A Biologist at Home

When I went to School to pickup my son S, he had a paper box held carefully in his hand and a lot of friends around him peeping in to it. He said the box has a beautiful spider caught in his School's garden. He brought it home, photographed it and let it go in the garden.



He tried to explain me about its fangs and how they catch the prey in its web.

On Sunday he went with his friend on their bicycles. They came back hurriedly and S had a cigarette pack in his hand. Even before my eyebrow could raise he said the cigarette pack contains a beautiful millipede.



Again photographic session and his explanations about its innumerable feet.



Coiled millipede stretched itself walked around and made itself into a question mark, as if to ask, 'OK, but why catch me?'



PS: The dot of the question mark is made by me in photoshop.

For the past two days he was busy in his 'research' on spiders. He scrolled through encyclopedias- both books and CDs and finally exclaimed that he has collected a lot of information and he wants to write a book on spiders!

He got down to it and wrote a book on spiders.



These days he is also busy in studying snakes. Though he has not yet caught one, he has fabricated tools and a net to catch them.

Watch this space!

Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth

It is the topic of death which is haunting me since 3 days. As we `Class of 82' are preparing for reunion and celebration of silver jubilee of our graduation, we got the bad news. Our classmate, R.A.Krishamurthy whom we fondly called MLA had an untimely death. He succumbed to liver cirrhosis- no he was not an alcoholic. Death due to liver failure is very painful, slow and miserable. Liver transplantation is beyond the reach of ordinary people. It drains all your money. You pray for the death to hurryup and finish the job. That’s what R.A.K. expressed when Dev went to visit him in the hospital.
I have had the first hand experience of watching a man die of liver cirrhosis when my brother in-law was in hospital 3 years back. I watched him everyday shuttling between conscious and unconscious realms, between hope and despair. Inspite of that we kept on telling lies to him, assuring him that he would get well and would return to his normal life. I knew, miracles never occur. Death does not differentiate between good and bad men. It neither differentiates between Jews and Muslims, between Shias and Sunnis, between Hindus and Muslims, between poor and rich and also between an inoocent child and a fanatical terrorist. And pain for everyone is always painful.
I have a TV tuner card on my computer. As I am typing this, I am watching the dance of death in Beirut, Lebanon and as well as in Haifa, Israel.



May be, Bush and Blair are also watching.



Nature is also taking its toll now. This year there are no rains in Bangalore. But north Karnataka, Maharashtra, Gujarat, Andhra, Orissa is experiencing heavy rainfall and people are paying with their lives.

It is disturbing…… death is everywhere.

Of comforts no man speak:
Let's talk of graves, of worms, and epitaphs;
Make dust our paper, and with rainy eyes
Write sorrow on the bosom of the earth.
(Shakespeare in King Richard)