For someone who wants to be an environmental lawyer, I display a lamentable lack of enthusiasm for biodiversity, especially of the arachnid variety. An otherwise perfect holiday at Kabini was marred by a relentless pursuit by the spiders. They seem to have sensed my paranoia of them, and popped up everywhere. Whether to perversely torment me, or to reassure me of their innate innocuousness, I cannot say. The first one appeared on the window sill when I was alone in the cottage at the Dubare elephant camp and the rest of the family was about to go on a safari. I ran out of the cottage screaming, much to the amusement of the guides, who must have thought that the decibel levels and the urgency of my yelling warranted a snake, at the very least. The next one, a huge brute, with abnormally long legs, appeared in the bathroom. Much, much harder to dash promptly out of there. I had to beat a strategic retreat, moving stealthily, so that any sudden movement wouldn't alert the spider to my presence. I refused to re-enter until the attendants exterminated it with some kind of spray and my sister swore that she had witnessed the disposal of the corpse. The unkindest cut of all was on the hammocks at the Kabini River Lodge. They were deliciously comfortable, and the spot was idyllic. The Kabini river was ten steps away, there was the most wonderful breeze whistling through the trees, I could spot cormorants in the distance and I was curled up with a good book. Everything that I could ask for in a holiday. Ten minutes into the book and I spot a bright red, poisonous looking specimen making its way across. The peace was shattered instantaneously. I waved my arms desperately, overbalanced and toppled out of the hammock. However, such was the draw of the place (see picture) that even the spiders couldn't keep me away. I convinced my parents to stand guard over me while I was reading, but they soon tired of their sentry duties. For the rest of the trip, the lapping of the waves would lull me into a false sense of security for a while, and then suddenly, I would imagine something scuttling up my leg and leap up nervously to conduct a frantic check. Most unrelaxing.
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Another summer has come and gone (well, not quite, there's still no sign of the rains) and the gulmohur that I planted seven years ago stubbornly refuses to flower. It is the ugliest tree in the building. I blush for it- it's branches are so immodestly bare. It is put to shame by the brilliant blooms of its neighbours. The few leaves that it puts out are dry, limp and brown. At a time when the rest of the city is at its arboreal best, my tree mocks me with its abject lack of colour. Since I planted it on my seventeenth birthday, it has become a ritual for me to have my photograph taken with me standing next to the tree. I've grown slimmer and fatter, become fairer and darker, have alternately had longer and shorter hair, but the tree gives no indication of the passage of the years. It is an unyielding trunk of barrenness.
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Given that I registered vociferous protests against my aunt's upcoming trip to Mexico, it is ironic that I should be the one to have contracted swine flu. I've been reading the health bulletins and the travel advisories religiously, and I'm convinced that I have all the symptoms. Sore throat, runny nose, body ache- all most uncomfortably present. Plus, I've travelled to and from Bombay and Bangalore twice in the space of two weeks, laying my unsuspecting body open to attack by the vast army of germs that travellers carry with them everywhere. I did not voice my suspicions to my doctor-aunt for fear of being re-labelled a hypochondriac (I flatter myself that I haven't been one for several years now), but this time around, I think that the evidence points to an unhappy confirmation of my diagnosis. Time and a swab test shall reveal if this birthday is to be my last one.
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Another summer has come and gone (well, not quite, there's still no sign of the rains) and the gulmohur that I planted seven years ago stubbornly refuses to flower. It is the ugliest tree in the building. I blush for it- it's branches are so immodestly bare. It is put to shame by the brilliant blooms of its neighbours. The few leaves that it puts out are dry, limp and brown. At a time when the rest of the city is at its arboreal best, my tree mocks me with its abject lack of colour. Since I planted it on my seventeenth birthday, it has become a ritual for me to have my photograph taken with me standing next to the tree. I've grown slimmer and fatter, become fairer and darker, have alternately had longer and shorter hair, but the tree gives no indication of the passage of the years. It is an unyielding trunk of barrenness.
***********************************
Given that I registered vociferous protests against my aunt's upcoming trip to Mexico, it is ironic that I should be the one to have contracted swine flu. I've been reading the health bulletins and the travel advisories religiously, and I'm convinced that I have all the symptoms. Sore throat, runny nose, body ache- all most uncomfortably present. Plus, I've travelled to and from Bombay and Bangalore twice in the space of two weeks, laying my unsuspecting body open to attack by the vast army of germs that travellers carry with them everywhere. I did not voice my suspicions to my doctor-aunt for fear of being re-labelled a hypochondriac (I flatter myself that I haven't been one for several years now), but this time around, I think that the evidence points to an unhappy confirmation of my diagnosis. Time and a swab test shall reveal if this birthday is to be my last one.
