The pool was clean, but somehow the water was black and impenetrable. There was not a ripple and it reflected the green leaves of the tree that gave it shelter, and the blue sky beyond quite perfectly. If one stood by it with great quietness it gradually revealed its hidden wonders.
Sitting on a wicker chair under the sky as evening falls: long fingers of coconut and stooping ashok tree rise to a great height above. From the coconut fronds drongos sally forth, swooping and arching high overhead and having caught their prey they return to their perch before venturing on another round of aerial acrobatics. Later they settle for the night, and bats both large and small take their place jaggedly diving through the air. Suddenly a huge owl appears out of the massed foliage of the almond tree, and Just as suddenly he disappears again.
There is a dead tree nearby, ragged and forlorn, and this morning a crow and its three fledglings cluster on the edge of one of its branches. The young birds caw-caw endlessly as their progenitor busily digs his way deeper into the entrails of a dead squirrel. I saw this group on the ground earlier when they had first found their victim. At that time but a small red wound had been opened up and the feast was just starting.
For most of the rainy season I slept on the verandah of my kutir, which certainly would not have been possible if it had been raining with any degree of consistency. It was wonderful to be so close to nature even at night, with the silhouettes of the trees in the garden and the orchard beyond, and with the special sounds and the atmosphere that accompanies the nighttime. To sleep beneath the vast expanse of the heavens feels very different indeed from sleeping between four walls.
The rains when they come are something of a mixed blessing – on the one hand they bring in their wake a general cooling of the temperature to something like a bearable level, and they provide water both for washing and drinking, besides inaugurating the planting season. On the other hand crops are not the only things that come to life at this time, also disease-bearing insects multiply rapidly and are well-nigh impossible to avoid. Mosquitoes are of course the number one culprit in this regard and are found to be carriers of both malaria and typhoid as well as filaria and viral diseases. Malaria is endemic in this area, though until this past year those living in the wood have been free of it. This year it was rife, and for the third...
At the first sign of rain the farmers also bestirred themselves and went out to the fields for sowing, and the sound of ox carts carrying cheerful workers rumbled once more through the countryside. Their joy, though, soon turned into anxiety as the days became clear again, and the land so recently refreshed started to return to its former baked condition. Even the Bay Weavers after a while seemed less than enthusiastic about their building work, and indeed as the days turned into weeks many abandoned their half-finished nests altogether. It was not until July that the second rain fell in these parts, just at the point when anxiety was about to go over into despair. We had heavy rain on two successive days, which saved the seedling...
[Deshgoan, Khandwa] Unexpectedly the first rain came early this year, in the middle of June. I had taken to sleeping on the verandah of my kutir, where it was possible to catch any breeze that was blowing. Suddenly one night around 11.00pm an almighty thunderstorm broke overhead, and the rain fell in torrents, so much so indeed that I was forced to retreat inside in order to avoid a soaking. The thunder roared and the rain fell heavily all through the night, though it had slackened by the time I rose about an hour before dawn.