A desperate blogger's letter to a friend

Dear Friend

I have never met you, know nothing about you. Yet I keep emailing you every weekend. Did this thought ever cross your mind, why do I write to you?

Well for reasons -

* I love speaking my mind

* I love telling stories,

* I need someone to listen,

And most importantly I belong to a breed of Pre-Facebook animals.

Facebook I cannot fathom.

You don’t exist if you are not on Facebook. Everyone is replacing emails with Facebook posts.

Why, my next door Johnny wanted to send me messages thru Face book. The bimbette from my old town was posting selfies dressed in every cleavage showing dresses in her wardrobe. I wanted to be in a group of people sharing similar thoughts and filter the rest out. But I didn’t know how to. May be the placid interface was too simple and it daunted me.

So comes Blogger and Google+ into my living space. Ah! Finally I got my prayers answered.

I happily went blogging stooping over my keyboard every Saturday afternoon.

Then all of sudden I was lost again.

Do people really read blogs? Are they seeing my posts?

Of the measly 20 page views how many were really read?

Confidence in my cognitive skills is now under a shadow of doubt. Without a single validation how do I know my perceptions are right? 

Where are those comments I see below posts with photos mesmerizing landscapes. Do people ignore posts unless with HDR photos?

20 odd photos from my last year's holiday were all used up by my second post.

These people must be great globe trotters. I have not even moved out Gujarat leave alone the country.

Where do I get ‘heart turning into a rose’ GIFs?

So I take blogging lessons.

*”Write short”-

 I cannot, I am a talker!

*”Write intelligently”-

I do- I am a sapiosexual, I really am!

*Make it visibly interesting with bold & colored text”-(don’t write ‘and’ Use ‘&’......)

I plastered my post with rainbow colored texts! Use symbols. (Mrs. Roy must be cursing me from her grave. I was never her favorite student anyway!)

”Put images”-

I inserted Scarlett Johansson’ picture too!

But nothing helped.

So let Google+ may rule the world, I will stick to simple emails, content and happy with the assurance you will read them.

You may ignore them, mark them as spam.

But I have seen thousand cats die. Curiosity always wins.

Are you a dead cat by now?

Have a great day!

A little bird that came to stay...

Ten years back we brought a flat in an apartment building in Baroda. The twenty acres of Sarabhai Chemical was flanking the back of our apartment. This long closed factory plot was with heavy plantation of various trees. Looking thru all our windows we never felt the concrete jungle around us.

From our third floor windows we could see the crown of the trees. In monsoon it was in various shades of green and in summer a deluge of colours. From the bright yellow of 
peltophorum and fistula, red and orange Delonix regia to princely purple of Jacaranda, all were there. The first thing I did taking the flat was to remove all the metal grills of the window. A mistake I can never forgive myself for. (May be this I can talk about some other day.)

The huge garden was a playing ground for hundreds of birds, squirrels, mongooses and monkeys.

The monkeys would jump to our building and sit on the window sheds, their tails going ‘tic-tac’ like a pendulum across the window glasses. They would often lean down and take a banana or a biscuit we offered. Sometimes they would even steal vegetables from the kitchen top. The small open window was the gateway for them all, except for the huge alpha male. May be the sneaking thru the window was far below his dignity.

He would open the latch of our grilled door. Walk across the living room to the kitchen with an attitude, and open the fridge.  Or he would sit on the dining table and confiscate the fruit basket. Much time the bread basket would be attacked. Gracefully of course he would spare the butter and cheese tray. Maybe he was calorie conscious.

Unlike the complaints of many they were never aggressive toward us. We enjoyed their simian antics.

A pair of squirrels had made the kitchen chimney pipe their home.  May be they liked the aroma of our Daal makkhani. We can hear them play in the pipe over our kitchen cabinets. Probably they had babies inside the pipe.

One evening a little one came inside the house and began to run all round. Finally he jumped on to our son’s bed, crept under the sheet and slept. We kept a line of pillows across the bed that Mimo won’t roll over in his sleep and make a pancake of the little fellow.

We thought the poor chap had lost his way. But to our surprise, he came again for next quite a few days and slept in the same place under the sheet!

A brunch of a peltophorum tree, touching the boundary wall was growing into our kitchen. We kept that window open and let it grow in. We had to fight with the occupants below our floor ant the maintenance team to stop them from trimming this branch.

We called it our tree.

One day we were startled by a sharp “chip chip” sound of a very small bird jumping on that branch. She was little bigger than a humming bird. May be it was a sunbird. She became a regular visitor and we named her Chipley.

Chipley built a nest on that branch. Every evening she would jump on the brunch outside and go ‘chip- chip’ till we leave the kitchen.  We come back only after she would enter and sit in her nest. Use of the fan was stopped in fear that she might get into the blades. Slowly Chipley got used to us and stopped flying out of the kitchen in our presence.

Chipley laid two eggs in her nest and we were jumping in joy like family expecting the arrival of a child.

One evening as we returned home, Chipley came flying to us and began to chirp. Astonished we began to wonder what she was doing. Was she playing with us? How did she all of a sudden become so bold?  Or did we do something to anger her?

She kept on flying over our head for quite some time going ‘chip chip’ endlessly. We just could not understand her.

Not till next morning!

We were woken up early next day by a huge rumbling nose behind out apartment. We rushed to the window to see a devastating sight. The Sarabhai Chemical plot was sold off to DLF. They are coming up with a mega commercial project in this plot. 

With tens of bull dozzers and diggers all the trees are being uprooted.

We debated amongst ourselves whether to bring down Chipley’s nest.

No, they will not cut our tree. It is touching the boundary wall and far away from the build-able area. I am an architect and I know they will have to leave this margin.

Our tree will not be harmed.

How wrong we were.

That evening when we returned home our tree was gone.

So was Chipley, her nest and her eggs.

Did Chipley sense it? Was this she trying to tell us and asking for help?

We felt so helpless.

Dinner remained uncooked that evening.

I fail to understand why do we want to destroy every beautiful thing nature has so graciously given us.  How long is it before we lose all our ‘Chipley’s forever?

Today I want to ask Barnali and all people who love this world of beautiful birds and animals how do we help them  survive?

Give me more than a picture

Kopou Phool

Every year during this time of April my mail box gets full with mails having picture of this Orchid we Assamese love so much. Every greeting card, calendars, books with love poems, and blog post that has got something to do with Bihu, cannot, not be adorned with a very artistically photographed ‘kapau phool’  it is something we associate ourselves with, something very dear to us.

It has all the right to be so.   

‘Kopou, botanically known as Rhynchostylis retusa, is indigenous to this sub Himalayan region and somewhat Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam. But region states near Assam probably has climate most conducive for growth of this orchid. 

Kopou is a very delicate plant and need a very even watering and fertilizing and cannot withstand extreme heat and dry atmosphere. Probably this is the reason it grows with ease in Assam and Arunachal Pradesh.

Though this plant may have medicinal value, we Assamese worship it just because of its delicate fragrance and the sheer beauty.  It symbolizes love, fertility and merriment and thus we consider it as our State flower and flaunt it all thru the Bihu season.

All verities of orchids are in great demand for decoration, mostly so in the hotel industries. During marriage season people are willing to spend a handsome amount. More the exotic value more will be the value. Most of them imports from Singapore and Thailand.

A hotelier friend had once asked me if I could arrange for a supplier from Assam. it would add to a new variety, and would be economical.

I searched thru Google and following was the result-

Orchid Growers in Assam- four results under nurseries, growers none: three under forum, site not accessible.

Rhynchostylis retusa  grower  in Bhalukpong- result nill

Rhynchostylis retusa in eBay over fifteen results from Thailand Malaysia and London.

Incredible isn’t it!

We all love this orchid and call it our state flower. And its cultivation is limited to some pathetic back yard or a pot hanging from the corner of our verandah!

Flowers are cultivated commercially all over the world.  I shall just not talk of Tulips; it is just beyond our wildest imagination. Marigold is a booming business in Gujarat, The climate of Gujarat does suit growing of Roses. Yet highest supply of roses in the country for Valentine day last year was from Gujarat. The Government gives subsidies for setting up green houses. People would even cultivate on terraces for scarcity of land.

Orchid grower in Kerela

http://www.aarshasree.com/OrchidsAvailable/Projects.html

Cultivation of Kopou alone may not be a viable project considering it flowers for a very short period during spring season. 293 species of orchids grows in Assam amounting to 24% of orchid verities in India.

The only detailed information of these orchids I found was in Bhaskar Boras’s blog http://borabhaskar.blogspot.in/2010/04/orchids-of-lakhimpur-district-and-its_11.html

Sale of orchids in Singapore

http://isharethese.blogspot.com/2011/04/orchids-of-singapore.html#.U0j3oaLQK40

Kopou is on the verge of extinction in rest of India and it’s time that we bring this beautiful orchid out of the backyards.

We have the entire climate, all the land. But the will, the zest, the entrepreneurship is missing.  Will someone wake us up?