – the outer bark is what we consume. In order to keep the tree in good health, one half of the bark is stripped and allowed to grow back before the other half is stripped. However, visitors to the site have seen the tree, stripped the bark without heeding the guide due to which it has died. Visitors are no longer taken to the live trees.

We came to a huge bamboo tower that dates back to more than a century when Thekkady was pure forest with huge herds of marauding elephants. The tower allows a view far, far into the forest so a minor rustle could be caught and people could get away while the elephants ate their crop and tore their homes down.

The stairs to the top of the tower

At the top of the tower

We came across tiny chillies - the size of a fingertip. These are the spicy Kandhari chillies. Keralites use a lot of coconut in their food and spice it up with Kandhaari chillies, these tiny bombs counter cholesterol. The incidence of high BP among these people is low because of the use of this chilli. Good for us, I can plant these chillies at home - maybe go on to own a chilli plantation - or so I thought. I'd market the chilli for its cholesterol combating capability maybe even as a weight loss agent. 'It burns your mouth so you can't eat more.'

I planted the seeds after returning to Mumbai - the saplings came up, tender leaves grew and got neatly clipped off by an interested sparrow :( and put paid to my agriculturist plans.

The 1.5 hour walk ended in the shop where medicines, oils and coffee are sold. We moved out of the plantation feeling mighty pleased with our education.

Trekking in Thekkady - 2

An interesting part of our trip was the Cloud Walk. There are a variety of walks conducted by the forest department – some a few hours long and others that stretch into three days.

We were enamoured of the Cloud Walk as opposed to the Nature Trail which sounded like the difference between walking among something versus walking on something. We were guided to the base of the mountain and met by a female guide. Most important, the forest guide’s office had clean bathrooms, Indian style. After a morning spent outdoors, this was really important to us. The cloud walk trail takes you up a thickly forested mountain that will hopefully be thick with clouds at some point. We were given leech socks to wear.

Bala and Anand wearing leech socks

The walk was nice. We would walk past huge walls of green to be met by surprise openings of fresh breeze. We saw different types of plants, almost saw a rat snake as we chatted (it chose to hide in the bushes) – elephant grass abounds and is a favourite of elephants for eating and of humans for thatching roofs. The grass is pointed and rough.

Part of the way, the guide stopped at a divide and explained that there were two routes we could take – she pointed one that was dense forest with no path and less air and another that was better-lit and open. Then she started a short monologue that I reproduce here with a few asides :

Dark road, very dangerous. Bears, wild elephant and wild buffalo. If bear smell comes, we must turn and go back- (turns out they are unpredictable, territorial and dangerous so you don’t want to wait for the smell to metamorphose into a real bear, if you wish to stay, she was clear that she would go anyway). If you want to go, I’ll take you.

Elephant comes suddenly and quietly. These bulky fellows trample grass, strip plants from the ground and uproot trees in their elephant fashion, but they do all this quietly. When they appear, the best thing to do is get down on your haunches and slide down the nearest incline. Elephants do not like to come down steep inclines - can lead to injuries to the leg (though they are adept at climbing them) and will limit themselves to blaring in protest. If you want to go, I’ll take you.

There are herds of wild buffalo, if one charges at you, nothing can be done; normally they ignore your presence. And yes, there are cobras, vipers and rattlesnakes in the abundant grass, and yes, they bite if you stand on their tails unwittingly. And yes, people die of their bites. Oh yes, I know the herb to save lives but the herb should be available nearby, besides it grows on the top of a tall tree. But don’t worry, normally snakes just go by. If you want to go, I’ll take you.

We looked at her like she was mad . Our choice was clear. She explained, it is my duty to tell trekkers and sometimes people want to go.
So, there have been deaths?
Yes, she said simply. Sometimes, tourists go close to the elephants and click photos. The flash makes them wild. Sometimes they scream in excitement and the animal reacts. People do all kinds of things.

We walked along the safe path. Bala had come on the cloud walk to well, walk in clouds.
‘Afternoon time, sir, no clouds. Evening time, sir, yes clouds but animals also coming sir.’ So we went ahead on the cloud walk without clouds.

No mist, no cloud

There was another divergence, we could walk up a higher mountain or move straight to the watch tower. We chose watch tower. Our pace was quite slow and the guide talked about her life. She wakes up at 4 a.m. and reports to work at 6 a.m. She makes about 3 three-hour treks every day. Goes home in the evening and cooks for her husband and three kids. She has a small plot of land – 1 cent (1/100th of an acre) and she grows coffee, kandhaari chillies and a few vegetables. Her coffee plant provides enough supply for a year, which is a huge relief to her family because they all relish the beverage.

Shaky watch tower with gaps at the top

The 4-storeyed watch tower was dilapidated – it’s like this, you have now reached some thousand feet above sea level (didn’t start at zero, so don’t gasp!). The wind whips you in the face; you make your way through poky elephant bush to reach the watch tower to find that it shakes in the wind. Okay, you tell yourself, she does this every day and start the climb to reach the top and wham – a hugely corroded tile right at the top (straight out of the first chapter of 'Kidnapped'). You cross gingerly past it and find another large square of corrosion ahead.

Now this tower normally is supposed to have two forest officers who can get a view of any poaching activity. Of the last few years this tower has been in disuse. Repeated requests for repair have gone unnoticed. The government has to approve before any action can be taken and since it appears as item 112,154 on the government’s list of things to do, nobody's noticed it as yet.

On the way back we passed through a few tribal settlements and Anand took out his camera to click a calf that was sitting on the side of the road.

Unimpressed calf

Two children came running out of their homes and watched him click. As soon as he turned towards them – they posed.

Can you say no to this?

I know we shouldn’t have but at that time, he took a snap of the kids. The girl ran to tell her mother (in red at the far end of the photo) who smiled thinly at me and put a protective arm around her daughter as I walked past.

Lesson learnt. Never again.

End of trek – end of day. What do three intrepid mountaineers do after they reach base camp – they search for dosa and a cup of coffee. We went to hotel after hotel after hotel only to be told that dosas count as breakfast. People don’t eat dosa for lunch and hotels are not mad to serve people dosas at unearthly hours like 4 p.m. So we settled for some fruits and returned to the hotel.

Lost and Found

Well, to return to the story of the 8 puppies of our building.

Despite my efforts to disapprove of the pups and disregard their presence, it was impossible not to fall in love with them. Sunny warm mornings would find the garden filled with pups tumbling over each other, sniffing the ground for nothing in particular, growling and snapping at their tails and checking the shoes of passers-by. The mother dog often played with the pups while father dog, well, he was too busy doing better things like chewing paper and tipping bags of garbage on the pathway.
The hot afternoon sun drove the pups under the bushes but rest evaded them. Young children took turns shaking the pups awake and patting them to sleep again. School bags lay strewn in the center of the park as the kids squabbled about rights of puppy care and shaking the sleeping puppy awake.

A series of complaints had started rumbling in the building – complaint 1: too many dogs, complaint 2: dogs are too noisy at night, complaint 3: dogs are messing about too much. A parallel series of complaints about people had started up among the dogs - complaint 1: too many people, complaint 2: people are too noisy all the time, complaint 3: people are messing about too much.

People stood in splintered groups and discussed ways to get rid of the dogs. The dogs stood in large congregations and growled their irritation about bipeds. We should get rid of them, only the tame ones should be allowed on the streets, said the first set. We should get rid of them, only the ones who bring food for us should be allowed on the streets, said the second set.

One fine morning the garden was empty – that’s it, empty. No puppy growls, no tumbling fights, no errant tails, no shoe checking – mummy and daddy dog sat quietly. Every once in a while the mother sniffed the ground and sat back while dad appeared quite nonchalant. I sent my almost-in-tears son to do some fact-finding and research.

Well, the complaints had reached the ears of the who’s who among the BMC and they sent the animal van (the revised version of the dog pound) to catch the grown-up animals. Daddy Dog (who earned the moniker James Bond after that), went deep into hiding. Mummy Dog was nowhere to be found. So-o-o-, what to do now with all those expert dog-catchers and their canine seeking missiles (read: sticks).

Not people who like to leave a job half-done, they picked up the eight puppies and silenced the complaining children with the assurance that they would bring the pups back. Puppies as you must know are VERY difficult to catch, one must bend down to the ground, wiggle a string and it will waddle over to investigate and get picked up. This was probably why one must be full of respect for the hard word and untiring effort of the dog squad.

Now what does the van do with a bunch of squealing pups? Well, they drop them off on entirely new ground, alien territory, so to speak, in the sincere hope that the existing canine mafia will wag its tail at the newcomer and welcome it into the group and all will be well. And that was what must have happened.

The next few days were tense some very troubled young souls in the garden. Stories of dog sightings did thr rounds but like all gossip, the stories died out in the face of cricket and hide and seek.

One school girl saw the pup Blackie and got off her school bus on the spot and quickly emptied her school bag. She walked from there, past the building security with a suspiciously moving bag and all books in hand. Once she reached the garden, she freed Blackie who leapt into the garden with visible relief. Mummy and Daddy Dog appeared from nowhere, (maybe the guy did care beneath that tough exterior) and welcomed their progeny back.

Another kid, let’s call him Adnan, saw Sweety in a horribly thin and hungry state near a temple. Sweety recognized him first and wrapped its forepaws around the kid in a silent, desperate plea to be rescued. It took a kind auto rickshaw driver, latent doggie talent to stay quiet at the entrance of the building to avoid being seen by the security and some kindness to return the pup back to its big garden home. Mummy and Daddy dog were overjoyed.

Sweety later turned out to be one of the girl dogs who turned out to be a boy. Blackie, just the opposite. 

5 a.m.

Alarm peals, saviour from nightmares
The body shuffles awake, groggy, unwilling
Returns to sleep

The doorbell rings, the body wakes up now
The mind has wandered long and far,
Faintly reminiscing the dream just dreamt

I walk to the door and mumble incoherently
To the milkman wide awake – he’s in a hurry
keep a bag at the door next time

I shuffle to the kitchen and light the gas
The milk takes time to boil, I wait grumpily
The bed is warm, the floor is cold

Aah! It’s boiled, I can sleep a little more
Before the rush of the day
But the crooked coffee filter beckons

The right mix of coffee and milk
Just the right heat, slightly sweetened
Bubbles at the rim

Window blackened by the sky
Surrounded by a soundless creep
Of slow sunshine

Somewhere in the distance, not very far
Another alarm peals, a light goes on
Action repeats as a doorbell rings

The ‘caw’nthem

We had a huge tree a little away from our window. Crow visitors would often come to sing their anthem at food intervals.

I know you just saw
Me caw caw
Fresh food is all I’ll eat
Caw caw
Hot rice, some dal and a dollop of ghee
Don’t fob off yesterday’s rice on to me

Wait a sec, what’s that I
See Caw caw
Chappati just off the griddle
Caw caw
I prefer that with butter, oh add some more
Rice, dal and ghee can be quite a bore

Words

Words flow as I write
Ephemeral things
Catch them as they come
On invisible wings

If I walk on a street
A thought appears
And stays for a second
Unless trapped on paper

But should I fail
To put thought into form
It remains a vague memory
A troublesome haunt

And should I rack my brain
To word my thoughts suitably
They slip past quickly and
Laughingly elude me

The Dog family

At some time during the last two years, there have been a few changes in the canine crew members of our building. Blackie 1 and Blackie 2 migrated to better climes (I hope) while their mother went ahead and delivered a litter of 8 puppies. Well, one and two is fine, it is a little at a time, but eight is six too many, I declared to my thrilled news-bearer son.

Now when there are 9 puppies and 'n' children, there is chaos, mayhem and a lot more. The puppies were safely ensconced deep under a few bushes in a corner of the garden. Mummy dog was nowhere to be seen when the puppies needed her most, which was all the time. Daddy dog, not the black one but a new brown guy who we shall call James Bond, was nowhere to be seen. Besides, he kept growling at them to stop wandering around, so he wasn’t much use anyway.

The children ranging from ages 2-16 and maybe higher fought about names, carrying rights, taking home rights, cuddling rights and putting to sleep rights. In short, they squabbled all day long. Thank God for schools! Here again there was a crisis of leadership as the naming ceremony began. Some pups were white with black or brown markings, one was white all over. The mother herself is a handsome lady with dark brown markings all over. It was time for a change in strategy. But first, they had to figure out the girls from the boys.

A simple physical probe would not suffice. Some serious under the tail research ensued and a decision was taken about the girls and boys. The all-white one was a girl, it was declared – she was named Dyna (after a soap!). The girl dogs were called Sweety, Browny, Whitie. The boy dogs were named Jackie (?), Blackie and Tyson. So much for a new naming strategy! One dog showed an amazing talent of wriggling away from loving human contact and taking off at top speed to the nearest bush – Ferrari it was. Ferrari's look-alike sibling was Duplicate (gender unknown).

A year later, Blackie delivered a litter and Sweety (who had earlier been declared a girl) turned out to be a boy. The others? Well, that is the story of another post.

Signing off

There was a time when letter-writing was a long-drawn process. Careful writing (what with no back-space possible) and an appropriate sign off in keeping with overall tone. A writer who wished to state that the recipient’s views were asinine would first express views in no uncertain terms. The letter would be checked for spellings and grammar, lest the recipient find fault with the method. Errors were corrected and the letter rewritten. In the course of rewriting, the author would check for tone and reword the content. It can be no surprise that the long drawn process led to conveying that the recipient’s viewpoints were in fact of the highest order and only a fool would disregard them. Finally satisfied with the outcome, the letter would be signed off with a formal ‘yours respectfully’ or the informal ‘yours truly’ or a plain ‘thanks’.

That was a time that when a castigating letter ended on a formal tone and if the message was allowed to don the garb of the cheerful advisory sort, best wishes would be added at the end. Garbing a message required time and mental work. Such letters were not prepared in a flash and sent with the click of a button.

Came the computer and in its wake the email, spell check and automatic signature. Messages started to flow at unimagined speeds. Sending a mail became an involuntary action of the hand. The need to check errors was done away with and with that went the process of reading and perfecting the art of signing off in a tone consistent with the content.

The writer did not intend to mock the recipient; the reader experience was inadvertent. The finer mental processes were never employed to verify the expressions. The phantom hand clicked the ‘send’ button faster than the eye could see. So it came to be that the writer who called a person an unseemly bag of gas, signed off with the advice “Smile always”, omitting to view the content in line with the sign-off. Another was dumped by a terse email signed ‘Ever Yours’.

And so it was that I received a mail about an error that spelt trouble and stress for many days to come. My mood was sought to be uplifted with a smiley wishing me a great day ahead!

The pigeon

At the window where I stood
A curious pigeon came to look
Maybe it was trying to be nice
Trying to convey some good advice

It looked at me intently,
I watched, bemused as it
Bent its head deep to the right
Its eyes on me all of the time

It bent its head deep to the left
Its eyes compelling me to learn, be adept
It strutted on the sill, always on the move
Making a point about things birds do

When it saw me stand, unmoving
It tut-tutted in its own pigeon way
Flapped its wings to keep them strong
Pecked at them to keep insects at bay

Then it fluttered around to see
And viewed me ever so carefully
To see if I had understood
Whether the lecture had done some good

I intuited what the bird wanted to say
A little exercise many times a day
Will keep weak joints and necks at bay
And life and limb from going astray

Shobna