A herculean task

 The tenant left. Poor guy was stuck in the US and could not return. The flat had to be cleared, so he got a friend to handle the shift to KGF where all his furniture was kept in a villa. However the movers could not handle the large pots of palms on his terrace so left them behind. And my sister, owner of the flat, did not want the palms there. Since they were planted inside the containers instead of in pots she was concerned the wood would rot and mess up the balcony. 

Who would have thought the shifting of the palms from the tenants flat would be such a herculean task. Each pot had kgs of soil in them along with the heavy palms. When the men came they very casually said -- oh these we can handle. They literally had to bite their tongues because for half a day it was such a struggle to move it all.

First the soil on top was removed.and put into buckets. That was really hard work. Each of the four large planters had to be emptied of the soil to ¼ of the pot as the planter itself was tough to carry. Four men were employed to work on the shift along with Steve and Bonny. Hats off to them they executed the whole thing so well.

Then each palm had to be lifted out keeping its root ball intact. That was also a tough job, after which they had to be carried to my balcony. Each palm with soil around its roots weighed a ton! Poor Steve and Bonny handled that to see that they were not traumatized with the shift.

Slowly and methodically they worked steadily clearing the soil and filling the buckets one bucket at a time. Then the planter was lifted into our house to our balcony and set down. Once it was set down the palms were held in them and while another man had to shovel in the soil while another man and me picked up what fell on the ground. It was a messy job.

Luckily  I had saved large sheets of plastic  from some delivery done in Golden Arch and that came in handy. Laying out the plastic all the soil and mess remained on the sheets and saved the tiles from becoming dirty, giving me double work. Gave me lots of exercise to sweep up what had fallen on the ground and put it  into the pots.

The move was worth it though the men grumble it has cut our already poor light. They look beautiful but seem to be rather scraggly so I will work on them. The new tenants are plant lovers so I left the smaller pots behind for them. Am glad that they are as usually plant lovers are nice people.

 

A fistful of feathers

 

Yeah! it is the Asian Paradise Flycatcher!

Over time my Mum lost her mind. She was never meant to go into a ‘home’ and should have lived out her days in the original homestead. She never was able to adjust to the place sadly. I had gone to study in Europe and during that time she was shifted into a home, far away in Bannerghatta. For whatever her reasons, she never found like minded people in the ‘home’ and  the food and the servants never suited her at all. I did try the food once which she had ordered when we visited and it was dreadful. And pretty inedible. Plus most of all, she had no intellectual stimulus there and once she lost her eyesight it was complicated with her being unable to read. It was a sad down hill life in the ‘home’ and Mum lost her mind completely and never recovered.

But I choose to remember my Mum like she was as a younger woman. She was fashionable and erudite and was my inspiration to go do a second Masters when I was almost 50. The PhD was because I just can’t stop studying, and love research. I remember so well the fun my parents had doing her Masters. Dad would walk up and down to the British Library on top of Koshys and hire out her books. Once she was done with researching with them he would walk back and exchange them for others. 

The little guy in the mango tree taken with my husbands cell phone.

Even my sons helped my Mum with her Geography ISC corrections where it was just checking maps and she had given them the answers. Naturally it helped them with their own Geography! I am eternally grateful for all my parents did for my two elder sons while I was busy with the young guy born much later.I place their success in life, so young, on my parents guidance and ofcourse sport.

Once both my parents died -- Mum died very recently I felt at a loose end. It’s just coming on to a year and  I miss them a lot, especially with the horrid, greedy spouses my siblings have brought in.My Dad would have clouted them back in their corners and told them to look at their own inheritance instead of looking at ours. Obviously the less said on the topic the better, but I got wonderful people to support me in the right places which crushed them and swatted them back and shut them up.  

A male and female breeding.

A few days after I was served with a fake case notice,by the nasty ones, through the tenant, out of the blues I heard the raucous cry of the Asian Paradise Flycatcher. “ No! It can’t be!,” I thought to myself. Surprised by the call and very sure it was the bird as I was accustomed to them in our little village of Goa, I went out into the balcony and to my utter shock, it was the bird! Such a rare and beautiful creature, only seen were we humans have not intruded, it was here, in Hayes Road.

My heart soared standing and watching it pirouette among the branches of the trees surrounding the building in the neighbouring compounds.It’s an insectivore and so was having a feast daring through the branches with it’s ribbon tail doing the Chinese ribbon dance among the green feathery leaves of the tamarind trees.They make short aerial sallies after insects, usually returning to the same perch.

Simply spectacular!

It comes to visit only in the winter, from the base vegetation and forests of the Himalayas which is its home. Probably to breed or just get away from the icy conditions. It’s a graceful looking flycatcher, as the adult male sports a long ribbonlike tail. The males occur in two colour morphs of cinnamon and white. Both colour morphs sport a glossy black head with blue ring around the eye, but the white morph is entirely white below, while the cinnamon morph has cinnamon upperparts and tail, and dirty white underparts.

I like to think the bird is the avatar of my parents coming to assure me that their physical body may be interred and turned to dust, BUT they are watching over me and whatever the nasty bunch try, justice will always be served. This is MY home and I am not likely to be going anywhere.