The spot-billed pelican: Calm swimmer
It was so calming to spend several minutes watching this spot-billed pelican swim away at Kaziranga National Park. Pelicans are known for their distinctive beak and throat pouch, which they use to scoop and store fish. I’m reminded of…
A viper in my garden!
Ah! The daily excitement of living in a place like Sevagram! A Russell’s viper appears in our garden. Thanks to ‘Sarpamitra’ Jeetendra for catching it and releasing it into the wild. Russell’s vipers are one of the most venomous species of…
Kaziranga National Orchid and Bio-Diversity Park
At Kaziranga, 2 km from Kohora, you must visit the orchidarium and biodiversity park. We just got a few minutes before the place closed down for the evening, but we were guided into the greenhouse by a…
Walk through the woods: Hollongapar Gibbon Sanctuary
It was a misty morning when we started for Hollongapar Gibbon Sanctuary. It was strange to walk with an armed forest guard for company. We had hoped that by the time we started walking through the woods,…
Morning walk by the mighty Brahmaputra
We decided to spend a quiet morning strolling on the banks of the mighty Brahmaputra at Nimati Ghat on our trip to Assam. Most rivers in India have a feminine name. The Brahmaputra is an exception with…
The greater adjutant stork: Scavenger in chief
This huge bird, standing over five feet tall, is not considered pretty and was often an object of revulsion. One ornithologist went as far as to call it “a prodigy of ugliness”. This is the greater adjutant…
Chhat: When Bihar worships the Sun
Today Bihar and its adjacent areas celebrate their most important festival — Chhat. Since a lot of my friends here, don’t know much about the significance of this festival, I thought I should explain why it is so…
Mughal E Azam: Feroz Abbas Khan’s magnificent play
Sometimes I let my impulses get the better of me. And so I landed in Mumbai on Sunday to watch Feroz Abbas Khan‘s play, Mughal E Azam, based on K Asif’s magnum opus, at the NCPA . And I…
Irawati Karve’s ‘Yuganta- The end of an epoch’
Just finished reading Irawati Karve’s ‘Yuganta– The end of an epoch‘. It is an English version of the original Marathi book written in the 1960s. In a series of compelling essays, she draws sketches of the most prominent…
Newton: Amit V Masurkar’s masterpiece
India’s 2017 entry for the Oscar for Best Foreign language film is Amit V Masurkar’s Newton. The film stars Rajkummar Rao as Newton– a conscientious, upright officer who is sent on his first assignment to conduct polls in a…
