A Naturalist's Column

  April 2014 I was the dorm parent for the first batch of tenth graders at Pathashaala (a residential school near Chennai). They were two of them and they stayed back in school during the summer vacations to write their board exams. We were good friends most of the time, but it was a daily challenge to meet their youthful storminess, with few other adults around. The washrooms in the dormitory were serene spaces during the day. But since school was on vacation there were barely any people staying on campus. And these spaces became the playhouses of Bandicoot Rats during the nights.  When problem turned crisis, we had half a dozen rat traps bought and set up in strategic places in the dormitory. The rats were lured like thieves to gold, to the smelly coconut pieces and masala vadas we used as baits.  This way we quickly managed to do away with most of the rats partying in the washrooms. In fact, we caught all of them, except one. And this last one was a mysterious ...

  A white void, vast as a mountain’s foot, lies amoebiacally here. Its thick blunt limbs fill gaping valleys. I feel strange tickling sensations under the soles of my feet. I stand at the edge of a steep fold of land and gaze at Gurudongmar lake, a couple of hundred feet diagonally below. It is unfreezing itself as morning grows; as if by volition. The stray thought of slipping over this rocky slope makes me breathe hard. My carotids knock on my throat. Pinballs of thought guzzle oxygen. And here at about 17,800 feet, it is scant. My team leader gives me an oxygen aerosol-can and keeps an eye. Not many months ago we were on a jeep winding around sharp Himalayan roads on the way to Sela-pass. We were at little under 14,000 feet, near the border of Arunachal Pradesh and Chinese-Tibet. After initial nausea, I had an onset of strange altitude sickness. Breathlessness, copious salivation and I sank into a state of semi-consciousness. I saw whiteness, flashes of closely grazing Yaks, c...

Throw it in the most derelict corner of the town, in the most utterly impoverished conditions you can find where few plants have managed to barely sprout, and the Giant Milkweed will grow forth royally. From right within a landfill, or beside the stench of an open sewer, through the dilapidated ruins of broken brick and concrete, amidst the blue-metal stones by railway tracks or from a crevice on a compound wall, there are a few places Milkweed is unwilling to rise from. Its grit and versatility are quite remarkable to note, yet it survives not by propagating itself rapaciously, dominating over all the other vegetation. It is no Prosopis, even though its hardy. The Milkweed instead exists in abundance together with all the other plants, never seeking to take over the land for itself. It co-habits and thrives. The latex which flows through the milkweed’s veins is well known to be highly poisonous, but that’s only to our stomachs and to cattle and other grazing mammals. A number...

Even when the air was still, the lake kept washing over its edges and receding in a strange rhythm. It was as if it had a beating heart in its depths. I liked to think that it did. I started out that morning, to walk around the Hadosiddapura lake, past the Eucalyptus plantation and to find some un-walked earth to wander on. Instead I sat by the shore till afternoon. That November it had rained down unusually hard when I was there in Bangalore. A good number of lakes were running full to the brim, spilling over onto the adjacent roadways. The car journeys through this city now seemed to get progressively eternal.   I was staying at The Bhoomi College for a few days, and on some mornings, I walked behind the campus and spent most of my time by the Hadosiddapura lake. This lake, which is as of now safely tucked away in the suburbs, too had breached its banks and had more water this year than I had ever seen in it. My body is nearly cold-blooded. It is accustomed to getting warme...

I remember reading somewhere that not a square kilometer exists in the world now where human trace isn't present. But as this was taking place, life too adapted to live in the habitats of our making. It has learnt to permeate it in so many ways, even into our bleak urban-scapes. Richard Powers said that "if you allow for kinship then the question of 'you' becomes permeable". In this fragmented age, how do we reimagine 'ourselves' in relationship with the soil, sky, leaves and birds? What connect and purpose could life around us offer in these times - spiritually? Could they be agents of our own inner transformation? Perhaps some of this could start with being profoundly observant in our daily lives.  Rachel Carson spoke of wonder as a 'radical state of mind'. Maybe wonder and watchfulness are powerful tools of community change. How do lives sharing our immediate spaces and surroundings braid our own? How do they invade or interweave our contexts? ...