Birds and Bees



In these times of images, where everything that one sees is in a form of a diagram, the art of writing is slowly becoming obsolete. I am thus going to write about how to reinvent the art of writing. No one is going to read it, because it contains no graphics to illustrate what I am trying to say.

But, I would like to first talk about the story of an Indian squirrel. For the ignorant bastards, the Indian squirrel is also called palm squirrel, which simply means, you can fit one in the palm of your hand, which is cute. Squirrels, native to most of the Western world, are the grey squirrels. They have often been seen in animations on television. But they do not fit in the palm of a hand. This is not cute. These squirrels are like big rats with big tails, and if you see one, and you are afraid of rats, you should run!

They probably won’t attack you, but when you compare them with the palm squirrel, they are scary, and look like ugly oversized cousins of the harmless palm squirrel, banished to the Western world to scourge the cold and barren temperate lands.

It is unfortunate to see that though the tropical climes sustain a wide variety of life forms, it is unable to successfully sustain human beings. Human beings are always complaining of the heat, then making up all sorts of excuses to travel northwards. Once there, they populate the place and make it warm, which allow the pedantic to call it ‘global warming’. The palm squirrels live happily alongside the mice and rats, the scorpions and snakes, and the tigers and deer. But the grey squirrels live with human beings who have escaped from warm climes only to find the grey squirrels to be ugly, oversized cousins of the palm squirrels, thus wishing they went back, only if to get one last glance at the palm squirrel sitting on the edge of the clothes line on the balcony, bathing in the sunshine.

Oh what sight are the birds and the bees when they try to enter your home. They elicit the most basic of human reactions, fear! Birds and bees, to my opinion, are best in close-up macro shots on the internet, and posted on facebook. They are also great to look at on the promenade holding hands, or behind bushes going about their private business, which is no business of ours, so stay away from it!

Although, most birds like the warm tropical climate and the bees don’t really care where they are as long as there are lots of flowers in the neighborhood, the birds and bees seem to prefer the cooler climes where the heat of excitement won’t make them sweat. They do not want to have to un-hold hands to reach for the handkerchief to wipe off the sweat. It would seem like too much hard work, with not too much style left from the ‘effortless’ act of love, or the hair gel that they put on in the morning.

I am now going to tell a tale of a pair of birds who have everlasting love in their hearts. Oh, I have run out of time, so may be another time. I might also use pictures for the reader’s benefits.

Dwaipayan Adhya
Location: Cambridge, UK

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Gun Powder: The Resto with a view, the Food ok.

Image
When do you last remember eating out in a restaurant looking over a green lake and surrounded by forests, from the third floor of a building? Well, third floor of the building may not sound very sensational, but the hill stationesque surroundings that the restaurant provides, especially during the cold, murky times of winter rain sure needs accolades for its sheer locale. Hauz Khas village is known to all who live in Delhi or have come to Delhi with a vengeance to tour it. From the broad expanse of the outer ring road, there leads a road that keeps narrowing as it enters into the deeply vegetated plains of Hauz Khas. Then starts a long and winding road that leads into a den of boutiques selling dresses for women at a rate which can only be afforded by those who earn in dollars and euros. Where is Gun Powder in all this? It is somewhere, and it still does not show itself even as you reach the end of the treacherous lane (provided you are taking the right one). I remember that at some po...
Read more

Bistrò Italiana: The Big Chill Café

Image
I am not an aficionado of Italian cuisine. As a matter of fact, after eating out at The Big Chill Café at Khan Market, I doubt whether prior to this I had any knowledge of Italian food at all. The pastas and the pizzas have invaded into the Indian palate since time eternity, but not without that local hint. The main ingredient of Italian food, the cheese, used here has always been processed cheddar. Even mainstream pizza joints which were offshoots of their Western counterparts do not serve stringy mozzarella cheese. In fact, real Italian cheese are very rare in India, except for in big departmental stores of big malls. I remember eating pasta at home made using spicy tomato ketchup and processed cheddar cheese. Sometimes, if lucky, I would find some Italian herbs such as oregano and parsley to add that European touch to the dish. The pizza experience was not any better. Making a pizza at home is ten times more difficult than pasta, first because you need an oven to bake it. T...
Read more

Free Food

A fortnight ago, Cambridge experienced an evening of heavy rain, lightning and thunder. When I shared this with friends not from Cambridge, they heard me out and tried to be nice. It was clear that they didn’t believe that it could have occurred - a five hour long thunderstorm in a region more famous for being one of the drier ones in the country? The BBC failed to predict it, and if the Gods were the BBC the clouds were them playing a match of rugby. Ordinarily, on a dry day in a desert this would have been a blessing. It was like a perfect murder, no one believed it because there was no evidence. The weather forecasters said, “Clear sky,” and the minor local mishaps did not reach the press afterwards. I became the victim of a twisted celestial game of hide and seek, like a true detective solving a crime, he knows what occurred but does not have proof to show because the villain was really good at covering his tracks. In retrospect, my life has turned into a game of cat and ...
Read more