1. Discover a new species:

I haven’t said this to anyone before but I’ve always wanted to do this. Insects, birds, reptiles, animals, the world is full of fascination and nature has always fascinated me. iPhones don’t fascinate me. Nature does. There are a whole lot of new species out there to be discovered. Nearly 70 % ( I presume) of insects is yet to be discovered at all. So, I just want to create that opportunity that I would stumble upon a new species. Not that I wanna name it after me, just an overwhelming curiosity.

2. See a Tiger upclose:

National Animal. I have seen it in a zoo. I have seen it in movies but haven’t encountered one in person, that too in the wild. Hope, I do that one day.

3. Own a sports bike:

I own a Platina – 100 cc bike and it is one of the best gifts I’ve got (My bro got it for his own use but later found no joy in riding it, so he gifted it to me unceremoniously). Though it is one of the best bikes for a city ride, I wanna own a sports bike someday. Say, like a 300cc bike or a 650cc one or more. Though it is not environmentally good to have such a powerful bike (They release more than twice the CO2 that my bike releases), it’s been always my passion to ride for long hours, feel the air blowing against my face, whistle past vehicles and say hi to kids in small towns. With almost no financial independency for me right now, that dream will take a long way to fulfill.

4. Visit the Himalayas:

I haven’t seen snow capped mountains in my life. I just wanna see the majestic of all mountains in its snow capped beauty before the glaciers run out of ice and the mountains run out of life Time is ticking.

5. Learn the sign language:

The tamil movie ‘Mozhi’ had fascinated me. Imagine yourself just for a second that you cannot hear anything. How you’d feel? When you try to tell it to your friends, you learn that you cannot talk too. How you’d fell? You can’t feel right now how you’d feel if you’re deaf and dumb but I’ve seen a few people with such irregularities and they’ve always reminded me of one thing. Life can just be made happy. It’s just you decide how your life is gonna be. They chose happiness despite their handicap. Their fine ability to communicate with just sign language had inspired me to learn it too and ‘talk’ to them. But, not the way you and me talk.

6. Photograph something majestic:

I’ve got a Digital SLR with me (Canon and a normal zoom lens) but I haven’t taken any photos that have changed anything or impacted anything. I wanna own a macro lens (That’s right!) and an ultra zoom lens to take awesome pictures. Though this is quite selfish of me to say, I’ve got to say I find myself in photographing birds and mainly insects. If not a zoom lens, atleast a macro lens. Soon….

7. Trek somewhere alone:

Take my photography kit, go alone into a forest, eat, sleep and get back alive. I wanna do that!

8. When I get older, I don’t wanna regret:

As I’m writing this post, I’m just 19 years of age. When I turn 40, I don’t wanna regret what I did at 19. I don’t wanna curse myself saying that ‘Dude, you should’ve done this!’. Though this is the most important bucket list I wanna fulfill, it is painfully excruciating because only time will tell if I had really fulfilled this point 8.

I can’t think of anything other than these 8 points. I don’t want materialistic powers but just a comfortable life to live, help others and make a mark in this world run by individuals controlled by selfish genes.

So, what’s your bucket list?

Though people may die, ideas live on and unfortunately the idea that ‘having poached goods increases your bravery and pride’ lived on.

Tigers were the worst affected in India. About 90 % of the tigers vanished in India to feed the black-markets of Chinese with tiger skin and tiger meat. Shekar Dattatri, a world-renowned cinematographer in his documentary “Truth about Tigers” clearly penned down what are the reasons for this drastic decline – the Ignorance of the forest officials, some men’s greediness for money and blind beliefs of the Chinese that the Tiger skin actually increases has medicinal values. In fact, Tiger skin is used for a variety of reasons. In Chinese medicine, it is made into an ointment to treat skin cancer and the tail bones of tigers were believed to ward off evil spirits. I don’t know exactly what the evil spirit means here because the only evil spirit I know is ‘HUMANS’ and he in fact is attracted by the bones of a tiger and is not ward off. Irony, eh? Though the Chinese Government has imposed a ban on the use of Animal products, it is still widely used in Chinese medicine.

Personally, I’ve seen live instances of poaching. On one of my bird watching trips to Chembarambakkam lake with my friend – Ramesh Rajesh, we saw about 6 Narikorava people shoot down more than 50 birds – both migrants and residents. What was supposed to be a 2 hour bird watching trip ended up in a 14 hour ordeal as we called up forest officials who arrived after 3 hours during which 3 Narikoravas had already left with half the kill and the other 3 were just about to leave. Police doesn’t come late only in the cinema, it happens in real life too. Among the birds were cormorants, purple herons, godwit, egrets and many more. That was one bloody day. A day filled with the blood of birds and the tears of Narikoravas as they pleaded that they don’t know anything other than their traditional hunting and they were in huge debt from loan-sharks. So, we can’t really blame them. So, who is to be blamed?

I’ll put the blame on the public and the forest officials. The blame on the public because they don’t know anything and they don’t care. Infact, the public is not ‘they’. It’s ‘we’. We are too ignorant to know anything about the birds that are so important to the wild life, so important in seed dispersing, so important in keeping some predators alive, so important in making the skies look magnificent, so important in eating out carcasses, so important in everything. The sad fact is we’re ignorant and we don’t even know about it. Denial is the word.

You might ask “What the hell am I gonna do if I know about these birds?” or “Even if I know about the birds what difference will it make? Will it stop the killing?”. Let me tell you, it will. If an individual comes to know of the importance of wildlife and birds, the society will come to know about it, then the hierarchy just moves up and eventually the Government will take necessary action to save these precious products of nature. ”You are the change you want the world to be.” Unfortunately, we don’t want any change.

Then, what about the forest officials? We should not forget that forest officials are just a part of the public. But they’re paid to do their work – that is – know about wildlife and save them. I don’t want to assault the forest officials too much because it’s only their presence that is keeping off poachers from several sanctuaries but still they can do a lot more than that.

So, poaching? Will it stop? I don’t think so poaching will suddenly stop like the water coming from a faucet but eventually it will. One can see people becoming more aware of the environment we’re living in and agreeing to the ‘fact’ that we can’t live in an environment we degrade continuously.

Only at the precipice, Humans will change and the precipice is here.

A cormorant mortally injured and fighting to live

Be it the aphrodisiac made from the horns of the ‘one horned rhinoceros in Khaziranga National Park, Assam’ or the skin cancer ointment made from the once majestic, now declining ‘Indian Tigers’ or the exotic meat of the migrant birds that poachers and narikuravas sell either at Chembarambakkam or at Pondicherry, I can surely say that they’re just the products of ‘utter ignorance’ and ‘denial’. It’s time to open up our eyes and look at the birds’ because in few years down the line you won’t see any of them.

As a common man, there’s nothing much we can do as our cries were not heard. We haven’t figured out what a common man can do to save the wildlife but ‘we’ will figure it out soon for which a common man’s power is what is most under-rated.

All of a sudden it heard a rustle among the ground and it was so afraid that it could be eaten by someone. Suddenly, a dark brownish image emerged out of the litter from what looked to be a hole. It was a rat and surprisingly, it spoke too. That rat has never seen a speaking banana and soon the banana and the rat became friends. The rat would invite the banana down to its hole where they’ll have some grains and starch. Soon, the female rat in the hole got jealous and wanted the banana for it too. The male had no problem and together they shared the food and the banana, the male rat, the female rat became great friends.

After few days the banana knew that its time has come. So, it called the rats and asked them to eat it so that it can at least give his friends some food when it dies. The rats obliged painfully as they had no food to eat. The next day the banana grew old and died. Once filled with beautiful yellow skin, it turned into full black and seemed motionless. The rats were in tears and silently ate the banana. As soon as the rats had the banana, they were caught in a rat net and were sent to a biotechnology laboratory.

The scientist of the lab performed a series of trials on rats collected from different farms for his experiment on ‘depression’. He induced uncomfortable situations on the rats he collected, and calculated their stress levels. Astonishingly, he found that the rats of our story had very low stress levels. When pondering over what could have been the reason for their low stress, one of the rats called him and spoke to him about their friend banana, almost in tears. The scientist was awe-struck by a speaking rat and was more awe-struck by the fact that bananas can remedy depression. Quickly he wanted to show the rat to everyone else so that he can become famous, but as he was searching for a camera, the rat had a slip in its cage and a small iron bar in the cage pierced its tongue.

When the scientist showed his colleagues the speaking rat, it didn’t speak and they laughed at him. The scientist turned sick and beat the rat to death for not speaking in front of others. Even though he did experiments on bananas to prove their medicinal values, he could find no result and eventually got very depressed. Since he knew bananas help depression, he had too many bananas each day and eventually died of obesity.

So, the moral of the story is – If you’re stuck to a group where no one does anything different, doesn’t mean that you have to do the same.

And also, if you’re depressed, grab a banana but don’t take too many of them.

*All the characters in the above story has been made up and you knew it already, didn’t you?*

One of the things that I (And almost everyone) hate in college life is record writing. With about 3 practical subjects every semester, we have to copy something utterly stupid from the stupid manuals which are prepared none other than the professors themselves to the observation and then to the records. With the little nerd inside me, I wrote the records religiously in my first semester. In the second semester, my little nerd died. Thanks to those observations and records.

There are words in the manuals. These words are just copied onto the observations. Then to records. No one understands anything. No  one cares about anything in the manual. You just blindly follow the protocol. Cut off some words so that it ‘saves’ time. In the end, nothing is gained and time is wasted. I still don’t know for what hair we have manuals, observations and records.

It even collapses the hopes of little nerds like me to study actually what’s in the manuals. Pathetic.

More pathetic is the state how the professors treat the observations and records as their bible. If a guy or a girl doesn’t finish the record on time, he is a bad guy/girl. Wow. Seriously. What a great way to scale some student as good or bad!

But, why is this done?

This is not something new. From long long ago, no one knows how long ago this has been going on. Probably from the British period? The British introduced this ‘mugup’ type of education so that people won’t gain too much of knowledge and question them. The British just wanted zombies. Just Indian clerks to fill up their seats. And we’re following that same system even now. We’re trained to be zombies. Clerks. Everything is just an eyewash. Great.

How it should be?

Scrap out Observations and Records. Make the students to understand what’s really in the manuals rather than making them blindly copy something which even the profs don’t understand. That’s just stupid. Make stuff interesting. Interactive. Joyful. Colorful. Students are like an open-book. Don’t close them with observations and manuals.

So, what can be done?

Massive student moments? Nah. Too big profile. Petitions? Nah. Will fall on deaf ears. With the current situation, I don’t think students can do anything at all to break this long term stupidity. We can just sit back, and wait until the authorities come up with some brains. Oh, in the mean time enjoy your observation, record writing. And regarding the authorities coming up with some brains to scrap this method, I don’t see any light at the end of the tunnel. In fact, I don’t see the end of the tunnel at all.

Instead of breaking records, we’re just writing them.

Culture – unsurpisingly isn’t related to genetics at all. For example, in the beginning when Humans were still nomads, they feared different stuff. People in the rain forests feared the lightning as it caused forest fires and burnt down their homes. People in the  deserts feared the sun as its scorching heat burned them to death. “Humans will worship anything that they don’t understand and what they fear.” So, people in the desert started worshiping the Sun – the God of Ra. People in the rain forests worshiped lightning. Zeus was born. Religion was born.

Religion is just a part of a culture. People can change religion. A modern man is fully authorized to change his religion in a secure state. He has the right and will to even adapt to a completely different culture. It takes place in the lifetime of the man. Within about 20 years? 10 years? less? This ladies and gentlemen – is the “cultural evolution”. The evolution of the brain. The replication of thoughts which spread like wildfire.

Cultural evolution and genetic evolution are two parallel evolutionary processes that go hand in hand. Genetic evolution gets carried on to the children. Cultural evolution also gets carried on to the children but not necessarily. A child if he wants can follow the western culture in India, but he cannot really change his eye color that he inherited from his father. This is the boon and also the bane for the “Cultural evolution” when compared with genetic evolution. Cultural evolution is fast unlike it’s counterpart. A ‘new’ gene in the gene pool for example green eye color in India needs atleast 5 generations of mating to be dominant. Cultural evolution is different. It takes place withing years, days, or maybe minutes?

Let’s get clear with what is actually cultural evolution. It’s just the evolution of the thoughts. I say something to you like – “There is no God!”, you take it in, think about it and come to your own conclusions. It maybe the same as I said or something opposite, but now I’ve planted a thought in your mind. You might say your conclusion to some other person and he/she will come to some conclusions. The cycle repeats. “A thought is replicated”. Just like a gene. This is just a simple example. Books are the best “Cultural mutation inducers”. They change people views. Thoughts.

But, in the course of “Cultural evolution” where man went wrong? Does it really seem a bane that thinking about good ways to improve a society, working towards it, building a good environment for your own species? If we see the outline of the issue it’s perfectly alright, but in the real sense, it’s not the case. The only bane or the problem of the “Cultural evolution” is that it is fast. Everything happens in a matter of couple of years. Industrial revolution changed the whole world. It changed the perception of a modern man of his environment, of the materialistic world. Cultural evolution increases just exponentially. Lots of changes happens within a short time – and that’s where the twist is.

Let me give you an example. Humans cut down the trees. We cut down the forests. To make new furniture, to build ships, for buildings, etc., We just exploited the nature as hell because it’s good for us. It’ll improve the standards of living for many people. But, Human thoughts failed to perceive that such improvisations are short lived. We failed to understand that cutting down trees will only cause other global miseries. The cultural evolution – or the evolution of thoughts was so fast that it overlooked this fact. Only down the track when the next generation came, we understood our own mistakes.

That’s where man went wrong. Cultural evolution was too fast for him to catch up unlike genetic evolution. A thought originated in the population. Let’s say that thought was ‘Let’s cut down trees to make furniture’. Soon, this spread like hell in the population unless a new thought like ‘Less trees means more global warming’ comes up. But, the problem is “THIS THOUGHT COMES WAAYY TOO LATE” like in the 21st century. Cultural evolution outruns genetic evolution and thats where man went wrong. Infact we did nothing wrong, just the evolution changed us. But again, unlike genetic evolution, cultural evolution is in our hands. We can seed thoughts in other people’s minds. When we realize this, it may not be too late for us to prevent a catastrophic effect on our planet just by us. When we realize that we just need to check the cultural evolution from evolving too much to bring in more catastrophe. We’ll have a safer planet. More importantly, a Greener Blue Marble. Period.

Poor little guy

I quickly called up Sai who was some 4 blocks away, and he showed up within 15 minutes. As I waited for Sai to come, I just searched the neighborhood for some help. A Tata Sumo came screeching to the house next to the gap where the sparrow was hurt, and about 11 people came out of it, many ladies in that. It looked like, they’ve built their house and are stepping into it for the first time. They were so happy and they didn’t give a damn for me standing there in my shabby shorts and tee. Minutes passed. As not being a great people person, I just approached the guy who seems to be the father of the kids in that family and asked for a chair or a stool. When he asked why, I just showed him the sparrow dangling from the pipe holding for his life. He just asked me to come back after half an hour. Superstitious. He didn’t wanna start his new life in his house helping to save a life. 15 precious minutes passed. I couldn’t do anything.

I was very glad to see Sai around the corner, and we just decided to get the sparrow from the pipe. After few failed attempts to get over a slab just projecting near the pipe, Naresh gladly helped me and raised me to get onto the slab which was about 7 feet from the stony ground. The neighbor guy came back and just asked blankly

“Is that your sparrow?”

“No”, I said.

“What you doing to that?”

“saving it!”, I was pretty annoyed

“Okay, what you want?”

“We need a chair and a knife to cut the iron”, I said and he obliged to give us both.

After getting a bite from the sparrow on my pinkie, I cut the rusty iron railing and took out the sparrow happily but it’s wing was pretty much damaged. It would die if we just left it there. So, after bidding goodbye to Naresh to his training, me and Sai just found an old cardboard box, kept the sparrow in it and took off for Vepery Vetnary College, which is about 10 kilometers from my house and in the morning traffic, it took us about 50 minutes to reach there. As it being a Saturday, it was very crowded with dogs and their owners waiting for their turn for vaccination. We just took our token, and with the hurt birdie in our hands, we waited there hopelessly. It was well past 9 30 in the morning as we began to lose hope and we asked for an emergency service. As some people showed the way to the emergency block, the little guy just spurred as if in sleep and then remained motionless. He was just absolutely still. I just checked him below his beak, and could feel no pulse.

With our token still haven’t been called, I gave it to a lady who just came in as she gladly accepted it and we rode back to our homes, sad. Sai just took the birdie and left it on the way in the streets. We couldn’t afford to bury it.

Superstition. Bad luck. Less vet-care. Less awareness. And the annoying neighbor guy. All played their part in getting the hurdles in when we thought of saving that sparrow. Mainly the Vet-Care. With this big city, there is just one major Vet-Care Hospital. And the one which really bugged me was the superstition that the annoying neighbor guy had. Had he given us the chair and the knife soon, maybe that poor fella would have been living now.

Human or a sparrow. A life is a life and we ought to save it.

The only thing that still haunts me is that I said a “No” when that guy asked me “Is that your sparrow?”. I should have said a “Yes”!

Sai with a smile and a bird. We thought we could save it.

I just walked down the street, looking for them but, I couldn’t find them at all. Just I was about to panic, a black guy looked at me down the street. He was well built, muscular, but he had some skin rashes; but the most fearsome thing about him was that he was staring right at me; looking right through my soul. I got goosebumps on my back, turned back ever so slowly and started running. He was right after me!

It was a losing chase I knew, but I just kept running with the black guy right behind my tail, ready to bite it at any moment. Just as I turned the street, the black guy lost his balance and tumbled a bit, and I found myself in the arms of a Human! Ah! Human! Am I glad to see him! He was a kid by human standards, about 12 Human years in age, and he just looked at me, and caressed my brown hair all over my body. He saw the black guy coming onto me, picked up a stone and hit him right in the shoulder area, careful not to hurt his eyes. The blackie yelped in pain, and scurried in the opposite direction. There was no scale, no words how happy I was to find this guy. He saved my life!

He gave me a gentle kiss on my forehead, and I began licking his arms, and he seemed to like it. Humans are always gentle to us, giving us biscuits, petting us sometimes, and allowing to sleep on their roads. Always so sweet of them, and this Human was no exception. He took me by his arms and started walking somewhere. I was really afraid of heights, so I just cocooned myself into his chest and lay silent. He walked for about 5 minutes, and was speaking something to me in ‘Human’. I didn’t really understand him, but he seemed to be so happy as I was.

I was about to fall asleep again, when he abruptly stopped in front of a steel gate and I could hear some of the dogs barking. I was happy as I thought I could hear my mommy and my siblings, but as I went more closer I could see that my mommy ain’t there. The barking came  from steel doors, cages in which dirt filled, ugly, skinny dogs were yelping in pain or in hunger. I couldn’t bear the sight of it. The Human who was carrying me just handed me over to another one, but he looked scarier. He had a mustache, and a cut on his forearm which just looked like a dog bite. I was so terrified as the 12 year old waved me a goodbye and left me all alone with this fearful Human. He examined me like a curious piece of artifact, held me by my neck hair which was really painful and forced me into a cage of 2 puppies both were sleeping or both were dead.

Great men come. Great men live. Period

Everyone has the same twenty-four hours in their life. Forget the childhood where a man’s character and his personality is shaped up. The childhood of a main is like the form of a wet clay. They can be shaped up, remoulded into a beautiful statue or a toy by the parents, by the society. Or it can be spoiled ugly too. But the adulthood ain’t like that. It is like a dry clay. It may shine long if it is well polished and kept clean or will just creak up to nothing if it is not well maintained.

Just wait a minute there. We are forgetting something. It’s not completely true that adulthood is like a dry clay which ‘cannot’ be remoulded. All you need is just a splash of H20 to make it wet again. But, if a human who is not a toy clay has to e remoulded, the water will not be provided from the outside, it has to explode like the tiny sprinkles of droplets from the ‘inside’. From ‘within him’! That, my friend, is called as ‘Intention’!

“It is never too late to change yourself”

I had read about great men having a change in their character, in what they do, changes in their profession very late in their life. A serial killer could turn into a good guy; a Barrister turned into the Father of a Nation; a Cobbler turned into the President of the United States. These people didn’t change when they were just 13. They changed later in their lives and still prospered! Of course, there are always incidents in great men’s childhood which shaped them up, but that just didn’t turn them into great men. They had this most deadliest weapon of all. The weapon. The Intention to achieve! The Intention to do something new! They not just asked ‘why?’; they went one step further and asked ‘why not?’. They had this will power to tear up mountains into pieces. And that made them great men. And that’s why they are still great men!

If these men can become great men; we can as well. Well, to be realistic, by ‘great men’, I don’t mean you should turn into another ‘Mahatma Gandhi’. Nope! All I just mean is ‘you’ to be a’greater you’!

There are lots of reasons for us to sit back at home, sulk, and build a cocoon around ourselves. It’s difficult to come out of that cocoon but, if we have two things in our hands, even Chuck Norris can’t stop us. That’s just

“The intention to do something new; And the willpower to do it”

Whatchu gonna do?

In a big herd of 30, most of them females or small kids, they just happily roamed around the waves, until things changed. Eleven shipping boats with dozens of men in each of them came searing towards the happy swarm. In panic, all the Dolphins started moving in random directions yelping in fear; some of them swam for the sea while some of them swam straight to the coast.

The shipping boats moving with a good pace had nets in them, and the men dispatched them underwater. The net was long enough for the shallow water and tensile enough for the dolphins not to break them. The dolphins which swam for the deep sea were strangled in the nets forcefully, and were carried along to the coast. The blue sea began to turn red for the first time.

Some dolphins bound to the strong net died on impact as the net cut through their organs. Some remain bound. Alive. They wished they were dead.

The dolphins which ran towards their coast realized their mistake as the sea level became more and more shallower, but it was too late to turn back as the boats are at a fast pace towards them. In a blind rage and panic, the Dolphins came towards the end of the sea, to the coast and their momentum carried them further forward; into the coast.

When the sea turned red

The poor mammals jumped out of the sea into the coast to save their lives; or just to live a few minutes longer. The engine roars stopped, and the remaining dolphins caught in the net are brought to the coast with the help of special shipping equipment and motor.

A dolphin jumped out of the coast was still alive. It’s moist skin adsorbed with the beach sand; her breathing fast and rapid; her body convulsing in fear. Dolphins are basically mammals, and unlike aquatic fish they need air to breathe as they have lungs; but too much of heat and harsh, dry conditions will kill it. As the dolphin was breathing its last, a tall man in his mid-thirties walked up to it. The sharp dagger he was holding in his hands gleamed in the evening sun which made the dolphins eyes flinch. He walked slowly, came near to the poor dolphin which was now looking at him. He smiled and impregnated the dagger right in-between the eyes of the dolphin. The crimson red fluid which came out of the shivering Dolphin was not supposed to be at that beach sand.

Dolphins are found in loads in the pacific, atlantic, and even in rivers. There are different species of Dolphins ranging in weight from 40 kg upto 10 tonnes (The Killer whales). Though the number of Dolphins is pretty good in today’s ocean waters, it’s number is alarmingly decreasing due to over-fishing and Dolphin drive expedition like this. Dolphins also get accidently killed by boat propellers, nets intended to catch other fishes (Cetacean by-catch), etc.. If this exponential  increase in the deaths of the Dolphins continue, then we might just see Dolphins in the museum. 

I just hope this inhumane assault of the Dolphins stop in the near future. Dolphin’s meat is rich in mercury and might cause severe food poisoning. Hope that we don’t see those cute little intelligent creatures only in bottles.

A 3 month old Dolphin fetus got from a dead female