Oriental Magpie Robin

26 May, 1600 hrs:

I am trying to read on scheduling, and yet, however hard I try, I still can't gather myself well enough to concentrate om this topic. There are just too many audio interrupts snatching my attention away and all from the musical clan of magpie robins.

Magpie robins (or Oriental magpie robins, as they call them) have been all over our place, and my mind, this spring. Through all the times from early mornings to hot afternoons to late evenings (and even during the night time on one discrete occasion) and through all places around me from our colony to right till Harantekdi and Indrayani, it has been one wonderful concert this summer from one beautiful ensemble of this bird.

Magpie robin is a wonderful bird; a worthy passerine(birds considered as songbirds) with its extensive vocal skills. It has a rich repository of melodious tunes and various ways of rendering them. Even the conspicuous calls of cuckoo have faded in my opinion in comparison with the spirited and varied calls of the magpie robin. I have loved hearing to them, indulging myself in their talks once in a while. I even once tried chasing one on my bike only taking its calls as the cue. It sure was a blind chase, since it was nearing dark, but by no means was it a chase in silence! Although the advent of barbets in the nearby trees has been a really welcome news this summer, magpie robins have hogged all the attention due to their relentless riyaz in their vocals. It is of course their breeding season. I realized, after some reading, that the calls aren't just meant to win over a mate during the breeding season. They are more to stake a claim to a certain territory as their own and to ward off any potential competitor from entering the protected area. That explains the observation of the peculiar stance of the birds in fixed areas around the house. I have seldom seen them in large flocks, but only in small units of a family. A male magpie robin claims its territory and in a solitary exercise defends it all through the breeding season and the initial few days of bringing up of the offspring which is taken care of by the female. The male's calling poise shows aggression, excitement and also some real determination. As a visual signal, it also uses its tail to communicate its intent through jerks, flicks and by spreading it sometimes while it sings. Besides, there are other subtler, musical calls, perhaps meant for other specific communication or signals. So much so that one feels that the magpie robin is actually having a detailed conversation and the tone, loudness, pitch, tempo, tune all seem to depict at different times, various feelings like love, understanding, concern, happiness, jubilation, pleading, inquiry, aggression, imitation and maybe some more. I once tried to converse with a magpie robin with my own bird-like chirping, just out of curiosity. It was successful to an extent as we exchanged a few calls before the robin must have realized that I wasn't making any sense after all and just flew away to a farther branch. Or on second thoughts, did I impose my authority over my territory, forcing it to budge away! [:p]

Here are some pictures of this bird.

The last one which looks evidently different from the rest is a female whereas all others are male magpie robins.

There is another relative of this bird, called the Indian robin, which is widely observed. I have always seen this bird only in open spaces, near shrubs and trees, somewhat away from human settlements. Here's a picture, albeit not a very clear one.

The Grey Tit

Next, I would like to discuss about the Grey Tit (Parus major cinereus). This bird struck me as a rather industrious one, consumed in its own activites and almost overtly oblivious to its surroundings. Perhaps, I always happened to see it when it was in such a mood. Busily foraging and gathering its food from one branch to the other, it seemed to be going about its business with some purposeful intent. It is not that the other birds aren't so, but this bird never seemed to waste even a glance on unnecessary details and events happening around it. Even now when I see this bird, like the one I saw this morning with sleepy eyes, it looks consistently busy, checking and picking things on and between the branches and twigs with its short, straight and pointed beak. It has a neat beak, something like what a small kid would draw in his drawing book for a bird's beak. With this beak the Grey tit normally feeds on insects and their eggs as also on small seeds and nut kernels. The strong short beak helps it to crack hard nuts and seeds. It is around the size of a sparrow, in fact slightly larger, I felt. This bird is coloured in patterns of black and white on grey and it is from this that the bird also derives its common name, the Grey tit.

When I tried to read some on this bird, I realised that this bird has been extensively studied since a long time. There is a more popular variant of this tit, known as the Great tit, which occurs all across Europe. The Great tit shows very good adaptability to the human presence, and also great adaptability in general, and has therefore apparently led to and aided a lot of research.

The grey tits, on the other hand, predominantly occur in Asia. They are believed to forage mostly in pairs through the winters and then summer is their normal breeding season. They communicate in pleasant twitters (yes, I know...it occured to me too).

And now to the photographing part of it. Grey tits, despite their busy continuous bustling, have given me some good frames to capture. They keep frequenting the branches near my house. I have also photographed one (the third one below) at the chowk near the Akurdi-Nigdi Pradhikaran dumping grounds, where I used to wait for my morning office bus. It sure makes for a lovely subject to capture in a photograph.




-Vindy

Scaly breasted munia

Scaly breasted munia was one of the birds that caught my attention when I came to Talegaon. It was monsoon and in the open space that my window overlooked, tall grass and weeds had grown aplenty. Amidst the swinging greens, I saw two brownish specks busily pecking away at things. I wasn't familiar to that kind of birds. I clicked a few snaps and sat down to correlate what I had seen with one of the bird illustrations in a book. The scaly pattern over their breast and the finch like beak were prominent pointers, apart from their colour.They were munias. And how apt their entire name was, Scaly breasted munia!

For a bird, their existence near the ground for prolonged periods appeared surprising to me. From some literature, I came to know that they feed on the grass seeds and insects near the ground and prefer building nests in low bushes. That explained their behaviour. When they weren't busy eating near the grass, they would fly up to the branches and perch calmly. Their sound to me felt like a milder version of the sparrow's sound and also less regular. When in the winter, the grass all dried up and later cleared away, the munias weren't there to be seen near our house for a long time. The monsoon came and the grass grew back and there they were again with their clan! While I wasn't satisfied with their photos captured during the first monsoon, they came out slightly better in the second season. Here are a couple of them.

Although munia appeared more like a finch to me, I saw that it doesn't belong to the conventional family of finches. The baya weaver, the sparrow and the munia, all belong to the same family, Ploceidae.

-Vindy

On The Go...

(Sometime around the end of Sharad rutu, early Dec 2009)

Early mornings, now-a-days, are slightly chilly, as if the waiting winter were slowly crawling upon me. With the weather Gods going crazy and all confused this season, winter seems to have resolved to put things back into their place and restore the familiar order in earnest. And so, with no more surprises expected and as a meek acknowledgement to the increasing cold, my reluctance at shedding my blanket and shrug out of my bed has increased in proportion; with that the repeated attempts of my mother to wake me up and get me moving and to my office; and so have come out my sweaters and the black Peter England coat. The winter giggles all along at me as I finally manage to hit the pedal. Me and my poor friend, who must have bore the cold brunt all night in the open, set about gulping distances by circumferences.

My friend is sent through violent shocks and jerks by the few metres of kuchcha road, and so am I with him; awaking both of us from the stiffness and dullness of the incomplete slumber. The landscape plummets down in front of us pulling down with it the quiet houses and farms, before the mountains far away lift it up towards the sky. They aren't very far away though, what with they almost filling up your sight and their essence percolating through your senses and soul. They surely do strike a pleasant, magical chord, almost enthusing a gladdening, familiar scent of the mountains all around you and within you. The winter, however, has played a beautiful trick on these harmless humps on the earth. It has brought all its mist clogging down, thick and dense, under the mountains to stay there, such that one can't see through them. The mighty mountains, as a result, appear to have been lifted nonchalantly up by the indolent congregation of the dense mass of vapour. It looks enchanting, I tell you. The sun's slowly peeking above the horizon, almost with a yawn, sending down warm rays to mix with and glisten the white mass of mist. If only I had my camera with me! Where, however, would I capture the smell and the cold feel of the winter that's tingling its way through me, perching on my nosetip, sprawling on my ears and setting into my eyes?

I pedal further down the now smooth road, breezing down the straights and around the bends. My numb fingers try to control my overjoyed friend. He is sprinting across, ignoring the undulations on tar. His bell calls are met with happy responses from his chums; the sparrows, bulbuls, mynas, crows, munias, shrikes and others and that's the cause of his joy. We pass the Krishna temple smiling our greetings to him. He smiles back at us, serene and healing as ever.

At the station, I bid a goodbye to my friend, promising to return at dark. I am amongst people now; my kind. The early morning crowd includes many youngsters, high-school students to college going teenagers. Everybody is geared up for the cold weather. From rural folks in plain dhoti and stained shirts to milk vendors and vegetable vendors with their huge cans and baskets to office going people like me to the teenagers, the station is buzz with activity and conversations. Herds are what I feel I am seeing along the length of the station and the faces wearing multitudes of emotion appear like ruminating on the daily dose of conversation and gossip. The newspaper guy is in the thick of action and everybody's more than eager to grab his/her copy. I always walk half the platform towards the far end to climb the train there. There's no reason for that, just a preference. I have a few minutes before the local train would arrive allowing me to take an easy stroll across the platform in my comfortable canvas pair.

My hand brushes my warm coat at its sides as I walk. I try to keep my head steady, but my fickle, flickering eyes give away my curiosity. I can't help but notice the girls whispering to each other. I cast a glance on the group and my eyes are held captive by a complimenting pair, pure, black and mesmerizing (as Onkar says, I think in my mind :-)). What follows is a strange status quo as far as expressions on both the faces are concerned as against a distracting and confusing hustle inside, behind the falsely held expressions. Both the individuals stuck in the deadlock become exceedingly wary of every movement and each sinew asks permissions before it can twitch. Intervened by a conscious mind now, my involuntary walking and poise suddenly assume proportions of a foreground process requiring extensive-complex-real time-stimuli based-decision making algorithms. Where the conscious mind sets in, I lose the fluidity of my sub-conscious self. She follows suit and her posture stiffens laying bare her own susceptible processes which have evidently gone awry by a little disturbance. Until my friend, ‘inertia’, thankfully carries me ahead and beyond the threshold distance disengaging the bond, we both go through a strange metastable state in our minds which can neither be defined as outright enjoyable nor as entirely uneasy. The effect sweeps across the group. Every individual goes through the brief wave trying to win attention and pleasantly sail with the occasion if it happens. Depending on various sensory parameters (primarily audio-visual) and their weights in position and time, any two individuals may get connected or there might be a sequence of multiple short connections. Let me accept that this is indeed a natural sociological behaviour in animals and the aforesaid events and effects form the normal protocol in mortal beings like me. Anyway, the point is that you feel for it. It is almost like an instinct driven by the irresistible laws of attraction and which renders every post-adolescence individual predictable and helpless in such situations. It pleases the heart and rides the mind and there’s not much one can do about it except wait for time to take care of and tone down this instinct, if it ever does. Besides, since I am no Yogi, I often follow the ritual and enjoy the uneasy transients and muse in the pleasant feelings that blot my heart as the experience trails. And so, I do the ritual today again. And boy! Am I not pleased! She looks beautiful, doesn’t she!

- Vindy :)

Lightning experiments

It was happening again yesterday. Heavenly flares and flashes were lighting up the backdrop behind that hillock and the immediate neighbourhood. Akshay came running to me, bursting with excitement at the spurts of illumination which were creating magnificent, isolated silhouettes of the hillock, the clouds and the tall receiver station, in an otherwise dark sky. As I broke into a beaming smile and let go a rapturous 'tokk', I realised that despite seeing this almost every other day here, at Talegaon, it still evoked a wonderous feeling. Far away, beyond the hillock and the mountain lines perhaps, a possessed clan of clouds and the crazy earth must be playing with their charges!

I have never seen before lightning with such regularity as I have seen in Talegaon. The location of this place between mountains on many sides and more importantly the vastness of perceptible space seem to make this possible. Unlike a metropolitan, where visibility is limited by structures and their immense density, this place is not that badly cluttered and not so populated as yet. Hence our terrace affords a lavish view across the countryside right until the horizon which in this case is largely undulated by mountainous hunches. And not just on one side, but in almost all the directions. The feeling, when I spend evenings sitting on the water tank at the top of my building, is akin to those I have had on numerous treks; a view spanning the earth as much as it could!  When I lift may gaze slightly skyward I see myriad and plenty clouds and realize their movements. Sample this – In cities, either there are clouds or there are no clouds; either it thunders and throws lightning or doesn't; it either rains or it doesn't. But here, I can see dense clouds, not here, but a few kilometers away over that mountain; I can sense the rains to my right and sunshine in front of me; I can sit down here without fear and still watch in awe furious lightning striking somewhere in a distance! I can sense nature at work in its various forms at different places at the same time, as if it were running numerous parallel processes, all of them distinctly visible to me.
 

Somewhere along this experience I thought I should try to capture images of lightning. There are, anyway, many spectacular images of this phenomenon already available across web and other literature, and still I wanted to experiment with my camera. Although this was a long cherished idea, I thought I had good chances of getting a good result here. I started with the first noticeable rains of this monsoon and have made a few attempts since. With a digital camera like mine, it is pretty simple. Trying to click at precisely that moment when lightning strikes is obviously not a very wise option. One might instead think of utilizing the features in a good enough camera. All you need is a fairly prolonged shutter speed (which means keeping the shutter open for atleast a few seconds) and loads of patience. Based on the other conditions, one may have to adjust other settings in the camera, like keeping the aperture small when exposing for a long time to reduce the insurge from other areas in the frame. With a long exposure, a steady surface for the camera is advisable while capturing the image. The lightning, if it strikes in exactly that window of time when shutter's open, is bright enough to create a reasonable impression, as also to leave the rest of the frame fairly illuminated. The settings may have to be adjusted bearing these things in mind. Patience is a very important trait in this pursuit and that can convert the matter of luck to a matter of time, before you get your desired result.
 

A few days ago, I felt, I finally got a satisfactory image. Hence this post :P
 

I would like to share some of the images of lightning that I have captured till now. Apart from scaling the images, I have worked around, slightly, with these images in GIMP, mainly modifying the picture curve to reduce unwanted illumination from lightning, of adjoining areas. (But believe me, the pictures look equally good with that illumination) 

The first one was captured on June 11, 2010. This one struck right behind the Harneshwar tekdi and I captured it from my balcony. Since it was pitch dark, the camera couldn't focus well enough.
 

The second one was taken on September 28, 2010. This lightning was snapped over the trademark mountain near Talegaon, around which Indrayani meanders. This lightning seems to be a cloud­-cloud discharge. I captured this from my terrace.

 The third one was photographed on November 21, 2010. This one's similar to the second in location. However I got really lucky with (wonder of wonders!) three lightning strikes in the captured frame. I was literally jumping with joy and singing merrily for the rest of the day!
 

Here's some of the exif data for this image if anyone's interested.
Exposure Time: 13 sec.
ISO Speed Rating: 200
Flash Fired: Flash did not fire, compulsory flash mode.
Metering Mode: Center­Weighted Average
Exposure Program: Manual
Focal Length: 9.9 mm
 

One interesting capture in this above image is the region in the vicinity of the mountain surface and the tail of the rightmost lightning. The air in that region seems to have been blown away or vastly influenced by the lightning strike. I wonder what the effect actually is! (Maybe related to streamers...or...impact..or..anyway) Here's that zoomed part.
 

Lalit had written a very interesting and informative post on lightning and related observations in his blog some time ago. Here's the link for that article.

- Vindy :)

Pied Kingfisher

I heard a splash, a loud one; as if some big stone had been thrown into the calm river. I turned my head in that direction, expecting not the least what I saw next. Cutting through the rippling river arose a flapping bird, much to my amazement. 'Just a bird and such a loud splash!', I wondered. It flew up and sat down on a transmission line running overhead across the breadth of the river from one bank to the other. Evidently surprised, I saw it settle down on the wire and the next instant my mind exclaimed 'Kingy!' The beak and the body structure were unmistakable! I couldn't be wrong. It had to be a kingfisher! However, I had never before seen a kingfisher of this colour. Black and bright white! As vivid as it could get in just these two! It was a pied kingfisher.

Pied kingfishers are amazing hunters, unique in their ways. They hunt mainly for fish. They hover over waters, biding their time, before drawing their wings back and making an almost verticle, spectacular dash towards their underwater prey, packing all their might into it. They cut the layer, beak first, diving down into the water to pick the prey with lightning speed. The heavy plunge was what had created the splashing sound. This one, however, had missed its target. For the next 15-20 minutes the female pied kingfisher kept looking at the waters under with a steadfast gaze. It was so focussed that nothing around seemed to matter to the bird. I, in turn, kept looking at it. I was waiting with bated breath for the kingfisher to make another dive. All my hopes to witness the spectacle whimpered away when the kingfisher flew away without making another attempt. Perhaps, it thought it wise to find another more suitable place to strike its deadly dive. I wasn't very disappointed though. Atleast I had seen the bird. Hopefully, I would also see the dive some other time.


Here's a modest cropped image of the bird, that I would like to share.

Pied Kingfisher (Location: Indrayani river, near Talegaon)

 - Vindy

Bayas

Not far from my home is an open field...

where grass grows without any care, where a pond shivers under misty layers, where lotuses meditate on slender stalks, where damsels and dragons hover as if lost, where shrikes perch on the trees veined, where robins and kingies feel just like a friend, where lapwings walk in the waving meadow, where bayas weave for the want of love...

to linger, to wonder, in every little glace, where I lose myself to this rhythm and trance...

When your senses yeild to the nature, its every form may spawn poetry. Every stroke of the landscape and its elements and their various stimuli seem to convey art, an unspoken art that just sinks in and wets the inner being. I realize that I am breathing and with every breath I feel a wrap of contentment drawing upon me. I have had and keep having many such moments here, in Talegaon, when I have felt like inhaling, in a single sweep, all the good air that descends from over the mountains and carries a maddening scent of purity. I wonder if my words do any passable justice to the effect, but I shall settle for this shortcoming.  After all, there's a language beyond words and logic, that can only be felt!

Of the multitude of things that have endeared me at Talegaon, one has been the varied clan of the winged beings here. Over time, due to a constant barrage of an urban scenario, my mind had reached a concious conclusion, nay submission, that all birds could be broadly classified into two simple categories – the 'Crows' and the 'Non-Crows'. I was tempted, often, to make space for another one for the 'Sparrows'. But the innocent, almost apolegetic, expressions that they seem to carry, kept me from leaving them alone in a family of their own and instead made me club them with the others to make up the non-crows. The crows, of course, stood by themselves in lofty numbers to earn an exclusive family for themself. Such is the abundance of the black bird in the cities and the towns that after some time my faculties had become indolent to any other bird form. Not that I was very interested, and perhaps that's the real reason, but I had stopped noticing the other birds altogether. Then, in IISc, due to the campus there and some of my friends I realized that there is more to the bird family than I ever thought. And when I landed in Talegaon, I had all the time and a new grown interest to watch the birds. And so, I do. I see many, try to photograph a few and read about some of them.

In the open field that I mention in the opening lines, there used to be a noticeable flock of Baya Weavers. Last monsoon, when I first went there, I was fascinated by the place and especially the flock of the Bayas. Bayas are the expert weaving birds, weavers like no other! Inverted retort shaped nests made out of grass strings and straw hung down from the branches overlooking the calm pond beneath. I and Appaji marvelled at the expertise of weaving the nest and also at how wisely the location was selected. It was such that no predator could reach it easily. Over the next few days I gathered some interesting information about the habits of this bird. As it turns out, the male Bayas weave nests and the whole purpose, seemingly, is to earn a mate. A male Baya tries to build his nest so as to woo females, who are prospective mates. Half completed nests are completed only when a female selects them, turning them into chambers of love and safe havens for the offsprings. It was really interesting to read on the research that has gone into undertstanding the nest-building tradition and the sexual selection process in these birds. One belief is that the woven nests help the female to compare and select genetically superior males, improving the chances of superior inheritance for their progeny. Seems reasonable, but I couldn't fathom the connotations of this to a satisfactory level. An alternate proposal, that I came across in a doctoral dissertation by S. Quader, suggests that the location of nest and its subsequent safety play a prime role in selection matters. A nest that is stable and protected from strong winds and predators seems to be preferred by the female Baya, since it lends that much convenience to the raising of the offsprings. This felt pretty convincing to me. Besides, some of the tendencies of the Male nest-builder seem to indicate an effort in this direction. The nestling chambers have been observed to be plastered by mud in many cases. Perhaps this lends some strength and balance to the nest. Every male Baya starts building multiple nests to ensure a good chance of finding a mate. It completes only those that are accepted so that no unnecessary efforts are wasted. The male Baya, thus, may land around 2-5 mates at a time. The raising of the young ones is majorly done by the female. Once, the responsibilities are over, the female may opt for another progeny with a new selection of a nest and the associated male. The importance of the expertly woven nests is more than evident from this critical cycle of reproduction. What might, however, be equally interesting is the role played by a Baya outside its mating cycle. I guess, from the way the flocks evolve and move and locate themselves strategically, there has to be some structure or tradition in the flock that directs such efforts. While thinking about all this, that I had gathered, I could not help feeling that the interactions in a flock seem to suggest a more involved societal structure and habits in the Bayas. Or perhaps, they just know!

Some snaps:

The pond

The Weaver colony 

Baya Weaver (male)

The weaver nest

-Vindy

Che and More

Recently (actually a couple of months ago when I first drafted this post) I finished reading the book 'The Motorcycle Diaries' by Ernesto Che Guevara. At the outset, I must thank the Voices Team for having gifted me this wonderful book. Further, I am mighty grateful to my dear friend Suneel for having inspired me to go on and shed my inertia and finally start reading this book. The inertia of having started reading the book was as strong and one has to say, it is just simply too difficult to stop reading this book once you start it and even more so to stop thinking about it. It builds on you gradually, encroaching onto your senses, barging into your mind and soul, if I may say so; helping you to rejoice in the fluid narration of the author as also forcing you to think and ponder. This book, which blots the author's and his friend, Alberto Granado's trip across Latin America, is a pure delight as a reading experience across the pages, through the entire course of the journey.

Che easily succeeds to paint a world around you. This world is so real in description that you can't help thinking yourself to be a part of the journey. The words create images which you keep seeing through Che's eyes and narration. This, in spite of the fact that the civilization and the land that Che talks about are a complete stranger to your memory. The essence of the book is the human flavour that trickles through Che's description and which is essentially the common string between the hearts across oceans and ages. Some of Che's thoughts, as aptly noted by Suneel, strike you so hard, honest and real that you take a pause to ponder over them, even reading them again and again. I shall stop here about Che and his Motorcycle diaries and let the reader himself regale in the spirit of the book, if he may.

But I shall continue to muse on the various aspects of traveling that this book has so effectively accentuated as also convinced me more of my opinions about it. Traveling is all about learning and undoubtedly so. It is true, in fact, that your whole life is a learning process. But I see traveling as a glaring manifestation of this philosophy; a philosophy which is an eventuality anyway. It is a phase where the otherwise gradual learning path of life takes a sharp detour to the faster lanes of unforeseen, unexpected and novel experiences and realizations. Away from the dreary routine, it makes you shed your shell of comfort and familiarity. Your mind and senses become exceedingly receptive to the sudden inrush. Your instinct comes forth to help you adjust to various situations and challenges. In the process you learn a lot of things, some pleasant, some not so. I have always felt that the learning curve is steeper than the normal course and your interest seldom wanes, making things better and productive.

As I think more about this, it strikes me that traveling must be endemic to the human race, or is it? Within the realms of my limited knowledge about the rest of our mobile compatriots on this planet, I believe, none of them would bother traveling to distant habitats, even if similar and conducive, unless it comes as a rearguard action against a serious threat to their survival in the present environment. Migration of birds or seasonal movements of herds of animals would then qualify under this kind of survival measures. So, do the animals ever travel just because they would like to, as we do? I don't think so but I may be wrong. For an elephant in the forests of southern Western ghats, which doesn't understand our nomenclature of places, the forests of Bandipur, Mudumalai, Nagarhole and the likes would all be the same and may together be the entire world for it. Call it their frame of reference if you want to. Such an elephant might, one fine day, get bored of roaming around in the same subset of this entire stretch and therefore decide to travel around to explore more, say traveling from Mudumalai to Nagarhole just for the heck of it. So I seem to conclude that passing a statement as the first sentence of this paragraph could have the other animals scowling at me. It won't be fair for them and therefore I shall try to rephrase it. Let's just say, traveling is inherent to humans.

Or I might be wrong on the other point when I claim that humans travel just because they like to. They do so because they feel like they need to, I feel. Perhaps this behavioural pattern rampant amongst the humans has its seeds in their rather inquisitive mind; a mind which seeks answers, explanations, discoveries, revelations, experiences and some constant fodder for thought. Exploration of places is perhaps not just a hobby but much beyond that, having more forthcoming connotations and stronger roots than one's mind might garner. The rankling feeling of lacking in the knowledge of the various ways of nature and the urge to decode the underlying principles have always stimulated man's imagination and efforts. Since the earliest times, man has endeavoured to solve the equations of the universe and unravel the basis of his existence. While the mental endeavours have led to countless abstractions, deductions and theories, no efforts have been spared to usurp every part of the globe to scrutinize and understand more and more. Technology has now made knowledge gathering and sharing a trivial matter and we have long passed the age of expeditions for exploration as of the Columbuses and Marco Polos. However a virtual tour by the way of images, illustrations, descriptions and tales hardly gives a semblance of an experience and if at all it arouses even more curiosity to actually go visit the places and live the experience. And so, man travels and keeps doing so to constantly replenish his pot of experiences.

I am no explorer or a full-time traveler, but occasional opportunities always beckon. In whatever little I have traveled, I have always felt some contentment that is difficult to describe. As Che and Alberto have shown, traveling has a lot to offer to the traveler. It makes one realize the humbling vastness surrounding us in terms of space, time, people, creatures, cultures, problems, methods and the nature that nurtures all. To the beholder, it gives numerous gifts; gifts of ethereal moments, melting emotions, euphoric leaps of heart, sedate sanctity, peaceful passages, enlightening corridors of time and gratifying experiences which settle into our memory ever so pleasantly. On the other hand, traveling tests in various ways. One learns to adjust and accommodate as well as to struggle and fight against difficulties. It smothers our immature exuberance as also builds our will power. It teaches patience and strength through testing situations. It shows us and helps us appreciate the varied and myriad forms that life can take for different individuals. And it breeds a sense of tolerance towards the irregularities and inconsistencies that percolate through the various strata of life; be it an individual, or a society, or a civilization or an ecosystem. You rejoice and enjoy, but also think as you observe. In essence, you communicate and converse with your inner self, your soul and hence try to recognize yourself. The way you observe, feel and experience a place, its people and the other things helps you to know yourself as much as all these things. My friends, Onkar and Vishal, say this quote from the Talmud, 'We do not see the things as they are, we see the things as we are' and it is so correct!

Thus, embracing a place with its environment and to feel its textures, smell its soul and taste its essence is left to the ways of the traveler with no specified rules or ends. Besides, the lessons and the experiences are never forcibly peppered onto you. They just happen, like a flowing stream would gather silt. And you hardly realize the process due to its subtle ways and its fineness. What juts out pleasantly for us is the fine rejuvenation that results and leaves us with mellow memories that stay. For all the things that traveling gives us, it reserves the best for the last, I feel. It makes us realize what a heaven our own little home is for us and how much we love our own people and they love us!

- Vindy :)

The Cricket match

I have always been a dreamer and my most cherished dreams for a major part of my childhood and then into the teens revolved around cricket. This must be true in the case of millions of youngsters like me in this country, over the past two decades. I always dreamt of doing it for India. I would come to bat with more than half the side back into the pavilion and a couple of hundreds of runs required to win. With grit and tenacity, I would then start bailing my nation out of the troubled waters. I used to plan each and every session of the innings in my fantasy. Such fantasies amused me and entertained me to no end. Hours would be spent on formulating various possibilities and run patterns. I would pick up my partners and decide the partnerships I would have with them. The opposition used to be Pakistan in the initial years and then Australia replaced them when India-Australia rivalry surpassed the other. I would imagine Glen Mcgrath and Shane Warne at their deadly best, firing all deliveries in their repository trying to dislodge me. I would actually visualize myself playing them, enacting each and every shot. Then, I followed them up with a mimicry of commentary of the famous commentators like Henry Bofield, Ravi Shastri, Tony Grieg, Michael Holdings etc. Every match would reach a stage where a highly improbable equation would beckon during the closing stages and I would be faced with scoring around 36 runs in the final over. Then, every ball would be imagined, properly analyzed, a shot selected, enacted and the whole sequence executed with all the drama attached to it. An imaginary crowd would create the background din and whatever place I were standing in, would become my stadium. I must have taken India to victory a hundred times in this fashion and I cherished every time I did so. That fantasy brought so much joy and euphoria that I used to relive it again and again whenever I found myself alone and thinking cricket. I never considered my dreams to be impossible and I still fantasize about such feats once in a while. But now I know the bare reality and the fact that such a thing can only feed my imagination and never materialize. However, when I got a chance to play for my department in the ongoing cricket tournament, my enthusiasm touched the sky again. If not for India, I can do it at least for my department some day, I felt. Thus started a daily session of early morning practice on the ground.

It was difficult initially, with every muscle, ligament and sinew in my body complaining against the unprecedented out lash of straining exercise. It was doubly difficult to carry the additional weight I have gained over the past few months and I struggled to move. I improved slightly over the next few days and started feeling confident about running around and moving without apprehensions. Catching was the main worry due to my wobbling glasses which made it difficult for me to steady my gaze on the approaching ball. Anyway, I was geared up for some serious cricket now. After sitting out for the first two matches, one a knockout which we won and then a league match that we lost, I finally got a chance to represent my department in our second league match. It felt great. It was a do or die match for us and we didn't do too well and lost it. I chipped in with a few runs and did a little fielding. It was a disappointing first outing for me and the whole team felt down for having missed a chance of making it to semifinals. We still had our final league match where we had nothing to lose. I was in the playing eleven and the words of our captain at the start jolted me and perhaps all of us. He said, "This just might be the last competitive game of cricket for some of you. So just go out there and enjoy yourself." Yes, he was so right, this could be my last competitive match in IISc. I felt really overwhelmed by this realization and promised myself, to do my best.

We were batting first. The afternoon sun was high in the clear sky and it was pretty hot. But the heat hardly mattered. We were all in a very jubilant mood. In fact, fun was the only thing on our mind. So we decided to do all sorts of juggling with the batting line up. Our regular openers were given a rest and two others asked to open. The moment Shashi was asked to go and open by our captain, Lalit, he sent his hands high up and exulted gleefully. He picked up his bat, wielding, like a warrior would wield his sword, and set out towards the pitch even before the opposition fielders and the umpires had stepped onto the field. War cry was given and a sort of taandav nrutya done on the pitch by him. With the long locks (jataa) that he has, it looked even more impressive. We were all cheering amidst rollicking laughter. Naveen joined him as the other opener and the match finally started. All of us in the pavilion were in a vociferous mood. Every ball would be followed by uproarious comments and a plethora of distracting suggestions to the opposition bowlers and fielders, but all in the right spirit. We lost a couple of wickets before our captain steadied the ship as usual. Everybody else contributed in good measure and kept the scoreboard ticking along the innings. I went in to bat 5 down and was soon joined by Prasanna. We had the final 15 deliveries or so to bat. My first three deliveries were nice and full and I just drove them along the ground for three quick singles. The opposition captain, who was also the bowler then, patted me when I managed to do the same to him three times on a trot in spite of his minor field adjustments and length adjustments. The singles relaxed the nerves, so did the way Prasanna nudged around for a few more singles. Over the last few deliveries we ran like people possessed, converting ones into twos and twos into threes, sometimes helped by fielding lapses and overthrows. I was panting and gasping for breath, but had little time between deliveries to get some air back into my suffocating lungs. We called for an emergency drinks break in the final over, which anyway didn't help much, since I could not drink much. I was just simply gasping and going crazy. I missed two crucial deliveries, but connected the final one properly, which yielded two runs and took the score beyond 100. Our final total in 15 overs was 101/6. Good enough, we thought. I had made 15 desperate runs and managed to stay not out. I was mighty pleased with my effort and looked forward to fielding with the same vigour now. We knew we could make a match of it and were very determined to do so.

The second innings started. We knew only one way; the way of aggression, intensity, grudge, commitment and nerve-racking energy. The bowlers bent their back undaunted by the sapping heat and we fielders flung ourselves at whatever that came our way. We were enjoying every moment of it. The opposition lost a few wickets, four precisely, to some good bowling and nice catching. Then a partnership started building up. After the first five overs, I cast a glance at the scoreboard and realized that they required another 80 runs off the final 10 overs. Tough task, but definitely doable. Dust was rising up continuously from the agitated ground and settling on us. I was sweating under the sun and dusty all over. An accumulating screen of dust on my wet glasses made me clean it regularly. The lips were going dry and tasted salty on being licked. My throat was parched and running dry likewise. We were constantly encouraging each other and mindful of any complacency creeping in. But the opposition wasn't giving up easily and were gradually reaching a position of strength. Our captain provided the breakthrough with his final over. He called himself on to ball and sent down a cracker of a ball after being cut for a boundary. The furniture was disrupted and we all erupted. We had one serious problem to contend with now. Our over rate was lagging behind and we had to complete the last four overs in just 10 minutes, failing which 8 runs would be docked off our total. It was getting tense and very frantic. Requiring 30 of the final three overs, their opener, Naveen, who was still subsisting, slogged a boundary and pulled a six. He was undoing all our hard work and fighting hard. But we weren't ready to cave in. Arjun came on to ball the penultimate over with they still requiring 17 for a win. Bowling with a short run up, to save time, he was bowling an excellent, tidy over giving away 5 off the first 5 deliveries. His last delivery was crucial to keep the pressure up on them. He bowled, slightly outside the off stump, enticing the batsman to drive and deceiving him to induce an edge. Rigil, our wicketkeeper, stooped low to pick up a neat catch near his feet and we had got rid of a major obstacle. Naveen was gone. Prasanna was summoned to ball the final over. With 12 required of 6 balls, it could go any way. The first ball was fiercely pulled and Karthik misjudged the bounce, conceding a boundary.
8 required of 5 balls!
The batsman swung his bat at the next ball and missed it. 8 required of 4 balls!
The next ball was clubbed away to long on and the batsman scampered through for a double. 6 required of 3 balls!
The next delivery was bowled. Batsman danced down the wicket and lifted the ball high up in air. I was standing at a shortish mid-on position and made a dash for the catch towards the square leg umpire. It was the moment of trial for me. I had to judge it and catch it. My spectacles were wobbling, vision shaking with it and the ball rising endlessly. Then it started making a dash towards the ground and I was still running to get under it. I saw it coming down in a wavy trajectory and tried to adjust accordingly. But it was coming down fast and I was just barely under it. In a last ditch attempt, I swerved under the ball and tried to hold it as it hit me. The ball bounced on my unsteady palm and ricocheted in Tanmoy's direction behind the keeper. I had dropped it! I had dropped the most crucial catch. I felt disappointed and crushed. Worse even, the batsmen had managed to run two and the equation now changed to '4 required of 2 balls!'
I tried to regroup and was full of anger when I returned back to my position. It had been a good day in field for me. I had made a couple of good saves and no serious blunders. Then, I messed awfully in the dying stages. I felt bad, but even more determined to catch anything that came even slightly close to me now. The next ball again fetched them two and the match came down to the final ball.
1 ball to go 2 runs required!
My heart was pounding. I widened my eyes trying to not make even the slightest mistake now. Everyone was on their feet, everyone was backing each other. The opposition players were ready to flood the field with their fluttering flag at the stroke of victory and we were not ready to budge and give it away. We felt we would do it, we just so desperately wanted to win. Prasanna came running to bowl the last ball. The batsman tightened his grip on the bat and started coming down the wicket. Prasanna let go the delivery and we all strained hard to let go ourselves at the ball wherever it be hit. The batsman lifted his bat and swung wildly at the ball. The ball yorked him, he missed it, Rigil pouched it right above the stumps and in one fleeting movement brought the bails down in a flash. The batsman was stumped and stumped. We jumped in the air, exulting and our hearts surged even higher. Everybody ran amok, wildly charging the pitch where the bowler was already over the wicketkeeper, then hugged and congratulated each other. We were feeling ecstatic and as the feeling sunk in after a few minutes, contentment was writ on all our faces.

This is undoubtedly my best sporting experience in this institute. The next time I see a close game won by our team, I would know how it feels. The victory margin of 1 run was as close as we could get to giving away our victory and still managing to pull it back. I would always carry in my memory, those 15 runs, that diving stop, those wickets, that missed catch, that last ball and most importantly the wonderful spirit we carried all throughout the game, and look back with joy and satisfaction. Dreams are one thing, now I can say, I have lived the thriller!

-Vindy

:)

Onesky versus Twosky!

"20-5! "
The scoreline ringed in Twosky's ears. He had to make a comeback. He was determined. He looked at his whitened right hand and the whiter fingers, steady over the light buff striker. He raised his eyes to scan the wooden surface and the whites on it. "4 left", he said to himself. He fixed his gaze on a white midway across the board in the other half, concentrated for a few silent seconds and let go the striker over the powdered board. The striker went slightly astray and though the white piece slided on the wooden border, it could not make it perfectly to the pocket. "Chukk!", went Twosky and Onesky heaved a sigh of relief. It was his chance now. He had 7 blacks on the board. Although a 15 point lead was quite a luxury, he knew he could not relax. Twosky was as good as he was. Only a few shots missed by a whisker or a few just barely pocketed, separated the two. On another day, Onesky could have been leading 20-5. Besides, he was facing an uphill task in this board. He took a deep breath and eyed all his pieces. He realised that a few straight shots would take him on par with Twosky, if executed properly. He started without thinking much on the lines of 'what could happen if I hit that' stuff. One went in. So did the second. The third followed suit. Onesky felt relaxed. "Well done!", he said to himself. The next one was a fine cut-connection shot. He took a few seconds to relax his wrists and fingers and then placed the striker. The thumb banked it from one side, the other fingers bent slowly holding the striker ever so lightly, then again stretched out in slow motion, the index finger touched the thumb and the behind of the striker and a slight push sent it floating across the board to hit the piece exactly where it was intended to. One black connected another, which promptly dropped into the pocket without much ado. "Impeccable!", a smile let loose on Onesky's face. But he had not finished. He gulped the next two, the second one being the coveted Queen. "There's the cover. I must not miss this", he took a deep breath in again. The next shot was again played perfectly and the blacks' count had reduced from 7 to 1 in one turn. Onesky felt sorry for Twosky. He let go what he felt would be the final nail and almost had it. But..."Ohhh!", it was not over. Now Twosky was staring a defeat in the game. He had to pocket atleast three of the remaining four pieces to keep his hopes alive. He was looking grim, but focussed. Over the next three fleeting shots he brought the board down to one final shot and....missed it! Onesky easily pocketed his last piece and the scoreline changed.

It was 24-5 now.

It had been a well contested and a well matched game so far. Onesky and Twosky were matching each other for every good shot as well as the silly misses. The key was that both read each other's mind perfectly. Whenever Onesky conceived a shot, Twosky knew he had. The same was true when Twosky planned a shot. Onesky would know it. It was as if both had a grip of the entire board and tracking each other without a glitch. The straight shots were coming easily, so were most of the connections. Only the cuts were going awry at times and this was true for both. Every board had gone till the last piece barring one where Twosky had flunked badly and had four of his pieces languishing on the board when Onesky had pocketed the last. The Queen, however, had eluded Onesky and he had to make do with four points. The game had started at even stevens and had stayed so till 4-4. Even the next two boards had gone to the wire with only the last piece left unpocketed and the scoreline had dragged along from 4-4 to 4-5 and then to 8-5. It had been black's game till then with all the four boards going to black. Onesky broke the string and never looked back from there. 8 became 12, then 16, then 20 and now 24. Twosky wasn't getting frustrated, however. He just sought some more focus and luck. Onesky was to break next. It was the 9th board in the game so far.

Onesky decided to go for a reverse break. He let go a cracking break, but missed the target. The break wasn't impressive and the pieces hardly moved. Twosky wrested the initiative from there on and made life difficult for Onesky, till another spree of brilliance from Onesky brought the borad down to the last few pieces. Twosky could not lose now, if he wished to stretch the game further. A few double dues did not help either of the two and the board reduced to the last three blacks and whites, the Queen still alive and unconquered. Onesky got a straightforward shot in and then went for the Queen. He missed. Twosky capitalized. Twosky first won over the Queen with a deft shot for her cover and then went a step nearer to victory. Last black and two whites! Onesky weighed his options. "Should I block or go for the kill?" He opted the later, but failed. Twosky, this time, did not make a mistake and neatly glided his last black into the pocket. Finally! He had budged from 5 and moved on to 10. 24-10! Could this be the beginning of a comeback? Nobody wanted to comment. Both were determined to supersede the other, despite knowing that the other was equally skilled and definite in his mind. Despite this rivalry, none minded the victory of the other. Both knew and understood each other so well that there was never a thought of aversion in their mind. They respected, praised and rebuked each other in equal measure and without any inhibition. The chairs were creaking under the nervous feet movements and the soft white boric powder was all over the place. The bulb had been warming the board since about an hour and a half, bringing smoothness to it. The black wooden borders had all gone white at the bottom with powder heaped into the joints. Pieces were simply flying across, dropping straight down the pockets or grazing the borders till the pockets, taking a chunk of powder down with them. It was the tenth board and the game was still not over. "Everything's 'carromed' !", both felt.

"24-10 and Twosky to break!"

Twosky sent down a crashing front break and saw one white go in. He missed the next. Many blacks had squeezed out through the central maze, to the outside of the circle. Onesky saw his chance and pocketed quite a few. In the next few shots, Twosky faltered whereas Onesky did not wince a bit, following up one good shot with another. Before Twosky could realise, 8 blacks with the Queen had gone down the pockets across the board. The whites' count on board, six! Twosky knew that his game was up. There was no escape from defeat now. Onesky did not want to miss it now and concentrated on his last piece. It was a simple straight shot, but still had to be hit with pecision. So he did and the last black drifted into the far pocket.

Twosky had battled hard and Onesky had played with grace and tenacity.

Onesky won and Twosky lost. One smiled, so did the other...and as he walked out of the carrom room, Vinsky smiled! :)

-Vindy

(Lately I have been playing carrom alone and the account above is that of a game of carrom that I played between Onesky and Twosky. Obviously, I i.e Vinsky was both of them changing chairs for every turn. It is really a very interesting exercise to think about your game and then your opponent's, the next instant and still try to be competitive and serious about the whole thing. You, challenging yourself and enacting rivals! In the end, really, there's only one winner) :)

The Weekend Dash to Madikere

"Sir nimmage route gottaa? (Sir, do you know the route?)", asked the driver and the heavy sack I was loading into the dikkii of the car almost slipped off my hands. "What the hell! He doesn't know the route!", protested my mind to myself. "Illa! (No!)", I replied almost innocently and with a tinge of apprehension. It was already past 11pm and we were supposed to have left by now. But, instead, we were gaping at each other with no idea of how we would make it to Madikere before dawn. Raghavanna asked out of sheer amazement, "Haven't you been to Madikere before?" The driver shrugged helplessly, "Illa Sir! (No Sir!)" We weren't expecting this. After all, we had booked a personal car for our trip and therefore expected the travel agency to send a knowledgable driver to drive us. "Pichle baar Tircoiluur jaate samay bhi aise hi kiya tha in logon ne, Raghavanna..", I continued in a vein of protest. "Ab dekhte hain kaise jaaneka." Images of the Karnataka map started flashing in my mind. Madikere was somewhere to the west or southwest of Bengaluru, I felt. I knew one thing for sure. To reach Madikere we had to reach Mysore first and I knew the route to Mysore! Yes! So it was very easy! Or did I? Did I really know the route to Mysore perfectly? I wasn't sure. 'We should start on the Tumkur road and then take some diversion somewhere. That's how we have been going to Mysore all this time', I tried to tell myself. Besides, the driver must be knowing that route easily, I felt. However, he had already taken the first turn wrong. I wondered what was going on. Perhaps the driver knew a better and an easier route to Mysore, I tried to reason out unconvincingly. Before I could come to terms with whatever that was going on, the driver said, "Sir, nanage Mysore varegu haadi helbidi. Allindaa Madikere hogbahudu (Sir, just tell me the way till Mysore. We can go to Madikere from there)." Haa! So he didn't even know the route to Mysore! Raghavanna and Vahini looked at me, perhaps expecting me to answer in affirmative. "Nanage perfectly gottilla, aadre naavu Tumkur road myaale hogbekagittu (I am not sure, but we should have gone ahead on the Tumkur road)", I said in a rather concerned tone. The driver had headed for the Mekhri Circle instead. "Illa Sir, illinda ne hogbeku..aadre perfectly yelle aadu gotilla..neevu Mysore route asht helbitre naane mund hogtene (No Sir. I am sure we should be going this way. However, I don't know the perfect route. If you just tell me the route to Mysore, I shall do the rest)", the driver stressed. I was getting confused and frustrated both. Raghavanna and Vahini saw the confusion and asked the car to be halted immediately. The next moment we were doing something I hadn't thought about even the wildest of my dreams. We were at the Mekhri Circle signal, temporarily parked at the side, with the dikkii open and digging into a crude map of Bengaluru behind one of my diaries that we had luckily carried along. Well, that's what I thought initially, that we were lucky to have carried along the map. However, as luck would have it, it hardly turned out to be useful and only added to the confusion. A few trespassers were asked and I called one of my friends to know the route. He was just quipping a turn when I saw our driver missing it. I interjected almost impulsively and the driver brought the car to a jolted halt. "Hindind turn! (The turn that we just passed!)", I said, almost running out of my breath. The driver nodded, reversed the car and we were finally running on the Tumkur road. There were a couple of more confusions before we were sure to be on our way to Mysore. We felt relieved.

But the relief was short lived. Before we could gather any sort of momentum, we were struck in a traffic jam. I could not believe it. It was already past midnight and I did not expect a traffic jam on such a fluid highway at this hour. Suddenly, all the blankets, sweaters, jackets and shawls that we had covered ourselves with to keep away the dreaded cold, started irritating us. The dense vehicular population made the cold night turn a sultry, smoky affair on the highway. All our excitement about going on a dash-trip seemed to have whimpered away with all the happenings of the night so far. But, as it turned out, this was just the beginning! It took beyond half an hour for the traffic to clear and we again heaved a sigh of relief.

As we hit the wide, clear highway and picked up speed, cutting through the chilling night wind, a relaxed feeling drew upon us and we started chit-chatting. Rakshita had long gone to sleep while Sakshi was half-asleep. I and Raghavanna did most of the talking while Vahini joined in every now and then. That weekend was a time to destress myself after the design review of my project got over. Raghavanna, Vahini and Sakshi-Rakshita had come over to IISc and I was feeling very jubilant about spending the weekend with them. We were contemplating a one-day trip to Mysore and then to spend the rest of the time in and around the campus. They had arrived even when I was frenetically preparing for my review and I just did the formalities; like receiving them, showing them my room, handing over its keys and leading them to the mess for lunch; before rushing off to my department. When I returned back, Raghavanna asked,"Agla do din kya kaam hai tujhe?" I asked,"Kyun? Kya hua?" He asked,"Madikeri aayega kya?" And so, there we were, heading to one of my favourite places. The environment was relaxed, company was lovely and destination beautiful. We had hired this Indica for our trip.

We were moving steadily on the breezing highway when we heard, "Aaj raat Mysore mein hi rukte hain kya?" This was Raghavanna's voice. I and Vahini waited for him to elaborate. He justified by raising concerns about our driver's health. He wasn't looking very fine. He was running a cold and cough and seemed very tired. The driver said he had directly come, from his day-long work in a call centre, to drive us. We weren't really impressed and were facing a prospect of modifying the initial plan. Sleep was, anyway, hard to get by and even the constant drone of the highway drive wasn't helping. Nobody wasn't talking much now. Raghavanna played a couple of nice songs on his mobile just to shake off the status quo and to help the driver stay awake. A few towns passed by and we were nearing Mysore. And then again, fate struck! Our headlights blew off!

'What the hell!', I screamed to myself. It was around 2am, I guess, and we were another three quarters of an hour away from Mysore. The driver tried to fix the problem without any success. In fact, he could not make out what the problem was for sure. Our car was left with only parking headlights which blink without much focus and, hence, hardly serve as any navigation aid. We started anyway and had to go very slowly. The best way to drive in those circumstances was to latch onto one of the passing vehicles and then keep following it closely. Some risk apart, this was turning out to be very interesting. All three of us were up and awake with wide open eyes trying to see every bit of the road ahead and also the vehicles nearing us. Desperate instructions to the driver followed our observations and we were even chuckling at the whole affair. Then, finally, we found our car! I mean the one we felt was best suited to keep following. This car, actually a Sumo, ahead of us, did not have a working back headlight. So we argued that if we stayed behind this car then our back headlights would solve their problem and their front headlights ours. So we did! We kept following that car and luckily, that car didn't try to overrun us. After around half an hour of this chase game, the car ahead stopped at the roadside. So did we, just behind them. Our driver went over and spoke to the driver of that Sumo regarding our problem, whereas, I got down to talk with the travellers in it. To my astonishment, they were my seniors from my institute, IISc, who were going to Madikere to enjoy the weekend just like us; talk about coincidences. Both the drivers then got down to spotting and fixing the problem which they did after much effort. The other driver gave us a spare headlight and replaced the faulty one with it. He further directed us on a shorter road adrift of the highway, leading us to Madikere. We were sincerely grateful for his timely help. The rest of the night, till dawn, was spent in watching our driver drive with only one headlight on and managing some sleep in between those watchful sessions. It was fun! At around 4:30-5 we stopped for a rather early morning cup of tea. It was cold, I mean the weather outside and not the tea. As we neared the dawn and Madikere, the narrow serpentine road started throwing new challenges for the driver. Going up (or down) these roads spiralling around the hills is a wonderful adventure in itself. Moreover, the maddening scent of the spices renting the air, which is so typical of Kodagu, makes it a lovely experience. This scent drives you crazy, as we had experienced the last time around and again this time. The driver was driving us crazy too. He surely wasn't one of the 'monk drivers', who respect the various myriads of the hilly terrain roads and take a cautious stance. Instead, he was cutting through the turns and racing across the narrow turf of grey, as if somebody had thrown down the gauntlet to him. One could not help marvelling at his control though. He was quite an expert at it. For this reason, atleast, we felt, we had the right driver with us.

It was still dark when we reached Madikere. I was supposed to guide through all the places in Madikere since I had been here once. But that was around 18 months ago and it took time for me to recollect all the turns and landmarks. I almost missed the turns on quite a few occasions forcing our driver to take a U-turn every time that happened. We had to make arrangements for our stay and were sceptical about getting a room due to the weekend rush. We approached a tours and travels agent, whom I instantly recognised from our previous trip. He was the one who had given us all the information about the places in and around Madikere and promised to make good travel arrangements for us at a fair deal. We had other ideas, however, and had ditched him for our own private Tavera. His information and the travel brochure had proved helpful, nevertheless. I saw, his brochure hadn't changed a bit. Even the spelling mistakes had survived the 18 months and they would, perhaps, continue to do so. The agent's office was so heavily and colourfully decorated with hundreds of things that it was crossing the levels of exaggeration. As Raghavanna pointed out later, the agent seemed to be practicing some sort of cult science, what with all those animal busts decorating the walls, weird wooden and metal artefacts placed throughout the room and incense sticks burning their scent all over the place. Anyway, the agent could not help us much. All the hotels in Madikere and even nearby places were full. After much roaming around we managed to convince the receptionist at one of the hotels to give us a room for 2-3 hours to freshen up.

At around 9, after having our breakfast, we were ready for our day long trip around Madikere. We first visited Bhagamandala, then Talacauvery from there. Bhagamandala is the place of confluence of three rivers namely Cauvery, Kanika and the mythical underground Sujyoti. It also has a nice, old, Kerala style Bhagandeshwara temple supposedly built by the Cholas before the 11th century. Talacauvery is the place of origin of the Cauvery river. The river originates from a sacred Kund, a square tank. The kund is said to experience a sudden rise or surge of water on an auspicious day, once a year. There are shrines of deities and an adjoining hill, Brahmagiri. One can climb up the steps to the top of this hill and enjoy a lovely view of the surrounding mountains and valleys. Then we visited the Raja's Seat which is nestled right in the mid of the Madikere town. It's a beautiful garden providing a breathtaking view across the valley. Our next stop was at the splendid Abbey falls. We then visited Cauvery Nisargadhaama. It is a beautiful tiny island surrounded by river Cauvery and connected to mainland by a hanging bridge. This spot provides elephant safaris, tree-top shelters, pedal boat trips and has rabbits, deer parks. Sakshi and Rakshita thoroughly enjoyed themselves here. Our final stop for the day was at the magnificent Golden Temple, a Buddhist monastery, with its three huge gold plated idols and other priceless pieces of art.

Madikere, this time around, looked completely different from our last visit. Then, we had visited in June, just as the monsoon had started. It was a picture of millions of fresh, wet greens then, whereas now, in the winter, it wore hues of yellow, orange and red apart from the fading green. The terrain had turned from dark brown of wet mud to its faded dry version. The mist was missing in its intensity and heaviness, but was still as fresh and alluring. From the vivid and enchanting seductress of the monsoon, Madikere seemed to have assumed a serene, saintly form in the winter. The weather had a relaxed feel to it, the sun shone steady and warm providing respite from the cold, skies were clearer and richer in shades of blue and the air was sedate and pleasant. A few branches, bereft of their leaves, now peeped through the reddening mesh of dry leaves. Even a slight breeze dislodged these leaves, bringing them down in a floating motion and adding to the accumulating carpet of foliage. Looking across the valley presented a calm view of the landscape draped by trees wearing yellowish, orangish, reddish, brownish leaves or baring their branches. The mountain ranges in layers were distinctly visible in receding shades of bluish grey, markedly so at Talacauvery. Golden meadows, windmills, shapely farmlands, randomly deformed fencelines and the fluid stroke of the landscape accentuated the beauty of the scenery and made for a wonderful composition. With no clouds blotting it, the sky was at its glorious best and provided for a perfect backdrop. I direly missed a camera to capture those immensely beautiful scenes. But our eyes were quenched beyond any expectations really. The Abbey falls carried a steady stream unlike the wild cascade of the monsoon. The crystalline water shone bright, especially the liquid splinters bouncing off the rocks and drinking sunlight in plenty. The daunting look under the grey skies of monsoon had been replaced by a friendlier, brighter one under the pleasant sunny sky. Nisargadhaama was enjoyable and The Golden Temple as amazing and awe-inspiring as the last time. The whole atmosphere appeared simpler, peaceful and extremely soothing. I could not help falling in love with Madikere again.

While returning from Madikere we also visited the zoological park in Mysore and the bird sanctuary at Ranganathittu. The kids were especially pleased and excited to see various animals and colourful birds.

Apart from the nature, we really enjoyed each other's company. Relaxed discussions, content smiles and hearty laughter were the day's order. I messed with the directions on quite a few occasions, realizing late the correct turn and hence forcing our driver to take a U-turn every now and then. The driver was also the culprit at times. The U-turns became so frequent that we decided to call our trip 'the U-turn trip'. We returned on the 25th evening, back to the cosy confines of my institute. After a long time I felt that the weekend was well spent and aptly enjoyed. Madikere enchanted us all and left us content and happy. I, for once, fulfilled my dream of visiting this Eden during my stay in IISc and am looking forward to many more visits to this beautiful haven.

-Vindy