The Magic Faraway Institute

Indian Institute of Science (IISc) is like a fairy tale and the months I’ve spent here are some of my happiest. Its four hundred and fifty acre campus is full of surprises (I’ll get to them soon). Many of the department buildings are tucked away between a dense thicket of trees and some look like old colonial houses. The older buildings have quaint olive green doors and windows which made me fall in love with them instantly.

What strikes you very quickly in IISc, after thinking “Huge!” and “So pretty!” and “THE TREES!” is that it takes eons to get anywhere.  It takes especially long if you, like me, tend to stop every now and then to ogle at some pretty thing you had not noticed before. Because, you see, IISc is a magical place. It is just the sort of place where you would expect the trees to wake up from their slumber at night and roam about the place. 

There are trees everywhere, sometimes vast stretches of land of just trees. Like the Enchanted Forest (my Anne-of-Green-Gables name for it) - a huge swathe of land with rows and rows of towering trees. And what is beautiful about this place, is that the leaves are not swept away. They crunch deliciously underfoot and turn every shade of yellow and brown there is. Because of the distances, almost everyone owns a cycle, adding to the charm of the campus. I used to be a teeny bit paranoid about riding anywhere that was not completely empty and I would wobble as I rode whenever a car drove past or I had to cycle between crowds of people, but a month in IISc took care of that. I even tried riding without any hands on the bar and have a silly grin on my face every time I do it.

It is only in IISc where a snake crossing the road will not cause too much of a flutter. That said, snakes also go into departments and residential houses and create quite a stir because some snakes in the campus are venomous. Our lab often gets ‘snake calls’ and I was thrilled to bits to be around when this happened. Someone or the other from the lab takes with them a snake bag to rescue the snake and let it out some distance away from the department. Unfortunately, on both times this happened the snake seemed to be on a tight itinerary and didn’t wait for us to arrive. Even so, I could not stop grinning when we cycled up winding paths and appeared at the Director’s house one morning after receiving a snake call. The house had a sprawling, wild garden and the owner recounted to us how a five-foot long snake climbed on to the house from a mango tree.

Two favourite haunts of mine are the Bird Rock and Jubilee Park. One afternoon, we sat on a large rock surrounded by trees and golden grasses taller than us. At around 3pm, a loud party of birds descended on the rock. There were red-vented bulbuls, munias, babblers, prinias, oriental-magpie robins and paradise flycatchers. We watched them agape. There is a tiny watering hole on the rocks where they took turns (or so it seemed) to bathe in and the water glittered in the afternoon sunlight, as they splashed about.

A mud path leads from the Bird Rock to Jubilee Park. The first time I visited Jubilee Park, I could not believe my eyes. We were the only people in it and there were tall grasses and golden wattle trees and gulmohars and frangipani trees as far as the eye could see. Some stone steps lead down to a pond in Jubilee Park. Sitting at the bottom step, we watch the resident paradise-flycatchers catch insects and a furtive pond heron skulk near the water’s edge. On some afternoons, the minute we enter the park, we are greeted by a deafening chorus of the frogs in the pond.

I discover new things I like about IISc every day. Playing ball with Limpet in the Enchanted Forest as the light fades, climbing trees, exploring new places, ambling along tree-lined roads, sitting in the boughs of a huge banyan tree and watching birds and squirrels eating fruits, hearing the sharp ‘keeeee’ of a slender loris in the evenings, chancing upon some breathtakingly beautiful seed-pods.

Photo by Limpet

A Small Lesson in Growing Herbs

The first time I heard of parsley, sage rosemary and thyme was when I heard Scarborough Fair by Simon and Garfunkel. I always thought they sounded pretty. I had to know what they tasted like, especially after watching Nigella and many other happy cooks on the Travel and Living channel make liberal use of herbs like basil, oregano and parsley. I also desperately wanted to sniff them and say things like 'Ah, basilico!' before I lovingly garnished food with them. And there was also the matter of trying that lovely Italian hand gesture that they use when they tasted something that was too good for words. I felt I could only use that gesture if I used herbs in my cooking.

And so began my hunt for herbs. I couldn't find them anywhere in Bangalore! I then decided it would be spiffing to have them in my garden and pictured myself picking herbs with a tune on my lips and using them in my Sunday morning omelet. Google provides no information on where I can find herb seeds. My dad found them in the Indo American Hybrid Seeds nursery. They were each around Rs. 75-100 and packaged and sold by Kraft Seeds.

Growing  Thyme, Parsley, Sage and Basil

Preparing the Soil

We first collected as many pebbles and stones we could to provide better drainage for the plants. These went into empty pots first.

 

We used a mixture of gravelly sand, coco peat and regular gardening soil. We put the gravelly sand in after the stones and then the mix of coco peat and regular soil.







Sowing the Seeds

Then, the exciting part! Sowing the seeds. We sowed three to four seeds per pot and a little more when the seeds were really tiny. For the tiny seeds, we first mixed the seeds with sand and sprinkled them over the pots. All of them need to be covered with a thin layer of mud and then watered.



You can put in cute markers to identify the pots. Pinterest is full of awesome ideas.

Herb markers
Source: August Wren

Care Before and After Sprouting

You can optionally, watch over them obsessively over the next  few days. I used to run to check on them the minute I woke up. Thyme took the longest to sprout and Basil was the first. They take a maximum of eight days to poke the first green leaf into the world. My dad instructed me to only sprinkle a little water over them everyday and we put them in a partially shady spot in our balcony.
We moved them into bigger pots once they started looking too big for their first homes. Dad did this by taking a wet spade and sticking it into the soil around the rim of the pot until the soil started to come away from the pot. The plant comes out quite easily once you do this and turn it upside down. He showed me how to press the soil lightly around the roots so that it forms a ball around it before planting it in its new home. I then patted the soil around it and poured some water on it.

Growing Oregano

Oregano seeds are tiny little specks that are almost invisible. We mixed them with some sand and sprinkled them over a pot containing only coco peat(they don't grow in any of the other soils we tried) and then sprinkled some water over them. Keep the pots in partial shade.
They take about three to four days to sprout and grow quite slowly.

That's all! Finitho!

Foot Notes:
1. We grew Spinach using the same soil mixture used for the other herbs and Lettuce in only coco peat.  They're both strapping young lads now.

The Peculiar Cherai Beach

Nature is such a wonderful cabinet of curiosities. I love coming across little oddities in the geography of a place that make it magical. Two months ago we visited such a place in Kerala. It was a sliver of land called Cherai that had backwaters on one side and the sea on the other. What a feast for the eyes it was. Turn one way and you saw the waves crashing against the beach, turn the other and you saw the calm stillness of the backwaters and look straight ahead to see a narrow road snaking through little beach side shanty restaurants and coconut and pine trees. 

We were going to Kerala to attend a wedding and my father thought we would make the most of it by staying in Cherai which was close by. We reached Erunakulam Junction at 4.30 in the morning. I stood at the door of the train when we were a few stops away and looked out at scenery that was unmistakably that of Kerala's; luscious green that grew everywhere and embraced everything and old houses with sloping tiled roofs. We paid Rs. 3 for a train ticket to Aluva, from where we bundled into a car that my uncle had rented for us, and drove off to Cherai. As we were nearing it I could smell the beach air and I stuck my head out the window with a big smile on my face and gulped it all in. 

Then suddenly, we were driving down this road:

The road leading up to the beach road

It had backwaters on either side and was beautiful.

The still backwaters

We stayed in Amrapaly Beach Resorts which looked over the backwaters and the sea. It was a nice hotel with thatched roofs and friendly owners and we paid Rs. 2000 a day for an A/C room.
What I loved best was a little gate right opposite the hotel which you could swing open and then hop onto the beach.

Amrapaly Beach Resorts, with the backwaters behind it

The beach behind a little gate

The beach starts getting quite crowded after eleven in the morning and stays that way till around 8 in the night. I really do not like crowded beaches, but I found the atmosphere in the evening to be quite lively and high spirited with lots of food stalls and people merrily walking down the beach road.

I loved Cherai best early in the morning and late at night. I would wake up with my Dad at five in the morning and we would go for a quiet walk along the beach which would at that time be completely empty, save for some happy beach dogs, a few crows trying to worry little beings out of the sand with their beaks, and the fishermen.

The beach early in the morning

The happy beach dogs played with crabs and chased each other and trotted amicably beside us. The crows would hop quickly towards the sand exposed by a receding wave and stick their beaks in and hurriedly hop back before an approaching wave could reach them. We saw the brilliant blue of White Breasted Kingfishers and I strongly suspect we saw a White Bellied Treepie in flight. Far away in the sea, silhouettes of fishing boats came closer and some went farther.

Crab hunting! A little while after this picture was taken, the dog with its head
in the sand got bitten on its nose by the crab, which was then flung in the air and given a chase

The first day we reached we drove along the sea past little  dwellings, mounds of mussels and so much green(of the trees) and blue(of the sky and the sea) that it made our hearts swell. Less than half a kilometer away from the hotels, everything is very quiet except for the waves; the beach widens out and is shady under the many pine trees.

The road along the beach

The beach side shack with lip-smacking food

We ate sea food for breakfast, lunch and dinner. A plate of prawns or mussels was just Rs. 90 and so fresh and so tasty I almost cried. We tried mussels, kari meen(a variety of river fish) and mackerel with puttu(ground rice which is steamed) and appam. We always ate at the tiny beach side restaurants and the owners were always chatty and friendly. A lady in the kitchen of one of these restaurants smiled at us broadly as though we were long lost relatives.

I sat by the backwaters in the late morning and evening and saw many Grey Herons perched on Chinese fishing nets and a tiny swift-like bird which I could not identify. Our room looked over the backwaters but if you craned your neck a little you could see the beach. The backwaters were like liquid mirrors and reflected many colours. Every time we stepped out of our rooms the backwaters were a slightly different shade of blue. It looked the prettiest during sunrise and sunset.

Fishermen who chatted away while they were fishing

Grey heron and a fisherman

The backwaters early in the morning

What greeted us when we opened the door of our room

I found that the coconut trees were either allured by the sea or the backwaters. Some of them would lean towards the sea and the others towards the backwaters. We couldn’t take sides as easily.
It was a wonderful three days away and I happily told everyone once I was back about the beach with the sea on one side and the backwaters on the other.

This post was featured on India Untraveled. 

Oh, For a Forest in My Backyard

You will notice that in Kerala, people build houses in only a tiny portion of their land. The rest, which can somewhat inaccurately(because of its size) be termed a backyard, is sown with all kinds of fruits and vegetables and whatnot and grows into a dense, care-free forest. This forest is the pride of all Malayalees. It is easily traversed by men in lungis and women in saris who water the plants and lovingly part leaves and branches to look for vegetables or ripe fruit  or whatever else the plant has to offer them. You will often find them standing on their verrandahs and looking contentedly at their overgrown garden.
I am always taken for a tour around this forest and showed which tree is what and earn a beaming glow if I can tell them what it is. Extra points for their Malayalam names.

A while ago, I visited my uncle's house in Kerala and sat by the door watching all the goings on in their backyard. There was so much activity! So much in the air, for birds to tell each other about. Often in Kerala, I only have to casually look outside the window to be afforded the beautiful colours of a kingfisher that would have landed outside just then.
This time, it seemed even the beings outside were celebrating the engagement of my cousin sister. From inside the house, I heard a shrill and loud cackling coming from outside and on closer investigation found around twenty Jungle Babblers flying together from tree to tree and hopping about the ground, foraging and announcing their finds amidst louder chatter.
The house was full of relatives I hadn't seen for many years, but the outdoors seemed so much more interesting. So soon, I established a routine that involved going around talking to everyone for a while and then sitting outside for a little longer.
Each time I doubled back to the outdoors, the air burst a little more with the heady scent of several ripe jack fruits, the crickets' conversation was a little more deafening.  I tried observing the Jungle Babblers, but was frequently, and happily distracted by butterflies that were the bluest of blue and the blackest of black and many shades in between, and by squirrels with brown heads and rumps. No sooner had a Common Golden Backed Woodpecker took off in flight, than a Rufous Woodpecker flew a little closer to my vantage point and kept up a constant rat-a-tat-tat to contest the croaky creaking of the crickets.

It was only reluctantly that I let myself be led away to lunch.