33 - Sparky’s ‘Fair & Unfair’ World

Hello, Sparky here.

Ø  This week was all about the fair. The excitement, the preparation and the fair itself. Perfect weather, yet again. It’s humbling how Mother Nature seems to be gifting us impeccable weather whenever there’s an event on Banyan Island. Not just the day of the fair, the weather stayed perfect the whole of this week which meant the preparations also happened under the umbrella of weather conditions that did not require an umbrella or a parasol, for that matter.

 

Ø  It was for the very first time that we were going to have a fair on Banyan Island, many of us were thrilled about it and wanted to make the most of it. In the run up to the day of the fair, on one hand there was a lot of activity but strangely on the other hand, many of the Banyan Island residents started going missing. Initially it seemed weird but soon as some of them began to return with loaded bags, it began to dawn on the rest of us that they had gone to get things for the fair. What they brought back from their trips wasn’t revealed till the day of the fair. Even in this secretive business, there was a lot of co-operation between us. When it came to be known that one of the monkeys who had swum to the mainland opposite to the island lost half of her stock of goods while trying to swim back with the baggage, the otters offered their service to anyone who would want to use them. So, for 2 days prior to the fair, the otters kept swimming back and forth to the other islands and the mainland ferrying bagful of stuff that they deposited by their burrow for the rightful owner to pick it up. The entrance around their burrow soon started looking like a warehouse.

 

Ø  Amidst the exhilarated preparations there were stray rumblings of resentment. Mr. SBK, the stork-billed Kingfisher (do you remember him from the election times? His photo was even featured as part of a puzzle 2 weeks back) started grumbling that this fair was taking away the precious days before deep winter set in, last opportunity to tuck in on many fruits and berries, worms and insects and such general succulents – essential protein top-up before these seasonal bounties vanish.

 

Ø  When these rumblings started to gather steam, Mrs. Ulukah, the leader of the birds intervened. One evening as Mr. SBK was sitting on a branch, preening himself, she approached him and started a casual conversation. She talked of the weather first and then moved on to his hobbies. No sooner than Mr. SBK had said that he enjoyed drawing caricatures, Mrs. Ulukah suggested that were he to draw caricatures on the day of the fair everyone would love it. The kingfisher said he would think about it.

 

Ø  With a couple of days to spare for the fair, Mrs. Ulukah invited Mr. Goldback, the leader of monkeys, Gumphu monkey and myself for a meeting. The Otters were invited too but couldn’t make time from their ‘transportation’ service. We brainstormed for an hour as to where on the island to have the fair, what events to have, till what time to have the fair, other general rules of decorum and etiquette and so on.

 

Ø  We all agreed that the space between the Banyan and the river, right under the canopy of the Banyan made the perfect venue for the fair. The place being right by the Otter’s den we later got their consent as well for the plan. 3 PM to 6 PM was thought to be the ideal time, everyone could finish their daily routine business of eating, grooming and siesta and then get together well before the Sun started to dip. We wondered if non-residents should be allowed. Memories of Mr. Wickham Otter still being so fresh in mind, we decided to have only the residents attending the fair. All the denizens of the island are well known to each other and there would be no trouble at all, especially with Mr. SBK, the trouble-maker-in-chief being nowhere to be seen.

 

Ø  Gumphu monkey suggested we also have an ‘impersonation competition’ for the children, much like the ‘fancy dress competition’ that the humans have. It would keep them busy and happy. It was such a brilliant idea we all wondered why we hadn’t thought of it ourselves. Gumphu had her team of little monkeys galvanised in no time to edit the fair pamphlets stuck around the island. The time of the fair, ‘resident-only’ rule and the children’s competition was soon added to the pamphlets.

 

Ø  The palpable excitement on the day of the fair was infectious. I wish we could have bottled the excitement to use it on the dull days that invariably follow days of intense activity. By 2 PM animals started coming to the venue – those who had brought ‘stuff’ started setting up their ‘stalls’ on one end, those who had ‘intangible’ wares put up their posters on the aerial roots of the banyan. A cordoned off area amongst the thick aerial roots made up the green room for the children participating in the impersonation competition. A short skip from this green room was the stage.

 

Ø  By 3 PM the other animals and birds started coming in. There was a variety of fare on offer – food and activities alike. Some old, some new, some definitely ‘never again’.

o   Civvy monkey’s mother had ripe jujubes – brownish spongy berries tasting more like a flower than a fruit.

o   The Indian Rollers had Jamaican cherries on offer – sweet tasting red fruits with the countless tiny seeds within lending it a grainy texture.

o   The Otters had brought in quite a few jackfruits for us. Not just that, they made quite a show of peeling it.

o   Gumphu’s cousin had some star-shaped fruits that she called, obviously, star fruit - sour with a hint of sweetness that only a few amongst us with the most discerning palate could identify.

o   The well-travelled warblers had got us something that made us wonder if it were a fruit, a flower or someone’s shriveled up hand. More mysterious than the ‘Buddha’s hand’ citrus fruit was how these tiny warblers had managed to get these fruits to the island. Friendships made in places one passes through can go a long way in enriching one’s life. As for the lemony smelling fruit, I wonder if I would take any trouble with taking another bite into one again – no juice, no pulp, just the rind. I wonder what the tree was thinking as it ‘evolved’ over the millennia. There is no dearth of weirdness in nature – if you have never seen it before, it looks weird, if that is all you have seen, say, a bird living on the Buddha’s hand tree, the bird would wonder what the juice and pulp is for.

o   As the dusk approached, so did the civets with each civet in the family dragging an elephant yam.

o   There were few birds with fresh smelling flowers which soon had the place buzzing with butterflies and bees, both enthralled by the unexpected bounty.

o   A cousin of mine had cotton from cotton trees and kapok trees. Also he had smooth grass, moss and feathers, all to be used for cushioning the nest. Many of us squirrels went into raptures looking at all the fluffy material which would keep us warm in the coming cold nights.

o   I had a ‘jigsaw station’ where I had my entire jigsaw collection for anyone to come and solve it or who might want to borrow it for later solving. Solving a jigsaw puzzle is great for the brain, more on this in the next issue of the magazine.

o   Mr. & Mrs. Woollynecks offered rides to anyone who fancied a flight.

o   Mr. SBK's caricatures were quite a hit amongst us all – he was the busiest one in the fair. Long after all the fruits were consumed, long after the light failed for the storks to give jolly rides and animals to try my jigsaw puzzles, Mr. SBK continued to draw in the starlight.

o   As Mr.SBK continued to draw, the children gathered in the greenroom waiting to be called for their part in the impersonation competition. Many children - monkeys, squirrels, birds took part in it rounding off the fair beautifully and leaving us with memories that will keep us laughing as we recall their impersonations through the coming times but the high-light of the show was Civvy monkey who impersonated Mr. Wickham otter.      

 

Ø  In news from elsewhere, humans rummaged through some fossils collected in 1980s from Antarctica and found that they belong to giant birds that they have named, pelagornithids which had a wingspan of up to 21 feet. 50 million years ago when these birds lived, which was after the mass extinction of dinosaurs due to an asteroid hit, Antarctica was a much warmer place and a heaven for birds and many mammals. These ancestors of vultures who probably looked like the present day albatrosses, ruled the oceans, drifting over the ocean for days and even weeks on end catching fish and squid in their bony teeth, literally on the go. These birds were around till about 2.5 million years back. In comparison, the first humans appeared about 5 to 7 million years back and about 2.5 million years back would have started to fashion crude stone tools. 

 

Ø  Talking of the extinction of these giant birds, never in the history of planet earth have so many species gone extinct as in the last 100 years – that would have to be all of one species’ doing, no prices for guessing which one. Humans’ activities – deforestation, overfishing, climate change, ocean acidification, pathogens introduced into wild, poaching, species introduction from elsewhere, sheer indifference and apathy – has rendered many extinct already and many are in the ‘red list’ numbering 100s or 1000s while the clock ticks on. Humans today are what the asteroid was to the dinosaurs.    In news this week, it’s estimated that today the North Atlantic Right Whales number less than 366 individuals on the planet and Hainan Gibbons of the Hainan islands in China number about 30. There are many species which share the fate of these whales and gibbons.

Here are a few activities for this week. 

·         Here’s a photo of an intertidal beach or a ‘foreshore’, which is the part of the beach which is exposed at low tides and submerged at high tides.

 

Look at this photo and see how many words you can identify which begin with the letter ‘C’. Don’t limit yourself to just what you see, widen your imagination and look for intangible things as well.

Author’s Note:

The dog’s pugmark in the photo has been superimposed on the photo as the original photo with the pug mark had lesser detail of the foreshore than this one.

·         Match the words in the left column with the meanings in the right column.

 

Introspection	A preference or bias
Confection	An uprising
Interjection	Soul-searching
Insurrection	Dissatisfaction
Circumspection	Looking back
Retrospection	A Sweet dish
Predilection	Being prudent & cautious
Disaffection	An interrupting remark

 

·      We all live in a variety of habitat, eat a variety of food -  it has been fine-tuned over the millennia to be what it is today and this process of fine-tuning will continue as only if a species can adapt to changes will it survive and thrive. This is evolution.

Birds have different types of feet to suit the environment they live in and to aid in a particular function like grasping, perching, catching, swimming and so on. In the puzzle below, can you match the feet on the left with the birds on the right? Asking where the bird lives and what it does will help with the matching.

     See you all next week with more news, activities and answers to this week’s puzzles.

In the meanwhile, if you would like to write to me, email me at Sparkyatbanyan@gmail.com

Answers to last week’s puzzles:

·      Here’s a photo of a Coucal peeking into a hollow in a tree. Coucals are birds that belong to the cuckoo family.

Look at this photo and see how many words you can identify which begin with the letter ‘N’. Don’t limit yourself to just what you see, widen your imagination and look for intangible things as well.

This is by no means an exhaustive list of answers. What has got exhausted is my ‘imagination’ and ‘inclination’.

 

o   Nosy

o   Neighbour

o   Nest

o   Nook

o   Nature

o   Natural

o   Node (in the tree branches)

·         Here’s a Crossword puzzle. All the words end with the word, ‘position’.

Little Readers’ Section

·         From these photos can you identify the objects?