Floral Abundance  at SVC

Sri Venkateswara College  has been subject to a lot of expansion  and construction over the last 35 years.  Stretches of ridge lands on which the institution stands  have now been tamed into a larger canteen with stone clad seating areas for teacher and students,   a library block, extra  teaching rooms,   more staff quarters, hostels for young men and women, bamboo rooms in two sections of the college requiring more levelling of the gound, extensions in the science block, expansion of the Arts Block and the  adminisrative section, an auditorium shell and a new teaching block named after Durgabai Deshmukh, concretised parking space for vehicles, badminton and tennis courts, electric cables, generators, and the most recent of them all, a walkway from the metro gate to the centre of college, leaving us with shrinking grounds over the decades.

Besides the miniature temple, very much a twenty-first century construction  is a  small patch of land bordered  with a few rain trees in front of th administrative block. For long it  showcased a few foundation stones, announcing  new sites under construction inaugurated by important digntaries. Members of the garden committee spent long years in shifting away  the commemorative foundation stones.  

When the stone slabs and the cement frames holding them were gone, the ground was levelled to plant pink roses bushes that quickly filled up the space and flowered profusely, providing an abundant  source of flowers that were collected for worship. Eventually, the rough demarcation between this green patch and the path leading to the grounds was identified by two concrete borders, on either side of a tarred road separated by two concrete boundaries that marked off the green spaces. The  rose bushes  looked scraggly when  not in bloom. The small plot outstretchd itself and   and took on new avatar. It  was chosen as  a site for rainwater harvesting.  Then grafted roses were planted instead of the local variety and they did rather  poorly. The whole area looked like wild scrubland. Eventually, the grafted plants  had to be painstakingly repotted and relocated  and we had a whole new canvas to work upon.

 We bordered the patch  with ruellias (mexican petunias) in pink, white and mauve colours..and slowly prepared the gound for flowerng annuals.   The rain tree shrubs formed the backdrop and salvia, daisies and calendulas were planted in stretches. A few marigolds and tagetas also found some space.  Closer to  the wall hollyhocks ranged themselves in and around the rain-trees. Alysiums in purple and white charmingly brought up the groundswell  next to the ruellias covering up the edge ofthe border.

 The annuals are now in full bloom. It is now a balmy spring and the nighs are still chilly, allowig the flowers a riotous interlude.  Soon the heat will be on and the flowers will slowly disappear. It takes  six months to create this wild floral canopy, every season. Our gardeners contracted for this work, work hard, nurturing the plants and replanting those that have died or have been damged by animal and human footfalls. This stretch has filled up uninteruptedly with annual blooms, almost 15 years after the stone plaques were removed.  Perhaps in the next season, more varieties of flowers will join this vibrant stage and add to the festivities. Who knows?

NO ACADEMIC SPRING AT DELHI UNIVERSITY

 Life  as a student in the North Campus at the end of the 1970s was made up of  halycon days. The North Campus was the longest distance I had commuted to in the city  in all of my life upto then.  Nursery and then Primary School had been at a walking distance and   Middle-school and Senior-school were always a short school bus ride away. The university that loomed in the distance was made accessible  through public transport. For 12 rupees and fifty paisa, one could board any DTC bus, blue in colour, sometimes maroon, and travel from Western Extension Area  to North Delhi and further. When we shifted home from Karol Bagh to Saket, there were university specials, buses in which mostly students and teachers going to the university travelled. These buses, dropped us off outside the gates of the coleges we studied in, allowing us to explore a whole new world.

 There were  sprawling grounds in  individual colleges, and then an entire university campus  one could wander over. From the back  gate of  college there was a scenic route to the the science block of the university and  from there  to the university coffee house where jelly and cream was a preferred delicacy, along with coffee and other odds and ends.  There were in fact so many food haunts around the campus, ranging from  the chow mein at the arts faculty dhaba and the aloo chat sold by a twinkling eyed man outside the arts faculty, who had ben selling aloo chat from quite some time. It was easy to saunter and attend  lectures because they were illuminating and sit in on  for talks that were informative. Sittiing in the college cafe and wolfing down flame-scorched buttered bread, or eating samosas and gulab jamun with nimbu paani  at Rohtaas's stand and absorbing a brave new world of ideas. Discovering  chane bhatoorae at KNags and  books in shops in  Kamla Nagar as KNags was expansively called. Nesting books on  library shelves in an old world library where from a seat  in an alcove, there was the possiblity of gazing at the green of the lawns outside the library window. Spic Macay and college festvals, theatre and social service leagues and literary societies and the occasional film at the film club, reaching home after long bus rides and drinking in all kinds of new thoughts and trying to accomodate them inside of one's head, exploring new spaces, such as Triveni and Mandi House, the National Gallery and the National Museum;  getting off the U special to have chaat on Shahjahaan Road, these are some of the memories that the mind throws up.

What an amazing place the university was in those days, and how wonderful it was to have a  long single academic year, that began after a hot summer, led us through the monsoons and then provided us  with  autumn and  winter breaks, where one could savour the seasons, enjoy varied   festivals in the short break in  October and then  nourish oneself in winter in the third week of December and  into the New Year cozying up  at home during the cold season. Back in the New Year to college in bracing weather that turned into spring and then taking our exams in  almost hot April, while the university shut down for the summer for students and teachers. It was a space of leaning and safety , from which we emerged, ready to test our wings in the world. Yes, the university in myriad ways prepared us for the universe!

 Five years of such  learning; undergraduate and graduate, at the university and  the overwhelming desire to continue to be a part of this life.  So there I was, after yet another long summer, back to teach in another college across the road, engaging with undergraduates and tutoring MA students and being part of a community of teachers,  young and middle aged, bonding over tea in the college staffroom, in between lectures, teaching various undergraduate classes,  rushing out to join rallies  or attend a talk, view  an exhibition of art/pottery,  watch a play, or just pick up a book or two  at the library and browse. We tried out  the local eateries in Knags. patronising  special Chane Bhature that sold out everyday in under three hours.. the shopkeepers downed shutters until the next morning... and  savoured the wonderful fruit beer at the corner as well as the snacks at Bercos..which underwent many new avataars from seedy to hip.  As young teachers we were  monarchs of  all that we surveyed, full of energy and arguments as we began to articulate our  discoveries in the subjects and areas that interested us while being trained through  MPhil programs to focus  on PhDs. 

Almost a 150 years after William Wordsworth one could  echo his sentiment and paraphrase it to declare that bliss was it to be alive during  those  years, when the joy of studying and teaching at the university was non-pareil.  As teachers, even befor internal assessment was introduced the university had a system of tutorials, preceptorils and practicals that were valued additions to the  academic  life of  a student.  Teachers came in to correct  answer sheets at  examination centres, set up in different colleges, usually at the North Campus in the hot summer, and brought food from home which was pooled into an abundant  lunch over which we exchanged notes and pointers about scripts that were to be corrected.  Examination results were seldom delayed  and evaluation was for the most part fair. Systems of re-evaluation were also in place. As teachers we also had a strong DUTA in place that worked to improve and ameliorate teacing and learnng spaces in the university. We were a much admired university at the turn of the century with varied disciplines  committed to academic growth and research.

Where did these years go? I just don't know. DUTA has ben reduced to small rag tag groups that have been pulverised by the new systems that has been set in place. The place of the teacher as reprsentative has shunk in important bodies such as the Academic Council and the Executive Council. A hurriedly implemented  semester system  is firmly in place. Upon its body experiments on curriculum continue to be harnessed. First we truncated and bowdlerised the annual mode, next we expanded it to a four year program with silly ennervating syllabi  that had to be  rejected on public demand.  Another Trojan Horse that was introduced in the midst of all this was NAAC.  This trojan horse continues to consume all our energy as we try and get accreditation on paper by endless accumulation of data. Significantly, the powers that be have never engaged with the absurdity of the idea of accreditaion for a hundred year old public university.  As we limped back to arranging a more suitable curriculum for the semester system (although that is a misrepresentation of the truth for the semester system is unsuitable as a method of teaching in itself) we were struck by COVID and subsequently pushed into online modes of highly unproductive teaching. Before we could recover and restore the university to its rhythms, CUET and the NEP were implemented in the university. 

Were we caught off-guard as teachers? Was it the onslaught of unending semesters, or  the death toll of the pandemic  that ushered this new regimen in?  We are now in some Americanised environs where mountains of data is collected on cyberpages on what seems to me to be a six-hourly basis. Endless hours are demanded of each teacher in compiling and uploading data which  contributes zilch to  the processes of  teaching.  So I keep asking  myself..wasnt the university set up to teach?  Five years from today there will be research papers documenting how  data punching damages and depletes the human  brain and corrodes creativity. Assembly line techniques  work for objects,  they are not meant  for the human brain.

 So  how does this impede the learning process? Much has been said about the shrinking of the classroom space and the curriculum. Perhaps it is time  to speak for the student meant  to learn and grow holistically at the university. The students are run down and  bleary-eyed, the air is thick with particulate matter.  Hostel accomodation is meagre and PG digs are either expensive and unsustainable or shabby  and unappealing.We are so busy watching  the AQI that our water and food contaminants are yet to be highlighted.

 In this toxic amosphere, each student has seven papers per semester from the first semester onwards.  There are three core papes, one GE that is disguised as a core paper and courses such as VAC, SEC and EVS. which are  offered as credit papers.  While the core papers have diluted content, the marks have increased exponentially. If earlier 25 marks out of hundred was part of the internal assessment  and attendance that colleges contributed to the score sheet, now numbers crunching has reached  70. 

 CA (continuous evaluation) is for 40 marks (35 marks for student performance and 5 marks for tutorial attendance) and IA( internal evaluation) is for 30 marks ( 24 marks for writen work and 6 marks for attendance). Each core paper is  for 160 marks and all  students attempt  a three hour central exam  for 90 marks. The CA and IA demand five pieces of writing from the sudent in each course.  The non-core courses, supposedly less demanding, continue to put pressure on students, seking a steady handing over of endless assignments.  

Whil a teacher may have to evaluate abour 500 essays of varying length per semester, each student has to write about seven essays in each of the courses he or she is offering. Most students have replaced the older cut and paste system  with modern cheat technology and one can get   written assignments from an entire  class powered by ChatGPT answers. The modular semester program ensures that no course can ever spill into the next.This promotes silo learning from semester to semester, easily forgotten because there is very little time available even to teach the truncated courses that are on offer.   

So three years of this..and then one more mysterious year later, our students will enter the brave new world of a one year Masters Program.  Why have  Masters  Programs in various disciplines  been compressd into a single  year? Does this bode well for students  when the  core undergraduate syllabi has been greatly diluted?  Why have  MPhil courses been scrapped?  The University continues to be  in the throes of a  learning and teaching pandemic. No  inoculation is  in place. Nor have any  systems  been generated to nurture the best pedagogic practices that the university had in place, once. Students are packed into lecture, tutorial and  practical rooms by the gross.  Neither the sub-par curriculum nor the dinacharya of the overburdened student or the clericalised university teacher compiling data, is likely to be reviewed at any point.  

We have already celebrated 100 years of Delh University. It is now in free fall, disintegrating  into small bits. The telescope that can track and record  the fall and disintegration of  humungous bodies such as a central university has yet to be invented. If we cannot change this, maybe it is time to gather around and mourn.

.

 

 Mulling over Mulberries in May.

It is going to be a hot summer. The melons, maltas, and water melons are abundant.  Grapes beckon to us in green and intense purple black and apples sit on fruit carts in the streets of Delhi,  possibly  emerging out of cold storage, but an unusual event nevertheless, because in days long gone by, fruits such as  the apple could not be seen  once March arrived. In fact, even Delhi's red carrots, that were being sold until last week  have also had a long run to the end of April. I still have two  red carrots in my vegetable tray in the refrigerator and shall consume them this morning, before welcoming the orange carrots  venturing out boldly in the face of the summer heat. Today is the fourth of May. allso the start of the agni nakshatra, my mom announces, as we ready ourselves for an incredibly hot spell.

 

 The mango  has been walking the streets of Delhi since February, announcing that this will be a  hot season. The Safeda, aka Banganapalli is the most dominant mango , but the Sinduri and the Totapuri and the Turkman, are  doing the rounds and recently Hapus or Apoos from  Bombay have also joined the fray. The Turkman is a small mango, thin skinned and sweet, with a rich flavour  while the Hapus , a little bigger than the Turkman  hits high taste and flavour  notes in every bite. Even before the other varieties of mangoes hit the streets, the mango captures the imagination and tweaks  the tastebuds for the longest season every year.  

Of late I have begun to wonder whether  large fruits, such as  the papaya, the watermelon, the pomegranate  and  banana( available all year long) the melons, pineapple, pears and peaches, less frequent visitors, have begun to edge out other berries and fruit not only from the carts but also from the cultural imagination?

  Fresh fruit of the date palm, grace the fruit carts for a very short time every year, although the ripe fruit, dried and packaged occupies pride of place in carts and stores all year long. The jujube fruit for instance, that Sabari bit into to verify  ripeness and sweetness before arranging them on a leaf plater for the visiting Rama. We grew up buying  three kinds of  ber or jujubes fruit,   in three sizes, red and pea sized, rust red and marble sized and  the green yellow jujube that was ovoid shaped and  turned a rust brown when overripe, and could be enjoyed both fresh, ripe and overripe.. The  ovoid shaped ber or jujube, available in shiv-ratri season, could be eaten only after  being offered to Shiva. Nowadays humungous jujubes  called apple jujubes  continue to arrive at markets  in spring. The two smaller sizes are hard to come by, although Tamil Nadu markets the most delicious packaged jujube pappads or vadas or paste made from the dried  red fruit, which is consumed stealthily by those in the know.  For those who have never eaten  jujube paste from Tamil Nadu, the jujube pickle made with mustard provides delicious counterpoint and yes, both the  jujube papad and jujube pickle  win hands down over  aam papad. 

 The maulsari, a delicious  tiny orange red fruit with hints of the cheeku, that most people do not seem to have heard of.   There are several Maulsari trees in full fruit at the college where I teach, that could with continued attention allow us to harvest abundant fruit. There is also the khirni, a fruit that possibly belongs to the same family as the Maulsari (Mimosops Elegi), and is ovoid in shape but yellow in colour, I have purchased them from a vendor in Chandni Chowk, but the fruit is rarely seen, although the tree itself is supposedly hardy and the fruit is meant to be nourishing, once consumed  only by royalty.

This April, we also had two days when  phalsa and jamun  were sold by street vendors because of the odd rainy weather  at New Delhi. Of the two, The jamun has managed to retain its clientele and can be found boxed up in imposing cartons. However, vendors selling both fruit  turn up in the month of June. Yet, other perishable fruit,  that grow on trees in New Delhi such as the fig and the mulberry seem to be receiving short shrift. Figs sell in carts in parts of Bombay and Kerala, but are rare to access in New Delhi, although the Gular grows in Delhi. Occasionally a stray vendor might sells some wilted figs in  transparent package, but such a  solitary swallow does not a summer make!

The mulberry,  available in small and medium and long sizes and in both deep pink and creamy green colours and a palette that ranges from tart to sour-sweet  and nectar sweet finds little mention in our fruit manuals. The Friday haat  sells kiwis, dragon fruit and blueberries (all the way from Peru )  routinely, but vendors who stack the mulberry in these local weekly market remain non existent. Occasionally, a desultory vendor walks the crowded street in  Sarojini Nagar market selling sad looking mulberries in a plastic carton, There is the lone vendor in green park market who stocks mulberry sometimes. I have seen one man at Connaught Place as well in a year long gone by, but the mulberry is now  a less loved fruit and will if we do not watch out, go the way of the maulsari and the khirni. 

This is a pity, because the mulberry is a versatile fruit , like any other. Fresh handpicked mulberries can be eaten off the tree or added to salads and sandwiches. They can be bottled as jam or  turned into compotes for pancakes and waffles. Mulberry jam is a delicious toppings for cheesecake and additions to muffins and can add great colour and body to smoothies.  They are dried and sold as tuth,  in the spice market at Istanbul. Occasionally, dry fruit vendors from Kashmir   sell dried tuth, that lends itself to a whole  range of delicacies. 

Recently a friend brought me mulberry candy from Hong Kong, wherein  the whole purple fruit had been dried and packaged  into delicious bite sized treats. It surpassed the  experience of  eating dried blueberries, was easier to bite into than cranberries and was softer and more intense in flavour than raisins.  All in all a great pick me up, with abundant health benefits, soothing coughs and sore throats, other than being the locavore gourmet and gourmand's dream come true. The mulberry tree in front of my house has fruited through March and April and will soon sign off its innings for the season.  It has provided sustenance to scores of birds, both tiny and large. It is  the favourite haunt of  small children who live nearby, who climb the tree and constantly raid it for its delicious and juicy fruit. 

Soon, the fruit will be gone and the children will be off in pursuit of juicier options. At the end of the week, large branches of the mulberry will stretch towards the earth, having descended to feed every child and adult who wandered by and tugged at its multiple arms. These will be  lopped off by idle hands and the upper ends of  metallic vehicles, as obstructions that must be briskly eliminated. The electricity department will also turn up, with machines, lopping off branches to protect electricity cables, while internet service providers will loop their wires through the uppermost branches of the tree. Meanwhile the enigmatic tree will  withdraw into silent meditation and  plan  for the next fruiting season.

 

A Requiem for Education

It was time for reason to flee

When Jaggu took over UGC,

For his well-timed exit from  JNU

Saved him from the falling debris,

Of that now- scrunched up university.

 

Everyone’s heart was in their mouth,

Knowing   twas DU’s time to go south

That is when in stepped HERA Pheri

Plus other practices jo Jaggu ne en route gheri!

Promoting questionable exams, benefitting neither meri nor teri !

 

Those were tiny shoes he had to fill,

 Vacated by previous VCs who had made DU ill

One had even opined that a little plagiarism was good,

This Jaggu at UGC speedily understood.

 Hence Michigan’s protocols have now become DU’s staple food

 

Our university years have lengthened,

And our specialized syllabi have shrunk!

 "No, don’t get into a funk,"

Jaggu declares, much strengthened:

 "In the new economy student fees will form a huge chunk."

 

 We asked :” What about ethics and equality and research standards?”

 He replied :” On such overloads,  why  must  energy  be  squandered?”

 “We promise ease of reduced teaching and guarantee pleasure

 Over four years you will be granted much more leisure.

 Why does such immanence worry you in undue measure?”

 

“ Our leaders, they are our national treasure,

 We must  not subject them to any more pressure,

 At all times, the university, student and teacher

In the leader’s diminishment must not feature

The ill educated leader is now an iconic creature.”

 

 “All education must take a hike,

So everyone go pedal your bike,

let us whip up the froth and fluff

 let no one dare to call our bluff,

 Less must be in fact, much much more than enough.”

 

Thus will NEP trip,  nip and rip education,

 Pushing students onto an overpriced  vacation

Under this new policy of Ignorance,

Education will forever be in a trance.

See how our politicians jump up and prance.

 

Meanwhile let us iterate as we so heavily fall

Know this: The anguished writing on the wall

  Higher education was not built by chance

 All those of you continuing to look askance

At innocent minds speared  through  mischance.

 Will you not end, this relentless,  macabre dance?

 Of Newspapers and New Mornings. 

Every morning in the cold season, as I stumble out of bed and into living, I focus on getting my limbs in readiness for the day. With a tall mug filled with a hot beverage, I ease myself into a comfortable sofa  and in the light of a lit  table lamp surf through newspapers. Invariably there is little to read. The world is falling apart; we've destroyed as  many institutions as could be destroyed and  damaged as much of the environment as we could, although grand national plans continue to march on relentlessly.  Meanwhile everyone in power is turning upon  anyone  out of  power, while much muscle flexing and badgering continues  between  those who occupy high offices, as part of the bid to worry people who stand  up against  them. 

So I quickly shift from dismal  news to stuff that is more diffuse, because  my brain cells  demand to be  fed some stimulation that will  keep Alzheimers and dementia at bay, before I succumb to  the coup that macular degeneration  will achieve in due course. My solution to postpone  ageing and to contribute to a better world is now focused on solving word and number puzzles. 

I spent a considerable part of the previous year sucked in by wordle and its multiplying kin, quordle and phrazle and so on, deeply enmeshed in a combination of propelled speed and power. until one morning, while I lay in bed a little longer, it struck me that this addiction to various cults in the wordle family had given me a grasp on floating alphabets and all I did was to place one letter next to another until my moment of revelation arrived. I got the correct combination and the page revealed a green light, almost florescent, that told me I had  conquered, in other words, mastered the word of the day. I felt powerful for a long time, and turbo-charged as well. I usually got wordle most days, at least by the third try, so as an indicator it suggested that my gray cells were ageing well. My success  with Quordle was about 75 percent. I got three of the four words right, but my moment of octane filled pleasure came from phrazle because I got the entire phrase rather quickly on most days. So the adrenalin flowed on and on for  months on end.

To go back to the morning of the reckoning, I  had written very little of note and lacked  motivation to write altogether. Worse, once I ran through the quordle clan, I tackled the spellathon next and followed it up with three sets of  sudoko, I felt  my brain cells had been given a workout  that left them in a great state of health and that therefore I might as well as  idle the rest of the day away.  So that fateful morning I looked  carefully at the five letter wordle in front of me: It was probable "strip,"  and in the meanwhile the phrazle for the day announced  "Break a Leg." I puzzled over both,  wondering at the subliminal messages. Normally, my brain would race over the multiple meanings encrusted around the word  "strip" and search for synonyms and then try and figure out the history of the expression "break a leg", which has little to do with an actual incantation  for bodily injury, being an expression  used to wish good luck  to actors staging a play, instead.  

 I reflected  that in an earlier time, people often opened religious texts written in the older languages of the world and accepted the first phrase or sentence their eye fell upon as the message for the day. They dwelt upon it and explored and examined that particular idea at great length.  A version of such engagement had filtered down as routine practice in middle school as well, wherein the thought of the day would be written up  in chalk on the general notice board and would be copied out by the class prefects on the black board of each classroom.

 I thought back to the debates we had over "honesty is the best policy" and  the conclusion we reached about how "make hay while the sun shines" discussing both opportunity and expediency.   Group activity with the spoken word was the practice of the local community that heard  the Hari katha being read or attended an exposition of the Ramayana Epic at a gathering.  For those who wanted something more modern, there were LP records, with a range of music and  readings of plays and poetry. and more recntly,  gatherings to read out one's poetry. How had I exchanged all those diurnal  spaces to engage with  a single word and phrase? It seemed a very odd transaction and a rather meagre returns  altogether, in retrospect.

 I was overwhelmed with the feeling  that I could do more for my gray cells and  for the pink cells in my heart as well as  the silver cells in  my soul. The gray cells are the one that occupy my brain at rest and become golden when illumined by ideas. The pink cells live in my heart and inhabit my emotional life, while the silver cells of my soul help me to process and think through ideas and make me examine closely the choices I opt for. Since then, I have signed off on all the wordle and phrazle Whatsapp  teams I was a member of. Now new wordles no longer serve as clickbait. 

 I have gone back to doing spellathon in the daily newspaper. and the odd Sudoko. However, I  have figured out why I had graduated to Worldle Inc  in the first place. The daily newspapers that set up a page of quizzes, cartoons, crosswords and sudokus and spellathons  have now collectively concluded   that mindful pleasure is not to be offered  as a premium to every interested reader.  For those of us still buying newspapers, the cover page is a shout out to IAS aspirants and those in search of coaching classes. However, the entertainment page has been shrinking year by year, column by column, inch by inch, word by word and alphabet  by alphabet. The crossword squares are miniscule, the crossword clues. themselves, grow smaller by the year. The spellathon has also shrunk, but the font can still be read by the naked eye. With the exception of the Hindu which has a decent sized sudoko, doing the crossword and sudoko  in other newspapers  causes severe eye strain. The other curious  thing is that newspapers offer easy and cryptic crosswords, but provide a  solitary black and white square  for writing out the answers. . The logic seems to be as follows: You can either do the easy crossword or the cryptic one. We do not believe in choice. This is odd, isnt it? As the buyer of a newspaper, surely I have the right to do  both the  easy and the cryptic crosswords? How do I write down two sets of answers in a singularly marked square?

" No, you cannot have such a choice;" the newspapers seem to chine in unison. "We are developing unidimensional  proto-types.  These are meant for people who need not strain to read the small print, literally and figuratively." 

" Could you not have larger fonts and illustrations and  provide  the easy and the cryptic clue crosswords their own individual black and white boxes?  Surely such an act will not put newspapers in the red?" For this anxiety of mine , there is no answer. Newspapers no longer have conversations with their readers.

 Undeniably,  nothing newsworthy has been  published in India of late. So  this is not a clarion call for an increase in the size of the font for the Editorial, Opinions, Letters to the Editor or Report pages.  All I want to know is this: What  is this malice  that has gripped the jugular of entertainment?  Surely, the  entertainment page can provide more joy by the use  of larger fonts?  Are we not to be allowed any mindful pleasures at all? Are we being made to  follow the Kartavya path, whereby  all pleasure and laughter must be relinquished? Small wonder then that newspapers, without any real news, without any arguments, without any legible infotainment and with  diminutive  fonts aggravating reader-discomfort are losing out to the digital world. The font size in the digital world and the material for viewing  continues to be attractive. I can watch Pathan on Prime TV and  amazing, award-worthy documentaries such as The Air We Breathe on You-Tube.\ and Meiyazhagan on prime time. If newsprint is losing out to the audiovisual film, it is  not because "the times, they are a changing," it is because the fonts of newsprints, they have "been  a shrinking," along with news and views for a long time now. 

 Clamouring Clerodendrum

Delhi is a city of extremes... It swings slowly between  between opposite ends of the spectrum over a period of twelve months, but continues to give us glimpses of its incredible beauty through its flora and birdlife, both of which are diverse and proliferating.  I love its trees and creepers , many of which have travelled from exotic climes ,  armed with flowers in  incredible colours , names, shapes and sizes. I love the wild rose, the thin pink-tipped jasmine, the plump mogras, the passionflower,  the shankh pushp, the madhumalti, the wisteria and the trumpet flowers, to say say nothing of the multi-hued bougainvillea  that can climb trees and walls and electric poles and street wires and then send down thorny leaf-curtains  well-loved by sparrows, but for me the creeper that embodies the spirit of Delhi is the clerodendrum, a hardy creeper that I have seen  densely populating  walls around homes, schools, colleges and public institutions. Most creepers in fact are gregarious, they are nature's climbers after all, and reach new heights  and newer destinations more often than not. 

When a small spot opened up in front of my house, several years ago, I planted a clerodendrum creeper that was eaten alive by an itinerant cow before it could get its act together. In recent years, since cows are now schooled in goshalas and are seldom allowed to stroll down colony roads, unless bedecked in a heavy embellished sheet and patrolled by an attendant,  I embarked upon Project Clerodendrum again by purchasing yet another creeperling from a nearby nursery. I planted it in the same spot , but a giant mulberry tree which was now lording it over the section of the street shut out the creeperling's sun. Listless, it  took on a grass like identity and grew at the rate of  half an inch every year, but couldn't really put a foot forward because it got  very little sunlight. For a while it straggled, living and partly shrinking, until last year,  a newly appointed maali used  a long string to lead the clerodendrum up the walled path.  I  wondered howthe attached string would help if  we did not chop off  the overhang of the mulberry tree.  When I broached the subject with Rakesh,  my not- newly-hired-anymore maali, about trimming the  mulberry branch, he announced that the clerodendrum required no such assistance. Puzzled l began to  trace the movement of  the single vine  climbing up the wall of my house and discovered to my delight that it had  leaped and bounded to a height of 17 feet  and then spread itself out atop the mosaic platform  that sheltered the wardrobes in  our first floor bedroom. 

 Laying down a nest-bed of leaves, the clerodendrum had burst into  several floral clusters and was preparing to  bloom. This  unexpected, magical moment, showcasing  an incredible event, slowly began to  sink in. I have been watching the flower-buds emerge for about a month now, and  continue to marvel at the tenacity of the clerodendrum, and the alacrity with which it  has created a space for itself, traversing a long distance from its roots. 

These are two pictures, one taken from the ground floor, and another captured from the second floor terrace, that document its  climb. The dark steel gray leaves, often seem to me to have drunk of the  summer sandstorms and the winter air of Delhi,  and gained in strength, feeding on a tough soil that nourishes stragglers and survivors enabling them to  thrive and flourish. When  clerodendrums bloom in New Delhi, they radiate warmth and energy  in  brilliant red clusters,  in the cold wintery months, allowing us to draw succour from their  rich vibrancy. Truly, the "flaming glory bowers" of the clerodendrum  epitomise the life- blood of this city.

 Hornbill Homecoming

This is the first-time in my life that I spotted  pied hornbills; four of them, having their morning sun-raiser, as they prepared to fly out to meet the requirements of their day. It was a typical  Corbett morning in late December, cold and misty,  but by 8am, the sun does make a grand  appearance and wash the  gray off the skies, unveiling the beginnings of a  baby blue.  The hornbills sat on a Jacaranda tree, finished with flowering and having dispersed  all of its seedpods, retaining  only a few  petioles with fernlike pinnate leaves. Its tall, spread out branches provided the hornbills  with a wonderful overview  of  possible flight routes. I know nothing of the habits of the pied hornbill,  having only stumbled upon  one solitary gray hornbill  at IIC and another  in Jaipur. Both these birds had flown away, showing little desire to linger and introduce themselves.

 This time round, I could gaze at these pretty robust-sized birds, much larger than the magpie robins, mynahs or pigeons I usually encounter, and continue to admire their beaks and plumage because their backs were turned to me. They sat calmly, unlike the usually garrulous and restless babbler crowd. Initially, all the birds gazed out into the horizon, but  the two  birds on the right began to gaze over their shoulder, responding to some commotion  in the  neighboring mango tree. Lo and behold,  a trio of sand coloured baby monkeys  were climbing up the leafy branches of the mango and  steadfastly  making their way up to the Jacaranda.  The bird sitting on the lower branch took off, without a backward glance. The two birds to the right continued to watch for the  baby monkeys speeding up to the jacaranda, finding footholds on the trunk and on  thinner branches and when they felt the monkeys were too close for comfort, turned, clutched their perch  in the manner of  race-worthy cyclists, dived off the tree and were airborne. One hornbill continued to wait, doubtful perhaps that the baby rhesus could reach a branch that was so high up.  In a matter of seconds one little rhesus stood at the intersection of the trunk  with the branch. So hornbill number four hastily sprinted off its perch. The other two little macaques, following the leader, decided to jump back to the mango tree, break off orange green leaves and chew on them.

The jacaranda tree emptied out and became a silent spectator. The macaque troops had swelled with the  addition of  older siblings and an indignant parent; all of them began to frolic and  forage amid verdant mango foliage. Watching this live-show from the sidelines, ensconced on a sofa behind enormous french windows,  provided  a stretched  hotspot of joy. Were the  little monkeys playing  a game with the hornbills? Is this the way that different species communicate? Nadeem, who drove us into the forest mentioned that  monkeys  often broke leafy branches for the deer to partake of. A  birdwatching stroll the previous evening had drawn attention to the nest of a pair of hornbills atop a tall fish-tail palm, near the Tree Top restaurant. Possibly they flew down  from there to this tree every morning. I found them on the Jacaranda tree again the following morning, but they flew off  before the charge of the primates began. Not finding the hornbills at their perch, four tiny primates peered into my room, pressing their forms against the glass and standing on the narrow wooden frame,  trying to make sense of a slow moving dormant  species.  When I tried  to take a picture with my cell phone camera, hoping to preserve  near human expressions digitally,  they scampered off, returning with an older sibling or parent, to subject me to yet another momentary scrutiny. After a few minutes of this, they left in search of more promising adventures.