Of felines and other things...how it all began.

The toughest things are the easiest ones...like giving a shapeless cloud a form !! Have you ever looked at a cloud and see it float and merge without any effort with another cloud.... will there be an identity crisis?

A blissful month of October in 2004 in Bangalore - being spent in a city that was an absolute bore for a lonely soul like me. I had broken up with my beau, I had the world at my command at work, a beautiful apartment at a dirt cheap cost on rent.... I did lack both acquaintances and friends ( ahem.... the closest Bong friend that I had was having a sordid affair with the man whom I was dating and who is still a dear friend. My then boyfriend told this to me much later & I had a laugh at my own expense :0 C'est la vie). But then, I was a very lonely person in Bangalore and I abhored the place.


This was my second year in the Indian silicon city. If someone were to have asked me my opinion of the place, I'd have de-sold the place for sure. I had longed for warmth and friends in a place that was so commercial and materialistic. Sometimes I felt like an alien in my own country. The vegetable vendors, butchers, auto-drivers and the local people fleeced anyone who did not hail from the southern part of the sub-continent. Now, in India we do not have the luxury to choose the city to live in or the job... most of us are like the free flowing water; getting into the job crevice before something or someone else gets in. At times, also displace others. Its still the survival of the fittest, of the conniving.

Despite my dislike for Bangalore, I can not discount the truth that some of my best years as far as learning about life as well as on the work front took place there.

That afternoon in October was the tipping point. Shamal - a colleague who was in my team called me and asked me if he could come over. Now... Shamal, Patrick, Vrinda and Ananth were family in a place that was home away from some 'Home'.

Anyways, Shamal arrived that funny sunday noon with a small scrawny kitten held in his HUGE giant like hand. Shamal is truely a gentle giant. The little kitty was filled with life and immediately began exploring the house.... into the kitchen, up the guitar, under the futon, on the curtain and the kid's eyes had not yet lost their baby blue shade !!!

Mitzi - an apt name for the gold and white cat who resembled a bob-cat because of his large ears and huge blue orbs...post prancing about the new home - zzzzzzz on a tiny painting of Claude Monet ' The water lilies'. Later post 3 months of him coming home, the name 'Mitzi-Claude Monet' was officially given. By the way, Mitzi would not have been called Claude Monet if I did not care enough for him and get him take his shots diligently.
Manna - as I still call Mitzi in my most endearing manner - was about 2 months old when I had to call the vet home.
Like your first born, your first pet cat / dog / bird or whatever it is, is always someone closest to your heart. Not that I have experienced parenthood in a true sense but I am sure that tomorrow if I were to give birth to my own flesh and blood, I'd be just as tentative with many things as I was with Manna. My day would and still starts and ends with this particular kid. Manna was and is my problem child as well. On the first week of arrival in Purva Graces, I found this fur-ball with a swollen eye. I am still left baffled on how he had hurt his eye. I called up my boss and told him' My cat is ill I can't come to work'. Now, any boss in his sane mind would say, 'ok, so your cat is ill - so what ?' Not in my case. Call my furball a cat and be assured that your face shall have some scars, your car, a dent ! They are my babies. So, Mitzi was my first born ( or rather my first feline baby). All that Manna needed for his eye, was a normal eye drop twice a day for 3 days. This being over, on the second month, I had to give him is vaccinations. The vet came home and caught the scrawny one dimentional golden fur ball. Mitzi had a temper even then. He spat and fought the poor vet and ensured that both, vet and I had bloody hands. His shots given, I learnt how to trim his claws. They were ( and still are) tiny pink ones.

Once the vaccination card was being made and the doc wrote Mitzi's gender as male, I had a sudden sinking feeling... I thought that the vet was a fraud. How could my Mitzi be a male...was my baby not a girl? Oh well, pink bowls, pink bed, pink towel, pink collar ...noooooooo this can't be true !! I retorted and asked the vet if he was sure that Mi was a male cat. My poor vet was surely not prepared to be cornered for this. He promptly caught Manna, lifted his tail and told me with a straight face 'those are the balls'. I died a double death - one out of a heartache and second out of sheer embarassment. I had to have a sudden accpetance of a gender change of my only child and then it struck me - Mitzi is actually Mitzi-Calude Monet. The only cat I know off, who loves Impresionism Art.

Mitzi was a handsom kid and before I could spell 'jack robbinson', he was a quarter year of age. Manna has certain traits though, that shall make him a perpetual kitten. He loves to knead me and suck my t-shirt.... not a normal kid !! Also, he usually usually licks his tiny pink paws at the crack of dawn and puts them on my nose to wake me... now how can one ever be angry with such an endearing fellow.

Nala - The beauty of Rantambore

India, an incredible land that has a rich flora, fauna and heritage is slowly, but surely loosing out on her wildlife. 5 decades ago, there were nothing less then 3000 tigers to be found across the country. There have been other animals who, along with the tiger also need some attention. These are leopards, wild cats and panthers.
The untamed growth of human race has become an absolute threat to the wild. Yet, neither are WWF, National Geography nor other NGOs able to do much.
Nevertheless, I must give kudos to Valmik Thapar and his efforts at doing something for the tigers. I am much impressed in the manner that Rantahmbore has worked on saving the tigers. I was there recently and had the wonderful opportunity of seeing 6 tigers spread across the jungle. My favourite is a tigress called 'Nala or Lady of the Lake'. This furry lady is a true beauty and she knows how to instill the mortal fear in all creatures both living and dead that fall under her territory. Seeing her and her freedom was wonderful. She is indeed a lucky cat. Imagine being born in a zoo she would have never known what freedom were to be.
Most of the time its criminal to confine these huge creatures in cages. No matter how beautifully the landscaping is done, it is nothing close to being out there in the open and in the wild... nothing like hunting down your food, nothing like facing the furies of the nature, locating crevices and caves, having secret routes, hiding the kill.... freedom is so important to anything living.
Plant a tree in a forest and the same species of tree in one's courtyard. There will most certainly be a difference in the quality of the fruit and the growth of the plant. Even stationery living creatures need freedom. I managed to enter Nala’s head…and with her permisson managed to capture below some of her thoughts.

I am ‘Nala’ - 'Lady of the Lake' and Ranthambore is my home. Unchartered, unbridled, free from realms of human intervention - I saunter across the plains and the grasslands. This is my land; these are my creatures - all of them - air borne, water borne and those who eat the grass of my land. I am permitting humans to come and learn from my kinds - let those lesser mortals learn how to live in harmony and what it means to be content. But let me tell you, human beings have no dignity, they trespass my privacy and misuse the hospitality that I have offered. One day one of them will shoot my cubs, kill my kinds and decorate their homes. Yet, let me just live in peace for now. Let me live for the moment, let my silent pugs usher the free spirit of my soul and for now, let me drink the cool water from my lake and sleep under the shade of the sisal tree. I can hear the monkeys chattering and the Sambar baying .... they need not fear for now. I am content and thus languid.