Amaltas is King in Spring

Ah, the spring is here again. A nature lover like me enjoys all seasons with equal enthusiasm but then there is no denying that spring gives you something extra.

It offers sheer pleasure to the eye. The new leaves, the bloom of bright hued flowers, typical to this season, and all such things.



The Peepal tree - or for that matter any other ficus - shows the most promising coloured leaves. As in case of this photo, see the beautiful reddish pink neatly tucked between the two army greens. 

And what to say of the yellow danglers, the Amaltas. (Called the Indian Laburnum). Beautiful aren't they? But I must confess, this is not a very good photo. But I am waiting, for soon the Delhi streets would erupt in a riot of yellow. Flowers, flowers and more flowers at one point of time and no leaves at all. In fact, that is the USP of many a spring flowers, all flowers and no leaves. And as nature would have it, the flowers do not last more than half an hour if you pluck them away from the tree.  

If we just can learn to observe nature. The brighter the Amaltas, they tell us, the better the summer. And more the temperature during summers, the better the rains, the old people say. But we seem to be indulging in activities that induce climate change and take us more and more towards global warming.

For instance, since 2007, I myself have kept track of how the same Amaltas blooms in September too. Although the flowers bloom in lesser numbers and along with the leaves, the very fact that Amaltas is seen in September is alarming. That indicates some subtle change in the weather pattern. 

Will it happen this September?

Up Close And ...

Now I am sure you are going to think of the conventional phrase after reading the title. But it is very hard to associate 'conventional' with Nivedita. The heading couldn't have been anything else, because, it really reminds me of  something close and ... yes, personal when I see these photos. 

This is one flower, whose name I am not aware of, I have liked nevertheless. This was a cute little flower in a huge garden on a beautiful sea front. It is a garden on reclaimed land in south Mumbai. 

I had gone there in 2005 during one of the last months of my almost five years of stay in the financial capital. And then, there is this such a good cactus garden, rather a cactus enclosure in the middle of that garden.

This close up I like because of the shine on the skin of the plant. This plant has small thorns - which I call as designer thorns - on all three edges of the erect stem, nay it is the leaf. Full, juicy and lot of fibre.  





I associate cactus with lot of things. But one thing, and that is where the 'personal' part comes in, is my linking up of cactus with any person's nature. I link this with a person who looks 'crude' but is actually very beautiful inside. And unfortunately, humans fail to notice that often.

And then there is this third photo I chose because, as like in the above two photos, here too is a close up of something, which is generally looked at from far away, most of the times. This close up is that of the remains of harsingar (parijatak) flower, almost dried up. And there is this very thin cobweb on the dried up portions of the flower.   

Guess, we continue to take a look at things up, close and ...    

Elephantine Dust Bath

It was a balmy winter afternoon in December 2009. I had taken my sister's daughters to the Delhi Zoo. Although the girls had enjoyed most of the other cages too, this particular scene freaked them out completely.

Specially, the younger one, all of three, had never seen anything like this. Of course, thanks to exposure right from the 'E for Elephant' to the likes of Discovery and NatGeo channels, she could easily identify: "Ha ... elephant."


To which her elder sister quickly added, "No, it is a baby elephant."


At that time, the elephant was coming from the rear of the enclosure to the front, in full public glare. Lazily roaming, trying to trick its mahout or may be playing with him.  


The real fun began when the pachyderm actually reached a cement-concrete mushroom obviously erected as a shade for the animal. With its trunk, the elephant started clearing the ground below raising thick clouds of dust.

But the ultimate was when the elephant sprinkled liberal amounts of dust on itself with the upturned trunk. It was a scene straight out of the Discovery or Nat Geo channel for the girls. And, along with them, we too watched fascinated as the elephant continued to amuse onlookers with its antics. Not that it was aware of the enthusiastic public.

At times, it took similar dust showers in a row then it would scratch its back to the cement pole of the mushroom. Elephants are known to use the trunk for everything, be it picking up a blade of grass to drinking water to even plucking up a large tree.

So this was no exception. Here the baby was using its trunk to pick and blow dust on to themselves. Perhaps this dust coating helps them with something.   

Now, it is being said that the zoo elephants are slated to be sent to the wildlife sanctuaries following some government order. Wildlife enthusiasts say it is a proper step and organisations like PETA etc are just too happy with the thought.

But I feel, for the urban children, places like the zoo are the only getaways from the urbane jungles. The rate at which animals are being killed and poached by man, zoos could be the answers for those missing from the wild. So there has to be a debate, I guess: Do these elephants really need to be sent to the sanctuaries?

The Balloon Bridge

  

The title of this post - The Balloon Bridge - may sound funny. When I heard it for the first time, I thought, what has a balloon got to do with a bridge. But then, the name is right.

The photo of the Balloon Bridge seen here was taken in 2005 when I went to the Lohit district of Arunachal Pradesh. It was erected by the army to facilitate transport of vehicles on the mighty Lohit river - the same one which is called Brahmaputra the moment it enters Assam and joined by Dibang.

During monsoon months, and that is a long stretch for Arunachal and Assam, the Lohit, the Dibang and the Brahmaputra, all are in spate. The Balloon Bridge is impossible to be put up in such force. One of these days, I will also post the way people and vehicles used to travel in Arunachal in times of heavy rains and floods.

Coming back to Balloon Bridge, this was an annual exercise, rather a ritual, when the muddy grey floods of Lohit calmed down a bit and gave way to a prestine blue. The 'Balloons' are inflated rubber rafts tightened with each other with ropes. Aluminium rails become the smooth track for vehicles, sometimes as heavy as Army's Shaktimans.

And the army guys themselves made the pebbled river bed motorable. At times, the water would be crystal clear that you can see everything below it. I am sure,, one can go a little deeper inside the water and still see as clear as this photo shows the pebbles.     

Now-a-days there is an all weather bridge on the Lohit, some 30-40 kms upstream from this spot. So I really don't know if they are still erecting such bridges. These were once common in Arunachal Pradesh.       

But why just Arunachal? Many Delhiites, and for that matter, many people across the country living on the banks of rivers too must have seen it sometimes or the other.

In Delhi, till 2008, the authorities used to put up a similar bridge - here they call it as a pontoon bridge - on the Yamuna between the ITO Barrage bridge and the Old Yamuna Bridge. Now after the Geeta Colony-Shantivan bridge has come up, I think they have stopped putting up this bridge.

I agree, it is necessary for the local population, specially in remote areas like Arunachal, to have all weather bridges and roads. But for people like me, these are objects of sheer romanticism. Taking vagabonds like me to surreal surroundings. Almost.    

  

Oh my is this real ...?