Comeback

The excitement is killing her. But she is not going to share it with anyone just yet, lest she jinxes it by saying it prematurely.

It's too early. No. She won't talk. Not now. Not till...

This has brought her back to her blog. She is overjoyed to know she is typing words again. For some months now she had phased herself out, not writing, not talking, not reading....

Her comeback is not far away now.

Pregnant with a growing foetus of a secret, she walks around the place with a smile on her face.

Naja naja

There they were.

Snakes.

Big ones.

Not one, but two.

Thoughts in my head- "What are they? Definitely not russels vipers or saw scaled vipers. These guys are looong. So cobras. Wait, they could be rat snakes. Well, I can't make out. They are moving too fast! Can’t see their heads, man! How do I make out?" It was then that I remembered I was holding a camera in my hand. "Stupid girl! Take pictures!! No!! Are you crazy? What if they are cobras? Run you stupid girl! But then I'll never know....

Click. Click. Click. Click. Camera frenzy.

"Check the pics. Did you get the head?"

Zoom in.

A hood.

"Oh my god, they are cobras!"

A parallel series of thoughts and emotions- I had to deal with the realization that it has actually happened. People had warned me about this, about snakes being around my work site. Wear shoes, not sandals, they advised. Wear full pants, not three-fourths. Wear thick full pants, not those flimsy cotton ones. And I had done all that. I had taken all these precautions. But I must tell you, standing there about 7 meters away from two large Indian cobras made all my precautions look puny and stupid.

Now I know why people revere them. Why they are idolized into gods. These guys are the very embodiment of power. Every move they made commanded attention. It seemed as if power actually oozed out of them, slithered to where you were and made you feel really really minuscule, puny and tiny and meaningless. Feeling helpless, I just stood there with dropped jaws watching them gracefully dance away.

Then the practical part of me finally broke through all the 'ooh's and ahhs'; this practical self reminded my jaw-dropped self that I was at least 20 minutes away from help in case anything went wrong, it was almost sunset and I had no idea how to handle snakes, so it would be best to pick up those dropped jaws and get myself out of there as fast as I could.

And I did.

After there was considerable distance between me and the romancing beasts, after the heart beats had returned back to normal a new moment of clarity- this is why I am here, I told myself. For this! This is why I didn't opt for a desk job. This is why I opted to get out of that city. To get out of the rush hour traffic and the local trains! To see a courtship of indian cobras, or as we biologists would call them Naja naja. It's all worth it, I told myself! The loneliness, the silence, the fear. It's all worth it! The moment of clarity broadened and I thought of all the other things that are making this 'living alone' worthwhile. The no-less-than-five hoopoes that visit my front yard everyday! The coppersmith barbet who posed so well in front of my cam! The verditer flycatcher that flew around the tree in my courtyard. The purple sunbird nests we monitored, their cute little chicks and their hungry cries!

I relate this incident to one that unfolds in the Lord of the Rings- when Frodo receives from Galadriel the light from Elendil, the elves' most beloved star; "let this be the light, when all other lights fade".

I sit here tonight, in this giant empty house and just when 'all other lights fade' I think of the spectacle that unfolded before my eyes- the rare sight that reminded me of why I am here. This, for me, is what Elendil was for Frodo.

Sappy? Very.But you know what, I don't care!

By yourself

My project work has been postponing because of some silly logistics. So I have nothing to do but wait here at Rishi Valley.
Everyone tells me this is a wonderful opportunity. And I know it. When else do you get to spend so much time with the trees, the clouds, the open sky and fresh breeze? With sunsets and birds and an occasional snake? What a golden oppurtunity! Yes I know it, I know it very well.
It’s all nice on day one.
It’s nice on day two too.
It’s ok on day three.
By day four you make so many phone calls, you are sure your phone bill is going to shoot up.
By the end of the week, you dream of meeting your friends and family, you are walking down streets and roads of your neighbourhood in your sleep.
By the end of two weeks you are on the verge of depression.

This temporal cycle also has a sub-cycle- a circadian one. Here is how it goes:
In the morning, you wake up feeling aweommse! The birds are singing, the sun is shining and you say to yourself, it couldn’t be a better day. After breakfast, you start your work. There are tonnes of things you have to do. Email your boss, analyze data, read through those books you have to read, do some more literature surveys. You do all this with enthusiasm till its lunch time. Lunch is served at the dining hall ten minutes from your house. Occasionally you meet some interesting people at the lunch table. Small talk happens. This is when you realize that you haven’t opened your mouth at all and used your pharynx to make sounds all morning. For a girl who was always caught in school for talking too much, this is a phenomenon to be reckoned with.

After lunch you get back to work. Read a book, surf net, read another book, read a paper, read your friend’s blogpost, read yet another book by yourself. Even after reading so much you realize you are, without a doubt, bored. You try to write, but mostly in vain. Sometimes something reasonably ok turns out, like this blogpost.

It’s 4.00 pm. Time to get up and exercise.
Tea must be getting served in the dining hall. Off you go for some tea, by yourself. Next item on the agenda- birding. Birding is fun. It is the only activity of the day that has an element of surprise in it. You never know which bird you’ll get to see up close, which bird will allow you to take awesome pics you can put up on facebook. Ah! The purple sunbird was posing so well! I’ll get lots of comments on my FB for this one!
There are lots of nice spots here for perfect sunsets. You sit on a hill top, or near a pond, or on open fields and watch the sun set aginst the hills. It's beautiful! You sit there with the breeze in your hair, again, all by yourself. You wish there was someone with you with whom you could enjoy this scene. It's not an idle thought. You really yearn for it. You really want company.

You come back home. Do the laundry, wash some vessels or sweep the floor. By yourself.
Dinner time.
Again, how well dinner goes depends on the people that come and join you at the table.
Walking back from dinner is when the feeling of dread sets in. Your house is in one direction the rest of the hostels are in the other. You walk back home; (need I mention) by yourself. After unlocking the door to the quiet house the first thing you do is switch on your laptop. I need some sound! Music. Any music. Anything other than this deathly silence. You while away your time doing general things- checking your fb friends’ status accounts, their pics, chatting. You constantly look at your watch. It’s only 8.30 pm.
Then you reach for your cell phone. Whom should I call today? I miss them ALL so much! The talks last for more than an hour. They leave you smiling and reminiscing about all your city-days. Later, the number of your yawns increase. It’s 10.00 pm. Time to sleep. One by one you switch off each light. With the diminishing of each source of light, you feel that the silence becomes more prominent, more noticeable. The switching off of the last light is the worst. As total darkness engulfs you and the house, you edge towards your bed, wimpering in your head.
What was that? That noise? Must be a toad. From outside. Sure it was from outside?
It’s nothing. You are just imagining it.
And that? That was definitely something. Yeah, but it was from outside. Must be those toads in the leaf litter. Should definately clear the leaf litter tomorrow. Leaf litter and toads- perfect place for snakes...
Did the door just crack open? No. It is just the small sounds houses make at night. It’s perfectly normal!
And that scratching noise? Hmm, either rats or civets on the roof again.
With these thoughts you fall asleep, by yourself.

Delays! Delays! Delays!

But I do want to work!

I want to be busy. I want to drown in work and be so busy that I have no time for sadness, no time for loneliness.

Just me and my work.

Then why does it not happen?

I just want my work to start now. But the fact that it's not in my hands is frustrating! I cannot do anything till the props are ready. Too many delays. They just make your enthu snuff out. I am tired of wasting my time. I am tired of nothing happening. I can't wait for the real work to begin. The anticipation of the results is killing me!

This is it

I have to live all by myself from today onwards for a month or so.

Finally!!!

A cute guy on campus!!!
FINALLY!!!!
yipppeeee!!!! :) :) :)

Ah!

As I was walking back from dinner tonight, I saw the headlights of a car approaching steadily. Prolly going to the guesthouses to pick someone up, I thought to myself. Then as the car passed by me, I smelled something. Something I had smelled before. A smell I knew. Ah! Gasoline!

I was smelling an automobile's exhaust after eons.

This realization made my day. :)

Rebuilding a lost world, piece by piece

I lost ALL of my bookmarks when I formatted my C drive recently. Never knew google chrome stored bookmarks on your local drive, thought it was more like google toolbar bookmarks, which are stored under your google account. Painstakingly obtained, meticulously organized information...all lost.
Its a sad thing you know,to loose all the pages you liked, adored, were attached to, and were just a click of a button away...
Tonight I'm trying to fill the gaps, trying to reassemble all that I lost. It has a rejuvenating feeling to it, like reforestation of a degraded habitat...
I thought one of the reasons I have been unable to start hard core work on my pc is because I have been reluctant to manually search all those pages again.
I hope this action brings back the enth.

City girl misses the peak hour traffic

I am not used to this.
I don't want to get used to this.
Never thought I'll miss the sound of the loud TV, traffic noises, the honking, the screeching of brakes, the sound of the fast trains, the fights in the ladies compartments...
This is toooo silent for me.
Too closed a system.
Too small, too peaceful, too fairytale-like. The same people, the same food, the same places day in and day out.
Work has kinda come to a standstill. It won't begin before the 25th for whatever reasons.
So here I am, I have tonnes and tonnes of other awesome stuff I can do here, want to do here, should do here, but am not.
Not enthu.

Tales from the Valley

I'll post all my Rishi Valley posts under this heading, and give a brief background before I start. The background will be common for all posts.

Background- Rishi Valley is a place in the middle of southern rural India surrounded by farms, orchards, rocky hills and more farms. It also happens to be the place where I am working currently.

The following is one of the numerous incidents that has defined the whole Rishi-Valley-experience for me. Hopefully, more will follow.

It was an unusually hot day. I was on my way from Rishi Valley to Bangalore.To make this journey you have to hop onto a number of rickety buses and autorickshaws- that are more like a random assemblage of nuts and bolts that may all disassemble with the next road bump. As I said, it was an unusually hot day and my backpack with my laptop, clothes and an assortment of things I always carry but never use was not making things any easier. So as I stood in the bus’s aisle I cursed pretty much everything around me.

The bus made yet another halt and a hoard of people got in. Great, I thought. Just what I need. As the throng of people pushed inside, I suddenly found myself at the receiving end of a stampede in the narrow aisle. There is no way these guys can move in, I thought. There simply isn’t any space! A man tried to get past me. The grey hair on his beard were covered with dust, and yet stood out on his wrinkled, dark face. He was wearing what once must have been a white shirt and a white lungi. They looked more like brown than white now, just like his hair. He tried to motion to me to move so he could get past me. At that moment I don’t know how or why, I happened to look into his eyes. And as I saw the eyes of that farmer, I mused- ‘The tomatoes I had in my rassam today might have been from his farm’. I have no idea where this thought came from. It just appeared there in my head, out of nowhere. I imagined a single tomato making its journey from that man’s hand to my mouth.

I smiled, and let him through.

Priceless

Wow..I can't believe I'm leaving tomorrow. Didn't think the days would pass by so quickly and it'll be time to leave already.

This time, it's going to be harder. I am going to miss home much more than last time. In fact, I didn'teven miss it last time. But this time, I know what I'll be leaving behind, and how much it's worth.

Never thought human beings could be priceless.

Roads go ever ever on,

Over rock and under tree,

By caves where never sun has shone,

By streams that never find the sea;

Over snow by winter sown,

And through the merry flowers of June,

Over grass and over stone,

And under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever ever on

Under cloud and under star,

Yet feet that wandering have gone

Turn at last to home afar.

Eyes that fire and sword have seen

And horror in the halls of stone

Look at last on meadows green

And trees and hills they long have known.

-Bilbo Baggins from There & Back Again

I'm back :)

It's Raining!

It's actually raining here! Just when I thought this place could not get more beautiful than it already is...nature is full of surprises!

A quiet diwali, for a change

I am so glad I am not celebrating diwali in the city. For once I am away from the vulgarity and commercialization that seems to have grown around all of our festivals. For once I can have a calm, peaceful, pollution-free, noise-free diwali. Although I can hear the occasional fire cracker here, it does not have the urban feel to it.

Yay! :)

That's how you make a house into a home

Shreekant is one enthu cutlet!

I could never have thought of beautifying a place this way,with whatever you could get your hands on.

Way to go doode!

My Window To Infinity

We went out for a peaceful post-dinner walk the other day, my colleague Shreekant; Zara, a Scottish anthropologist; Sunit, a Krishnamurthi reader and I. It was one of those impromptu things that turn out to be great because they haven’t been previously planned. So we walked about randomly along the dimly lit mud roads of Rishi valley recounting mad stories from our childhoods. There was a slight nip in the air and I was grinning for no particular reason. Because of the tree cover we couldn’t make out if the sky was clear or cloudy, until we came upon the school grounds which had a few lights along its periphery. These lights illuminated almost the entire ground except for one tiny patch where the light could not penetrate the dark--my window to infinity. Although I could see but a small patch of the night sky, for me, that night, that patch stretched on forever and even though I was very much on the ground, I could touch the distant stars.

My two new friends

I made two new friends at Rishi Valley- BBT and Old Alfred. Both BBT and old Al are long past their youth.

BBT is probably the oldest guy around needing support to stand, but he still stands tall in his last days, so much so that you can actually feel his pride even from a distance.

Old Al looks beautiful in his brown wrinkles. In his presence you feel calm and serene.

They both seem to have gathered wisdom that can only come with age.

Here are their pictures:

BBT is a Big Banyan Tree and Old Al is a Gulmohur. Being in their presence fills me with a joy I cannot possibly express.

My first job on the field

Last night it finally hit me.
I am leaving home next week.

I have left home before, for innumerable camps, treks and excursions; for holidays in short. But this, this is for work. I have to go there for a job.

For all those who don't know what I am talking about, or for all those who don't know the exact details, here is the ho-down:
I'll be working as a volunteer under the guidance of a professor at NCBS which is located in Bangalore. I will first attend a conference during my stay in Bangalore, YETI (Young Ecologists Talk & Interact) then get some hands on training in Bangalore itself for the job at hand. Later, will move on to a place called Rishi Valley School, Andra Pradesh (Chittoor District). It is a well known residential school which teaches it's students by using the philosophy of J. Krishnamurthi. Incidentally, my mother wanted to enroll me in that school but by the time she heard about it, it was too late, I had almost finished my schooling. She still spoke about it wistfully. "If I had sent my daughter there"...and so on.Guess her wish will soon come true, in a way :)

Anyway, so the campus is a large one hosting good biodiversity (they also run a bird watching course there). So the prof from NCBS has a field station established there. His students go to that place for their field work and stay at the field station. The campus hosts a population of a fairly common lizard called the Peninsular Rock Agama. Nothing much is known about the animal except it's breeding season and colouration etc. I have to go there and study it. For starters, I will be focusing on its home range. My first official field job! Wow!!

Also, when I go to Rishi Valley, no one will inhabit the field station but me. But since it's a full fledged school, stuff like food and laundry will be taken care of. But when it comes to doing the actual work, I will be all myself. Also, imagine living in a 3 room house all alone.

I shall have only solitude for company :)

A dear friend asked me the other day, if I was sad about leaving home. At that time I wasn't, not that I am now. But I'm sure I'm going to miss it. I am sure I will miss meeting my friends whenever I want to, I'll miss the evening strolls around my neighbourhood, I'll miss CCD with my best friend, will miss watching Criminal Minds on TV, my room, my bed, the local trains, the traffic, the noise. Speaking of noise, I most probably won't be around for Diwali. Somehow I won't miss Diwali in the city. Would like to celebrate it away from the noise and the vulgarity. But I will miss my family during diwali though. But that's only in case I have to stay there. Dunno how things will turn out.

Also, this first phase is not a long one, I'll be back in a month or so. Will have to go there again in some time, things will get finalized in the coming weeks.
And, the field station is euipped with a broadband connection, so I won't be all alone, strictly speaking. Only, I don't know if I'll have the time to come online and meet friends.
During that period, I may either be silent on my blog, with not a post in sight, or I may blog so much that your Reader gets flooded.

All in all, October 2009 will be month of many firsts indeed.