Bear's Bread

We went on a jeep ride through the Bannerghatta National Park and saw sloth bears yesterday. The jeep driver told us that these bears mix honey and jackfruit, form the mixture into little balls and eat them.

Upon returning home and searching Google about their eating habits, I found out about "bear's bread". According to Wikipedia, "when feeding their cubs, sows are reported to regurgitate a mixture of half-digested jack fruit, wood apples, and pieces of honeycomb. This sticky substance hardens into a dark yellow, circular, bread-like mass which is fed to the cubs."

Pets

 Published first on 03.02.2012 on the older version of my blog, verbatim with original title.

"I want pets

 

I want a dog, a monkey, a sparrow, and a pair of goldfish.

The dog, I will carry on my arm (it has to be a small dog, and not too furry, please), the monkey will sit on my shoulder, the sparrow may either twitter around my head or perch on the other shoulder, and the fish – I’m still thinking about a way to carry them around, though I haven’t gone any further than the obvious idea of putting them in a transparent water-bottle and hanging the bottle around my neck. “Like me!” added my eight-year-old cousin, excitedly, when I told him about it. Yes, like a school-kid.

Names:

Dog – Hoku

Monkey – Fix

Sparrow – Chee

Fish1 and Fish2 – Doodle-dee and Doodle-dum

In case you are wondering why the fish get bigger names than the others, let me explain to you the basis of my pet nomenclature.

The quiet little fish will have precious little do, except stay in their amount of water, swim around, eat boring fish-food, kiss/cuddle each other and contemplate on the world at large through the clearglass. The others, the mammals and the feathered dear, on the other hand, will have lots to do, numerous places to go, various things to eat and a lot of noise to make. Hence I balanced it out in their names. I am being fair, you see."

 

 

Now, on 09.10.2022, I have pets. They are two dogs and a cat. 

The older fawn dog with wolf markings on his forehead - Kiba. 

The younger black dog who looks like we don't feed her but actually eats twice the amount of food Kiba eats - Mishti. 

The cat with a white throat, a caramel back and honey-coloured eyes - Bella Miao.

reading with a cat

 I finish cooking dinner after coming home from work. I still have quite some time to fill as I please before dinner and bed, so I decide today I shall read and maybe take some notes on the reading. 

So, I fetch my notebook and fish out the pen I am favouring at the moment. And open up my Kindle to choose something to read. 

The cat springs up on the table and paces up and down its length, brushing my arms with her tail, purring and mewing. She plays with my pen. She settles upon my notebook and closes her eyes. I scratch her chin and she leans in for a better angle, her eyes still closed.

I don't end up reading after all. 

Silence. Whirring of the fan. The thundering of the clouds. It is raining cats and dogs in Bangalore this season.

Small things

I look forward to Saturday mornings when we take the dogs out for a long walk in the playground of an abandoned government school, next to our residential complex. We have to get there through a break in the boundary wall, stepping carefully away from some garbage dumped by the neighbouring houses and pulling the dogs away to stop them from burying their noses in the filth. 

There are trees lining the playground, large trees with thick trunks and some with low, sturdy branches, that you can climb, sit on and dangle your legs from. There are thin paths running through overgrown grass and plenty of ground to walk and run. There is a lovely grove of trees in the middle of the playground, where you can find shade from the sun and watch the wildflowers sway in the breeze in the dappled sunlight. Tiny flowers of yellow, cream, purple, red and pink.

Sometimes there are grazing buffaloes, with peaceful eyes and gentle snorts. Sometimes there is a man in a hat and sunglasses, practising manoeuvres with his remote-controlled car.

Cat

9.30 in the evening and it is raining heavily in the city. My cat's head has emerged from under the armchair. I watch her stretch and yawn. The night has become quite cold, and I haven't turned off the fan yet. She walks up to my chair, regards me with her honey-coloured eyes a while and then she leaps into my lap. Circle, circle, settle.

Now I have a warm, purring cat on my lap and it is pouring outside. 

It probably doesn't get better than this.

 

'..."what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?" Death thought about it. CATS, he said eventually. CATS ARE NICE.'

Opportunity

 "Whenever I get ready to write really sincere notes in this notebook, I shall have to undertake such a disentangling in my cluttered brain that, to stir up all that dust, I am waiting for a series of vast empty hours, [...] a convalescence, during which my constantly reawakened curiosities will be at rest; during which my sole care will be to rediscover myself."

 

Well, now is the time, the perfect opportunity of a convalescence has presented itself.

Hasty decisions

Last year I had taken upon the task of studying for a postgrad course on a distance education programme.

There are a few reasons why I took this decision, despite knowing how little time I would have left over in a day after working a full-time job, and being thoroughly aware of how much attention three pets and a partner require:

1. The urge to do something other than my tedious day-job surged in me like boiling lava, and before I knew it, I had enrolled myself in a course.

2. I thought it would be a cool experiment to study something I had no interest in, and see if I could do it. So, I chose "Public Administration".

3. It felt possible to me then, because the University allowed the students to finish the course in three to four years, instead of the usual two. 

4. I rather fancied I could be one those people who study many different things just for the heck of it.

Now, after a year and a few months, I have only read a few pages, haven't submitted (or written) any of the assignments and have no idea of how to start getting a grip on things. Also, the subject is, quite obviously, very boring. But I continue to hope at the end of every day that I shall study a page or two tonight, and if not tonight, then surely tomorrow night.

Perhaps trying to unearth interesting things in my course material so that I can blog about them will inspire me to study?

Blogging v2.0

 Pros:

1. It will keep me in the habit of writing, which honestly, has become one of my least practiced hobbies for the past five years.

2.  It will encourage me to be always on the lookout for interesting things about which to blog, or at least think.

3. It will help me to work on my crippling fear of talking to people whom I do not know well (in hopes of blogging about the encounters).

4. It will encourage me to use language beyond the desiccated, official literature I have to consume and generate at work.

5. In some measure, I feel, it will help me with my talking remedy. I do not know yet in what form this may or may not happen.

Cons: 

1. I might, quite possibly, lose interest and abandon this pursuit in a couple of months, or even weeks.

2. I write best when I am writing for myself, in my private journals. While blogging, presuming eyes other than mine will be reading my words, I might try too hard or try to sound a way that I am not. 

3. I will make a fool of myself.

Here we go, again.