Fresh Skin!

After two cold, windy and rainy days, the sun showed up at around noon today. We always tread carefully on the lawn because there are creatures that bite and sting, but I didn't notice what was there until the mali pointed it out to me.

 

I was not the only one who'd come out to enjoy the sun!



We thought that the frilly bit was where the head must have been, but when the malis turned the skin over and unfurled it, this is what we saw:

The snake must have been over five feet long. Look at the head :

  All the revulsion I'd felt at the sight of the skin was gone.

Smelling of April and May

When the drought is over and we've had some rain we get to feast our eyes on these signs of moisture. It's a surfeit of flowers and new leaves everywhere. No need to plan out beds or plant seeds like the cold weather, because what's already in the garden starts blooming. There are lilies, hibiscus,hydrangeas, magnolias and gardenias. The grass is green again.

Thank you to the person who planted these hydrangeas. They're pink and lilac in one border and blue in another.

Almost like a forest floor under the mahogany trees.

Delicate blooms of bougainvillea.

Heady and intoxicating, the fragrance of the magnolia blooms - alas, I can't capture that!

Gardenia - what I choose to call myself on this blog.


There are many fellow creatures celebrating life out there. I captured the most eye-catching of the lot.






I salute the Maker!!

A Page from A Monsoon Diary in the Dooars

Does guava jelly keep monkeys away? I decided to find out when I saw that the guavas on the tree in the corner were beginning to ripen. They were small and woody and not worth the picking and eating. Those guavas can give the strongest tummy terrible aches.

Parrots and monkeys love these fruits. Parrots are okay, but monkeys! We have never been plagued by monkeys as we are here. We could handle regular visits by elephants who routinely destroyed our crops of corn and trampled or uprooted palms, banana and jackfruit trees. Elephants, we’ve seen, are destructive without any provocation, but after having suffered monkeys, I feel like putting out welcome mats for them.

We thought the monkeys would keep away if there was nothing to attract them so we picked all the guavas off the tree. Into a big vessel they went one evening and by morning the juice was ready to be made into jelly. We got one small bottle of a richly coloured jelly.  I smirked at having put off at least one monkey raid.

Yesterday the rogues were back. This time there were young ones too. Two or three sat on the swing, and they got it going. I could swear a couple more were pushing the swing. Maybe I am losing my mind. Another couple of little ones were on top of the slide, waiting to come down. Some had already torn flowers off the bushes here and there. I give up. I don't see myself making allamanda wine or hibiscus jam to keep the demons away. Any suggestions?

There are days and there are dull days and there are days when the excitement arrives just when you are about to drop off. A python entered the section behind the bungalow. It scared the wits out of Margaret, the ayah, and the chowkidar who saw it crossing the road as they were going home.  We heard about it at around 9.30. Mohan and the chowkidars made sure the cows and the calf were safe in their shed. I was worried about the calf, especially after reading about the two little boys killed by a python in a pet store owner's apartment in Canada.

Mohan popped up at 11.30 p.m. and told me not to feel scared about the python entering the bathroom or anything - that was really nice of him, considering I had forgotten all about it. Goodbye to all sleep for me that night. In the morning, we were all still excited. The python could be hiding under the bungalow. A gardener sprinkled some strong smelling insecticide all around to drive it away. Later, the estate chowkidars said they knew about the python; it lived in a section near the pump house and had been there for a long time. After a couple of days of being on the lookout, we guessed that it would have gone back there.

August is almost over, and by now we should all have been fed up of eating corn. We'd have it steamed at breakfast, or roasted on the cob on rainy evenings. It was a staple in the monsoon months when green vegetables were hard to come by.  All that is in the past, I now realise.  We don't grow corn any more, because the monkeys won't let it rise. We couldn't find any to buy either, and that was a mystery! The last time I found any in the daily 'haat' was in the month of May. I have now learnt that the Railways have forbidden the growing of corn anywhere near the tracks, and the Forest Department has forbidden the cultivation of corn anywhere in the region - that is, anywhere in the neighbourhood of the Buxa Tiger Reserve.

It's obvious that the Railways don't want any elephants wandering about near the train tracks. Corn is fodder, and it brings them into inhabited areas. With no solutions yet to the human-elephant conflict, the Forest Department and the Wildlife Department must put their faith in these short-term preventive measures, I suppose. And it is obvious that we must learn to eat frozen packed corn.

(Published in The Sunday Statesman and on Koi-hai.com)

A Killer Strikes

On 25th June, Manwar Ali, a resident and former worker of the tea garden where we live, was attacked and killed by a wild elephant. The elephant, a lone tusker, had entered the Bara Line - a workers' colony - early in the evening, and it had hidden itself quietly for some time before the people living near Manwar's house saw it. They gave chase, as they usually do, frightening it away with crackers and strong lights, and by making a lot of noise. Tea garden people are resigned to sharing their living space with elephants.
A tractor with powerful lights was driven around to send the elephant back in the direction of the forest. The chase ended - or so it appeared - and people went back home. Manwar Ali turned off to the side street where he lived, and stamped the dirt off his chappals. At the sound, the elephant came out from where it had been hiding, unseen, and hurled him to the ground, into the tea area. Manwar rolled into a little drain and hid there. The elephant sniffed around him once, and walked away. Manwar got up, and walked until he found someone. He told him what happened, and asked to be taken to the hospital. It was around eleven thirty in the night. People gathered at once and they took the poor man to the garden hospital, where the doctor examined him. He didn’t have any external injuries. However, the doctor recommended that he be taken to the hospital in Birpara town. Someone was sent to call the driver of the ambulance, but before he rushed back with him, Manwar died. He must have sustained heavy internal injuries. His head had hit against a tree trunk when he fell.

The shock was terrible. What a sudden, unexpected, fearful and painful death. Manwar's brother had been with him less than an hour before, in the big group that always runs behind elephants - keeping a safe distance, of course. No one tried to injure the elephant or to harm it in any way. It killed without a reason, and without any provocation.
The Assistant Manager alerted the Wild Life squad in the area, who turned up soon enough, but not before they expressed the fear that they might get beaten up by angry tea-garden workers. It has been known to happen. There was no trouble. The people were agitated, but not aggressive.
The state pays a compensation of Rs.One Lakh in the case of deaths caused by wild elephants. The Squad paid a small part of the sum as an advance towards funeral expenses.
There are so many cases of elephants killing people. According to a report in The Times of India dated 5 June 2008, 250 people die on an average every year in the country's eastern states in the man-elephant conflict. There is a website called 'Elephant News India' where I spotted the link to this article, and it carries 18 stories of man-elephant conflict for the month of June alone. Now there is one more.

Elephants are dangerous animals, and we in tea gardens have a healthy respect for them. There are as many elephant stories as there are tea planters. They are part of our lives, the tall tales that are told and retold over evening drinks in friends' bungalows. I don’t feel like recounting even one here now.
Visitors to tea gardens get really excited when they hear about elephants coming out for an evening round from the nearby forests. 'Don’t say you that you wish you could see an elephant,' my husband always tells them. That elephants can kill, and for no apparent reason, is something visitors find hard to believe. That they can destroy huge areas of cultivated land, including vast areas planted with tea, sounds impossible. My husband has more to say about elephants. They are huge, but light-footed. They can chase their quarry at great speed, running at something like 40km an hour. They have tiny eyes in proportion to their bodies, and weak eyesight, but their sense of smell more than makes up for that. An elephant is a master at concealment. It can hide in the darkness, even in the shadow of a tree.

The night after the attack, everyone was worried. A killer elephant generally returns to the place where it has struck. Manwar's brother, his closest surviving relative, was filled with sorrow, but he had no anger. He had a sad story to recount to my husband when he met him in Bara Line early in the morning. Their uncle was killed, over twelve years ago, at almost the same spot, and by an elephant. He'd been carrying a little child in his arms. The child was lightly flicked aside out of harm's way by the elephant before it struck the man down and killed him.