I wanted to be an archeologist

It's funny how as a child there are just so many things you want to become...But after school, before joining university, there are hardly any choices left! I just remembered I wanted to be an archeologist once. I was in sixth grade then. We had just started reading History in school, and as you would imagine, history in India begins with Indus Valley Civilisation, as much in books as in reality. So the chapter began...In 5000BC, there flourished a civilisation along the banks of river Indus...to how the cities of Mohenjodaro and Harappa were discovered, and so on. I think I was caught by the romance of it. The spirit to explore, to discover, to venture into the unknown is strong when you are that young.

In my seventh grade, I wanted to be a neurosurgeon. I read a Readers Digest book section that year, in Hindi, which read...'Kaise Bana Main Neurosurgeon'(How I came to be a Neurosurgeon). It was a brilliant piece - an account of one man's determination to specialise in a science as complex as that and take on one complex case after another, and the price he pays for his commitment to work in his personal life. It was touching. In my eighth or ninth grade, I wanted to become a Forest Ranger. An officer in an olive green Mahindra, khaki uniform, driving through dirt roads inside the forest at dusk and dawn, checking if everything's alright everywhere. I guess that was the closest I was to my true calling. I wish I was serious about it then. :)

I wanted to be a Coast Guard, I wanted to be a detective, I wanted to be a professor, I also wanted to be an astronaut! Its funny how I became a software engineer...

Anyway, feels good to be out. There is no end to possibility. :-)

The end of a long day...

Yamanaka-ko. Another Marathon. Preetam's going to run 13 kms... We woke up at four in the morning today. Took the first train to the car rental. It was a Nissan Serena this time. There were eight of us. I knew some people from before, their wives/girlfriends I was meeting for the first time.

By the time we reached Yamanaka-ko, it was raining very hard. It's impossible to run in this rain, it's crazy, I thought. And yet there they were. Hundreds of participants. All age, weight, size and nationalities - walking, stretching and warming up. Yamanaka-ko is a huge lake, one of the five lakes around Mt Fuji. The Marathon was around this lake. Anyway, we got off and by the time the participants(which in our case, were only the men folk) registered and changed into running wear, shots were fired and the Marathon began. We ladies picked up the bags and belongings of our men and walked back to the car. Just SO MANY people. It was a strange enthusiasm. Undampened by the rain. Almost like a carnival. The leaves were the brightest green, the barks were the richest brown. We walked over to the edge of a narrow pier jutting into the lake. Clouds were all around us. Couldn't see more than a few meters. It was almost unreal. It became cold, and my socks started feeling damp inside. We cheered the runners for a while. Then went to a coffee shop. Good breakfast and hot coffee...in a warm cafe besides the lake... rain, and some lazy talk...I loved the hour. The runners started returning back after a circle around the lake. We spotted our folks and met by the car. A good lunch. Amazing view of Mt Fuji as the clouds parted to let the sun in. A drive around the country. Hot spring. And the journey back. Preetam says running in the rain today was one of his best experiences so far...Today was very very long and I am dog tired. But it was a beautiful day. :)

Stop Global Warming

Global Warming is real. It is happening. At a far more faster rate now than ever before. We all, each and every one of us, should be aware of the impacts of global warming. We should be aware of the impacts of OUR lifestyle on global warming. Each one of us, no matter how busy we are with work, family, children, vacation, hobbies, travel, latest gizmos, whatever, we have to be aware of the choices we make. We have to change our attitude. We have to change our lifestyle. Believe me, if each one of us as an individual changes his/her lifestyle, it would make a difference. A big difference. By using energy efficient fluorescent bulbs in your house in place of incandescent yellow bulbs, you can cut down carbon emissions. If each one of us chooses to do that, wouldn't it be a substantial decrease then? We still have time to act. Start by joining StopGlobalWarming.org. Let WE the people gather force, gather momentum. Together we can be heard. Together we can shake our governments, our leaders, our apartment committees, our neighbours from ignorance, apathy and inaction. What are we waiting for?

Mouli

I first met Mouli when she was eight months old. The door opened and I saw an adorable little child sitting on the floor engrossed with something. As I walked to her, knelt down and said "Mouuuuliiiii!", her face froze in an expression of alarm, a few quick frowns appeared, and then she turned into :-( as she looked around for her mamma. She bawled, we were strangers after all and had intruded her familiar world. It took a while to get acquainted. She was a delight from the moment I saw her, making her way with single minded determination to plates, glasses, cutlery, cans, bottles, anything other than her toys, that the bunch of grown-ups was using and she wasn't allowed. Her favorite act was slipping under the low table, lying on her tummy with eyes glued to TV, fascinated...Charu would fret about the effect of TV on her eyes on finding her there! We've spent many weekends with Mouli since then. Every weekend she would have learned something new. She is slowly becoming an individual now. With definite likes and dislikes. She likes certain kind of food only...Likes to have it herself...Preferably sitting or standing...Not in mamma's lap. She's also learnt to seal her lips and refuse eating what mamma thinks is healthy if it doesn't appeal her palette. There's a clear distinction between "I like this :)" and "This is yuck :|" these days. With all her effort she has learnt to climb the table, where earlier she would just circle around it trying to reach out for those interesting taboo things grown-ups eat and drink. She communicates with new sounds and expressions now, gives the most delightful smile from time to time and enjoys the adoring attention she draws from all of us. Everything goes in her mouth these days, from tissue paper to remote batteries. She loves pulling out CD's from the TV stand and tossing them around(thank god for the CD covers!). She loves cell phones. She loves pulling off the power chord of the laptop and then looking around for reaction.

She'll be an year old next month. It's amazing to see children grow. It's amazing to see how quickly they learn to emulate us. :)

Tropical Diseases Move Up North

Climate change and rising temperatures are driving tropical diseases up north, to countries like Canada, US and Netherlands, says this here. Mosquitoes, ticks, mice and other carriers are surviving warmer winters and expanding their range into regions where diseases like Malaria, Cholera, West Nile virus were hitherto unknown. "Things we projected to happen in 2080 are happening in 2006", says a Harvard physician. Higher altitude regions are warming faster than lowlands. Trees are moving upwards with melting snowcaps, bringing disease carrying insects to higher elevations. Warming of seas is helping breed cholera virus in regions where cholera was unheard of. In South America, first case of cholera was detected in 1991, and since then has spread across the continent killing more than 10,000 people. West Nile virus, transmitted by mosquitoes, was first detected in New York in 1999. It has infected 21,000 people in US and Canada since then and killed around 800. It is a virus which thrives in drought and an increase in it's cases has been observed directly coinciding with unusually dry, hot season, which is typical of drought-deluge spells caused by climate change all over the world.

Climate change has impacts we can never, never be able to understand fully. They say we still have a ten year window. If each country, especially the developed and the fast developing, focuses on working on a war footing to bring down emissions in the next ten to fifteen years, we might still be able to avert the complete break down of natural systems of this blue planet we call our home.

The Growing Conflict

The biggest conservation issue in shrinking wilderness areas all around the world is that of human animal conflict. Growing human populations and dwindling wilderness areas has put the man and the beast in direct confrontation, and what makes it worse is that, it is a vicious cycle. As human settlements move closer to the forests, they start living on the resources on which the animal populations are directly or indirectly dependent. For most part, these people who live in the forest fringes are the poorest of the poor. They trickle into the forest for collecting fuelwood and minor forest produce like honey, fruits, berries etc. They let their cattle roam free inside the forest. The impact of cattle grazing inside forests cannot be stressed enough. Not only do the herds have a voracious appetite and they graze away everything in the lower story of the forest foliage, from leaves, to grass, to roots, to even seeds, leaving almost nothing for wild herbivore, their hooves make the ground very hard and unsuitable for sustaining or nurturing any kind of plant life. To add to this are the diseases and epidemics that spread from domestic cattle to wild herbivore populations. Dwindling natural prey populations and easy prey in the form of cattle makes starving predators kill domestic cattle for food, which is a big loss for a poor farmer with strained resources. Frequent occurrences of such incidents makes villagers hostile and they turn to the government for getting the animal shot, or capturing it using snares and then beating it to death, or by
poisoning its kill. They cannot identify the real culprit in most cases, so, any random leopard gets punished for a crime committed by another of it's species. In the Indian forests, it is the leopard which lives in closer proximity to the human populations. In south India, elephants are notorious for raiding crops. In
forest fringe villages of Africa, lions often kill cattle or turn man-eater. Hippos are the notorious crop raiders. Hungry crocs are turning man-eaters in river side African villages because villagers are rapidly decimating the croc's main source of food: fish. Black bears have become a menace in West Virginia like wolves in Italian villages and starving polar bears in the Arctic settlements. Human-Animal conflict is the same story everywhere.

Since the last few years, I have read stories of leopards encroaching peripheral villages around Sanjay Gandhi National Park in Borivily every year. Some have turned man-eaters; starving, they encroach into peripheral settlements and pick up a human victim from time to time. As my sympathies lie with the families of these victims, many of whom lose the only bread winner in the family, and what they get after the loss and ordeal is the cold callousness of government bureaucracy, I can't help but wonder - WHO is the real encroacher here? WHO has encroached on WHOM?

For more on human-animal conflict in Bombay, check out this article here.

Dingo

He is the older of my two dogs. He would be ten this year. Milk white just after a bath, off-white on all other times. With brown ears and a brown patch behind. And beautiful large eyes. He came to our house in the front basket of Pop's old Bajaj. Avi chose him from a litter of four or five at a near by petrol station and brought him home. He was a month old when he came...small, cute and roly-poly. He changed our lives.

He grew up to be lean and handsome, courageous and large-hearted, intelligent, and above all, extremely playful. Well, he wasn't the best mannered always, especially when we had guests, but he was a darling. There are just so many stories of Dingo. His mischieves. His rebellion. His brilliant escapades.

Like how he dug below the meshed wire fencing to make a depression of sorts, pressed himself to the ground and slowly crawled out to the other side. To make new friends. I don't know if dogs with pedigree want to mingle with dogs on the street, but our hero sure had the common touch.

On one hot afternoon in the rainy season, he was tied in the garage. He started barking and it was a strange bark we couldn't understand. There was nobody at the gate. He kept barking when Mom went out to check, and make her afternoon round of the garden. Neither Mom, nor Kashi, the maali, could make sense of Dingo's strange and urgent barking. Then Kashi suddenly saw something moving in the thick lawn in the direction Dingo was barking. It didn't take too long to register it was a snake and it was moving in the direction of a flower bed close to Dingo. There was just a second of daze before Maa got the picture and rushed forward to untie Dingo's leash; meanwhile the snake, probably not meaning any harm, crawled closer to where Dingo was, and Dingo, while Maa quickly pulled him to the other side, lunged forward at the snake, with his front paw narrowly missing it by inches. He had to be dragged inside quickly and forcefully. Kashi saw the snake change direction and quickly disappear into the hedge beyond. Dingo went back to the garage later and we kept our eyes open for the next few days, but didn't see the snake again that season.

Dingo moved to Hyderabad in 2001. It was a new environment, with a new neighbourhood to explore. It was here that one day Dingo jumped off the parapet wall of the terrace, and came down with a big thud. The crash and the big yelping made the household rush out to the scene at once. Luckily, he had fallen on damp ground. We could never understand how could he be a fool to jump from that height. But then, Dingo had always seen possibility, and never known fear. He probably saw the front gate open and thought he could neatly jump off the terrace onto the lawn, and bolt out through the open gate. To friends and freedom. It was fun going for a walk with him in the night, everytime I was in Hyderabad on a weekend. There would always be some element of comedy or adventure involved.

He moved back to Bhopal last year. There is a gang of dogs in the neighbourhood there. Hungry, listless, starving, which makes them ruthless and aggresive. Last week a worker left the gate open and Dingo ran out. And this time, he got himself badly injured, in the street fight that followed. He was against seven or eight of them, who had him surrounded. He didn't give in. And they pounced on him. Had Pa reached the scene a couple of minutes late, it would have been impossible to save Dingo this time. It was a war to establish hierarchies, and he didn't want to surrender. He's got badly wounded, his worst wounds so far. When I called home this morning, he was sitting outside sullenly, in all probability, licking his wounds. Maa thinks he would be alright. I think so too. Dingo, the wounded soldier, with his large doleful eyes.

Yellow Sand - A Rogue Here, An Angel There

Hiya Folks, back from a long vacation and the mood is still upbeat. :)

Would like to add a little to the article below. Sand storms from Gobi desert which cover everything in Beijing in a thick layer of dust from March to May every year, might not entirely be a bad phenomena!

Strong winds from Siberia sweep down over the Gobi desert and hurl dust and stones high in the air, from where they travel with the wind across China over the Korean peninsula, reaching Japan and sometimes United States. Yellow sand as it falls over Beijing and South Korea, causes rough skin, allergic reactions and asthma related problems, in addition to damaging material and property. In western China, the dust storms destroy houses and shatter window panes. In South Korea, hundreds of school children are admitted in hospitals because of high fever and nasal inflammation. Little doubt then, that the annual arrival of this sand in these regions is not very welcome. Not only does it raise concern over a serious ecological issue(growing desertification of China's North-West), it also is harmful(and a trifle annoying) to people where it falls.

However, this sand has an environmental upside. It has been found to neutralise acid rain and have beneficial effects on marine environment. It's highly alkaline nature neutralises the acidic nature of the air(due to pollutants) when it reaches east, and helps prevent the occurrence of acid rain. It is rich in minerals and is consumed by plankton in the Pacific which absorb it's minerals. The fish feed on plankton and thus nutrients get passed on to higher levels in the food chain. In Hawaii, researchers say, yellow sand provides nutrients to trees in the tropical forests. It also slows down global warming by converting sulfur-di-oxide from burning of fossil fuels, into sulfur mist which reflects heat back into space.

So as Prof Masaharu Asaba says, once regarded as a bad guy, yellow sand rides on westerly winds and serves as a good guy in remote places. This shipment from the Old Silk Route tastes bitter or sweet, depending on where it lands.

Nature sure works in mysterious ways. :)