Nanju's bete noire

On this day a couple of years ago, when I met Ananda, my friend and occasional philosopher-cum-guide, he was all excited. ‘Sir, you remember Nanjundappa?’ he asked.

‘Yes, I remember him,’I said; he has worked occasionally at Random Rubble and is one of those silent sorts with wide open sparsely populated spaces between his ears.

‘Sir, a leopard bit him!’ he said and sat back with satisfaction at seeing the shock on my face.
It turns out that on an earlier day, the leopard had picked up one of Nanjundappa’s lambs and returned this day for another. The man heard the commotion in the pen, rushed out and charged at the leopard. In the ensuing melee, the leopard dropped a lamb and bit Nanju on his palm and then bolted away.

It was a nasty bite, deep and bloody. Now, the thing you expect to read next is that Nanju was rushed to the hospital but then he, as with many others in Doddi, his hamlet, has never visited one in his life and wasn’t about to grace the premises of an Emergency ward with his Divine Presence now and the only thing more daunting than a leopard that bites is a doctor who injects (old jungle saying). So he tore out some old cloth and wrapped it around a heavily bleeding palm and then wondered how he’d manage the excruciating pain.
And then an idea struck him.

So Nanju and his friend then headed out to the local bar about four km away and tucked in a robust round of pegs of potent intestine-churning stuff like PowerBolt, Napolean 65 and BigBang 10000, which meant that in about half an hour, he was pain-free, sozzled to his gills, seeing two bottles where there were none and leopards behind the grill on the counter. He was, to use Ananda’s immortal words, ‘Full tightu, saar.’

Which is the condition in which Ananda and a couple of forest guards, who had been informed, found him. They took a most reluctant Nanju in the jeep to a clinic but the doctor – quite rightly – refused to inject a pain-killer into a guy who was seeing two leopards where one doctor stood, and asked them to go to the Government hospital. At which point, Nanju did what these strong, silent types do when they are plastered to their pinkies: he gave everyone present and voting a piece of his mind - that tiny piece that was still left inside the cranium. In most colourful language, he cast grave doubts on everyone’s ancestry and their parents’ marital status, and continued the performance in the hospital until the effects of PowerBolt + Nap 65 + BB 10000 had worn off.

All in all, he lost about two litres of blood (after we deduct the sales tax in the narration). He was then sent back to Doddi and was taken everyday for an injection and told that, if he so much as breathed BigBang 10000 in, he would be locked up in hospital with a leopard or two for company and, if leopards couldn’t be found, doctors - the kind who carry sutures and thread and sing praises of the devil - would substitute.

I met him the other day in front of his ragi field; the stalks were tall and handsome and richly productive and he proudly told me that he guarded it all night from the machan on top of a nearby tree from elephants and wild boar and the odd nocturnal writer, the keen scrutiny no doubt aided by a generous helping of Napolean 65.

His hand has healed well and the leopard, having learnt that you do not mess with some, has moved to greener pastures (which, you will - one hopes - understand, is an idiom and not a suggestion of a cathartic change in diet).

Now, if this story does not have the happy ending you often dream for, which one does?

No Blues This Morning Please

If the first day of a year is an indication of what the roll out would be, then it is birds for sure.

It was silent enough on new year's night at Random Rubble to hear a lizard drop (with a soft splat, if you need to know the details) and I woke up to the new year to the lovely musical notes of the puff throated babbler, described in the bird app as a 'melodic warble' which makes me want to rename it the warbler babbler and have the rest of civilized society after my blood ("Warbler babbler" ends in birder murder - ToI). 

I just love this sketch....(not mine though)

The puff throated babbler is a lovely bird too, and keeping it company with nervous energy is the lovelier fan-tailed flycatcher (now called the spot-breasted fantail and soon to be called something else by someone who was denied second prize in Moral Science). As I clamber outside to take a look, it hops on the branch first this way, then that, with frenetic urgency, never still for a second, which, of course, reminds me of a lot of some people I know……The fantail unfolds with a flourish often and then folds up in an instant.  In a moment of heightened joblessness, I once tried counting this to tabulate the per-minute frequency and realised that life could be better utilized in washing dishes. 

The bird-life gets into top gear when, to my astonishment, two blue-bearded bee eaters show up on the low branch of the tree by the building.  Even as I move in slow motion towards my camera, one of them perches on the tip of the roof and, half upside-down, inserts its long, curved beak into a tiny cavity.  What on earth is going on here? This is a bird that is a recluse-and-a-half and generally in the higher canopy, with a low opinion of Civil Society below.  As I get closer, inch by inch, to see more, both of them get wind of the human in the vicinity and are gone.  The mystery reveals itself: the buzz of a hundred stingless bees that hover around the cavity tells the tale of a morning attempt at breakfast, some unhappy (and some dead and digested) bees and a human who will write a blogpost on the outcome.  If you haven’t seen this utterly gorgeous bird, do see the lovely image in this excellent article on the bee eaters of India: https://www.natureinfocus.in/animals/the-bee-eaters-of-india.

And then, later in the morning, as I watch the regulars – a drongo, bulbuls, sunbirds, a white-eye, a tailor bird - a movement in the lime trees and the blue-faced malkoha surfaces.  Now, I will happily endorse a name change (and protest till I am blue, but not quite in Malkoha league).  It finds something green – a grasshopper, me thinks – and makes a quick meal, which answers the second question this morning: why would a malkoha hang out in a thorny inhospitable lime bush?  

A movement above gets my attention: it’s a grey hornbill, with that occasional wing-beat and talkative cackle flying past.  This one, and its mate, generally hangs around Random Rubble, perched high up on a  tree, often hidden in the canopy but cackling away to deliberately stress out budding photographers on the ground.  Yes, I have a bone to pick with the Grey (and the idiom could not have been more inappropriate). 

Later in the day, an Oriental Honey Buzzard flies overhead and by then I have seen the shikra and black-winged kite, so we are housefull on raptors.

But then there is always space in the sky……