yet again ... getting lost ... then enjoying self-discovery ...

Mumi could not quite accept the fact, during initial days, that Agraa did not have a phone and wondered why I had to move to such a place. I then had to travel to Vijaypur on our Rajdoots about 18 kms and we talked about once in 10 days. Mukesh, the PCO owner, became a friend over the 2 years! My love for bike rides there I would dwell on some other time.  Move to Baghmara took place sometime during 2004 and it was funnier. I could not call the land lines in Gujarat for they were locked; mumi however could call me up. I did talk to the district BSNL head and got to know that along with locking Jammu and Kashmir the department had ended locking up calls to Gujarat as well! I recall the person at BSF run PCO telling me ' bhaisaab kahan transfer ho gaya aap ka '. Yes the Border Security Force also ran a PCO besides illegally logging the Baghmara Reserve Forest! Many a times when mumi called ( i.e. when the phone worked ) she could hear more of the rain on tin roof as o...

One late December evening we returned to our base at Saiha. The morning next as we shuffled between resting and getting the base in order we saw moths having taken over the place. One, two and the count went up till 18 different species or should I say differently appearing moths as I walked around the place. Fatigue of 14 hour sumo ride of the earlier day vanished and I was climbing tables and chairs to click their images.  Some on the ground and some up near the tube-light. It was as if we had let out the place to them for the three weeks that we were out.  It appears as mind boggling now as it was then!  My awareness on moths then was at best pathetic and I was keen to know of them! There hasn't been any significant change in my awareness levels since then either. Attempts to get help with identification proved difficult. Responses ranged from 'I know only butterflies and not moths' to 'email silences' and I gave up after a while. Getting in touch with Gee...

Initial interactions had team-members (conservation education team) share of their activities and me ask them questions. These would help me understand the program (including people associated) and would be pertinent given that   the team, language and landscape were fresh for me! (We had a discussion on my asking questions including my saying that I quite like doing so and have been told I overdo it at times; but that I will skip for now). Next I shared briefly my journey with conservation education.  I looked at partners and activities; how I had learnt from experiences and as a corollary affected revision. One of the activities, film-screening, we delved on at length. This consisted of our seeing the film Sekhar Dattatri’s “ Save our Sholas ”, team dividing into 2 groups and discussing how it could be ‘shown’ in the 2 different settings team works in and ended with me sharing of how we used to screen films. Team presentations were interesting and suggestions o...

Picked up ' Gulbadan' from a 'Book Sale' on account of love for history and interesting cover besides the tone of the author in the initial pages; she translates the name to 'rose-body'. Gulbadan was the youngest daughter of Babur, first Mughal emperor of India and lived almost through three reigns: her father Babur’s, her brother Humayun’s and her nephew Akbar’s, till two years of his death. This I find interesting on account of my interest in wildlife; recent reading of Valmik Thapar's Exotic Aliens : The Lion and The Cheetah in India  brought forth the clear distinction between 'maintained forests' and 'natural wilderness' during those times! As Akbar grew older and the Empire more settled, hunting took the place of battles; it, too, was cruel. Hundreds of soldiers would surround some chosen miles of jungle and gradually beat inwards, driving the animals until they were in a vast net. The Emperor went in first to take his...