We decided to call a few friends out for a party in Pune tomorrow. My eternally optimistic (in this case, optimistic about the way airline staff handle baggage) is just packing two wine bottles and trying to put them in his check-in baggage.
I suddenly find that I have the ability to predict the future. I gaze into the crystal and am able to see him donning funky purple underwear (and perhaps a whole new purple ensemble) for the party….
Ill-equipped, ill-paid and still chasing poachers
By Joseph Hoover/TNN
Bangalore: Imagine chasing poachers in the pitch of night, sleeping under an open sky with tigers and leopards stalking prey around you.
Imagine battling the vagaries of nature without appropriate clothes, caps and shoes.
Imagine surviving on a morsel of rice and a sprinkling of curry; quenching your thirst at water holes where elephants gambol.
Imagine earning Rs 89.90 per day as an MRE (Monthly Rated Employee) with the Karnataka State Forest Department and being paid once in four
months. This is what the protectors of our forest live through. Yet, they don’t give up their fight against poachers and smugglers, who lord over our jungles with state-of-the-art guns and ammunition.
These men are indeed the heart and soul of the forest department, without whom the tiger would be wiped off the face of our forests.
For Kudhus, Mara and Thimma, the storyline is the same. “We have a family to look after. Only if we work can we feed them. But we get salaries once in four months. And during these dry months we have to depend on the local grocer and the money lender. The grocer often charges us twice the cost of the commodity, the moneylender charges 3 per cent interest. So at the end of the four months, almost our entire pending salary goes towards repayments. This is our fate,” is their heart-rending refrain.
Officers directly in charge of these sentinels are helpless. “We ensure that they get supplies in the core of the national park. To see them braving the heat and cold without proper gear hurts us. With no help coming, we turn to NGOs to provide caps, shoes and uniforms. But they expect us to reciprocate. It becomes very difficult,” said assistant conservator of forests Aswath Narayan Gowda.
With funds hard to come by, the department repeatedly appeals to the state government to borrow money from the employees’ benevolent fund to pay the MRE. This fund is replaced when the Government of India grant materialises. “This year again I have sought the government’s help to pay the staff,” said A K Varma, principal chief conservator of forests (wildlife). Varma was also hopeful that the government would regularise the 2000-odd forest staff who come under the MRE category. “Sympathy is there with the government. In fact, former forest minister was considering regularising their services. I am sure the present minister C Chennigappa will look into this matter as well,” said Varma. Chennigappa directed R M Rai, principal chief conservator of forests to answer queries. “All I can say is that things are looking up for the FD. We are no longer orphans. I had a two-hour meeting with the minister. The enthusiasm and energy he has shown I haven’t seen in anyone else. But we will have to see how much is put into action,” said Rai.
A GLIMMER OF HOPE HERE
Can the mind’s eye forget our forest staff, equipped with .303 rifles taking on the AK-47 might of the dreaded Veerappan? Never.
Our forest guards may be poorly paid and ill-equipped. All is not lost for some of them have been given better arm power now. But the same cannot be said of the manpower situation, that has improved just marginally. Most guards trudge the national parks with outdated guns. But now, some have been provided American sling guns to fight poachers. “We have acquired 100 American sling guns and have trained our staff at the Sports Authority of India” said A K Varma, principal chief conservator of forests. Shortfall of guards: The general ban imposed on recruitment in 1984 still seems to affect the performance of the department.
Need for vehicles: Go to any national park or wildlife sanctuary, you are sure to hear the choke and stutter of a forest vehicle, mostly jeeps. Reason: most vehicles have lived beyond their times. As a matter of fact. it has been almost ten years since their fleet of vehicles was replaced.
In the past, NGOs would provide a vehicle or two, but now there are no takers. Perhaps, corporates can chip in for the cause to save our forests.
WWF and other agencies have pumped in literally crores of rupees into our country…where is all the money going?
Was trying to feel equable about the fact that my spouse would be in Pune for his birthday…(he doesn’t really celebrate birthdays, he says all days when we are alive and healthy should be celebrated equally)…then the generous guy asked me if I would like to come along…I just finished booking my tickets on Spicejet (it’s generally half the price of Jet Airways. I don’t see the point of paying around 2.5K extra to get upma and button idlis and a small bottle of water!) We are going to invite a few friends for dinner and bask in the warmth of old friendships.
I have mentioned elsewhere how unusual an Indian man he is…he lets me be myself at all times…and when I see him I don’t see the middle-aged, aged-middle person every one else sees, I just see the smart 28 year old with the great sense of humour who made me forget my reservations about lack of height, myopia, age difference and living in Chennai (well..the last one I *still* detest!)…a big-hearted, wonderful person full of the joy of life,who likes to have the best of everything…. who, I hope, will be at my side for the rest of my life.
Happy Birthday…tomorrow…. to my truly better half!
We had a lovely time playing Holi in a friend’s apartment building…but the friend’s brother kept repeating, “Why don’t we organize a Tamizh New Year’s Day? Why must we only have North Indian festivals?”…It made me think. I hadn’t thought of Holi as a *North* Indian festival, having grown up with it. ….And do we have any equivalent colourful festival? When we do, we celebrate it, like Navaratri. So what’s the beef about? Tamizh New Year is not a group festival, so why make a big hoo haa about celebrating it in public?
When we moved to Madurai, I was surprised to find many people called “Bose”…and I learnt that they changed their names to honour Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. We seem to have become more parochial since those times…
Came to Hyderabad on Friday to cool, rainy weather…instantly decided to visit the Ramoji Film City, and it was a lot of fun. The Wild West Show was quite well done! On Saturday, went pearl shopping (at one stroke I solved my “what-to-give-as-gifts?” problem for this Christmas just before the wedding we will attend at Connecticut..there are going to be about 18 people, 9 of them women…well, my gift to each of them is going to be a pearl necklace! Yesterday evening, went out for dinner, and a drive to Husain Sagar…there are lovely open areas where we felt safe sitting and chatting until midnight…so rare in an Indian city to find this kind of public space, clean and safe too. Had a great time. Wish we had this kind of public space in Blr…Lal Bagh and Cubbon Park are OK for the daytime but there is nowhere to drive to at night and just sit and chat. I love Hyderabad…er…except that the normal weather would not be like this!
…a South African playwright who has, over the years, become one of my favourites. We went to see a production of “Valley Song” by Arundhati Raja’s Rep Theatre. It was very good. The singing was excellent too and it was an evening well-spent.
The only beef I have is that there was NO introduction, no giving of the actors’ names at the end (even Arundhati Raja was introduced as “our director” without giving her name), and no other technical credits. A friend of mine said, “Oh, we know all of them!”…but the friend with whom I had gone, and I, DIDN’T know ANY of them…in fact, I had never met Arundhati Raja before, only seen Jagdish Raja at some of the quizzes he has conducted. ( I am *NOT* a page 3 person!) Every theatre group cannot assume that the entire audience knows their identities…they must identify themselves during the course of the evening. When bad theatre groups make a big deal of announcing the names of everyone associated with a production, it’s sad that good ones forgo this important part of theatre.
Go asap to kalyan and just look at those amazing snaps. I am looking for non-banal words to describe them…but my finger just automatically types a W, then an O, then another W….
Wonderful to find someone who has found his metier.
Through noelladsa I went to ronaldphilip, and got this lovely sequel to Sidin’s post on South Indian young men’s angst… (MABSS…Mutual Admiration and Back Scratching Society)
Somebody’s ACTUAL postal address:
Old No 776,
New number 23,
First Floor,
9th Main,
5th Cross,
5th block,
BSK III Stage,
3rd Phase,
Katriguppe
Bhuvaneshwari nagar
Bangalore – 560085
I had heard of these kind of Bangalore addresses but this was the first time I spotted one of these in flesh and blood! Amazing!
It’s like an open wound, a sore in your mouth which your tongue keeps running over…it stings every time, but you can’t help doing it. This is what happens when you lose–or, to be precise, misplace– something.
It can be something very small, like a set of house-keys; but it is essential to your daily life and though you can get along without it, you can only do so for a while. After some time, you will have to take some positive action about its absence. You are not sure if you have mislaid it or really lost it….there is the first frenzy of looking anywhere and everywhere, and that slowly peters out into going about your daily business, with the occasional poking and prying into more and more unlikely places as you hope that the unexpected sight of the lost object will suddenly reward you for your effort. Your thoughts,too, keep returning to the lost object in the middle of all your other work, and you also ponder about the difficulty of replacing it or getting something else….You wake in the night dreaming that you have found it somewhere and as you wake up, the feeling of relief gives way to anxiety again.
In the case of the misplaced object, the exercise ends when it is suddenly found…generally following a brainwave about where you might have left it, or a sudden, totally unexpected find as you are doing something else entirely. But if it lost….slowly acceptance seeps in and you set about doing the things necessary to cut it altogether out of your life…you try not to let your feelings get the better of you if it was something you had a sentimental attachment for, or thought of as highly valuable for financial or other reasons….it’s worse when it’s someone else’s, and you have to explain its loss.
If this is the case with an inanimate object, I can only imagine how it must be to lose a member of the family, or one’s spouse…. Loss, an inescapable, universal, and yet uniquely painful part of existence…
Deponti to the world 