The Other Goa

Goa…golden sands, sapphire blue waters, lazy siestas, river cruises, adventure sports... When I say ‘Goa’, is this the vision that is conjured up in your mind’s eye? I don’t blame you! I had the same impression of Goa, before I signed up for Nature India’s ‘Romance with Birds & Butterflies’ trip to India’s smallest state in the first week of December. Birdwatching? What birds (or butterflies for that matter) could possibly find beaches alluring?

I was amazed when I was handed the list of birds found in Goa. More than 400 species and many of them endemic to the Western Ghats. And surprised that Goa has two major wildlife reserves – the Bhagwan Mahaveer and the Bondla sanctuaries.

We were put up at Nature’s Nest or The Canopy. The resort near the Bhagwan Mahaveer WLS, literally ‘nestles’ in rolling acres of green, with rustic cottages set amidst swaying coconut palms and betel nut trees with pepper vines winding around them. Lots of hibiscus bushes with flowers in every colour ranging from pale pink to deep red provide a touch of flaming colour. And shocking pink ‘powder puff’ flowers abounded, with crimson-backed and purple sunbirds creating a racket among them. It was marvellous to wake up to the ‘plink-plink’ of dew falling on the tin roof and the melodious warbling of the Malabar whistling thrush, instead of the honking of cars and the screeching of brakes. The experience of stepping out of the cottage into a world of swirling white mist is indescribable.

A welcome drink of sweet ‘n’ sour kokum sherbet and an introduction to Pankaj Lad, the young ‘n’ lively owner of the resort and then it was on to our home away from home for the next four days. An odd number of women in the group meant that like in Kutch, I had a cottage to myself (J). Nothing to beat not having to share…!

Adesh said that we would see six species of kingfishers in Goa and sure enough, during our late afternoon bird walk after a cup of piping hot ginger chai, we saw the blue-eared kingfisher! The striking crimson-fronted barbet was another bonus. Not to be confused with the crimson-breasted or coppersmith barbet, the cfb has a complete vermillion halo around its face and its call is not the loud, metallic ‘thunk, thunk, thunk’ of the csb but a softer, more continuous ‘thunk’.

The night walk proved to be amazing. After trudging through waist-high dried grass and stumbling over rocks, we entered a kind of open plateau, where NI said we would spot the Jerdon’s nightjar and the Indian grey nightjar. As we plonked down to wait, the sharp beam of the flashlight soon picked out the glinting eyes of a grey nightjar sitting motionless on a stump. Yessss!! What a fantastic view through the spotting scope – one could see the streaking clearly. The bird was completely frozen in place giving the shutterbugs (oh, why are there always so many of them??) a golden chance to get some close-ups.

Then back for a good night’s sleep in time to rise early for our visit to the Bondla Sanctuary. A lovely, lovely time was had, especially stopping in the woods for a hearty feast of omelette-pav/kande pohe, bananas and hot tea! Could one ask for more than breakfast with birds and butterflies? Wished I could do this everyday of my life J. Sighhhh! L

On the way to the reserve, NI (and Pankaj) kept searching for the Malabar trogon. They said they heard the call but of the bird there was no sign. We did see other birds including the white-cheeked barbet (another endemic of the WG), a bounty of bulbuls including the crimson-throated bulbul (the state bird of Goa), the white-browed bulbul and the yellow-browed bulbul (not forgetting those ‘common’ red-vented and the yellow-vented bulbuls!). The Indian grey hornbill and the Malabar pied hornbill, the hoopoe, shrikes…

Behind the forest restaurant where we had lunch, was a pipe spewing waste water – no, don’t wrinkle your nose – it was a happy hunting ground for gaggles of jungle babblers and believe it or not, the orange-headed ground thrush! There was a mongoose which had its lair nearby and a crimson-backed sunbird had built its tiny nest on a shrub just below the window of the restaurant. Then! What should we see but…the Malabar trogon!! First the female and then the ‘more beautiful’ male (quote Adesh!). Wow! We just couldn’t take our eyes off and I was transported back to Eaglenest where we saw Ward’s trogon. Then, too, we were all falling over each other for a glimpse!

We also saw the vernal hanging parrot having an upside-down meal of flowers and berries and the pied flycatcher shrike.

The trogon was the high point of the day. We were too tired to go on a night trail, but Adesh showed us three little tailorbirds sleeping on a twig overhung by a banana leaf! Snug as a bug in a rug! They had their eyes tight shut and looked like balls of fluff. He also showed us a sleeping brown shrike…it seems birds lock their talons around the branch to avoid falling off.

The next day, it was off to another sanctuary, the Bhagwan Mahaveer WLS. On the way, we stopped off to see – the Sri Lanka frogmouth. Yesss…NI had discovered a pair in roosting in the thick grass of the scrubland we had visited earlier for the nightjars. We went one by one very quietly and there they were – the larger brown female and the slightly smaller grey male! They gazed back at us with unblinking, great yellow eyes. The wide mouth was edged with bristles. A rare sighting because at this time of the year, frogmouths are not very vocal. Thumbs up to NI, tick bites notwithstanding, for taking the trouble to discover the spot and show us the birds.

The Mahaveer WLS was a revelation because one doesn’t realise that a substantial part of the Western Ghats, which as NI frequently emphasised, is a biodiversity hotspot (one among 25 all over the world), lies in southern Goa, contiguous with Karnataka. Known earlier as the Mollem Game Reserve, it was declared a sanctuary in 1969. Spread over 240 sq km, the sanctuary is home to a number of bird and animal species. We saw the greater racket-tailed drongo, peacocks, the white-breasted swamphen, the Indian pitta, the pompadour green pigeon and the Asian paradise flycatcher, in all his white-tailed glory.

A glimpse of the jungle owlet (almost a Pandharpuri sighting!), the grey wagtail and the large pied wagtail, and the Blyth’s reed warbler.

There were so many large and small streams and patches of water all over that it was possible to sight warblers, thrushes, tits and kingfishers as well as waders like redshanks and sandpipers almost everywhere.

The third day, early in the morning, we saw the Siberian stonechat, the thick-billed flowerpecker, the rufous treepie (Adesh chided me for not recognising it despite ‘it being my 13^th trip with Nature India’!), the hanging parrot once more, the Malabar starling, and ashy woodswallows a-plenty. Neha, on her first such trip, remarked that there were so many ‘Malabar this’ and ‘Malabar that’ she expected to land on ‘Malabar hill’ pretty soon J.

The last day drew near (as all good things must come to an end). We were to go on the Zuari river cruise and then later to Maina lake for a festival of waders. Because of the sudden spring tide, the boat could not carry all of us at one go. and we got split into two groups (below 50 in one and above 50 in the other!!). So the group I was in visited Maina lake first and the Zuari cruise came later. On the way to the lake with Adesh, we stopped to see black drongos, the Indian roller, the grey heron, scarlet minivet (spotted by our driver Brian), white eyed buzzard, streak throated munias and small green bee-eaters. At the lake awaited huge flocks of lesser whistling teals, marsh sandpipers, green and redshanks, cotton pygmy geese, ringed plovers, grey heron, purple heron and purple moorhens. The lake was covered with water lilies. What a serene setting near a church… Terns, lapwings and whimbrels…wherever one turned, there was a wader engaged in a busy quest for food, or just standing and staring!

The sojourn on the river Zuari was breathtaking to say the least. Miles and miles of clear, pellucid green water, with lush mangroves on the either shore…not only did we see six species of kingfisher as Nature India had promised, we saw some amazing night herons, the osprey, brahminy kites, and the white-bellied sea eagle. First, the not-so-common common kingfisher, then the very common white-breasted kingfisher, the stork-billed…then the black-capped kingfisher with its ink-blue feathers, and best of all, the collared kingfisher, which Mr.Kamath our guide said was elusive, but which we sighted out in the open! The only kingfisher we didn’t see was the oriental dwarf.

As we neared the shore, a flying fish leaped up to add to the list of the other ‘winged’ creatures we had seen so far – the ornate flying snake and the flying lizard!

So ended a cruise which I wished would go on forever…a fitting finale to a fantastic experience of a Goa I never knew existed…the other Goa of verdant green forests and beautiful birds and oh, I completely forgot… the butterflies! Cheers, anyway, for Nature India and for the wonderful group that I was part of – the Georges, the Sarvaiyas, Neha, Sucharita, Dr. Sumukh Deodhar and Dr.Rajeev Joshi, Subbu, Santosh of the absolutely amazing voice (he put up a mini-concert of old songs for us one night), Sandeep, Shobha, Nilima, Pankaj, Ramesh the snake-man, Brian and of course our inimitable duo of Adesh and Mandar with whom I have discovered so much of the wonder that is wild India in a short span of three years!

Best of all I am going to kick off 2012 with what I am sure will be another amazing NI trip – to the Great Rann of Kutch…

A Great Trip to the little Rann (January 2011)

Every trip that I take with Nature India surpasses the last. The previous one was to Kaas, the plateau of flowers in Satara. I never imagined that flowers as tiny as the nail on my little finger could engross me so much! The vistas of flower carpets in every imaginable colour so enthralled me that I think the accumulated stress of months of urban living just flowed out to be replaced by a calming quietude that remained with me for days afterwards. It made what followed bearable – my mother’s stroke and hospitalisation because of which I could not write about the wonder that was Kaas. In fact, I had even thought of the title: A Khaas Experience!

The Rann of Kutch was on my wishlist (and that one’s a pretty long list!), so I jumped on board the minute I got the email! The drive to Bandra Terminus through those awful roads didn’t dampen my enthusiasm a bit. I reached almost an hour and a half early. I read a little of Stieg Larson’s second book in the over-hyped Millennium Trilogy waiting for 5.30 to arrive. Finally, when I phoned Adesh to ask if he had come, he gave me a nasty little jolt by saying, “What are you doing at the station today? The trip starts tomorrow!!” When I reacted with shock, he said, “I was just joking!” Hmmmm….Adesh and his teasing!

The train arrived and left for Viramgam. We were a group of 14 including Adesh and of course, his Sancho Panza Mandar! There were at least four IT professionals - a couple from Pune, Abhaya and Ameet, young Vaishali and Alok and one engineer in the making, Sahila. Alok I knew from before and I was happy to meet Captain Haridasan and Ritesh again. The bubbly, effervescent flavour was provided by Rakhi and Kavita and of course, good sport Nikhil. We had a cartoonist in our midst, too – Keith Francis – who gifted Captain, who was his room mate, with a lovely caricature drawn on a paper napkin in two minutes flat!

From Viramgam station to the Royal Safari Resorts in Bajana. What a beautiful resort it was! Done up in traditional Kutchi style with an ornate doorway, and individual circular cottages made of red brick and with thatched roofs. The rustic feel was only for the outside. The inside was, surprise, surprise, airconditioned, with fancy taps in the bathroom and a double bed with the softest mattress and pillows imaginable! Even the rajai was so comfy…it was hard to get up in the morning. And the curtains were works of art – embellished with mirrors and embroidery! Great décor all round.

The entire place was magical – with a water lily pond, swimming pool, vast spaces of green grass (few trees though) and even a mini lake which we noticed on our way out of the resort three days later!

After a good breakfast we were off to the Bajana Wetlands. The jeeps were open, the breeze was cool, the company was awesome and the birding was terrific…what more could one ask for? I cannot remember exactly where we saw what, but here’s a general idea of the birdlife.

In one of the wetlands, a feast of flamingoes – more numbers of the lesser and fewer of the greater – but both in fair numbers. What a beautiful rhapsody in every shade of pink! One can just keep on looking at them forever and never tire…There were ducks (pintails, shovellers, godwits, brahminy), teals, coots, greylag geese, grey herons, common cranes, and best of all, the mightly Sarus crane. We saw an endearing family of three (mom, dad and kid) in a field quite by chance. Never-to-be-forgotten sight…

On the way, in a stream choked with rubbish, a veritable armada of painted storks, and when they started walking ponderously, they looked like a bunch of gentlemen in their flashy coat tails out for a stroll! There were egrets keeping them company, too…

On another day, it was a safari on the Rann where we saw the rare desert warbler – trust Adesh’s sharp eyes to spot it even though it was well-camouflaged! The wild asses were, well wild! Just a mere movement in their direction was enough to set them cantering off in the opposite direction. We managed to observe a small herd for quite a while. One of the more timid asses got kicked out and left behind by the others. He stood in solitary silence for a few minutes, till he was joined by a friend and trotted happily away! Mere man ki ass hai tu…and all that (pun supplied by Mohan V!)

On the last day, we were led to an area to see something special. In a tree, who do we spot but a pair of pallid scops owls! Absolutely marvellous camouflage, till they moved their heads and opened their great yellow eyes! In the Rann, another species of owl, the short-eared. We chased it around the Rann, but it kept flying off and sitting at a distance. Finally, we did get a good look through the trusty spotting scope…what would we have done without this fantastic invention?! And glory of glories, we did see Macqueen’s Bustard or the hoobara bustard! It was in Pandharpur (or Alandi, as Adesh wryly remarked), but spotting scope ki jai ho, we saw the pair of them fairly clearly.

I should also mention the educative session we had with Adesh on one safari. He put all the ‘non-photographers’ (and there were only five including me who had these primitive cameras and were not so click happy!) in one jeep and came with us on two occasions. He was wearing his ‘lucky hat’ by the way (see pictures). In one stream under a bridge by the roadside, we saw almost all the common waders and were able to compare them! The marsh sandpiper, the common sandpiper, the wood sandpiper, redshank, greenshank, Temnick’s stint, stilts, ruffs…you name it and it was there, rooting in the sludgy water. We took out the book and had a rocking time looking at the picture and then the bird. What better way to learn! And I must say that Adesh is patience on a monument. I have been on ‘n’ trips with him but I still fumble when it comes to identifying birds which I may have seen any number of times, especially waders and raptors!

And how can I end without mentioning the delicious food? Yummy paneer dishes, tamatar sev ki bhaji, noodles, fried rice, soups, gulab jamuns, icecream, gajar ka halwa…well, you can bet your life that yours truly, truly tucked in! And stole extra dessert helpings as well!! Rakhi will be witness to that!!! Then back to dusty, crowded, dirty, noisy Mumbai…sigh!

Would that I had a little round house on the Rann, with the cool breeze blowing over the vastness, silence my only companion, and the blazing stars to shine down on me at night….

Hand-me-down Pet

       

Three days after he disappeared, my brother said he saw Shippie with a gang of stray dogs, and when he called out to him, Shippie looked at him askance and then trotted away quickly behind his new-found friends without a backward glance.

It had all begun with a bath. Shippie hated baths, as I suspect do most dogs. He would go roll in the mud immediately to rub out the scent of the dog shampoo we so lovingly used on his shaggy coat. We had to literally drag him to the backyard for the Sunday ritual. That morning, he planted his legs a tad too firmly on the ground. He squirmed his head this way and that, and before we knew it, he somehow managed to slip his head out of the collar and away he went in a flash. He didn’t come home that day, or the next. We scoured the colony for him for two whole days, yelling out his name hopefully. It seemed he had fallen off the face of the earth.

After nearly a week on the lam, Shippie came home wearing his battle scars like valour badges, a devil-may-care expression painted on his face. His ears were dripping with blood-gorged ticks and when I finished cleaning him up, he looked like he had fallen into a vat of mercurochrome. I later suspected that he was the father of the pups in the litter delivered by a stray living in the colony club. Two of them had his brown patches and his distinctive pink nose.

When he came to us from a family that was leaving and couldn’t take him along, Shippie was seven – already middle-aged in dog years. We never thought to ask why he had such a weird name or what his breed was. The fact that he wasn’t a cuddly puppy or that we didn’t know his antecedents didn’t matter to us. We were over the moon because we’d always wanted a dog. Which child would mind waking up to a loving lickover every morning, or a sudden nuzzle of a cold nose? Or not look forward to an ecstatic welcome home after school?

My grandmother and grandaunt were irked by the presence of this ‘loathsome’ animal which had the run of the house and the huge garden. The kitchen was out of bounds to Shippie, but sometimes he would streak across it into the yard if the back door was open. He would glint wickedly at my aunt as he sped past. She would gesture at him with a stick. Not that he was very bothered. Punctually at breakfast, lunch and dinnertime, he would peek into the kitchen, his brown eyes melting with hope. When it came to food, ‘hangdog’ was a word made just for him!

Shippie hated us leaving him alone while we visited the city every weekend. He would follow the car, barking wildly and would only give up when we drove out of the colony onto the busy highway. When we returned, his entire body did a Beyonce-like shake and he ran all the way to the garage, lit up redly by the tail-lights.

One time, he decided to make a statement about being left home alone. He clawed the drawing room curtains to angry shreds, though how he managed such a thorough job from the outside we couldn’t fathom. Another time, we nearly jumped out of our collective skins when a white bundle leaped into the car. We were at a petrol pump near the colony gate on our way back home. Shippie had obviously stood vigil at the entrance.

And woe betide if we ever tied him up. The one night we did that, he brought the house down with his long, mournful howls.

Shippie ensured that we built some childhood memories. My mother would have ‘golu’ or the display of dolls every Navaratri and would invite the ladies over for ‘haldi-kumkum’. One year, one of our guests made the mistake of bringing over her dog. There was pandemonium as Shippie went for his throat in the middle of the living room. The women panicked and Mom feared for the fate of the fragile dolls as both dogs circled each other, growling menacingly and barking fit to wake the dead. Finally, Dad doused them with water and leashed Shippie before any damage was done.

Then for the second time in his life, Shippie had a change of owner. Dad was transferred to Mumbai and said we couldn’t keep him in a flat. My brother and I wept buckets of tears but to no avail. Shippie went to the maid who had worked with the previous owner. We got regular updates from our former neighbours about him. We even visited him once. He was nearly blind and had become fat and lazy. He slapped his tail feebly when we hugged him. A year later, we heard he had passed on, at the ripe old age of 14.

Thank you, Shippie, for giving us your heart, albeit briefly, and showing us why a dog is a man’s best friend…

The Sound of Letters Falling

It’s a sound I really miss these days. In the quiet of mid-morning and mid-afternoon, the ‘shrrshh…shrrsshh’ of the postman pushing letters through the slot in the door and the soft whisper of them falling on to the mat. I remember rushing eagerly to gather them up, riffling through the envelopes and inland letters, searching especially for the blue ‘par avion’ label. I had four pen-friends when I was twelve – from Norway, England, France and Germany. I also wrote regularly to a wacky cousin of mine who was married and settled in a back-of-beyond mining town called Ghatsila in Bihar. She was bored out of her mind and would write long letters full of absurd advice crackling with humour. Then there were letters written by friends from whom I had parted wrenchingly when we moved from Pune to Mumbai. It was my only link to the world I had left behind and thought of with longing.

For my European pals, it was a chance to improve their English – not one of them except of course, Catherine from England, could write fluently. Marion from Germany wrote her spider scrawl completely in German and Nadine from France communicated in a strange patois of English and French. Hanne-Marie from Norway was very correct and exact, right from her choice of words (I often suspected she had a dictionary beside her when she wrote!) to her neat printing. Hanne’s penfriendship lasted a full six years. The reason? I was spending so much on aerogrammes at one point, that my parents forbade me to keep more than one penpal and since Hanne was the one who always replied immediately, I chose her over the others.

Gifts winged their way, in both directions, across the ocean. One time it was a beautiful sealskin purse,another time a silver snowflake brooch and filigreed earrings. Once she taped a handkerchief with Christmas motifs inside the card! I received such lovely cards and postcards from her, that I still have them, over 30 years later, shown to my daughters, handled lovingly and read again and again. I sometimes wonder where my long-legged friend Hanne-Marie - who sent me a photograph of herself in shorts and sleeveless blouse sitting casually on pristine snow - is now. Did she treasure my letters and gifts (a leather purse, a kurta sent agonisingly by seamail, a sandalwood thingamajig) as much as I did hers?

My stories of my penpals inspired my daughters to look for their own when they were eleven. Of course, it was all done online – no laborious filling up of a form by hand with your age, hobbies and whether you wanted a boy or a girl! They selected the snail mail option because, they too, wanted the magic of letters delivered by the postman and the thrill of tearing open an envelope. To exclaim over the letter paper and the lives of teens like them in lands far away. One penpal sent candy, another sent stickers, and a third sent a novel she had written and printed all on her own.

Oh, of course, it is an expensive hobby, letter-writing. People regard it as an old-fashioned quirk, in an age when email, texting and instant messaging have taken over our lives. Aerogrammes used to cost three rupees when I was young, now they cost five times as much. Yesterday, I stepped into a near-deserted post-office to buy aerogrammes for my mother who wanted to write to my daughter who  lives abroad. She is uncomfortable with computers and the keyboard is beyond her comprehension. The lady behind the counter looked astonished, as if I had asked for the moon. The aerogrammes were yellowing and musty like they were relics of a bygone age.

Would my grandchildren ever know the indescribable adrenaline rush of unfolding sheets of paper and vicariously experiencing another’s faraway life through the magic of ink? No lols, rotfls, btws or silly smileys to mar the flow. The silent swoosh of a letter falling on the mat.

I guess not…

Great Expectations

The day I came home from work and gorged on an entire bottle of mango pickle, I knew. The stork had come calling, it was finally that good news and there was soon going to be the patter of tiny feet at home. Only in my case it turned out to be two pairs of feet.

Right from the first check-up, when I told the doctor that I had ‘evening’ and not ‘morning’ sickness, and she replied that I was ‘different’, I should have been suspicious. Maybe she didn’t want me to panic. Whatever the reason, it was only in the fifth month that I knew it was not one bundle of joy but two! I wasn’t exactly harrumphing with joy or whooping around the corridors at the news. Of course, the fact that my feet were rapidly disappearing from view and that I could use my ‘baby bump’ (just that in my case, it looked more like a boulder), to balance my dinner plate, should have given me sufficient warning.

I breezily sailed to work every morning, announcing my arrival much before I appeared, dragging the rest of me after. At assembly (I taught in a school), I could hardly concentrate as a warring flurry of elbows and knees practised their kung-fu moves inside my belly. “God, let both of them not be boys,” I would pray fervently every time this happened. “Let at least one be a cherubic, sweet, placid little girl.”

In the local train, the women looked at me accusingly and some of them wouldn’t meet my eyes. The unasked question in their glance: ‘Would I suddenly go into labour right there? And make them miss the 7.15 fast?’ Poor me was only in my fifth month!

Hypertension in my seventh month did not sweeten matters. And neither did the fact that the skin on my burgeoning abdomen was stretched so much that it became completely black! I wondered if I would burst one day like an overripe fruit. Was I worried about stretch marks? It seemed as if they would extend from the city to the distant suburbs, I wanted to yell to all those ‘no marks’ cream manufacturers.

Then began the ‘which side to lie on’ dilemma. Every time I turned, it was like lifting a oversized pumpkin weighing a zillion kilos. They ought to re-define the phrase ‘tossing and turning’. Never mind that my ‘tenants’ decided that playing footsie at 3 a.m. in the morning suited them just fine.

And the itching…it would begin just when I was dropping into a doze after what seemed like hours of staring at the ceiling with wide-awake eyes, long after the last sheep had jumped spryly over the last fence. In the morning my stomach looked like I had just crawled through menacing fields of brambles, nettles and an entire desert of Saguaro cacti. Anyone fancy a game of belly tic-tac-toe?

Finally, finally, after bursting into tears, pleading with the doc that I wasn’t exactly slavering for a ‘normal’ delivery, enduring a saline drip and comments that I had a ‘cast iron’ uterus, being poked and prodded, at last, deliverance. ‘Seeta aur Geeta,’ pronounced the anaesthesist with a smile and I wanted to scream, ‘Ram aur Shyam’, ‘Luv aur Kush’, I don’t care, get them out of me already!

It was as though a great weight had been lifted and I felt free, free, blessedly free. No more waiting, no more tossing, and best of all no more scratching. No more agonising over whether my babies would be perfectly formed or heaven forbid, joined together at some unmentionable place, or missing arms, legs, fingers or toes. Considering the Mahabharata that was waged inside, not for 18 days but nine whole months, I had expected some serious war wounds!

They placed the babies wrapped in bilious hospital green into my arms. I gazed at my two flawless, beautiful little girls, at their beatific, rosy and content faces. I nuzzled the petal-soft cheeks, breathed in the warm, milky smell. I heaved a long sigh; the first of a million ‘mommy’ sighs…

Ballad of the Coffee Drinker

Sometimes I dream of the aroma of fresh coffee decoction dripping slowly into the filter before I fall asleep. Brewing it the next morning. Adding just-boiled full-cream milk (with the cream, of course) and the right amount of sugar. Stirring it slowly, the fumes wafting up and dissolving the last mists of sleep. Each sip heaven, savoured and swirled around till the tastebuds drown in ecstasy. After three or four wonderful sips and swallows, a chocolate chip cookie dunked and eaten, the chips melting in the mouth. Scooping up the coffee-soaked chocolate with a spoon after draining the cup to the last drop.

My dear departed uncle, a retired college principal, was a coffee junkie, a true-blue Tam Brahm who would have demitasses of the brew every hour. My aunt had one of those gargantuan coffee filters of gleaming brass, which contained enough ‘digashan’ to feed a multitude. He lived to a ripe old age of 83 despite dire predictions of an early death, because, according to me, he had coffee, not blood, flowing in his veins!

When I was a kid, I would clamour for ‘decoction coffee’ every morning. Mom would put two drops into a glass of milk and serve it grandly as ‘colour kaapi’! I would feel very grown-up. By the time I was thirteen, I was well and truly initiated into proper coffee drinking. I would look down my nose at the instant variety – only unadulterated-with-chicory filter coffee for me.

Later in life, coffee at seven, coffee at eleven, coffee at four, okay, coffee at any which hour, pure bliss. Just for the experience I tried, I really tried drinking cappuccino, espresso, latte, hazelnut-flavoured, even cardamom-flavoured coffee, but nothing, nothing to match pure peaberry, roasted to perfection in Mom’s ancient blackened hand-operated roller, ground to the right coarseness in the equally-blackened cast iron hand grinder, only minutes before brewing the decoction. One of my enduring childhood memories is the fragrance of roasting coffee beans filling the whole house, infusing our hair and even the clothes, so that when I burrowed my head in Mom’s lap it would redolent with the scent of coffee.

Recently I read what I’ve already known for years – indeed since my ‘colour kaapi’ days – that coffee is good for health. Those adventurous goats in Ethiopia probably knew it, too. It chases away the blues, protects against Alzheimer’s, cancer and heart disease. It even reduces the chances of developing diabetes – but remember only if you have four cups of good ol’ caffeinated or filter coffee every day and before you develop any of these ailments! There is something then, to be said, for starting early…

So quick, run out and buy that filter you’ve always wanted before the medicine men change their minds. Pack one-third of the upper container with powder. No matter that it is store-bought. Press it down gently with the slotted umbrella. Slowly pour in the boiling hot water. Wait. Inhale. Ahhh…if there is paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this.

Mind-blowing Corbett (28 February to March 2010)

Nature India's trip to Nainital, Pangot and Corbett National Park was my second outing to this wildlife paradise. Last year, however, we spent all our time in Dhikala, Kosi Barrage and Mohan Kumeria. The lure for me this time round was the 2½ days in Naintal, Pangot, Bhimtal and Sattal. According to the trip experiences of participants of this trip last year, they saw more than 80 species of birds, many of them lifers. I was literally salivating at the thought of seeing all those new birds. The trip before this, to Dandeli in October, was beyond belief, so my hopes were sky-high!

I had met only two members of the group previously and that too, briefly. They were Dominic, Katie and Renee. The others were also `lifers' in a way…Paresh, Nita, Shubhada, Hutoxi, Usha, Veera, Vidyanand, Pravin and Mandar's wife Pallavi. This was my daughter Sharada's second trip with NI. The first was to Dandeli. Her life's dream was to visit Uttaranchal and she jumped at the opportunity to come with me.

It was great fun interacting with everyone. Renee, Katie, Veera, Hutoxi and Shubhada are inveterate tree lovers who have formed the Save Rani Bagh committee and have managed to stay the modernising of the zoo. Usha was an inspiration to everyone with her never-say-die spirit and concern for those much younger than her. Dominic bore the brunt of all our teasing with good sporting spirit. He had an insatiable curiosity about everything and his questions were endless…he even `fell' head-over-heels in love with Corbett! As we were going out of the park on our way back to Ramnagar, we sighted a tiger. In the commotion, Dominic lost his footing and thudded to the ground from the jeep – a nasty shock for him and for us. Fortunately he did not sustain serious injuries…and did not become a tiger snack!!!

NI had changed the itinerary slightly. We went to Nainital directly from Ramnagar where we landed at 4.30 am by the Ranikhet Express instead of Dhikala. Our first stop was at a small resort run by a Mrs.Kapoor at Kaladhungi. It was lovely, with a few cottages amidst acres of greenery. Here we freshened up and had breakfast – piping hot paranthas and fresh cranberry juice. Our birding began immediately with sightings of gorgeous Purple and Crimson Sunbirds…The drive was in Innovas, otherwise we would have been icicles by the time we reached!

Nainital was breathtaking…absolutely marvellous scenery, invigorating weather and delicious food – could one have asked for a better combination? It was freezing cold in the mornings and evenings – we had ignored the instruction to bring gloves at our peril! But once inside the room we were toasty warm. We stayed at The Nest, a cluster of 4-5 rooms set around a restaurant. The rooms were built of stone and wood. Ours had an actual `nest' – a kind of elevated space inside the room which contained a mattress for two reached by a wooden ladder! Sharada was totally fascinated and immediately `booked' it! There was a fireplace with a chimney – ideal for a Santa Claus…At night there was such silence all around except for the mild chirping of crickets, that I could not get to sleep! I could hear the blood rushing in my ears – something we don't experience in Mumbai. The stars were like brilliant lamps in the night sky, again something we have lost in the big city.

In the two-and-a-half days we were in Nainital, we visited Bhimtal, Sattal and Pangot – areas located at various distances from the main Nainital town. Coming to the birding, I had a number of lifers including the Eurasian Jay and the Red-billed Blue Magpie, a splendorous bird with a long cobalt blue tail. I cannot actually remember whether we saw some birds in the first half of the trip or in the second half at Corbett but we managed a tally of over 250 species, inspite of not sighting as many woodpeckers as we did last year.

All five species of parakeet, including the plum-headed, red-breasted and slaty-headed. A number of raptors including the ubiquitous crested serpent eagle and black-shouldered kite (we sighted so many of these two, that towards the end of the trip it was like…oh another serpent eagle/black-shouldered kite!!). The lammergeir, himalayan griffon and red-headed vulture, the shikhra (Manoj Sharma said the shikhra was a villain in romantic Punjabi poetry and even quoted some lines for us!), the black eagle, steppe eagle, the lesser fishing eagle and the changeable hawk eagle. Of course, since we were in dense evergreen forest (sal, deodar, pine), many of the birds were more heard than seen. The tiny warblers and tits flitting among the leaves made us wish that we had the vision of the owl and the neck of a flamingo! Won't someone please invent binoculars that fit on the eyes like spectacles and which can be adjusted in a jiffy according to the kind of vision one wants?? Manoj made the remark that soon birdwatchers will evolve with longer, more flexible necks…

Tit-tilating – that perfectly describes the tits. The Great Tit, Black-lored Tit, Spot-winged Tit, Green-backed Tit…a glimpse only of the Small Niltava and the Green-tailed Sunbird, a lifer for many. One of the most fantastic sightings was of the Collared Owlet and the Spot-bellied Eagle Owl. The Collared Owlet has these false eyes on the back of its head…just like some butterflies and moths – totally out of this world. The Spot-bellied Eagle Owl was sitting on a bare twig right outside our camp at Dhikala. It was a lifer even for Manoj who could not stop smiling for a long time after that! Its great big yellow eyes, ear tufts and long beak – it was the size of a large house cat!

And the mammals! Gharials, muggers, otters (!), the yellow throated marten, the mongoose, jackal and all the species of deer found in Corbett – the chital, hog deer, barking deer, sambar…who can forget the elephants? A herd of matriarchs, calves and young tuskers…we watched them feeding for a long, long time in the grassland with only the whistling wind for company. For the first time, I noticed that the elephant digs out the grass with its foot in a forward motion and then picks it up with the trunk. Once it has collected enough, only then does it shovel the grass into its mouth! There was one old female with a broken hind leg…which the guide said it had had for six years.

That elusive animal of Corbett, the tiger…We almost spotted one on the first day. Missed it by ten seconds! What heartbreak, especially for Sharada who had nurtured this dream of seeing a wild tiger for a long time…On the last trail, again the tiger leaped across the road in front of us. Again, some of us including me, missed seeing it. Those in front saw it clearly at least for fleeting seconds. Maybe next time…Inshallah!

So we turned back, our hearts heavy because we were leaving such a beautiful place to go back to the concrete jungle and resume the rat race…In my heart I hoped that humans would have the sense to preserve these last remaining havens in their pristine wild state for at least a few decades more…it would be the ultimate cruelty to rob coming generations of this natural treasure.

Congratulations to Adesh and Mandar, as also Manoj Sharma, for awakening  appreciation and love for the wild in city slicker like me…