The Geese Fall Silent

We will get a new metro
Maybe in years two or three
Meanwhile they have taken
Away all the geese
Soon they will come down
To cut all the trees
But even before that
Oh where are all the deers?
Only the birds still come
And sing a few songs of cheer
Making me come out
Once in a while to peer
But will I ever get to see
Another new bird, dear?
Sigh, we should be happy
About the new metro that will be here.

Had posted before: The Silence of the Geese

The Regal Look - Wasted

Peeping out to see how many saw his humiliation

Five white tigers in an enclosure. Standing at a safe distance, we were still awed by the majesty and the beauty of the regal animals. One walked down the slope to the ditch dug around the enclosure, next to the ditch, separating the humans from the carnovores.

We stood admiring each when we heard the gates of the cage being opened and shut from the rear of the enclosure. Food time, we realised.

A man came out to the outer wall on the rear and called out harshly, "Po (go)!" All the tigers looked. One of them instantly sat up. Another glared at him regally. He threw a stick at it to get it moving. He shouted again and again to get them to pick up their food. Slowly one went in, another followed. The stubborn ones were egged by the man to get moving.

Even the most stubborn one finally got up, went in, had its fill and came out. It was a sad sight.

But, I couldn't help wondering - is this what is happening in Tihar jail right now? The one with the power is the one outside, making those inside dance to his (her) tunes?

The Kind Lord; Hobson's Choice; Animal Farm

The Metro

Chennai is on par with other metros today, we say proudly. We have malls, we have cars, we have flyovers and we have traffic jams.

A 10 minute distance took me around 40 minutes yesterday on my two wheeler at 11 in the morning on the arterial road - The Mount Road.

Was I mad to be out on the bike - not only did I ask myself this, but many of my friends. Pressed between cars of all sizes, not an inch of the road visible, there was heat radiating from all sides. Not one apology of a tree to provide shade against the merciless sun that glared at all the foolish citizens of Chennai that were out at that hour.

But I was on a bike, and other travellers on car. I could not help thinking of so many old people - inlcuding my father - who depend on the shank's mare regardless of the time of the day. The sun is no more merciful to them than us, the trees as absent. And they as used to the comforts as us... And yet I have seen them do it - two old men from my building can be seen out in the sun on bank work and other sundry things.

I wonder if development has to mean cutting down of trees. If a road is broadened, can't a provision be made for some shade somewhere? Is the lust for the metal so much that anything green is an anathema?

For those of you who read my blog The Silence of the Geese - there is some good news. Of the 172, only 28 are to be cut - a HC order was passed to this effect. I am hoping that this will be followed and not forgotten.

In the early days, kings had a rule - if they cut 1 tree, they had to plant 5 or something in its place. This ancient law should be made mandatory today.

Revenge

As we sit wondering about the explosion in the nuclear reactor, I cannot help wondering if this isn't nature's way of getting back. There is a Tamil word that fits our attitude to nature appropriately - sorandarathu. Literally dig our nails into the last available resource and grab every iota of it in our greedy hands.

But having got used to our comforts, where is it that we can cut down? Will we stop killing trees, reclaiming land, mining, poaching, drilling, populating and therefore restarting the entire cycle? In retrospect, is industrialisation a boon or a bane?

Incoherent Expression of Shock

The deep shock on hearing of the earthquake and the following tsunami still lingers. Just seeing the steady inflow of sea water into the land and the helplessness of the "highest creation" of god on earth... how can words convey what one feels. And to think of those caught in the tragedy...!

It is ironical that water, the source of life, can be so unforgiving as a cause for death and loss too.

Always wary of the sea, the 2004 tsunami had been a shock for me. And yet, we have grown up on stories of the submerging of Poompuhar in ancient times and Dhanushkodi in Rameswaram in more recent times - as latest as pre-independence India. Atlantis probably met the same fate, if it was indeed a reality.

But not just the sea. Last year, I got a message from a friend in the middle of the night - at 2 am - saying: Please pray for us.

Shocked and disoriented, I messaged back but got no response. I called first thing in the morning and her mother picked up. In the persistent rains on the preceding few days, a water reservoir had been opened and the water flooded the city. My friend lives in a low-lying area and water flowed into their streets - into their homes, through the windows.

Just hearing this sent shock waves through me. Imagine water flowing in at 2 in the night at window level and no signs of stopping.

Except for loss to property, there were no loss to lives, thankfully. But the moment must have been as scary as a tsunami.

That's an aside.

For those caught in the tsunami, was this the moment of reckoning, the end of world, the Pralaya, the great flood? Words, emotions - they are too small to be coherent to express what one feels.

The Silence of the Geese

One of the first concerns we had when we moved to the current apartment complex - aptly called The Nest (as we later discovered) - was the noise the geese made. Geese? The complex shares a wall with the TN veterinary research institute and houses geese, and poultry of other forms. My husband Srikant's concern was that they would make noise and disturb sleep. But, it just became part of our background music since 2006.

In the last two years, we have paid greater attention to this neighbour. We first discovered a crow's nest very close to our balcony. While watching them, we became aware of other birds - parrots, white migratory birds, kingfisher, woodpecker...

Maybe because children need us less, my husband and I stand in the kitchen wash area that overlooks the institute grounds and spend long hours gazing at the varied birds and the animals that we see there. Deer, snakes, mongoose, squirrels, birds of all types (http://www.facebook.com/album.php?id=1161404038&aid=2043683).

Treepie was a completely new variety for us. Then recently, we saw very tiny green birds that live inside branches. Yesterday, we saw sparrows - which have become a rarity in Chennai. And while clicking what we thought was the smaller variety of sparrows, we found a bird of a new kind! Honeysuckle, maybe.

But last two days, the geese have fallen silent. They are not there anymore. They have been shifted to another location. Because, the ground is now part of Metro Rail project. A station cum office is what we are going to have for neighbours.

My heart bleeds. What will happen to the deer? We see samples of so many bird varieties - will they abandon us? Where will the snakes find ground for cover? Will the eagles hover lower anymore?

I try to tell myself - when Nest was being constructed, maybe these brids had taken fright. But as the dust settled they returned. So will they return once the metro rail construction is over. I hope they have enough trees to return to.

Turtle Walk

If it hadn't been for my daughter's school - Vruksha in Chennai - taking my seven-year-old on this Turtle Walk, we would have been home, watching Dance India Dance Doubles on Feb 4, 2011. But the school gave us an opportunity, and for my daughter's sake, I went along.

The harsh man-made light on the beach was a disappointment. But it gave us an opportunity to sit around our guide, Arun Anna, and find out more about Olive Ridley Turtles. Except for knowing they were endangered, I had felt no curiosity about them. But that night, I was amazed that there are a set of people who give up their sleep periodically just to ensure that the eggs laid by the mother turtles are transferred to safety so that they may hatch in peace, and have better chances of survival.

The beach at night is like listening to soft music. The dark night enveloping the dark waters, the monochrome broken by the white waves that hit the dark sandy brown beach, the white crabs near the shore. To see a turtle peep from the slope would have completed the romance of the night. But that was not to be. We only saw a dead turtle. And a nest - an amazing work of architecture. A neat pit with a cylindrical passage down the wet sand. Eggs soft and small like ping-pong balls, laid in layers - 105 of them! A few broken, but at least, not because of human intervention, unlike the dead turtle.

But the beach itself was sad. Dirty, littered...

Can man not respect nature? Is it a compulsion to destroy what we have and then rebuild from scratch artificially?

Somehow, while enjoying the prospect of seeing a turtle, I felt like an intruder.