Encounter: The Demoiselles of Khichan – Part I
As I enter the village children greet me. They are a cheerful lot, waving and smiling at the visitor with a camera. I notice that they are playing with a dead snake and want me…
Author: Sahastra Rashmi
Traveller, photographer, philosopher, art connoisseur, trekking guru, and master trip planner, Sahastrarashmi (SR or Sahastra to his friends) is on a relentless quest for the story of life. An engineer from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, he works in Chennai, India and lives (on weekends) in the former French enclave of Pondicherry (Puducherry to the officious). He is on a mission to introduce the uninitiated to the glory of the Himalaya.
Encounter: The Bronzed Frog
In April 2006, we trekked from the Iruppu waterfalls in Kodagu (Coorg) to the Brahmagiri peak on the Karnataka-Kerala border. After crossing the lower bamboo-dominated patches we crossed a transition zone and reached a nice…
Wordless Wednesday : The Bird Trappers
A Spotbill Duck trapped for the pot in western Uttar Pradesh Amid caged quails trapped for the pot, a girl holds a Yellow-fronted Green Pigeon Text and photographs by Sahastrarashmi The Green Ogre – Birds,…
Lichens, Beatrix Potter and Symbiogenesis
The unpresented paper In 1897 the eminent chemist Sir Henry E Roscoe, know for early studies on vanadium, presented a paper to the Linnaean Society in London on behalf of his then unknown niece, Beatrix…
Wordless Wednesday: Sarus Crane gestures hypnotically
Caption this! Photograph: Sahastrarashmi The Green Ogre – Birds, Wildlife, Ecology and Nature notes from India.
Echoing the darkness – Water wells after the borewell revolution
As a child, they could not keep me from wells And old pumps with buckets and windlasses. I loved the dark drop, the trapped sky, the smells Of waterweed, fungus and dank moss. ~ Seamus…
Birds of the Varanasi River Front – a photo-essay
Sparrows on the wood weighing scale Sparrows dust-bathing in a boat A Blue Rock Pigeon drinks of its reflection A White-throated Kingfisher brightens the clutter Bank Mynas inspect a priest’s wares A Bank Myna surveys…
Encounter: Brown Headed Gulls in the City of Light
One does not usually associate birding with Varanasi’s riverfront. This ancient and holy city, which is amongst the oldest continuously inhabited places on earth, is crowded, filthy, crassly commercial, oozes religiosity, garishly dressed up, loud,…
Encounter – Antlions and the pit of death
Antlions are far more menacing as larvae: their pits are death traps for ants and small insects and can offer kids many hours of macabre entertainment
Kiln Fields – How brick kilns hurt the environment
The brickmaking industry gradually converts fertile fields into sterile lands. Here’s how it’s done… Sarus Cranes take flight outside a brick kiln in Uttar Pradesh’s Rae Bareli district As a kid when I used to…
Le Question: Will you get me a new globe?
For his seventh birthday I gifted Shashwat a globe. It met a long-standing demand and soon enough he had charted the oceans, seas, continents, polar ice caps (the great melt, breaking ice shelf), the Pacific…
Encounter: A monsoon brush with Cobra Lilies
A not-so-pale view of hills I woke up to the sound of rain pounding the tin roof of the rented shack and the remnants of a nightmare lingering on. I dreamed that the mountain looming…
Le Question: What happened to the Sidewinder?
The Sidewinder is a rattlesnake that has adapted to life in the desert with unique sinusoidal-diagonal locomotion that enables it to negotiate smooth sand dunes with ease This post concerns a certain question asked…
Death of a Sperm Whale
Posted by Sahastrarashmi On Tuesday, August 4, 2010, morning walkers on Goubert Avenue, Pondicherry, were greeted by a creature larger than most of them would ever have seen, tossing in the waves near the shore. It…
Encounter – Monsieur Baobab
The Baobab trees of Pondicherry were lost in time and rediscovered in the 13-acre forest patch inside the now defunct Swadeshi Cotton Mill Complex