The bagheera (leopard) of Narhat

Update 1

While at Narhat village, my favourite timepass at nights was to gaze at lovely night sky…won’t be able to see it in so much glory once I go back to Mumbai. However, my happiness was cut short by a local who told that a bagheera (leopard) frequents the village during night to drink water..and apparently two nights earlier, that bagheera was roaming right outside the house where we were staying. A neighbor spotted the animal at that time.

The local however added that the bagheera is not a man eater..and only eats animals like goats etc. … and hence it was safe to venture out at night. Also, all the villagers sleep outside their homes at night and the bagheera doesn’t do any harm to them…and then, the local peacefully returned to his home.

Needless to say, as soon as the local went back to his house, we closed the doors… Me and my roomie didn’t dare to venture out that night to see the sparkling stars..Well, you do not want to be the first person to know that a bagheera has just turned a man eater..right???


Update 2

Two weeks later, I again went back to Narhat and this time I happened to speak to an old lady about this leopard. She nonchalantly replied that the leopard runs away when you scare it with a stick…I was dumbstruck by the callousness by which she was telling me all this...as if it was their way of life.

Village diary - Narhat, Rajasthan

I am currently in Rajasthan. Area-wise, it is the largest state in the country and boasts of very rich & colorful cultural heritage. Aravali Mountains welcome you to Jaipur while the western international border is a vast desert – called Thar.

I have been here for over a month now and it has been an experience. After spending initial one week in Jaipur, I moved over to a village called Narhat (1.5 hrs from Jaipur) and later on to a tehsil/block called Thanagazi (3 hrs from Jaipur). Both these places are in Alwar district. During my stay at these locations, I travelled a lot in surrounding villages attending various meetings and interacted with a number of villagers.

This area is full of mountains…small mountains, much lesser in height as compared to the great Himalayas and you can easily reach the top. The terrain is rocky and dry. Haven’t seen anything apart from sparse shrubs, Babul trees and cactus on these mountains…and mind you, all of them are thorny. The only flowers I have seen here are on cactus!!! I saw that lot of villages are situated in mountains and their foothills. Often, these villages are miles apart from each other and located at such places which make me sit up & think - Why in the world will you stay in a place as remote as this? It will take hours for a doctor to reach at those places in case of need..but still, the wheel of life goes on.

Staying in village is a different experience altogether. I’ve often heard about water scarcity, sanitation problems, livelihood issues etc in villages but never really got a chance to see it myself until I reached here. I stayed at Narhat village. It is a 400 house village situated in the foothills. The nearest renowned village is Pratapgarh which is 3 kms far. The organization with which I am associated with was kind enough to make my living arrangements…otherwise I would have been in a soup. The village is decent…lots of pucca houses here. People here are warm. Often, when unknown persons come across you in a gali (street), they would say Namaste or Ram-Ram. This is much different from cities where nobody gives a hoot to you. About every house has goat(s) and some also have other cattle like cows, buffaloes, camels etc. So fresh milk availability is guaranteed!!!

The village is not without its share of problems. I haven’t seen any taps here. The wells are non-functional. The area hasn’t seen a proper rainy season for years altogether now. Handpumps are the main source of water. Each morning, everyone -including me- makes trip to village handpump to ferry water to start the day. One automatically learns to economically use water in such situations. There are only couple of shops in this village and one has to rush to Pratapgarh to get stuff. Electricity is an issue here with it not being available for most part of the day. A major issue here is that of sanitation with hardly any proper toilets built in the village. It seems so natural for us city folks to expect amenities like toilets built around but it is a different India in these villages. I didn’t see any landline in the village. But thanks to the mobile revolution, the village is connected to world. Transportation to the village is another issue. Overloaded private jeeps ferry people around here and trust me, these jeeps can put an overcrowded Mumbai local to shame :)

This is primarily a weavers’ village. Narhat means landless. Villagers’ main source of income is carpet weaving and they produce beautiful hand-woven carpets. Some people also do shoe making and govt/private service. The village seems to have realized the importance of education. Apart from govt primary school, two private schools have also come up in Narhat.

The evenings are calm here..no constant blaring of horns and no regular city buzz.. a laid back environment indeed. One can relax just by looking at the sun which is setting beyond mountains. By 07:30-8:00 PM, streets are empty and pitch dark. The night sky looks full of pearls, some faint and some of them shining brightly. It is a mesmerizing view…one that I had longed to see.

Finally, a sunday to live

Life has been mundane and hectic here. There is so much to do that it takes all the time at your peril. However, just like a oasis in desert, this sunday brought a ray of hope. It was (albeit surprisingly) a refreshing different sunday... much different from my regular sundays which are more often than not a day to finish whole week's pending errands and to catch with as much sleep as I can get. And the reason?? The college had arranged for us to watch a play based on the famous novel - 'The Alchemist' written by Paulo Coelho. The play was to be performed at 'National Centre for the performing Arts' (NCPA), Nariman point, Mumbai. More than just the play itself, it was the whole idea of 'GOING to watch the play' which was really spurring me on.

Well, what is a sunday evening w'out your dearest frenz? So 6 of us decided to go together and njoy the occasion. We had to reach Churchgate 1st in order to reach Nariman point. And what better way to travel in Mumbai than a local train? Fast, cheap..but ahem..crowded. All of you must have seen mumbai locals in TV and you can very well understand what I mean. We reached Andheri station at 4:20PM and decided to catch the 4:30 fast local to Churchgate. For some of us, it was the 1st experience of travelling in Mumbai local...and I'm pretty sure, they won't forget it. To start it, the train was 15 mins late. Due to this, the platform was very crowded. Combine this with the already jam packed train and you know itz gonna be a 'Halla Bol' when the train arrives.

When the train chugged in to the platform, we braced ourselves for the charge and then...the train stopped. There were two sections of crowd- one who were ready to get into the train(despite the fact that there was no space left in the compartment) and the others who wanted to come out. Simple 'logical thinking' here will tell you that you should allow people to come out of the compartment before you try to barge in...but then this is Mumbai and here, people make a killing by completely relying on their 'non-logical thinking'. As soon as the train stopped, the two sections of crowds collided, hustled n jostled and yeah, pushed each other. Newton's 3rd law of motion states : "For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction" but here, clearly the law failed. Here, it was only one-way force. The ferocious outbound crowd(men and women alike) had their fists clenched firmly in front of them(just like the boxers do) and they mercilessly cast aside anybody who dared to venture into their path. The inbound crowd tried to enter the compartment initially but the force coming from other side was simply too overwhelming to respond to. Once the compartment was 'relatively' empty(compared to what it was earlier), we tried to force our way into the compartment and then suddenly in a flash of second, I found myself inside the compartment..I dint knew what really happened in that moment..but nonetheless, I was inside the compartment. I wasn't in a comfortable position as I was standing on my toes and half of my body weight was falling on one of my friends who was standing next to me...not that he really wanted to support my weight but then, he had no choice!!! After some time, I moved to the 'relatively' empty area of the compartment where I could stand on my feet..As stations passed by, lot of passengers got down from the train and it became nearly empty. It was a good opportunity and for the kind of photographer that I am, I clicked some photos of an empty train...well, you rarely find empty trains in Mumbai!!! All of us got seats and we happily chatted our way to Churchgate.

While all this transpired in the general compartment, an interesting story was developing in the ladies compartment. We had sent the gurlz in our group to the ladies compartment as it would be easier for them to travel over there. Apparently, one of them, got hyper-excited on seeing the Mumbai local and insisted that she will travel by just clinging onto the door of the ladies compartment. She anyhow watches far too many movies and I'm sure that she wanted to do a stunt like running over the moving train which she must have seen in countless movies..but thankfully, better sense prevailed among our other frendz and they stopped her from trying out this stunt by pulling her inside the compartment. Phew!!! Anyhow, on reaching Churchgate, all of us quickly headed towards NCPA.

From Churchgate station, NCPA is located at just 15 min walk along the Marine Drive. The sea looked stunning and serene from the Marine Drive. Lot of people were sitting at the seaside, enjoying the beautiful weather and the cool breeze. We also enjoyed the weather for sometime and then headed off to NCPA. The play was held at 'Tata Theatre'. Trust me, this theatre was beyond all my imaginations. I would recommend you to take a virtual tour of the theatre. The theatre had a seating capacity of 1010 people and it was filled to its capacity...and why shouldn't it be, afterall, it was the 1st adaptation of 'The Alchemist' in India. The scale was grand, the setting was huge and the audience were eager. After some time, the lights were dimmed in the theatre and the play started. The play was an absolute pleasure to watch. It was fabulously enacted by the actors...'Twas a musical delight and a visual treat indeed. It is always tough to enact such a philosophical play by means of music but the cast stood to the task...so much so that all the songs were sung LIVE on the stage by the cast. The duration of the play was 1:30 hrs and we were totally spellbound during whole of that time.

Once the play got over, we also interacted with the director, Mahesh Dattani and the other crew members. I spoke to Mahesh and told him that it was the 1st ever theatre show that I had watched and I loved the way it was presented. He seemed to be quite happy to know about this. During the conversation, Mahesh informed us that the whole concept of the play was being worked upon in past 6 months and the actual practice took 4 months. Well, I must say that the hardwork really paid off on the stage.

After this, we headed back towards Churchgate station.. We were quite hungry and hence had our dinner in a restaurant just opposite the station. Finally, we boarded local to Andheri and came back to campus just before 11PM. Fortunately, this train was not very crowded..so all of us could easily enter one compartment and do chitchat on the whole way back. All in all, it was an excellent Sunday..I won't forget it so easily. Thank you all for making it such a wonderful day!!!



Left->Right: Me(Mohit), Sumit, Pankaj, Supriya and Anuradha .




Kaps is missing in this picture and he threatened me that unless his picture is also added, this blog can't be published. He told that he has lot of supari contacts. Considering the khauf of Kaps that all of us live under, I decided to heed to his request and add this photograph of his:


Lagta hai naa poora ka poora Don :)

All for the sake of precious taste buds

Wednesdays are the new saturdays for me. Reason is not hard to guess...we have thursdays off here. So our 'weekend' starts on wednesday. Moreover, mess is off on wednesdays. For people like me, who live to eat, this is a double bonanza..c'mon, who doesn't like going out with frendz on 'Saturday' nights(and givin the taste buds some respite from the mess food). Well, yesterday was one such Saturday and for reasons known only to 'the chosen ones', we decided to give our regular dhaba a miss and try a new restaurant (not that I'm complaining). However, there was only couple of minuscule glitches in the 'plan':
1. Nobody knew where this new restaurant(hereafter referred to as dhaba) was
2. None among us had tried this place before.. So we had no idea about the hole it was going to burn in our pockets
3. And most importantly, none among us had any feedback about the food (Whoa ???)

They say, 'Fortune favour the brave'... and hell yeah, 'the chosen ones' were brave enough to call justdial, ask all the passers by and panwaris and dosa wallahs for directions to the dhaba. Needless to say, these leaders were sometimes so focussed in their strategy that they forgot that they had some followers also who were trying desperately to keep up with their swift 'thought process'. Anyhow, finally, the leaders tasted success (and we smelled food!!!Finally!!!) There it was, 'The Courtyard'.

We were lucky enough to get a prompt entry to the dhaba..for it was quite crowded. The place was definitely big with lot of seating capacity and judging by the number of people that were there, I thought that it looks to be a nice place and food should be good here. We were seated and promptly served water. Since we had undertook an arduous journey(2 traffic junctions..can U believe it???) en route to this place, we missed no time in placing our order, and then.... we waited. As usual, we started doing some TP and started pulling each other's leg..The dhaba wallahs were kind enough to give us some sort of namkeen to chew upon. Hungry as we were, we wasted no time in finish it up..all this time, waiting. Seconds became minutes and minutes started inching towards hour..and what were we doin??? chirping and ofcoz, waiting. And then, in a quick flash of brilliance, I imagined myself going out of this dhaba, crossing the road, eating a wada-pav/sandwich from a roadside seller and then returning back to this dhaba.. and I was quite sure, that our order wouldn't come even by that time... but then, I had a thought about the dhaba owner. If the crowd waiting outside saw me doing that, probably they'll all run away. So I curbed my 'natural instincts' and to avoid such dangerous thoughts from coming to my mind, I dozed off, right then, on the table.

Anyways, after a small wait of 45 mins(and after reminding the dhabawallah just thrice), our order was served. We jumped on it and well, I'll say that food was just okayyyy.. Going by the crowd over there and the prices on the menu(120-140 bucks for each sabzee), I had expected a much better deal. However, we were not complaining. We din't want to wait another 45 mins for the dhabawallahs to serve us more rotis. We quickly finished the food, paid up the money and then quickly came out.. Our taste buds were angry and agitated.. They were howling at their peak. They wanted a better deal.. Their demand was of supreme importance to us. And then, what do we do? We straightaway head off to the Amul ice-cream parlour which is right next to 'The Courtyard'. I must say that the Amul shop owner must be a good entrepreneur... he has indeed chosen a very good location for his shop.. right next to this dhaba. If just 50% of the people coming out of that dhaba eat an icecream at Amul's, this shop owner can make a big fortune. All of us chose our favourite utterly butterly delicious scoops/cones and headed back to campus.

Pigeon eggs in the balcony

2 days ago, my roomie (Kapil aka 'Kaps') observed something unusual in our balcony...there were two pigeon eggs lying in an old flowerpot. White coloured and small in size.
Needless to say, we were happy...Well, who doesn't get happy to see a new life; be it of a human, plant, bird or an animal. One pigeon(whitish in colour) was right there incubating the eggs...I guess it was the mom pigeon (though not too sure).. She initially got scared when we clicked some photographs of her but later on she got used to the camera and lights (It was like a new film star who gets used to paparazzi :) ). She sits there for the whole day while the male pigeon attends to the parenting tasks at the night.
The male pigeon got scared when I tried to click some photographs..so I didn't disturb him but rather clicked some shots from distance. Nowadays, we just sneak peek from a distance so as not to interfere in their parenting tasks!!!
P.S: I had earlier clicked this photograph when the lovebirds were dating in our balcony:


I had also uploaded the pics to my twitpic account for my twitter friends!!!


Note: Did some googling and found that female pigeon incubates at night while male pigeon attends to the eggs during daytime. Looks like I screwed up between mom and dad pigeons. :))