At Bilikal Rangaswamy Betta, was the leopard watching us?

Off we went, my namesake Arun and I, early Saturday morning on the Diwali weekend. Our destination - Bilikal Rangaswamy Betta, a hill in Kanakapura taluk of Bangalore Rural district. At the top of the hill is a temple but, of course, our visit was a pilgrimage of a different kind. We were there for birding and to salvage some peace and quiet, which is impossible in the city during Diwali. 


Due to several unfortunate reasons we reached the foothills quite late. I tried to take the bike on the jeep track but soon gave up as I didn't want it to end up in a garage the next day. Parking it beside the track we continued on foot. The first thing that greeted us was not something from the sky, but from the earth.


Fungi -- pale, thin, strand-like filaments shooting up from the ground.

Curious fungi

Birding soon proved a disappointment that day. We didn't see much except for a couple of unidentified raptors, bulbuls and some macaques on a rock next to some plantations at the top.

A Diwali away from the madding crowd

For this Chital stag at Bannerghatta, Diwali was a faraway rumble

Diwali, the festival of lights that signifies the victory of good over evil, makes us Ogres nervous. Noise, smoke, runny eyes, shortness of breath and sadness at the colossal waste darken our moods. And because we don't want to get in the way of the revelry, we get away.


A night out at Bannerghatta, 25 km from Bangalore, isn't the wildest of escapades but it's a welcome break from the city on the noisiest and smokiest night of the year. The Jungle Lodges nature camp here is great for kids, as my two-and-something year-old found out.

A little light rain kept the termites busy - the glistening earth at the peak of this fresh mound tells of a hard night's work

As for me, any stretch of wilderness offers a chance to reacquaint with old friends. Including some whose names I don't remember any more. Can you help?

On our morning walk we met the Bamboo Treebrown (Lethe europa)

Dry season form of the Common Bushbrown (Mycalesis perseus)) 

This thumb-sized beetle was of a golden-fawn colour

This little amphibian tried to make itself scarce

This moth caterpillar, suspended by an invisible strand of silk, appeared to float like a sprite

Mormons mated in the Butterfly Park

And this little work of art was seen flirting with my (dusty) car window

*Thanks to Ulhas for butterfly ids

Light up the darkness, smoke out the evil?

Over the three or so decades of my life, I have seen many Deepavalis come and go (true to my chauvinism, I prefer the South Indian 'Deepavali' to the globalised 'Diwali')*. The essence of our festival of lights, I have been variously informed, is to symbolise the victory of light over darkness, of good over evil, and such. So it stayed for many years, as firecrackers blasted the wits out of the demons of darkness and sulphur fumes cauterised flying insects in the air. Suspended particulate matter notwithstanding, it's all for the good. Over evil. More recently, however, it has been about spending and buying. About trashing the old, and celebrating the new. Never mind our ailing banks, our fairy rings of malls and supermarkets and hypermarkets - BIG retail, as we know it - has helped ensure that we have lots of new to buy. So we trash the old, yea, and we trash it good. And we buy, buy, buy more new. By next year, new becomes old, and old becomes trash. And thus, good and evil live like twins separated at birth. Happily ever after. Or until the world ends. Whichever is sooner. And what of light and darkness? It's relative, isn't it? Like old and new. About seven years ago, flying to Bangalore from Mumbai, I would press my nose to the window to see as far as I could. From that redeye flight, all the world looked dark and inky black. Somewhere in the warped horizon, stray patches of light burned like matches dying in an ashtray. Most of our villages, and most of our roads, were just shades of darkness upon a field of darker dark. In a sense, it felt good to imagine that there were places out there in the hinterland that still enjoyed their share of night. Recently, even that has changed. Two months ago, as I flew back from Mumbai late at night, I stared out at the darkness. And didn't see it. It is heartening to know that many more of our villages have electricity. Many more villages have become townships, and many more townships have become towns. And electricity keeps them alive and well. Their roads are thin veins of light creeping deeper and deeper into the surrounding morass of blackness, seeking out its inky heart. We keep the lights on late into the night. So that darkness has no place in our lives any more. And light pollution? Oh, is that something we need to worry about? So this Deepavali, I wish your eyes well. May they crave the dark of night again. May they be able to look up and wonder if Orion and the Pleiades still occupy their rightful places in the sky. Unless we have blazed them out along with our demons. Have a blast! Actually, don't. * Postscript: Another dyed-in-the-saadamkolumbu South Indian, Krish Ashok, has defined at some length how Deepavali dropped the pa when it ascended that uncertain territory north of the Vindhyas.