Shell Shocked

 In early August this year, a deep pond was dug in one corner - the lowest end - of Random Rubble to harvest rainwater.  Sure enough, despite the sparse rains, we had it filling up a bit and, in mid-November, I fetched up as usual at the pond and took a look.  

There was little water left, a few inches of it, yet resting comfortably in a corner on wet mud was a lovely large Indian Pond Turtle (also called the Indian Black Turtle, I am told) with a couple of tiny turtles in the water.  Mother and babies, if you’d like to be mushy and sentimental perhaps?  Not having a particularly vibrant, rocking social calendar at that moment, I sat down by the pond to watch this regal lady.  

Now, if you are the kind who gets your adrenaline fix from watching the Grand Prix or the death overs of T20 or the Indian Kabaddi League, I would recommend giving watching Indian Pond Turtles a miss.  Nothing happens.  Ever.  Like me, they don’t have a busy social calendar, in fact, they probably have no calendar at all (and I have done a Google search to make sure and asked Quora, "Do turtles party?”). 

This lady had figured out my presence, so she was as still as a pole’s shadow.  Yet, a quarter of an hour later, when she thought that I had left, she poked her dainty head out, lifted herself - carapace and all - moved a few steps and then plonked again and I thought I heard a satisfied sigh.  

Ammumma and Princey - two lazy people

All of which, of course, reminded me of my delightful Ammumma or grandmother, whose maiden - if that is an appropriate term for grandmoms - name was Madhavikutty (and after whom I named a stern smooth-coated matriarch otter).   Ammumma - niceties be damned - was the fattest person I had ever seen while growing up, beyond all competition where undiluted, sedimented, comfortably ensconced fat was concerned, exactly as grandmoms are meant to be.  I made fun of her often and she would shake with laughter, the tyres around her tummy rolling over in undisguised bliss, as she removed her specs and wiped off the tears (which may also have been shed for having a distant role in producing this aberrant grandson). She had keen native intelligence too, which, when added to her girth, made her, shall we say, a rounded personality.

(as an aside, grey matter in Malayalam, is oddly termed ‘tala-chor’ or rice in the head, largely because no one asked my opinion)  

What Ammumma hated was any form of exercise, which, she believed, was a deeply suspicious conspiracy to ruin an otherwise normal day.  If pestered, she’d waddle three and a half steps from one chair to the next and collapse into it with a satisfied sigh of having achieved a day’s arduous workout and stay there till Kingdom came over for coffee.  

All of which is why I thought of her now.  

It would be good, I decided, to take a photo of Turtle Lady, so I took a brisk walk to the kitchen where I had left the mobile.  When I returned, three minutes later, well….the Lady had vanished.  Gone.

Now, I was brought up on Holmes, Hercule and Hitchcock, so I searched all over, missing no detail however slight, but the Lady had bolted (which is hardly a word we use in conjunction with turtles). Someone once said - in another unsavoury context - If you gotta go, you gotta go.  And she had taken him at his word.  

Ammumma would have strongly disapproved.  But then, grandmothers aren’t turtles.  

Even fat ones….

I saw this guy on an earlier occasion