Tag: uttarakhand

Nature

a lizard yarn…

Predatory instincts work on an interesting dichotomy – stealth builds upon the slowest of movements and translates into a narrative of high speed leaving hardly any space between the transition… with the agamids, ‘tis the slow, tentative footsteps contrasted with a ferocious tongue, a tentative rustle between the bushes, never hastening when in attack… for …

Nature

On monsoons and mating rituals…

As the sky grows overcast, ‘tis time for the shrill, raspy chatters of Baya weavers to fill up the tree tops, yet another one of those elaborate and enchanting courtship rituals of the avifaunal kingdom… the seemingly fickle constructs of grass it calls a nest swaying at the slightest of breeze yet sturdy enough to …

Art & Culture, History, Mountains

On royal animists… Sun Temple, Katarmal

Katarmal Sun Temple, Almora, Uttarakhand, India

A temple is a kernel around which settlements, permanent or temporary, are spun… across history and religions, they have laid the ground rules for civilizations, defined the contours of culture and cradled the arts… one might say it comes at a price though… an opacity of belief and conviction beyond which societies offer little incentive …

Art & Culture, Mountains

on water of the woods…

Naula, traditional water system, Uttarakhand, India

the way we mistreat water more or less defines the way we mistreat the gods, cleaving away the elements to deprive divinity of its roots and imprisoning it in a seclusion that can leave even the most devout stymied at times… yet one feels that this thought is more of an urban construct, as a …

Mountains

the woods o’ winter…

I wonder if the snow loves the trees and fields that it kisses them so gently? And then it covers them up snug, you know, with a white quilt; and perhaps it says, ‘Go to sleep, darlings, till the summer comes again’. -Lewis Carroll the woods of winter are an exercise in a patient build …

Mountains, Nature

on prancing poikilotherms…

Kashmir Rock Agama (Laudakia tuberculata), Gangotri, Uttarakhand, India

The lizard that jumped from a high Iroko tree to the ground said he would praise himself if no-one else did… – Chinua Achebe, Things Fall Apart the reptilian world has generally been designated to embody negative traits in the constructs of human imagination for as long as one can comprehend, from the sacred annals …

Mountains, Nature

postulates on divinity…

Divnity atop Kandi Galu Notch (~3,600 mts), Great Himalayan National Park, Himachal Pradesh India

Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God. – John Muir the leitmotif of any mountain, any protrusion that can make its surroundings feel insignificant, would unarguably be divinity… the sanctitude offered by the higher climes more often that not …

Mountains, Nature

On precipitation…

It might be a coincidence — though one gets a rather assertive feeling in the gut that ‘tis not — that the less we splash about in the rain, the more we swoon over petrichor in the annals of internet… Google Ngram Viewer testifies to the fact, with the usage of the word spiking around …

Mountains

a swansong of the sun…

A riot of colours at Dunagiri Peak, Uttarakhand…

The sky ambles blue, broods black and bleeds white… look at any high mountain panorama and you’d see the analogy ticking away incessantly through dawn and dusk, that play of shadows and light, of heat and cold, of hope and despair, the quintessential play of yin and yang if one were to ponder, or suffer, …