A WANDERER'S MOORINGS

We wanderers, ever seeking the lonelier way, begin no day where we have ended another day; and no sunrise finds us where sunset left us. Even while the earth sleeps we travel. We are the seeds of the tenacious plant, and it is in our ripeness and our fullness of heart that we are given to the wind and are scattered. (The Prophet – Kahlil Gibran)

Since my college days the breeze has carried me to many a landscape, each with a distinct texture, a different shade of the evening sun, a unique darkness of a moonless night, and to people whom I may never meet again. I have visited places – some famous, some not – and the journey has been adventurous. For two years I made my home in the forests of southern India, amidst elephants and butterflies. During my many wanderings I have met numerous fascinating people – naturalists, forest officers, grassroots workers; all vagrants in far-off places. But our insanity and love for nature is such that fate took us by the handfuls and hurled us over the land as if we were seeds. Some seeds germinated, some did not, some simply got hurled around too much and were lost. But whatever we do now and wherever we are, we are in each other’s memories, tangled in our roots though our crowns may open under different skies.

This partially non-academic section of my website is dedicated to the memory of those people who made possible much of the work presented here. And I hope that some of those whom I lost may find me here, and so would strangers with whom I might have something to share.