Fathers and Sons

 

In the past, an old man’s wife found fresh dose of love in her late fifties. She ditched him and eloped with her middle-aged lover, leaving behind a brood of five grown up men and women, two of them already having little children of their own. I happen to overhear a row between the old man, in his eighties now, and his graying son. They are very angry at each other. ‘Your wife ran away with someone. You are fit for nothing,’ the son probes his fingers in the hurtful corner of the old man’s heart. ‘And your mother eloped with a goon,’ the old man countered. Then both of them turned silent under the weight of the family history.

Cheering Sixers for Tau

 

A decade back, I once took a photo of one of the taus in our village. ‘I know why are you taking my photo,’ he said as I clicked the picture. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Because you think I’m just about to die and you will be able to see my face later,’ he looked hurt.

He is still around after ten years and most importantly can see reasonably well. I need to take his latest photo so I approach him. He is near the century of years and loves cricketers hitting centuries. He loves those who meet the three-figure mark and hates those who get out in the nineties. He hates them even more than who get out on zero.

He was watching an IPL match. That was the time when luscious cheer-girls danced in skimpy skirts to celebrate the hits to the boundary. I am not sure whether he loves the boundaries more or the dance. I think both of them cheer him up. Once after a hit to the fence they forgot to show the dance. He looked very disturbed and the next boundary took a few more overs in coming. He grew impatient and jittery. ‘Why would they hit boundaries if the girls turn lazy and don’t dance? The girls didn’t dance on the last hit,’ he held a grouse against the girls.

He had another issue about them showing the same dancing reward for both fours and sixes. ‘They should do something better for a sixer, which is far better than a four,’ he reasoned. I was about to say, ‘Do you want the skirts to go up tau to celebrate sixers?’ But I kept the query hidden within me because in that case he would have surely taken a sixer-type swipe at my legs with his well-oiled stick.

Lazy Doves and Smart Buzzards

 

Hope you remember the spotted dove episode? The broken nest is still there. Without any doubt, all doves are very lazy. They seem content in their small, peaceful world and take the trouble to coo sometimes and walk with gentle strides. They show a bit of urgency only when they take off. They flutter their wings pretty loudly to even scare you sometimes. In comparison to their eased living, a tailorbird looks weary and stress-battered.

The nest is just an assemblage of few dry twigs at a height where you can easily touch it with your extended hand and raised heels. A pair of laughing dove now decides to occupy the abandoned house. They aren’t deterred by the painful recent past. They make some flimsy, make-believe adjustments to the arrangement of twigs. You can literally see through the nest when you stand under it and scan it for its safety features.

A honey buzzard lands onto the small curry patta tree bearing the nest and the honeycomb. The birds haven’t laid eggs yet. They fly with a loud beating of wings. The nest is empty but he gets a bonus, the little ball of honeybees. It’s a small hive because flowers are vanishing from the planet and my little garden is sufficient for a tiny hive only. But the eagle gets a little sweet beakful of honey. The dove couple looks adamant and returns after some time. They will surely lay eggs despite cats and the eagle stalking them. They are into it with a single-minded focus. In between, some biggest favor by luck favors them with a successful hatching. However, given their lazy ways, it seems a miracle almost.

The Story of a Tiny Beetle

 

Darkling beetle isn’t named after its dark color. It’s a gray ground beetle that loves to stay in the dark. Its Latin name means ‘seeker of dark places and trickster’. But some are active during the day also. They are generalistic omnivores feeding on rotting wood, decaying leaves, dead insects, fresh plant matter, fungi, larvae and much more that we hardly have any clues about.

It’s an unpretentious armored beetle. Under the sunlight, as per the scheme in the beetle world, it would count as travelling by the night. Nights carry risks for us. The same is during the day for these nocturnal insects.

Even while at a run, it seems a leisure walk, something like a jolly, happily portly twaddle of a rotund gentleman. It crossed the garden, walked across the courtyard, walked up to the floored inner yard. As I came nearer, it feigned a perfected death. I moved away and it abandoned its acting and started again.

It looks an adventurous beetle on a long walk. A carpenter ant comes from the opposite direction. They stand face to face, greet each other, shake their antennae to convey bye and move on. An ant—far smaller—hurries past from behind. The ground beetle doesn’t care. It loves it gentle, leisurely pace. Another carpenter ant also goes speeding up as it overtakes and takes a U-turn after going a few yards. What is the use of speed if you aren’t sure of the direction? It’s better to go slowly with a clear sense of direction. The returning ant is in much hurry, so forgets to greet the gentleman like the earlier ant did. 

The ground beetle tries a hop but seems a funny miniature version of a rhino on slow trot. It but realizes its mistake and goes back to its natural pace. There it crosses the inner yard and arrives at a hole in a corner. It’s a nice, cozy, secure hole in the flooring. It seems an ideal spot for a hiatus. It snoozes around the opening. A skink raises objection at the encroachment. The beetle is too big for her mouth and she herself is out of reach for the beetle. So there is no confrontation.

It tries to climb the wall, goes with the slowest of a cautious crawl like an expert mountaineer sticking to a sheer rock face. It realizes that heights aren’t for it and wisely comes down. A very wise decision indeed, a proper estimation of its abilities. It then moves cautiously, slanted over the edge of a stone slab. A journeyman on the move, it goes into the verandah, then into the room. Who am I to stop its march? I can just look at it.

The Lazy Dove

 

An industrious cat will go for a rat. A lazy one will crawl among the trees to steal dove eggs, the easy catch. As we have seen, the lazy cat had an early dinner of dove eggs the other day. The dove cried the next day and to give herself some happiness laid another egg on the following day. By the way, they lay eggs in a little series, separated by a few days gap.

Everything is relative. The dove is still lazier than the cat, so it’s a win-win situation for the idle cat. It again crawled for another early dinner, too early this time. I was in the yard when the tailorbird raised a ruckus like a good neighbor. The honeybees didn’t have any issue like the last time. They leave it for the cat and the dove to sort it out among themselves. So they stayed neutral. I don’t think the honeybees and the cat compete for anything regarding food, otherwise they will also sting, if not speak out like the tailorbird. The cat doesn’t seem to have any appetite for honey. A lesson here. It’s advisable to have some common interests with one’s neighbors so that at least they speak out when you are in a soup. This repetition of crime got me into good neighborly emotions. The egg dropped with a plop followed by the lustily hungry cat. My stick dispensed justice and away went the cat scared out of its wits. It didn’t return the next day but I was sure of its return because it loved its milk bowl, being too lazy to hunt rats. It would maintain some distance for a couple of days and again get into the usual business.