Sept 22nd 2022

Random Rubble

 

It is a lovely clear morning and the rains have taken a welcome break in the last fortnight.  The stand of grass across the farm is over four feet tall after a vigorous monsoon and we – a team of four – move about cautiously, clearing up a couple of paths and uprooting invasive weeds.  Seenappa takes a step sideways and yelps in surprise as, in a flash, a hare darts out of a clump of grass and dashes into the undergrowth behind him.    We wait motionless for another to make its move, for they often move in teams, but there is stillness.

My day is made.

 

I have said this before: the Indian Hare (the South Indian sub-species is the Black Naped Hare, but you can leave these details for the specialists) is an unusual, astonishing product of evolution, with extraordinary power in its very long hind legs. Watching them bounce-and-sprint is sheer delight: they are Usain Bolts On Energy Bars and they change directions in sharp and unpredictable ways (which reminds me of the Centre’s trade policy, but let’s not get carried away), twisting and turning their way out of trouble - of which there is no paucity - with a speed that can leave you breathless and overawed. They are, in a phrase, Nature’s great dashers.  If otters are mesmerizing to watch, hares are equally so. 

And they are as beautiful!  Their bunnies, ah! they are unforgettably cute and endearing too; I have seen them just once as they bounded away, bundles of bouncy fur and nervous energy.

Photo by Nagesh Rao

They seem to love this time of the year at the farm as much as I do and I understand this is the breeding season; they make their cave-like creations - multiple ones - in this case using the lantana that had been cut at the farm in mid-Oct 2020.  A pair hung around and helped themselves to some ragi stems, depositing the nibbled grass neatly to one side and prodigious quantities of droppings – again, neatly - on the other. I can, in my mind’s eye, see them nibbing rapidly away, with the male standing up and sniffing nervously ever so often and looking around all the time, with his long, narrow, upright ears twitching like vibrant antennae.

 

Nature built them for speed but if they need protection against anyone, it is us, for hares are hunted in the ghastliest ways, with snares and packs of trained dogs and Heaven knows what else.  Perhaps in response, they have become ever more elusive and nocturnal. 

For now, my hares are safe and I know they will be around but it’s unlikely I’ll see them much. Because big boys, you see, play at night. Others write on Facebook.

Today is World Rabbit Day and, of course, a note is in order, though you don't find them in the wild in India.

My introduction to rabbits was through, well, Enid Blyton; I grew up (now, did I ever?) on her stories of Brer Rabbit, and that old red hardbound book, thumbed dozens of times by a dreamy kid and his patient mum, has pride of place in the bookshelf in the study.

I even had a rabbit given to me as a birthday gift as a result – he was a beautiful white, with shiny pink tender eyes – but, I must say, he was boring as hell and not anything as smart as Brer Rabbit was and he didn’t smell that good (you can’t eat cabbage leaves all day and smell of roses – old jungle saying), so I sort of lost interest until he went missing one day from his cage by the veggie garden.

And when in my teens, I read an eerie story called ‘The Rabbit’s Paw’ (read it at your peril), but it only enhanced my fascination for the family of Lagomorphs to which hares, rabbits and that other marvellous chap, the pika, belong (once shared a lodging with a pika at Bedni Bugyal up in the hills in Uttarakhand and he loved my food, a matter on which he and I had a serious disagreement).

And you should know that rabbits were used in cosmetic testing for years: with their heads held tightly in brackets, for example, drops of shampoo were put into their eyes that must have been terrifyingly painful, setting new standards in needless cruelty. Beginning in the 1980s, a no-testing-on-animals movement began and some, including the passionately heretical Anita Roddick of The Body Shop - a hero of mine -, gave it strength. Better still, it became a marketing weapon and (hopefully) the cosmetic folks walk their talk today, so things have changed for the better overall (so be an optimist. If you are wondering who that is, an optimist is one who expects all the crayons to be in the box).

So, for rabbits at least, the world is probably a better place today.  And that is more than we can say for most others.

Gowramma, the lake Goddess, there's a fly in the pakoda and why the Chinese have a stake in an annual festival

Today is the habba, the festival, and the temple, a pleasant drive away from the farm, is teeming with people: a group of women singing in a corner, families with offering, decked in their finest dresses and a surprising stack up of cars that bear testimony to the increased prices of land. The air is festive, chaotic and happily loud. 

A month ago, as is done every year here, some clay was dug out of the lake bed a short distance from the temple, and fashioned into the Goddess' petite figure, decked with her cloth and jewellery. Today, the Form will go back into the lake; the adornments stored for next year. 

The lake is sacred and conserved; the rule of religious conservation belief reigns as it does in so much of India. 

Children pay little attention to all of this. They, and the Chinese who make the cheap, disposable toys sold here, have a stake in these stalls, except for the ones that serve food. The ones with the stake there are adults with a touching belief in their iron constitutions. And, yes, flies have a stake too and are having a time of their (short) life  (though I don't want to put you off your meal). 

A fly and a flea in a flu
Were stuck.  So what could they do?
Said the flea, Let us fly
Said the fly, Let us flee
So, they flew through a flaw in the flu

I seem to be the only one thinking of the plastic waste that will pile up after today, but wishes aren't horses.....
Change will come one day. But may the festival of  Gowramma - her creation and immersion - never change.

Rain, Rain, Horn OK Please

The reason we Bangaloreans get all excited when the city floods after a rain is that we need something to complain about other than the traffic, which gets terribly (yawn) borrrring after a while.  

“Do you know how long it took me to do the 5 km to Brigade Gateway?”

“Ok, if took you less than 2 hours, buy us the bisi bele bath and one by six coffee. Ask for extra kara boondi.”

…and so on.  After all, we are only human (even though it does seem otherwise if you listen to conversations on food as above).

In these last few days, the neighbourhood Whatsapp group – of which I am now a Distinguished Alumni, but still receive messages – has everyone’s personal account of the trauma they faced the last night, with video, photos, Income Tax Refund details and annual expenditure on dog food.  Needless to add, everyone is deeply touched by everyone else’s plight, before adding: “Suresh, this is nothing.  My basement……”

Everyone is of the view – and this is synchronous, unanimous, unambiguous and uninterruptedly emotional – that someone should do something.  Now, you should know that the city once had a municipal council.  This council had a bunch of elected folks and if you put their photos into a box and took eleven of them out, you would have a Wanted poster for the nearest cop station, no questions asked (those photos also raised serious doubts on the rest of our population – the Are They Homo Sapiens? Question – but I shall not digress).  The Municipal Council was dissolved (no, not in the rain, dumbo) and since then, We Have No One (well, Jesus saves, of course, but in a slightly larger context, if you see what I mean), the thought of which makes most Bangaloreans burst into tears which, you will agree, doesn’t do much for the flood situation.

The road in front of my home – calling it a road is a touching gesture on my part – was under a foot of water this morning and there were seven people standing in the water looking important (the people, not the water.  These details matter.)  Most of them were on their phones.  (Now, now.  Don’t take this literally.  They weren’t ON the phones, which would mean that the phones were IN the water, which, even the Unicorniest of Bangaloreans – the chap who runs Cred, for example – wouldn’t do).  I gathered by listening in – a most healthy and biologically nourishing activity with your morning tea - that all of them were telling others how bad it all was and, presumably, they were standing in the middle of the road, sixteen inches in the dirtiest water I have seen since my school’s sambar, to ensure accurate measurement.  

ps: just fyi - this need for accurate-measurement-with-adjusht-maadi is another Bangalorean auto immune disease that makes us sometimes seem not so human. 

It's been sunny all day today and everyone’s deeply disappointed and returned to complaining about traffic: apparently, someone on Outer Ring Road (now called Under Ring Road) has parked his boat in such a way that it is obstructing all boats and that one fishing vessel that has come up this morning from Mangalore.