Wildlife Whisperer

A DIFFERENT KIND OF A MORNING WALK Not long ago I was a totally night person – most creative, lively and awake after 8 pm. I could work the entire night but post 8 am I had to sleep. So although I have always loved sunrises, I never had to wake up for one. I would usually stay awake for the sun to rise, and then promptly go to sleep. Life changed one fine November morning in 2008. In the middle of a workshop that I was facilitating, the venue of which was next to a beautiful beach, for two days in a row I woke up around dawn and went for a walk on the beach. Since then I have been addicted to morning walks and feel a special tinge is seeing the world wake up. Mornings are indeed special! The walk that I went for on Sunday though was a different one. Having moved to Delhi a month ago, I have been constantly comparing my current karam bhoomi Delhi to my beloved janam bhoomi Mumbai and in 9 cases out of 10 Mumbai wins all comparison’s hands down. On Sunday I discovered that...

I saw this picture first time in 2005 when Mumbai faced a kind of flooding due to torrential rains, a nightmare that caught the city totally unawares. Like lakhs of Mumbaikars I was caught in the rain too, but safe and sound, and well cared for in the Police Training School where I was in the middle of a training. Because the school was at a height, and because there was no TV in the School, we did not realize the enormity of the situation (an enormity which strikes only once you ‘see’ some things or ‘experience’ things first hand), despite the various wireless messages which went on throughout the night. Early next morning when we did venture out to gauge the damage the sight that beheld us is etched in memory. Deserted cars, dead bodies, washed out roads. It was only late that day that I had reached back home. And everyone everywhere had a story to tell – either horror ones of how some people sat in cars, with windows rolled up, waiting for the waters to reside and dying of suffocati...