The Second Steppe Rider

The equatorial rain forests and the Steppe grasslands, I am sure are very much familiar to a lot of people thanks to the great folks at National Audubon Society. There are far too many conservationists that made a name for themselves by studying the natural habitat of their favorite animals and plants. Audubon for me is the source of childhood fascination and I generally talk about them with some amount contrived familiarity. Its because of the fact that I learnt about ornithology from them and in my early years that I forayed into the woods imagining myself to be a amateur bird watcher. A bird with fine plumage used to visit us and sit on tall coconut trunks and make a call that sounded like its name - it sounded like a quick note on the flute - "hoo hoo"- it sounded in this manner. I found a little snippet on Youtube that presents the unmistakable call of the hoopoe. Mom told about birds that migrated long distances to sustain their kind and I thought the hoopoe would have visited us from a long distance place. It was interesting to think that the bird that you see is a cool thing on wings which sees a lot many great places that any child would think about in great awe. ( Here is a documentary on hoopoe for the discerning birdwatchers among you ). In a recent time I discovered another fascinating bird which in my assumption belongs to the family of cormorants. The fascination is that it dives inside water and hunts for its prey fully submerged in water and then suddenly emerges displaying only its neck outside of the water. The migratory birds are everywhere, suddenly cropping in nearby bogs, spending their time in broods and just as quickly take off to different places in their sojourns. I do not have an interest beyond casual photography upon these birds though identifying by name does give some pleasure.

The migratory birds have a relentless cycle of migration which spans across the globe from the old. One of the defining things about migratory birds is how they fly in flock patterns and behavior scientists delve into these patterns to tell the world really nice things about how people do their business efforts. In my gaze though the migratory birds seen in Chennai look the same as the migratory birds found in Hyderabad after two days and then in Bhusaval in another day's time and still further in Jamnagar in two more days time. There might be some change in the intermittent stop times of these birds. If the conditions are quite good at some place - the water is teeming with food and the weather is good, the birds get pepped up and get to raise a few more new chicks before they launch into the sky. I find that the migratory birds or even other birds do not find much of a mention in the books written in the English language in India. I am not aware of any cultural ban on writing about the migratory birds but the writers have just not been able to crank up stories with migratory birds that could touch people's imagination in ways other than a clearing avast. It appears to me like I myself have taken a really long time to write an article about the migratory birds. In the same breath I would also like to add that I have not written about hailstones which we get to see in my place, at one time quite alarmingly punching the top of our car. I albeit have got really good excuses for not writing about the migratory birds and the hailstones until recently when 10-15 kg hailstones rained into a farm in the rural areas of a nearby city. The good thing that happened after this episode of hailstones is that I soaked up some kitchen fenugreek for a night and then wrapped them in a towel for a day before depositing them in the backyard. The mud had been scratched with a spoon or fork the day before and lightly watered. Today I discovered that there are many more ways to grow fenugreek ab initio. I very well remember to have done this feat in a different city. Its actually a very good time to grow kitchen fenugreek since there are not country fowl of ours at the moment in our backyard. The country fowl adore the kitchen fenugreek shoots and it would be very difficult to say no to their voracious appetite. Therefore now is the best time to somehow make that looming effort to raise a batch of fresh kitchen fenugreek. One of the great effects of kitchen fenugreek is to give the nicest reddish brown color to dosas. I would however want at least one batch of ab initio kitchen fenugreek from our backyard.

I know there would be a lingering feeling of fuzziness about why I wanted to grow a batch of kitchen fenugreek after getting to know about the size of hailstones at a rural outpost in a city near my place. To understand this predicament it would be good and interesting to know about a favorite root vegetable of mine - the radish. I am not able to think of growing radish in my backyard in a way that is consonant with the amount of radish I like to buy. However I do something that is easy in any given scenario - the culture of a kitchen fenugreek patch. There would be some radish buyers would be hard pressed to understand a small kitchen fenugreek patch beyond a green thumb's dash. I am able to bring this lustrous subtlety to my discerning readers only through a careful meditation on words which sprouts through huge patches of onions and dozens upon dozens of egg trays. The green leaves of the kitchen fenugreek are a goodly delicacy fit for a feast limited for 4-6 persons. I have never had a preparation of kitchen fenugreek leaves in a wedding banquet because of the economics of scale. The preparations made of kitchen fenugreek leaves are very simple ones but I have always expected of these preparations an artisanal quality, which I think depended upon the earliest introductions of kitchen fenugreek leaf dishes in my life. As I buy my vegetables it is now almost an invariable factoid that the small bunches of kitchen fenugreek leaves are sold out by the time I bend down to the vegetable vendors of our market. The venerable lady looks at me everytime with an expression that is reserved for those that miss the bus. She gives me tips about when and how much the kitchen fenugreek leaf bunches are going to available and make the best efforts to land my coveted bunches without fail the next time I bee in into the market. I wonder that with such a high demand for kitchen fenugreek leaves, how effortlessly the lady-elders of my life had made me feel good with those slender stalks of kitchen fenugreek leaves. It still doesn't solve the rider about the reason for thinking on the lines of kitchen fenugreek plants after a shower of hailstones in a nearby city. If anybody wants a go at this rider, my staple idea about the fraying is to write and get a truculent green patch of kitchen fenugreek plants in your backyards. The kitchen fenugreek plants make a great photo opportunity in the early mornings. It is also needless to say about huge library type of materials that is available on the many applications of kitchen fenugreek. After writing a great bridge piece I always tend to feel that very little escapes my senses and finger tips and as I would soon touch the Publish button, I forgive my monkey for some days and gorge on a lot of other good things in the avowed presence of the Dick Tracy as we discuss the nuances of his greatest cases. Dick Tracy when he is in his good senses says raspily to me : Join the drops!