The day we spot the Jacobin's cuckoo

Trip #2

On Saturday night, we are better prepared for the camping trip: we have a stove and fuel for it. Hot parathas and tea even in heavy rains bolsters spirits.  The kids' tent is snug and comfortable. The adults' tent is another story: water leakage through the open window makes it yet another wet and uncomfortable night. Maybe we ought to be throwing the tarp on top of the tent instead of keeping it under the tent. The peacocks and the brainfever bird scream all night long. What's up with these crazy birds? 

Sunday morning dawns with a brilliant orange sun peeking through thin purple clouds. I am moved to perform Surya Namaskar for the first time in decades. We each set off in different directions for walks. 

We spotted a Jacobin's cuckoo. It's easy to spot because of the bright white bands on its wings in flight. 

                                                                

We also spotted Malkohas: 

<-- This is Sirkeer Malkoha. A very very shy bird.

 

This is the green billed Malkoha  

 

(from https://anotherglobaleater.wordpress.com/tag/green-billed-malkoha/)                                      

Did you know that Malkohas are also part of the cuckoo family? So, just in 2 days, we have seen:

- The regular koel cuckoo

- The Jacobin's cuckoo

- Brainfever bird

- The two Malkoha species

Perhaps it's because of the rainy weather (the Jacobin's cuckoo is supposed to be a harbinger of the monsoon)

The red wattled lapwings are back to their screechy "did he do it" calls... many juveniles, so I guess the adults get nervous. "Chillax lapwings, we aren't interested in killing you or your kids" is something I wish I could tell these birds. 

Other birds we keep seeing:
White browed bulbul                                                        Gold fronted leafbird

                        

Bonelli's eagle                                                                    Honey Buzzard 

                                                                                        

Raptors are notoriously difficult to distinguish. I am certainly useless at it. Ram, despite his vast experience in bird watching, also finds it challenging. In fact, there's a whole article on the difficulties faced by most people in distinguishing raptors. The first sentence of this article is "Diurnal raptors are notoriously difficult to identify in flight: raptors in India are even more so than in most other areas because of the greater number of species (68) and the lack of definitive information in bird field guides" (Clark and Schmitt, 1992 Journal of Bombay Natural History Society)

Peacock footprints in the farm

    

                                                 

 A nearby dam attracts egrets                                                                   

                                                

Durga and Ram saw nightjars  

It camouflages itself really well. And it comes out only at night and it's extremely shy. 

But sometimes one gets lucky and can spot one or two by the side of a grassy mud path during twilight or early night. Apparently there are many species of night jars (Skyes, Indian, grey, long tailed, great-eared, jungle etc)

No idea which one we spotted....probably the common Indian nightjar

Ani and RK play cricket and monkeys come to watch

                       

Durga loves climbing trees and watching the world go by

                        

Worm found... mistakenly first declared as caterpillar, then centipede and now we realize that it's a

  millepede! What's the difference, you ask? Check out the link! 

 Not just that... it has blue legs!

A quick search on Google Lens does not give me any results on millipedes with blue legs (although the results all agree on its millipede-ness.  Durga thinks we might be the discoverers of a new species (Millipedus prasadfamilitus)                             

Other creatures on the farm seen:

Hares and baby hares

Bees

Monitor lizard (possibly)?

Bonnet macaques

This was a lovely bee hive and the bees were so friendly. But sadly, someone came the next day and removed the hive. Glad I got a taste of the honey and a pic of the hive before it disappeared

All pictures from Wiki Commons, or taken by us, unless otherwise referenced

Starting an Alternate Life Style

 Trip #1: Wednesday: 2-3 June 2021

We decided last week that we would start an alternate lifestyle: we would come to the farm every Wednesday and Saturday, spending the night camping and returning to Bangalore the next day. We also thought we ought to start growing some trees and plants on our plot in the farm.

It was perhaps a real test of our resolution the the very first time we came to the farm after a long hiatus on a quest to begin this resolution that it should have been a rainy day. We had new untested tents, we had no camp stove, but we were adamant and we had the confidence that should things go really badly, we always had the car to take shelter in.

The recent rains had made surrounding fields of chrysanthemum and grape vines lush and verdant

Vines after harvest

           Mums before harvest!

The ponds from the quarries are full and the surface run off makes little muddy brooks.

 

So the first night of our lifestyle was a bit of a tester: it rained incessantly, there was thunder and lightning, the tents were smaller than expected, bugs got inside our pants and inside the tent, we were severely bitten by mosquitoes and Perry our dog could not figure out why we were making her sit inside a crowded tent when she really just wanted to be outside eating moths. But there were also many successes: the tents were put up while there was still light; we planted the sapling (guava? We still don’t know) that had been transported from Bangalore; we finished our packed dinner before the rains began and were ready for bed by 8pm, when it was pitch dark in the farm.

The kids learned to use the sleeping bags when it got cold; we learned the hard way that removing the roof off the tent wasn’t a good idea in the monsoon season and Ram and I realised that our particular tent did not appear to be water resistant. 

Quality of sleep was pretty awful- city dwellers do not realise how loud the night can be out in a farm, and these are strange noises to our city ears. We start at every sound, we imagine all sorts of wild life apparently on no other quest than to hunt for us mercilessly as we lie hapless in the dark protected only by a flimsy layer of nylon, every bird’s chirp is magnified, every rustle of the wind appears to be a gale, and we stay up in the tent eyes wide wondering how the others in the group are able to sleep.

Utterly drenched and cold, I waited for the first rays of light and then shot out of my miserable little wet hole, raced to the car and changed into dry clothes  It was bitterly cold, although it had stopped raining. I jumped around trying to get warmed up since all my clothes, wet or dry, were thin cotton better suited for hot and muggy Bangalore. The kids ran into the car and turned on the heater. I do not recall going to birdwatch this first day. We did however weed our plot and yanked out hundreds of Congress plants. Really experienced, for the first time in my life, the difference between tap root and fibrous rooted weeds…. Tap rooted plants are awfully difficult to uproot! 

Parthenium/ Congress plant. They are everywhere :(
These pics to the left and above from this source:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/270271589_Effects_and_Management_ofParthenium_hysterophorus_A_Weed_of_Global_Significance/figures

By 7am, we were done weeding. We packed up our tents and headed back. 

Birds we saw included the usual ones:

Little bee eater

Indian Robin (which I ALWAYS confuse with the male bushchat)

Laterite quail

Kingfishers

Swallows

We heard the brain fever bird for the first time- incredibly loud, but also very very shy. Was hard to spot it.

And for the first time also, I saw the helicoptor bird (red winged lark)

Little bee eater... what a beautiful little eye band it has... like a little bandit!

    

These are pictures of the Indian robin from Wiki, Flickr and eBird

This is the pied bushchat                          

So similar, right? Who wouldn't get mixed up? I guess the beaks are different...

Here are the laterite quail, apparently a discovery made by Salim Ali and Hugh Whisler in the 1940s 

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      Picture by AK Raju in https://jlrexplore.com/explore/on-assignment/the-discovery-of-an-unusual-quail

Brainfever bird or the Common Hawk-Cuckoo: 

   For all its screaming, an exceptionally shy bird

The helicoptor bird (red winged bushlark), so called because it flies up, hovers and then lands.

Successes of this trip:

A) Survived a rainy night out reasonably intact. Learned what to do to prevent rain from coming into the tents.

B) Transplanted a tree from our house in B’lore to the farm plot in Chikkaballapur

C) Weeded the plot and learned about tap and fibrous roots. Caught a glimpse of the very rich insect life that lives within the ground and come scurrying out when weeds are uprooted!

All pictures from Wiki Commons, unless otherwise referenced

Sudoku!

I saw the headings of this video and thought, oh come on, why in the world is this considered difficult? There are so many numbers already given!
So, quickly went to the site and started.
Only a few minutes after starting did I realizing the order and patterns in the puzzle: do you see it? The diagonal 1-2-3 and the 4-5-6 and the 7-8-9. I only saw it after getting stuck in the middle.
The reason it's diabolical is because on the bottom 3 rows (where is there no immediately discernible pattern) on the left side, it is impossible to immediately (or even after some head-scratching) figure out where the 4,5,6 go. And on the right side of those 3 rows, it is impossible to figure out where the 1,2, and 3 go.
Ok.
Guess this needs a lot more investment of mental energy than I assumed.

De-stressing

There. A nice optimistic title.

Hopefully it will work to nudge me into a better frame of mind.

Sometimes, I wonder if psychologists and psychiatrists around the world are seeing an increased number of patients with anxiety in their practices, because seriously, who cannot be anxious in a world like this?

My anxiety levels have definitely reached higher levels than they used to be earlier (wait, is that true? Or is it that I never understood that the churning feelings inside could be termed anxiety?) and I get even more anxious if I read the newspapers. So I try not to read the papers... or FB or any of the social media outlets that show anything about the state of the world. I get filtered news from other sources and I can retain a modicum of control. Or I watch the late night comedies on YouTube where I get (mostly American) news but it is presented in a fun way. Why can't Indian TV make high quality comedy on daily news, where we get information but it doesn't stress one out like crazy? Don't we have enough smart, funny people in our country too? But no, Indian news only makes one feel horrible about one's country and one's life. And I think this is a form of addiction: watch the news to feel glum and full of despair so that you can't find the energy to take responsibility for any action.

Another thing that makes me anxious is the pollution  where we live (though it is significantly lower than where we used to live- if there were a prize for tolerance to living in pollution, the people living on the street where my parents used to will definitely win it hands down). I was driving down from Mysore last weekend to Bangalore... and I kid you not, as we entered Bangalore outskirts, we could see a thick, grey-green cloudy haze hanging suspended over the city. This is the miasma under which we go about our daily lives- we add to it, and we breathe it every single minute.

The biggest source of stress and anxiety, although it is also usually accompanied by a sense of excitement and dread in equal parts, is my company. How to make enough revenue, how to break free from the shackles of loans, how to thrive ... these are questions that equally frighten and thrill me. It's like a roller-coaster ride at Six Flags. What also scares me is the scenario where you build all the momentum and the suspense, but the ride isn't what you anticipated it would be- it falls flat and you have to tell yourself that it was ok and that it was a good experience anyway.

Ram told me about an exercise for fear management written way back by one of the Buddhist monks in Sanskrit (truly, I am beginning to understand why so many entrepreneurs read philosophical texts... everything that one goes through now has been gone through by thousands before and there are musings, gleanings and reflections that help put things in perspective). He might have changed it a bit to suit my preferred method of reflection (which is to write), but the basic principles of working through stress remain the same:

Before the start of every venture or every learning, there is a mixture of feelings.

a) Acknowledge the feelings
b) Identify them by their name. If you can't name a feeling, describe it in detail so others may help you identify it. ("This feeling makes me ....")
c) Show gratitude for the positive feelings, like happiness, excitement, optimism etc. Clarify why you might be happy, excited etc. Write down your expectations and reasons why.
d) Focus on the "negative" feelings, like fear and stress. Write down exactly what your fears and sources of stress are. If you worry about losing your money, or other resources, or if you worry that you will fail at meeting expectations, or if you are afraid that you will lose out on other opportunities, write these down ("What if I....?"). Clarify what those failed expectations or missed opportunities might be.
e) Rank each of these in order and then tackle each one in turn from the highest ranked to the lowest ranked.
f) Imagine each fear as a person. This person is someone who is honorable, well-respected and a person of integrity from whom you can learn a lot.
g) Imagine going to each person (who is actually a fear that you have acknowledged, identified, listed and ranked). What is the one thing that you would request each of them to teach you? Frame these questions beginning with "Help me.... " (help me... accomplish ... )

Let me show you what I mean by copying down what I'd written a few days ago:

My initial set of questions were framed like this:
a) What tools and skills do I need to scale the wall of getting no deals or not knowing how deliver on these deals/ promises?
b) How do I ensure that my team and I can handle the new work without dropping the old ones?
c) How do I build a team around me that is excited, motivated and sees their success as our success?
d) How do I get 2.5 crore rupees this year in revenue?
e) How do I build a team of mentors and interact with them often enough that I am prepared to think fast and pivot appropriately?

But Ram told me that this list above makes no request, and only asks for advice. The key to progressing is to make these fears into team members and allies.

So I changed my list to this:
a) Help me get orders and make deals
b) Help me keep track of orders and deliver on promises
c) Help me create a team of mentors, partners and collaborators excited about the prospect of working with me.
d) Help me get 2.5 crore rupees in revenue in 2020.


And oh, guess what? I started this blog in a state of utter stress and anxiety. I'm glad to report that I've truly done what the title assured me I would- I have destressed and am feeling excited and motivated again.










 

The flowers above

Do you know why I like those flowers above, those yellow ones standing in the mulch on the top of the page?

Sometime in 2010- I think it might have been Feb- there was a gigantic blizzard in Pittsburgh. It was supposedly among the worst. Snow many feet high, roads closed, no food in the stores- that kind of blizzard. I was pregnant with Ani at that time, maybe 7/8 months along, and desperate to finish up some work for the doctorate before maternity leave.
So the first day of the storm (snow storms are very quiet and mostly peaceful, none of the sound and light effects of a regular Indian thunderstorm), RK took skis and walked 3 miles from our apartment to his residency (he might have been on call). And the second day onwards, so did I. I trudged to lab, bundled up in a few dozen layers, grabbed on to roadside shrubs and hedges on the downhill parts where the road might be slippery, but made it up and down okay. One of the best things about snow is that when it is snowing, the temperature is actually not very cold. It's much better than once the snow has stopped and everything freezes over.

I have no clue what work I did in lab, but I recall amazingly clearly how beautiful it all was: there was snow of so many types on the road and on the trees and leaves: Soft, crunchy, icy, flaky- they were all there! It was completely white, the trees were bending down from the weight of the snow,  there were kids sledding on the sideroads, no traffic whatsoever, and bright red cardinal birds on trees. It was like straight out of a postcard from the 1800s.

Even almost a decade later, I love remembering that pregnancy and those walks in the snow. I might have been waddling like a penguin, perhaps there was some danger of me slipping and falling and breaking something in the snow, but for the most part, what I remember is the calm white peace and the general happiness all around.

So anyway, those flowers up there were the first flowers of spring that I saw that year. They had popped out on the driveway of my favorite Indian restaurant and I took that pic sometime in May, after Ani was born.
 
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Post script:
So, I had a vague recollection of writing a blog around this time and went hunting through the archives for it and found it. Clearly, my recollection now is rather drastically different from what I'd written then. I'm a bit startled by it, to be honest. How odd that what was seemingly so frustrating at that time should be so beautiful now!

Pleased with myself and the world

The kids and I braved Spar Hypermarket on a Sunday evening (the very definition of hell on earth) and bought a white board, chess board and scrabble board.
Today, when playing scrabble with Ani, I won because of "YOD"(a Hebrew alphabet)... not just YOD by itself, but YOD on the Triple Word square.

*Feeling very smug*

Remembrance and Relief

Last time I was at NCBS, a few months ago, I felt so anxious about some things that I had to get myself under control by staring into the koi pond and imagining I was a fish whose only concern in life was to flit gracefully through the water, munching on whatever koi munch on.

Once I'd finished with koi, I also wished with all my heart that I had a job like one of those M &B heroines: have you noticed that a majority of romance novel heroines have jobs like secretaries, hair dressers, cupcake bakers and food photographers? Very few M&B novels have:

- businesswomen (ok, some do, but they usually run family-owned businesses)

- physicians (always, ALWAYS, doctors are male; brilliant (naturally); wealthy (because all heroes in romance novels have to be... when I was younger, they had to be millionaires. Nowadays, who cares about a million here or there? We only care about billionaires); grumpy, because they are oh so tired and impatient with the antics of the vast brainless populace they have to tolerate (invariably they mistakenly categorize the heroine as brainless initially, but when their equally brilliant/ good looking/ wealthy colleague hits on the heroine, suddenly realize that hey, she's The One!); stupendously compassionate (there always HAS to be a sick kid/ baby/ old lady in these books- it is a rule); and exceedingly good-looking... show me one doctor who has acne spots, bad teeth and hair on his back....(oh, if he has hair on his back, you're in the wrong genre... you need to be in the fantasy section where the hero is actually a werewolf. You're welcome). Women are ALWAYS nurses in M &B.

- scientists (unless you count one book where there was a scientist who had the brains to invent a magical solution that could do something powerful... either suppress high emotions in mobs, or infertilize people for population control or some such thing, but didn't somehow realize that it could be abused in the wrong hands until gently pointed out by the hero- because, get this, she only saw the best in people. *Sigh*)

- policy analysts... well, to be honest, I don't know too many women in real life who are policy analysts, so... plus, imagine the poor author trying to figure out what kind of policy her creation should be analyzing. 

- any field where she has to take decisions or disagree with a man's decision... maybe I'm being pessimistic here, but I have to be honest... can't recall a single M&B where a woman takes a decision that would affect anyone other than herself... unless you count the books where she has a baby (usually illegitimate and belonging to the hero, who somehow doesn't know that he has fathered a child), or a kid (if she's a widow).

Not all romances are M&Bs, of course. and there are thankfully many many romance novels that shatter these norms: G. A Aiken's books (usually have very bloodthirsty female warriors), most books by Susan Elizabeth Philips, all of Penny Reid's books, my forever go-to-authors Ilona Andrews (yes, it is authorS, not author, since it's a husband-wife duo), Sherry Thomas (who has many books with fantastic female protagonists: physician in the 1880s! Chinese warrior! Detective!) One of my current favorite series is the Wrexford-Sloane series by Andrea Penrose, although her series with chocolates is kind of awful.

Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah,  so today when I was at NCBS and I happened to find myself back at the koi pond, I couldn't resist taking a picture to remind me that hey, I ought to celebrate the feeling of non-anxiousness!

Staring down the koi pond from the 1st floor. Today, I'm glad I'm not a fish.

Thank you, my beautiful Wednesday! I enjoyed you immensely!