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 Potter, a mycologist and gifted illustrator. Beatrix loved illustrating lichens and fungi and these detailed studies had led her to a definite conclusion with regard to the origin of lichens. However, neither scientific temper nor talent enabled her to present her research. Being a woman, she was barred from the precincts of the hallowed temple of Victorian science. Her paper, titled “On the Germination of … Continue reading Lichens, Beatrix Potter and Symbiogenesis

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 Heaney I vividly remember the first time a bore well was dug on our fields. It involved a manual dig to locate water and then began the long and back-breaking effort to create the deep shaft, all the time praying that the initial promise of water at the site held. We watched with bated breath as the final few feet were dug. The final tense … Continue reading Echoing the darkness – Water wells after the borewell revolution

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 its domain Even paradise takes prisoners, like this parakeet Monkey business as usual – and does the kite qualify as a bird? All of us at The Green Ogre wish you a very happy 2011, filled with hope for the future of our earth. Photographs by Sahastrarashmi The Green Ogre – Birds, Wildlife, Ecology and Nature notes from India. Continue reading Birds of the Varanasi River Front – a photo-essay

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 take a bus to go outside the village, usually to Kanpur, the brick chimneys were on my list of wayside wonders. The sites were marked by huge twin maroon chimneys and they dominated the surrounding countryside. I never managed a visit any of them, but I knew they were brick kilns (or ita bhatta in the local language). I could only imagine what went on … Continue reading Kiln Fields – How brick kilns hurt the environment

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 was a 37-feet-long Sperm Whale (Physeter macrocephalus) and it was quite dead. The visitor was large and quite dead Whether the whale had beached or had floated to the coast after an unfortunate mid-sea collision with a ship was not very clear, though posthumous stranding is quite likely, given the fact that this was along the fortified avenue and there is not much of a … Continue reading Death of a Sperm Whale