Alvida once more....

When I reached Random Rubble on the evening of Feb 21^st, about a fortnight after I had last been here, I knew that Winter was leaving shortly: the evening was warmer than it had been and the canopy, that had begun its Great Annual Shedding of Leaves three weeks ago, was partly bare and open.  

Winter is one for leaving quietly: she picks her moments well and I have learnt, with experience, to anticipate her departure. There were moments in those early years when I would think of the many months to come before her return, weeks of stifling heat and evening showers, of two fickle monsoons and flooding, of squelching tyres and a sliding car as it worked the last lap, months of waiting….Today, I enjoy the days of every season, which is probably a testament to the self-help reading that each of us is assaulted with.     

Siddharth, a friend with a passion for wetlands and their conservation, had turned up and was waiting for me, for we had planned a birding trip to the Big Lake of the Mother-of-the-Forest the next morning (and that went reasonably well).  We sat under the stars after dinner and spoke of viruses, birds, science and venture capital and, about a quarter of an hour after I had gone to my room, getting ready to hit the sack, the howls of a pack of jackals filled the silent night.  It has been some years since I have heard them – far too long – but this is, to use a rather atypical phrase, such a February thing, for my notes seem to suggest rendezvous around Valentine’s (they have much in common with otters, which is a reason for my affection).  A minute or two later, the calls went silent and the village mongrels began their reply, one that was far too persistent, me thinks.

I know Winter is leaving when the palash and silk cotton flowers begin to bloom and the noisy rosy starlings busy themselves up in the tree, darting from one flower to another with an urgency that makes them seem like behind-schedule postmen checking post boxes in those days of yore.  

Stand below and a light shower of falling wine-red silk cotton flowers – gorgeously designed, shaped and coloured by evolution -  is destined to bless you (if Nature’s blessing is what you seek.  If you seek photographs of starlings, a sore neck will bless you as well).  And, just as Winter does, these starlings will leave when their time here is done, which is about as philosophical as we can get in natural history. 

When she, Winter, did leave two nights later, she left behind an enveloping mist that rolled in late – around 7 in the morning -  delivering you softly into the lap of Spring.  The morning mist, with its fragrance that suggests poetry and tea and langour, is what she leaves behind, much like a handkerchief with a delicate perfume that a girl would tuck into a boy’s palm.  So, it must be felt, savoured, inhaled, absorbed.  A cup of orthodox organic tea (preferably one in each hand) is strongly recommended.

And when the mist lifts, with the sun up in the sky and the portents of a warm day, the fragrance of mist recedes into transient memory.  I have learnt to live the moment in memory too - some call it nostalgia - with the expectation that the mist will roll in early on the morrow.  That the day after this day will be as today is in some way.  

Which, if you think about it, is a slice of some philosophy too.

The sunsets of Spring

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Day Time

Ok, I don’t know about party poopers and negative people who will read this post, but I have recently become a huge fan of Galgotia, whoever he is, and of his parents who did the initial hard work that popped out one fine day as Baby Galgotia.  Apparently, he was in a typical utterly boring business when someone asked him if he had ever been in Univ.  So, he set up a Univ, having misunderstood the question.  This is more than I can say for you, so let’s give him some respect and treat him as 67% human (for now).

Then he recruited some unsuspecting passers-by and trespassers as faculty and got it all going. Some years later, there was a silly hype on something called Artificial Intelligence which his students badly needed because, if they had non-artificial intelligence, they would have preferred to become toll gate operators in the Atacama Desert to his stellar university. So, Baby Galgotia (who had, in the meantime, grown up despite Societal pressure to have him extradited to the Cayman Islands in a rubber dinghy) set up the Centre for Artificial Intelligence, with himself as the Centre, some batata pav and samosas, and a dog from China as his sidekick that was not a dog but a robot that looked like a dog and fooled everyone into thinking it was a dog because it did to Galgotia’s car tyres what dogs do when they see car tyres.

Then there was some conference in Delhi on this (no, the conference was not on what dogs do when they see car tyres), so he signed up the dog which had an IQ greater than all those trespassers-who-are-now-faculty combined. To keep a close watch on the dog, he sent the trespassers, sorry, the faculty and to keep a watch on the trespassers, sorry, the faculty (why is this autocorrect thing not working when I key in trespassers?), he made a drone out of thermocool that looked so stupid that it did not even fool a reporter from a TV channel called Times Now-or-Never (the answer is Never). Then they occupied a Stall, which, if I may digress with a pithy comment, is a perfect verb to answer the question, How is technological progress best described in India?

It all unravelled sadly when the robot dog did to a pole in the conference what it otherwise does to tyres (what the pole was doing in the conference is one of 3,247 questions that are engaging the attention of Informed Society at the moment) and someone who was observant saw a Made-in-China sticker in a delicate part of the dog’s anatomy that I refuse to describe in further detail out of sensitivity for reader sentiments.

Then hell broke loose, of course, as you may have read, and Galgotia’s Brigade was asked to vacate the Stall, which is such a pity because they were just getting started and, no doubt, hens, geese and cows - with real methane, mind you - were waiting to be let in. I have written a strong letter of condemnation about such extirpative tendencies of these conference organisers who, when reports last came in, had failed a competitive intelligence test where the only other competitor was the thermocol drone. But I am deeply impressed with the bureaucracy that has ordered an Inquiry and taken action with impressive speed: it has neutered the Principal Offender, the dog.