My work day today started with watching a crowded group of red-whiskered bulbuls fly about in the canopy. They made those bubbly, gurgling calls that all bulbuls seem to make. I never saw what had them flying around in such a tizzy, but I suppose there are many things I don’t see in the evergreen forests of Anshi. We continued past the bulbuls, and when I turned back, I saw that they had left the trail too.

An hour and a half more of work. And then we came upon Baki, a neighbouring village. I saw as I left the forest that Baki seemed to have a communal fence, perhaps to keep wild animals out. I was immediately reminded of strategy games in which, in the first, oldest age, I would build such fences around my village. Of course, I wanted to keep out enemy soldiers. I do hope the people of Baki think better of the forest and its wild species.

Idyllic, to say the least. We walked along the fence, and turned a corner. I hadn’t seen it at this point. We walked over to a tree, and plucked a couple of amla. I noticed that the day was getting hotter – it was early afternoon already. And then I saw it.

It was so exquisitely simple: green-hued trees framed a wide open patch. No, they seemed to be embracing the grassland almost lovingly. The grass was yellow, not green like the trees. When I first laid eyes on it, a sense of calmness and quiet joy washed over me. My heart did not stop, like it does when I look at the night sky here and see all the stars that ever were, seemingly.

All it was was a sunny yellow field, unclaimed by man or tree. But it had such a hold on me. I felt woefully powerless, and yet extraordinarily privileged at the same time. What are we made of, if the yellow grasses of the world can take our hearts and hold it between their stalks? But what an honour it is, to be these fragile creatures who are capable of feeling so much of anything?

Familiarity can be such a gift. That patch of grass and trees took me back in time, to the place I grew up. It took me back, wonderfully, to afternoons sitting among yellowing grass overlooking a field, also framed by green. This field had a track, where I ran races. It had volleyball courts, where I’ve made a thousand memories. It took me back to a simpler time when I had looked around and found so many reasons to smile, inside my head.

Life must move on, and so must we. So that’s what we did. When I saw the charming heart-spotted woodpecker in the tree later, he seemed paltry, through no fault of his own. I wonder if, years from now, I will see this bird or any other from this forest and be spellbound and speechless once again. But for a time, I was not thinking about work. I wasn’t thinking about the mixed-species flocks I was studying, which go to the extent of orchestrating nothing short of a performance for me. I was thinking, ‘All I want to do is sit in the middle of that grass, until I can’t anymore.’

 

The child dances in her frills, not knowing that stars shine so brightly around and above her. Perhaps knowing, but not caring. Because they are stars, they’ve been scattered there all her life. She’s never known nights when lights and smoke and the very air robbed them of their beauty, when their radiance dimmed in quiet submission. But children, and adults, are like her. There are always reasons not to look up at the stars.

We do not speak the same language. Her big eyes dart around everywhere. Everywhere but my face. She smiles at the ground, she mumbles words I do not understand. Her feet trace patterns on the smooth ground. Only earlier in the afternoon, it was smoothened with soft mud. Mud that found its way upto her elbows before going back down to the ground. Because mud, you can shape, even with small hands. Especially with small hands that hold not so many heavy weights.

She doesn’t watch for the sunset. But she knows there’s meaning to it. To walk along the gentle bend in the tar road that is the boldest feature that man made there. Hands are held, the pace is set to a stroll. A flower is plucked, by her. She likes flowers – they make good presents, even those Lantana ones, with their yellows, reds and pinks all together. Maybe she likes them because she likes that they don’t know what colour they want to be.

She bows her head, like her mother. Clasps her hands. Closes her eyes. She looks smaller now, when the roof is so far up above her head. But the faded gold of the bell is not out of her reach. She gives a mighty tug of the rope, and it rings true for her. She gives me flowers, quickly, with that same smile for the cemented ground too.

She has no time for the monkeys that play-fight or the cat that comes meowing for fish. They elicit a harsh shoo from her, and even her small frame is enough to send them scurrying for cover. Instead, nails must be painted, haphazard but so colourful. Outfits changed, socks displayed, ankles accessorized and cloth-hair pretended into elaborate cloth hairstyles.

How do you impress upon her, that out of more than seven billion individuals like her, she is one of the select few? That she can skip outdoors and spot birds and animals and plants that are found nowhere else on the globe, before lunch time? How do you explain to her the tremendous weight the word ‘endemic’ carries? What words would you pick to tell her the mountain range she’s growing up in is 150 million years old?