Stray Birds in Bangalore -- Postponed

Just a quick update.

My book launch and photography exhibition at B'lore, Stray Birds has been postponed to November.

The opening (of the exhibition) and the book launch will now be on November 9th.

And the exhibition will be ongoing till November 16th.

More updates to follow.

Why is this event getting postponed, you ask?

Cold feet is one reason -- I have a lot of trepidations about lugging all my photography gear, about Bangalore, etc., etc.

What to exhibit is another reason -- I have too many photographs of too many birds; selecting from a gazillion of these feathered folks is no easy task. Then again, this is art -- and always a Work In Progress.

Work -- yes, that's the primary reason.

November isn't that far away; meanwhile I have canceled a train ticket and Stray Birds has been postponed.       

Stray Birds in bookstores

Looking back more than three years, I remember how I had to hustle to place Moving On in the bookstores. And how the so called "big bookstores" repeatedly rebuffed me for being a small publisher (and unknown "author").

Fair enough, books are after all business and if Chetan Bhagat and his ilk sell more, and deserve more shelf space in such bookstores, so be it.

But an achievement of sorts from back then was getting to place Moving On in two lovely, old and quaint and very "bookstorish" bookstores of Hyderabad -- Walden and Akshara.

Largely (of course) due to the intervention, goodwill and help of friends -- my PR sucks.

Ink Dries went a step further and had its launch / release at Akshara Books, largely again (of course) due to the intervention, goodwill and help of friends.      

I will of course, be headed for Akshara and Walden soon with Stray Birds, but speaking of bookstores, Stray Birds is already available at a bookstore in Hyderabad's original shopping district, Abids; a place famous (among the bibliophiles at least) for its second hand books market (where incidentally U saw a copy of Moving On as well!).

At a very "bookstorish" bookstore -- AA Husain, where almost every single inch of the place is laden with books.

I feel very Hyderabadi to say this. And I intend to go to AA Husain soon to see what "out of print" and "impossible to find anywhere else" treasures are roosting there.

BTW, if not for other rare to find books (and Stray Birds), AA Husain deserves a visit for its big collection of bird books and field guides. Because its managed by someone who knows the worth of anything to do with the feathered folks, a fellow birder.

So, do head out there soon!              

Prosaics on doing nothing

Lately, I have realized that I am busy with a lot of things that really have no value, or that in the sum total of things, I am doing nothing. And then again, even when you are busy with the minutiae of doing nothing, sometimes you still end up doing nothing. Like it was day before yesterday, when there was a lot of gusting, thunder and lighting (again a lot of it) and almost nothing in terms of rain here near S's place at Bhubaneshwar. Of course it all contributed to making the evening pleasant (as opposed to the one before) but then what is the sum total of small things like that anyway?

What the afternoon of summer rain (or rather the afternoon of threatened summer rain) did result in was -- light so bad I could do no shooting at all which meant that my date (emphasis on "my", birds of course have their own schedules to keep) with the White-breasted Kingfishers that abound all around hereabouts ( I have already sighted 5 of them in convivial proximity to each other) was a parade that got rained on.

And then again, I saw a "bothered to bits", "almost going around the bend" (at least that's how it seemed to me) tailorbird in a wildly swaying mango tree that's almost eye level from S's bedroom balcony.

Poor thing was half crazed with all the gusting and the thunder and the lightning and the occasional pellets of rain. I spent close to a hour watching it, unable to help mitigate it's misery of hopping from one branch to another, wondering (not for the first time, I will confess)-- where do birds go when it rain? Especially if they don't have trees to nest in?

Ah, all these small things and nothings, no?

I also wrote something in verse, in more or less the same vein...I guess it needs a couple of revisions sometime soon :-)

Untitled

Yesterday, in a burning
nib's crawl on my skin
the heat wrote nothing.

Today, the sky's a page
of silver haze, riven by lightning,
it rains a drizzle, of watery ink.


Like it? Do let me know!

A bit of the road and my first field birding trip

I am not a compulsive blogger and I am chronologically challenged
too. On top of it all, every time I post up here I am heavily spammed in
the form of comments by various bots. And I can tell you its a fucking
nuisance to have to repeatedly hit the "notify as spam" button and yet see
the same bots do the same thing down the line.

So you can say I have my reasons for being silent out here. But now that my
father has recovered (in fact, apart from the bypass surgery he had -- from
a very bad self-inflicted scalding because he poured hot water over himself
in a hotel bathroom at Tirumala) and the book moves on
as poetry does, I hope to blog more here on this online journal
of my days (for whatever it is worth).

And in time, I hope I will get used to the bots crapping here, I guess
the way I have got used to all and sundry Facebook comments and notifications.

How I digress, you will say!

**

If you like having the wind in your face, if you like the road (whatever
it means to you, there are a thousand and one "road" philosophies, and
then some) you would know that in India there is no better time to
ride than in the winter -- when the temperature is a bracing "not-even-warm"
in the day and the nights though chilly (and very much so, even around
Hyderabad,lately)are just right to gather around a fire or a Dhaba's tandoor,
when you have that gloriously golden evening light that gives chrome a
glint that is downright in-describable.

And most of the winter past I wasn't exactly in a position to ride, couldn't
get away, did not want to be far from home. But then, as all good things
happen in time, I did manage to be in a position to answer the call of the
road around the third week of January.

It so happens that my trusted (and much loved) Bullet will turn 10 years
this May; and though I still don't know what it amounts to, this extended
ownership of and loyalty to the same set of wheels, these highway miles
that we have shared together, I do know that (though there are the usual
pitfalls and worries) there is no better way to eat up the miles than on a
Royal Enfield.

And (since I have been part of four of them) I will also say, there is
no better biker event to ride to than the annual Rider Mania conducted
by the Bullet clubs every January.This year's event was held on the
outskirts of Delhi, by the Royal Beasts.

Most importantly, last year I had fallen en route to Rider Mania
(at Kolkata) so this time around it was important that I be there. If for
nothing else, just for the pure pleasure of calling myself a biker.

But then, I had goofed up and my Bullet was not exactly ready for the road
and I was a total "mixed pickle" in the head; all at ends and in no position
to plan for the road. At around the same time my good friend
Bikram of the Road Survivors Chandigarh offered to lend me his
Bullet. Which meant that I could take a train to Delhi and then
another to Chandigarh.

And then ride out in a group (and a fairly large one) to Manesar.

350 or so kms each way (I am just guessing, the Thunderbird Bikram lent
me had no functional odometer) through cold winds which felt like a wet
cloth touching the exposed parts of the skin (in the day) and made me
feel like a Bedouin would in Greenland (in the night) still isn't much of
a Rider Mania tour. But I will take it, riding as I was with a "recuperated"
collar bone, on a strange (the Thunderbird's brake and gear levers
are opposite to that of my Bullet) bike, wearing an open-faced helmet
without a proper retaining strap provided the rest of the edge.

As did the effort of reining myself in, not opening the throttle
wide open, after all one doesn't push a bike lent by a friend
to the limits, does one?

The ride from Chandigarh to Manesar apart, there was quite a bit
of riding that I did in Chandigarh itself. This was my fourth
visit to Chandigarh and I consider myself genuinely fortunate
to have friends in this lovely city of well planned Sectors
(reminiscent of the Sectors of Rourkela) as also the lovely
Paranthas, the wayside "spring rolls" and the roundabouts.

But my most enduring memory of Chandigarh will remain the number
of turbans and the number of brightly coloured groups -- of women
and men standing out in the sun and doing nothing much but basking,
like so many butterflies. Maybe its because, it is summer and getting
hotter by the day when I write this, and I am always looking forward
to the coming of the butterflies :-)

**

It has been more than a year since I have been seriously "birding".
And while I am no ornithologist or even someone with a Graduate level
of knowledge of zoology (and by inference or extension, of birds) I
am a bit surprised about how well I have taken to it. About how fast
my development has been, about how I delight in seeing birds everywhere,
even in humdrum urban situations -- like the Black Kites of Hyderabad,
Vizag,Delhi and Chandigarh; or the Sparrows, Munias, Prinias, Silverbills
and Starlings (and crows) all around my place; or the almost "blessed
sighting" of a Peacock / Hornbill crossing over from one patch of urban
forestry to another, right over the head of road-borne me; or seeing
very green Parakeets disappear into the dirty grey monotony of a
telephone pole and so on...

And I have been getting away from it all too, stalking waterbirds,
peacocks, kingfishers, sandpipers, rollers, koels, shrikes and the
like, identifying woodpeckers, hoopoes, barbets and the like, even
as the photography has become -- in conjunction with my increasing
levels of patience and application of field-craft -- better, day by
day. And through all these days, I have continually thought about
being out in a forest / sanctuary for much more than just a couple
of hours, continually thought about the "birding bliss" of coming
across a bird that I have come across online or read about in the
accounts of someone like Kenneth Anderson. Coming across it in
flesh and blood, perched in sight and holding me rapt in attention,
transfixed like a kid looking a gift horse in the face.

As such, way back from Chandigarh, it was but natural that I landed
up at Bharatpur (especially since my much anticipated trip to
Amritsar was not happening because of the freakish cold) considering
that it was almost directly on the way back home.

And I spent a blissful 4 days at Bharatpur, cycling into the park on
a daily basis shooting a bevy of "first sightings" -- as myriad as
Nightjars, White-tailed eagles, Sarus cranes and Treepies and as
common as Painted Storks and Common Coots.

Looking back, the best part of those four days was an encounter
with a Shikra (juvenile, me thinks) in a thicket. I did not
understand when I was clicking away -- why the Shikra wouldn't fly
away, but just hop within the thicket. I must have shot some 30-40
"keepers" of the guy and finally left bemused because I did
not want to spook him / her. Later on, I saw why the bird was
behaving that way, it had one claw badly wounded and probably
in no mood to do any flying away or gallivanting. From what little
I know of raptors being that close to one is "rare" and I will
certainly cherish this encounter. Who cares if the Shikra wasn't
"perfect"? Am I? Are you?

A lust for life and close encounters with the beautiful wilds

Looking back, over the last three years, I have spent a lot
of time outdoors, and most of it is in the "wilds"
near my place, in what is more or less military / government
land that has been left on its own -- crisscrossed by grass-verged
dirt tracks and populated by quite a few trees (though none
are that old or that giant) and interspersed with rocky outcrops
and disused quarries.

And I have been spending a lot more time here than the usual
hour in the morning or hour in the evening in the last two months,
thanks to the fact that I have had plenty of time on my hands and
that the profusion of butterflies and birds that I have found here.

I have seen the most stunning of artists -- mother nature -- at
work here, seen the dusty expanses of sun-scorched grass turn
green and then burst into colour -- with a billion wildflowers --
blue, wine red, yellow, purple and so on. And I have felt like
going down on my knee, overwhelmed by the inherent mystique in
the fluidity with which mother nature transforms what was once
a barren, almost dead landscape into something that calls out
to the Van Gogh in me...

I have agonized over the choice -- on continuous forays into
these wilds, on continuous days -- if to stick to shooting the
landscapes on offer or be led on a dance shooting the birds and
the butterflies. And there have been days when I have kicked
myself for not having both of my lenses with me (while perched
high on the narrow saddle of the Schwinn -- which doesn't have
a carrier or allow for leisurely ATB kind of cycling -- lugging
much gear is a bit tough) or when I have had both with me, I have
agonized over whether to shoot the whole meadow or a close up of
a flower and so on and so forth...

It is another matter that I have already come to the conclusion
that photography cannot be mixed with anything else; even with a
leisurely cycle ride, especially when it is the photography
of birds and butterflies.

Being on the cycle (with the camera zipped up in a bag) means that
by the time I am ready to shoot, the bird has flied off or it means
that there is a limit to the amount of "on foot" chasing that's
possible behind a butterfly, while leaving the Schwinn unguarded.

Which means, I have spent a lot of time afoot in these wilds and
hopefully will spend some more time walking through them.

And while enjoying the feeling that the wilds are my own private
preserve, thrilling in knowing these open expanses first
hand, for having played amateur naturalist and rookie woodsman
and coming across tailor bird nests, conclaves of bee eaters,
shy peacocks and even shyer coucals, pairs of bulbuls, colonies
of weaver birds, trapezing chameleons...

How do I even begin to express the pricelessness -- of the wealth
of all these ramblings in the wilds? It certainly cannot be
measured in terms of the photographs I have taken; I sincerely
feel that peering through a zoom lens is no less "naturalist" and
fieldwork from an ornithologist / lepidopterist point of view
than it would have been if the peering had been through a pair of
binoculars...and the ego boost of a good / perfect capture -- of a
bird or a butterfly is at many times secondary to the joys of seeing
the bird or butterfly with an enraptured eye :-)

And yes, just when I start thinking that I have seen it all, I see
something totally new and wonderful, something that -- yet again --
thrills me with the joy of witnessing and understanding the magic in
the behaviour of yet another "wild" species while simultaneously
humbling me with its beauty and economy of being natural.

I forget I have a camera with me when I see multitudes of small
butterflies like the Anderson's Grass Yellow -- fluttering and
wheeling around, like so many children at play -- preparatory to
settling down to puddle. Or I forget that I am supposed to take
a picture, capture the minute when I see a pair of Pied Kingfishers
bobbing / balancing on a barbed wire (for some reasons these birds
always seem to fish in a pair) while -- with the accompaniment of
a twinkle in the eye -- shitting a pearly white; instead grinning
to myself...

And it still doesn't cease to wonder me when (after having observed
the same countless times) I see weaver birds in their bright yellow
plumage, at work weaving freshly fetched green grass into what is
already a project that is a month long...going on and on...with the
finickiness of the true artists, building masterpieces the same way
countless of their ilk have done before as directed by their genetic
code.

It is more or less the same feeling -- of wonder and awe -- with
which I watch a butterfly pirouette on a lantana flower, preparatory
to going for the nectar the way a kid would for the jam bottle;
somehow the butterfly's greed seems more worthy of respect,
more evolved!

I don't know how long these wilds will survive -- as with most
open spaces within or flanking a concrete jungle called the city
these face the depredations of man too. I found (on my return from
Varanasi) that many weaver bird nests have been knocked down
and in some cases those very branches on which the nests were
have been cut; God only knows why and by whom...and a large
residential colony is already coming up flanking the wilds --
but I do look forward to some more close encounters, some more
peaceful epiphanies like the one I had on this Sunday.

I was cycling through the wilds on the dirt track and I came
across three bee-eaters, their green plumage iridescently
dazzling lying right on the track, beaks and beady red eyes
looking skywards, wings stretched out, something I have never
seen any bird do. Maybe they were sunbathing, or they were
praying.

Whatever they were doing, I did go down on my knee yet again.

And the photographs that resulted were but a bonus.

Deccan Diary

30 hours for a bit over 1600 kms from more or less the middle of the
Gangetic plains (which in many ways, is still the heartland / cowbelt
of India), i.e. Varanasi to Hyderabad -- Deccan is a bit of a
creditable haul by train; even in these times of Shatabdis,
Rajdhanis and Durontos. Because the basic infrastructure, underlying
complexities, local issues, etc. on / through which the railways
ply just cannot be wished away or treated as a theoretical
technicality. As such, in retrospect, I am happy with the 33
hours that my train took to reach Hyderabad.

And heck, in the light of the fact that this train was "canceled"*
and then ran (more or less on time) is itself a creditable achievement.

And it compares very creditably with similar long hauls on a
Bullet, at an average of around 50 kmph.

This is not to say that everything is good with the Indian
Railways -- in many ways the Railways are still stuck in a
time warp dating back to the 80s and the 90s -- but more
(hopefully) on that in a later post.

For now, I will take this long haul that got me home --
with the family of 6 (and their 2 friends / attendants /
relatives who were coming over for breakfast, lunch and dinner
from wherever they had parked their butts) "adjusting" in 5
berths around me from Varanasi to Sewagram and the man and
woman who boarded the train at Mancherial along with their
two 3-5 year old girls (for the sake of whose sleep, I couldn't
do much sleeping) and the numerous other things that make
most of Indian Railways compartments seem as if they are
"packed like sardines" -- and give the Railways pass marks.

#++++++++#++++++++#

One good thing about that slow, long haul - the home run from
Kazipet (Warangal) onwards was how it reminded me -- nodding
off at a window or hanging out from a doorway of the compartment,
of a similar slow, long haul from Warangal, with a moon in the sky
(like yesterday night) in a convoy of Bullets with a fellow
rider who had met with an accident and broken his arm riding along
(in an Ambassador). I was sleep deprived on that Bullet ride and
it was the stunning beauty of the moonlint night that helped me
keep awake, mentally marking off the distance to Hyderabad
(Jangaon, Bhongir, Bibinagar) even as I set the pace at the
head of the group. I was sleep deprived yesterday night too,
and again it was the stunning beauty of the moonlit Deccan that
helped me stay awake and get down at Secunderabad Railway
Station (as opposed to waking up next morning in the
shunting yard).

#++++++++#++++++++#



From what I gather -- through interactions with K and my
mother, it has rained twice (and "showered" more or less
every other day) here in the 10 days I have been away. The
skies (I get to see a lot of them around my place) have been
breathtakingly blue and beautiful all since morning. And yes,
there are clouds, with silver and gold linings aplenty along
with the persistent promise of a cloudburst. In fact, it did
rain a bit too, more or less for five minutes, but that
tells me there's rain left in the skies still.



#++++++++#++++++++#






Among all the stuff I had lugged along with me, on long
walks on endless platforms and up and down the stairways
that lead to them was my 55-300 mm lens that I did not get
to use (or feel like using) even once on this trip.
As such, it was imperative that I do a bit of narrow
perspective shooting ASAP. This necessitated a stroll with
the camera and that led to a couple of nice captures of Brown
Pansies. And some Sunbirds. So my wild touch still survives,
after travels through a lot of civilization, or so it seems :-)

#++++++++#++++++++#

Speaking of Sunbirds, while I was away, the Yellow Trumpet
tree that flanks the boundary of the homestead and has served
as a world -- for food and drink, shelter (and in all probability
as a nesting place) for a bevy of Sunbirds has crashed and
broken its trunk. Or so I am told. In fact, it had slanted
onto the road even as I was here (and earlier too) and I had
spent the good part of an evening (with a couple of neighbours
helping and the little man watching) trying to straighten / belay
it. Later on, I had firmly managed to pull it into more or less of
a vertical position with a wire (and some help from willing shoulders)
and tied down the wire with some granite blocks. But it has gone
ahead and crashed...and there is a big, irreplaceable chasm
along my boundary wall (and in my being). I wonder what the Sunbirds
must have made of the disappearance of the tree. And I wonder how
long it will take for a Yellow Trumpet (or any other flowering tree
that attracts Sunbirds) to get equally heavy with flowers as this
one for whom all I can say is RIP...

#++++++++#++++++++#

The first thing I noticed on getting home yesterday was the fragrance
of Parijaatam (it had started flowering -- for the first time -- a
couple of days before I left for the train trip). Even before I
noticed that the Yellow Trumpet (and its world of yellow) was
missing.That happy fragrance lingers, even now :-)

#++++++++#++++++++#



And, oh yes, here's the final diary entry for today. Everything
does seem hunky dory in Squirreldom.



* There was a Rail Roko announced for 13-15 of October,
the Railways first canceled my train and then (as the
Rail Roko was deferred to 15-17 October) ran the train.