The Sound Of Music!

A few months ago when I was at the children's school,(I am usually found there,either in the library or volunteering wherever help is needed!),I happened to see colourful posters put up everywhere.They were announcing auditions for the cast and crew for a play based on the beloved musical 'The Sound Of Music'. I was terribly excited and urged my daughter to go for the audition.After all she had won a 'best actress' award at a summer camp in Pune a few years ago!And since I put up with her histrionics on a daily basis ,I know first hand how good she is!
She was not convinced and she said the von Trapp children were blonde!I was equally insistent that no where was it written that they had to continue to be blonde,the school certainly did not say so and there was no harm in trying!But she was adamant in her refusal and so I had to be content with waiting for the play to be showcased,instead of being a 'Drama Mamma'.That's how mothers of cast and crew are termed here!
Finally the sale of the tickets for the play was announced and I managed to secure four precious tickets!For those of us who grew up in the Pune of the sixties,seventies,eighties and nineties,the 1965 movie'The Sound Of Music'starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer,was an integral part of our lives!My earliest memories are of watching this movie with my mother and sister at one of Pune's oldest cinema halls.This,of course,was ages before the advent of multiplexes.All schools offering a propah British education also ensured that the songs from this movie formed the core of our music education.So we always had each song right at the tips of our tongues and a cassette to sing along with or just listen to!Compact discs,of course were not even invented then!
Our mothers never had to entertain us at any family reunion as all of us cousins used to commandeer a room for ourselves and immediately start enacting our favourite scenes from the movie!A basket with a handle was brought out,a satchel was unearthed from somewhere,a dusty carpet bag found,and there was cut throat competition for the role of Maria!Finally we had to take turns to be her.We used to wish hard that our mothers would,one day,make dresses out of the same curtain cloth for all of us!In fact when the school mailed us asking for props to be used in the play,I regretted not being in India!I,single handed,could have supplied all of them,old bicycle included!Fortunately,I have not accumulated that much junk in Nairobi yet!
Though I have watched the movie umpteen number of times,(my mother recently bought us the DVD the minute it was released in the market),I had never seen the play!Ironically it was the play by Rodgers and Hammerstein based on Maria von Trapp's book,that became a hit first!So I was very eager for this new experience and it surpassed my wildest expectations!I could not believe we were watching school children!They were amazing and the entire effort was so well coordinated that,patriotic Indian and as true to my beautiful blue passport that I am,I realized why Hollywood is so many many notches above Bollywood!The live orchestra,which consisted of children playing all the instruments made each note come alive.Every change of scene ensured that they played the music of the song that had been sung in the previous scene!They were so good that I could not believe if I was watching the play or the movie!All those familiar dialogues were effortlessly spouted,the curtain cloth dresses were enchanting and the music and drama department had cast each student so perfectly that there was no jarring note anywhere,pun intended,since all those high pitched songs were sung live for us!The art department had painted the scenes so well that it was easy to imagine we were in an Austrian villa of the Second World War era!It was a treat,indeed!I cannot even begin to fathom the hours and hours of practice the children and the staff had put in.
By the time the von Trapps fled Austria,I am sure there wasn't a dry eye in the jam packed hall.They deserved every bit of the standing ovation they got!The hills in Nairobi were alive with the sound of music that night and I hope these songs are sung for the next thousand years. The movie and now the play remains at the top of my list of a 'few of my favourite things'!

Feed A Giraffe....Or Pet An Elephant Calf!

When we came to have a look at Nairobi last May,we did not know whether we would be relocating here or not.I was not sure if we would find a school that would match our expectations and also be worth leaving Pune for and the other major factor was that my husband's work permit had not come through and there was no guarantee it would before the start of the new academic year in Nairobi!So,keeping in mind the fact that we might not get another opportunity,I had two places on my list of 'must-sees' which we simply had to visit!
One was the Giraffe Center and the other was the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust Elephant Orphanage.We had been listening to people talk about the amazing experience they had had in the former throughout our stay in Tanzania!The latter was my widely read mother's discovery.She had been collecting articles about the elephant orphanage for years and so we were determined to visit it despite the fact that we paid the entrance fees charged to 'foreigners'which are huge compared to what we would have paid today as residents of East Africa!But that did not deter us for who knew if we would get such a chance again!
A typical,cold,cloudy,Nairobi morning found us speeding(well,as much as you can speed in peak hour Nairobi traffic!)in a taxi(we were tourists,then,remember?)towards the giraffe park.A quick stop to purchase tickets as soon as we reached and then we were set to do something unique!The Giraffe Center was set up in 1979 in a bid to save the endangered Rothschild Giraffe and has been hugely successful in doing the same.The best part of visiting the center is that you get a chance to personally feed a giraffe!I backed out at the last moment and was content to watch the children who very enthusiastically fed a number of giraffes.The giraffes,with their thick,leathery tongues couldn't wait to gobble up the treat offered and slobbered saliva all over the children's hands!They did not mind in the least but the guide must have seen my look of disgust because she was quick to inform me that giraffe saliva has antiseptic properties!Thank you but give me Dettol or Savlon any day!
Then we read a lot of information that was displayed about this elegant animal.My son solved the huge wooden giraffe body parts puzzle kept right there,we purchased a few souvenirs of this delightful place,I made the kids scrub their hands raw and we were set to visit the next place on our agenda!
The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust was founded in memory of David Sheldrick,the founder warden of one of Kenya's most famous National Parks-Tsavo East,by his wife Dr.Dame Daphne Sheldrick in 1977.Among their many commendable projects is the one in which orphaned baby elephants are reared by hand by a team of handlers till they are old enough to be released into the wild again.At 11:00 a.m every morning these babies are fed by hand from milk bottles in front of an adoring crowd and that is what we had come to watch!
The elephant calves trotted out behind their handlers and came and stood in the roped off area,at the stroke of the hour!The gigantic milk bottles were already in place!The mothers of most of these calves had been shot by poachers for ivory(yes,the tragedy of the African elephant is that even the female has tusks,unlike the Asian female elephants) and they had been too young to survive on their own in the wild.Luckily for them they had been rescued and brought to Sheldrick's orphanage before it was too late for them.It was a treat to watch these calves guzzling down the feed and nuzzling their handlers with their trunks.Sadly these calves would never know their mothers and were showing affection towards each handler in the same manner as they would have shown to their own mothers.Some of them were so young when found that they have no memories of their elephant mother.And that,knowing the phenomenal memory that an elephant has,is saying something!I wish people would realize that only elephants should wear ivory!
Once their hunger was appeased,the calves became frisky!They began overturning the buckets of water,they enjoyed squirting muddy water on themselves and began rolling in the little ponds built for this purpose!The tiniest ones had blankets to protect them from the cold and all of them came to the edge of the ring to be petted by adults and children alike!They were too sweet for words!
The Trust gives people all over the world a chance to adopt elephants,which means that you can choose to pay an amount towards the upkeep of a calf for a year and you will be regularly updated about it's progress.It is no easy task to feed an elephant whether calf or adult!

On the way out my son,who is as frisky as an elephant calf,almost had a head on collision with a wart hog!Yes,wart hogs run freely around the orphanage!It was really hilarious to see both him and the wart hog take off in opposite directions!I don't know who was more scared but I suspect it was the wart hog!A fitting end to a fulfilling day!It happens only in Africa!

Kontagious Kricket

They gave us the system of telegraphs.They gave us our first railway line.They gave us the postal system too.They gave the Penal Code and the Indian Military Academy.They gave us missionary schools.They gave us our first cricket bat and cork ball.Then they divided us and gave us independence but enslaved us to cricket for generations to come!
Cricket in India was an unknown entity before the advent of British rule in India.The closest we came to it was our game of Gilli Danda.The Gilli is a small oval shaped wooden structure.The Danda is a stick which is used to  flip the Gilli into the air and then hit it as far as possible,with the player running a certain distance while the Gilli is retrieved.This game has been played in India since ancient times.In fact,some scholars believe that the early Europeans who came to trade in India took back the idea of this game with them,which subsequently evolved into Cricket in England and Baseball in America!The Gilli was transformed into the ball and the Danda became the bat!Whatever the origins of cricket,the fact remains that while Gilli Danda is almost obscure in the India of today,it is indeed,cricket which rules the roost!The new twenty twenty format and the million dollar babies of the Indian Premier League(IPL) only appear to have fueled cricketing passions further!
It is also interesting to note that the top cricket playing nations of today are England herself and all the former British colonies-India,Pakistan,Bangladesh,Sri Lanka,Kenya,South Africa,Zimbabwe,West Indies,Australia and Canada.So for those of us who are not Kricket Krazy it is easy to know whom to blame!The game has spread as rapidly as a contagion and the best time to go for a drive in any city in India is when the final of any major cricket tournament is being played.The streets,the malls,the multiplexes are all empty with every Tom,Dick,Harry and their wives being glued to the television screen!The only downside of shopping during this time is that all the sales people in your favourite store will be clustered around the tiny television set at the reception!If you dare to ask for help you will be given the most disgusted look possible for daring to disturb them as they worship the new Gods -the cricket players!
When we moved to Nairobi and into our beautiful apartment,it was obvious after a glance at the landscaped grounds that the builder had to be a person of Indian origin and a cricket lover to boot!He had ensured that the wide strip of lush green lawn on one side of the parking area was big enough to double up as a cricket pitch!And sure enough a fellow resident of the complex was quick to inform me that all the children played cricket on week ends and from morn till night during vacations!
The nationality dominating our complex is Kenyan-with a twist!They are all of Indian or Pakistani origin with most of them being third or fourth generation Kenyans which means their grandfathers or great grandfathers had moved to Kenya from India or what is today Pakistan,during British rule here.Many of the children have never visited their country of origin,have no ties whatsoever there and naturally consider themselves Kenyan.
So I was astonished,to say the least,when my new acquaintance informed me that when people have guests from overseas and there are lots of kids and adults playing cricket,the teams are divided on the lines of India and Pakistan!
When Sir.Cyril Radcliffe who was the Chairman of the Border Commission,drew up the Radcliffe line in 1947,dividing India into two countries,(often dividing a house into two,with some rooms in one country and a few rooms in another!I am surprised they did not demand  that people standing on the border be sawn into two as well!),I do not for a moment think he realized that it's repercussions would,one day, be felt across the Indian Ocean in another former colony.That too by little children playing cricket,a game they had introduced in their colonies for their own amusement,children who had seen neither India nor Pakistan and probably never would!The binding link,cricket,is of British origin,the divisive link too has the same roots!It is a delicious irony.Or is it a pathetic one?

Of Guns And ...Not Roses!

I am an avid reader.Let's say I am a compulsive reader.If I am alone at home having a meal and have run out of fresh things to read I study the label of the pickle bottle on the dining table.Else I read all the ingredients listed on the packet of chutney in the (vain) hope that I might make it some day!When the children are at home my role changes from that of a reader to a raconteur and I relive my childhood and then their babyhood for them in the form of various true stories as they tuck in into their food!
So when we learnt that we were expecting our first baby it was a chance for me to do what I love most-read!Though,as children,my sister and I had often dipped into my mother's huge collection on childcare (after we had read through everything else in the house for the tenth time),this was a chance for me to update my knowledge!Violence in the modern world had increased a hundred fold since we had been children and there was a lot of new material available on this topic.So I read  up on it and the general view seemed to be that while there should be no discrimination between a boy and a girl while buying toys (or even otherwise!),guns were to be strictly avoided!Guns,it was concluded,seemed to spawn a desire for violence in young children!So be it!
Hence my daughter had the usual teddy bears,dolls and their clothes,tea sets,tiny kitchen ware,a tent,a dolls house full of minute furniture,a cricket bat,a basket ball hoop and we also bought her a host of trucks-a digger,a dumper,a tractor,a road roller,cars,helicopters,airplanes,all of which she, being the sunny and cheerful child that she is,happily played with.
Then my son was born and he inherited huge collections of everything!Everything,that is,barring guns!Keeping in mind what I had read I followed the same philosophy(rather psychology!) for him.As he reached the kindergarten stage,on the very rare occasions that I served bread(yes I had read a lot on how harmful white bread can be,although that had been our staple breakfast for years and we are still alive and kicking!)I noticed that he often nibbled it into the shape of a gun and pretended to shoot!I ignored him as I felt that he would outgrow this soon.But when he began twisting and contorting my daughter's beautiful Barbie dolls' limbs into gun shapes I knew a little boy instinctively wants to play with a gun and I finally gave in on the condition that he should never,ever aim a toy gun at a person.He was smart enough to agree and still sticks faithfully to his promise!
Thus began our collection of  what I call 'weapons of mass destruction'!Plastic swords,daggers and bows and arrows soon followed,along with every kind of gun imaginable and all was right with our little boy's world.Then we moved to Kenya.
Kenya is a country which does not sell any kind of toy gun.Only water guns which look faker than fake are available here.I had not allowed him to carry any of his guns from India as I knew I would be questioned at the airport.So we hunted for toy guns in Kenya but to no avail.Not a single shop or mall stocked them.He was really sad and had to make do with brightly coloured plastic water guns which were an insult to his eight year old sensitivities!
When my husband went to South Africa last month he decided to buy a toy gun as that was our son's only demand!He found a very realistic metal toy gun which the Jo'burg authorities found so suspicious that they forced open the suitcase after it had been checked in to see!Once they were satisfied that it was not the real thing they allowed the suitcase to pass and later informed my husband that they had opened his luggage!
When he landed at Nairobi,the suitcase was not even loaded onto the conveyor belt!It was placed at one end.When he went and asked them what the issue was,they said it had a gun in it!Then the airport security came and asked him to open the bag.They said they were sorry but the gun had to be destroyed then and there as Kenya does not allow toy guns even in personal baggage!
In the meantime the kids and I were waiting in the arrivals lounge wondering about the delay,when my husband called and explained the situation.My son burst into tears and said that he did not care about the gun but just wanted his father back quickly!Wow!We have not failed as parents yet!Our son chose his Dad over something he had been waiting for for more than a fortnight!Considering how materialistic most kids are these days I was impressed,specially as he had been practically drooling over laying his hands on a gun after so many months!
The gun was destroyed at last and the pieces had to be chucked into a dustbin under the watchful eyes of the security!My husband walked out with just the metal nozzle which he handed to my son!I am hoping the child's ardor for guns has cooled a bit,as this is something none of us will forget in a hurry!Maybe we should try roses next time!Oops!Live flora cannot be checked in either!

Out Of Africa

'I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills.'
The minute I heard those lines from the movie 'Out Of Africa' starring Meryl Streep and Robert Redford I was transfixed!As a rule I am not a fan of the woods,neither Holly nor Bolly, but after moving to Kenya I was determined to watch this 1985 winner of seven Academy Awards and I finally did!I resolved then and there to visit the location in Nairobi where the story took place(and the film was shot) and I got my chance this week!The children have their spring break(well,we are nearing the end of a warm Nairobi summer but it is spring in the United States Of America hence 'spring break' for the kids!),my husband was in South Africa and so I bundled the kids into the car and we were on our way to the Karen Blixen museum!
It is a long drive in peak hour Nairobi traffic and I had plenty of time to mull over the lady in question.She was a Dane who,after a failed love affair,entered into a marriage of convenience with Baron Von Blixen and together they came to Kenya to start a dairy farm in 1914.But her husband bought a coffee farm instead and so it was that Karen found herself the possessor of six thousand acres of farmland!Karen was very sick with syphilis soon after coming to Nairobi,thanks to her philandering husband,whom she divorced a few years later.In those pre antibiotic days,the disease ensured that Karen,though cured,could never carry a pregnancy to full term and remained childless all her life.Instead she devoted her remaining years in Africa to educating the children of her farm workers.Her husband moved out,with the result that the burden of running the farm fell on her slender shoulders.
We reached the affluent,residential Nairobi suburb where Karen's beautiful Kolonial bungalow,with it's airy verandah and sloping,tiled roof,is located and that has now been converted into a museum.A cheerful guide escorted us into the old world stone structure and began recounting Karen's story.Unfortunately for Baroness Blixen the soil of her farm was acidic and not conducive to growing coffee.But she was determined to make it a success and struggled on alone taking huge loans from a bank to tide her over.I told the children how hard she must have worked to keep the farm going but my unsentimental daughter was quick to point out that it was the Africans who actually did the back breaking labour!(Not to be left behind,the Indians were simultaneously slogging to lay out railway tracks across East Africa!The Kolonialists certainly knew how to make us work!!)I pointed out to my daughter that Karen alone bore the responsibility of making timely payments to the bank,no small feat for a woman during the early years of the last century.In fact when she published her books later,she initially did so under a pseudonym,as female authors were not well accepted even in Europe!
The guide showed us all the lovely wooden furniture,some of it original,some donated by the crew after the movie was filmed.Karen was a skilled artist as well and some of her originals paintings line the walls of her house.Palm trees that she herself planted survive to this day and their tall fronds embrace the Kenyan skies like Karen did Kenya and her people.It was in this house,too,that she was visited by her paramour Denys Finch Hatton,an Englishman and a big game hunter.He was a pioneer in game hunting and game viewing and Finch Hatton Safaris are the ultimate in luxury in Kenya even today!The guide showed us two lamps that Karen used to signal to Finch Hatton whether her mood was good enough to receive him or not!The green lamp placed in the parlour window and seen from a distance gave him the go ahead to visit her but the red lamp warned him to stay away!Wow,I wish we could use this system in Pune to keep away people who are in the habit of dropping in unannounced despite having more than one phone at their disposal!
The farm began to show some returns but then a major fire broke out and destroyed everything Karen had worked for.She was forced to sell her house,her furniture(most of it was later bought back for the museum) and land to repay the bank loans.Finch Hatton had been killed in a plane crash while flying his Gypsy Moth plane and there was nothing to keep her in Kenya any longer....She returned to Denmark and began a new career writing about her life in Africa.Her books became best sellers,she became famous and the rest,as they say,is history!When the guide explained this,my son turned to me and said,'You write about Africa as well.'I said'Yes I do and I hope I am becoming famous too!'
Her dream was to build a college for her workers but it was not fulfilled in her lifetime.So the Danish government stepped in,provided the  funds and the College Of Nutrition now stands right next to her house!Her government also bought the house and gifted it to the Kenyan Government.Thus we can enjoy the Karen Blixen Museum today and stand in her garden and gaze at the smoky blue Ngong Hills which she loved!The word Ngong means knuckles in Kiswahili and that is exactly how those hills look!Denys Finch Hatton's grave lies at the base of these very hills and lions often came to bask on it....
These are Karen's last lines in the movie and I quote,'If I know a song of Africa,of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back,of the plows in the field and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers,does Africa know a song of me?Will the air over the plain quiver with a colour that I have had on or the children invent a game in which my name is,or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me,or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?'Unquote.
I would like to assure Karen Blixen's soul,wherever it may be,that though I do not know if African children have invented a game,there is a beautiful suburb in Nairobi of her name-Karen!There we have the Karen Plaza Shopping Center,the Karen Coffee Gardens Restaurant,the Karen school,the Karen Museum,the list goes on and on...Yes,Karen,Africa remembers you and how!Though you never came back here after you left, you never really went Out Of Africa either!!

                                                Karen's House-now the museum.

                                                 The Ngong Hills

A Doctor We Call 'Mami'

A new country means exposure to a host of new viruses.So one of the first things that I did as soon as we relocated to Nairobi was to scout out the best paediatrician for the children.After asking friends who are long time Nairobi residents and cross checking from others,I had a name.Even though both the children usually have a hundred percent school attendance in India,I knew that sooner or later they would come down with a bug here and I was prepared!Well,the day dawned sooner than later and a shivery cold morning found us at the clinic as both the kids had the sniffles,fever and throat and body ache.
We introduced ourselves to the doctor and as he began examining my daughter,he casually mentioned that he had moved from India to Nairobi almost forty years ago and had had the good fortune of being the paediatrician for the children and grandchildren of Kenya's Presidents and Prime Ministers for three generations!When he found out which school the children were from,he added for good measure that all his VIP patients are from that school.My daughter immediately began fancying herself as a 'VIP' though she has not done anything remotely important in life yet!
His words took me back to my own childhood and into our very own paediatrician's clinic on one of Pune's busiest roads,right in the heart of the city.All my childhood memories of being ill are enmeshed with those quaint,wood paneled walls,the wooden seats,the ancient refrigerator and the immunization chart on the wall.Being Army brats,we did not live in Pune during our early years but each vacation was spent with our grandparents there.And I seemed to have developed a penchant for having either one contagious disease or a broken bone every summer!One year it was a cracked collar bone,closely followed by chicken pox,then it was jaundice,another year it was measles,the next year I had mumps,then severe tonsillitis,then a broken toe,an appendectomy and I finally finished off with German measles at seventeen!Maybe I subconsciously knew where I would get the best care!Unlike today,when a new born baby's vaccinations start even before it has properly opened it's eyes after birth,we had a very limited number of vaccines and our bodies became immune the hard way!
The word 'Mami',both in my mother tongue Marathi and in India's national language Hindi,means your mother's brother's wife.In our case,our beloved child specialist was not our own 'Mami' but my mother's maternal uncle's wife!And my grandmother(from the royal family of Aundh,near Satara) was not her only sister in law!She had five more but both she and my mother's uncle,a top vascular surgeon,(who also happens to be the younger brother of Nairobi's first Indian High Commissioner)went out of their way for all of us.Most of us can barely manage one sister in law or two(and I am sure the feeling is mutual!) so hat's off to her!And all this while raising her own family of two young children.The relation was once removed but the warmth and the excellent medical care we got was not!Right from the day I was born,my mother made it a point to consult her about all kid care matters.And our doctor's technique is such that her advice is always in the form of gentle suggestions,something we can all learn from,as people giving unasked for advice are rampant in India!She is never 'a know it all',despite having studied medicine in London and is the daughter of a very high ranking former Reserve Bank official.Her late mother was an extremely soft spoken and talented lady.'Mami' has traversed the world but has maintained such strong bonds with the entire extended family that her care is not limited just to prescribing drugs but often extends to a home cooked meal followed by gallons of ice cream!And a bag of garden fresh mangoes to take home during the season!And my mother's uncle,being as skilled a photographer as he is a surgeon,clicks enough pictures of all of us to launch our own portfolios!
When my children were born I demanded that Mami come and examine them,though they had been pronounced hale and hearty by the hospital's resident paediatrician!And on her way home from her own clinic she honoured my request,nay 'demand',and each time both of them dropped by to see the baby despite their busy schedules.Only when she declared that all was well,did I breathe a sigh of relief!Such are the levels of trust that a good doctor and an amazing human being inspires!
When we were in Dar Es Salaam,my mother called us with the sad news that her uncle and aunt were closing down the clinic where we had been so lovingly tended to and henceforth would only operate from home.After all,they were getting on in years too.My son who was three then and my daughter who was eight,were up in arms as soon as they heard the news and stoutly declared that they would not 'change' their paediatrician in Pune!I assured them that I,myself, would drive them across town so they could be examined (or injected!) by Mami at her own house!And that is exactly what I still do!Never has a paisa changed hands  nor can we ever repay all they have done for us!
Our Nairobi doctor's prognosis brought my thoughts back into the room and as I smiled and thanked and paid him I realized that though my sister and I and all our cousins were not the children of hot shot politicians nor were we very important people but that is exactly how we were treated,pun intended,by our,sorry my mother's, 'Mami' who had become our own!

Wild Encounters At.....The Maasai Mara

You know you are in Maasai Land when you see the cattle grazing peacefully across the vast plains!They are accompanied by the Maasai tribesmen clad in bright red 'shukas'or sheets.It is said the colour red keeps the lions away!In fact,in the earlier days,killing a lion was a rite of passage from boyhood to manhood for Maasai men!Today,of course,both the Tanzanian and Kenyan governments have banned this practice.
A group of twenty of us set off for Mara,bright and early from Nairobi,and a four hour drive saw us at the gates of the Maasai Mara game reserve.We were headed for the Sarova Mara tented camp which is right in the heart of the reserve.A sumptuous buffet lunch of twenty different main dishes awaited us, not the least of which were Mattar Paneer and Mixed Daal(lentils) with hot,buttery Naan!There was also an array of soups,salads and fruits.The desserts comprised of cakes,puddings,ice cream and mousse.I thought it was sinful even to look at these but that did not stop me from tucking into them!There is many a slip between what a person thinks and actually does!And believe you me ,it was the same for every single meal!Never was a dish repeated in the three days that we were there and nor did we have to relish the same desserts!I had never thought a day would dawn when I would savour perfectly spiced methi-aalu(fenugreek and potatoes), bhendi chi bhaaji(lady finger),'upama' and 'bhajias'(fritters) in the middle of the African grassland!(Our earlier wild life sojourns in Tanzania had yielded only continental food!)Times change and how!
We lingered over lunch till it was time to leave for our game drive-the first of four.The animals which have now become'common' for us were spotted immediately!The gazelles,the impalas,the haartbeestes(they have antlers shaped like hearts!),the topis,zebras with adorable babies,giraffes,lots of elephants,a protective mummy with her fortnight old calf among them,wild buffalo,wart hogs and hyenas.Fifteen minutes into the drive and we crossed our fingers!We have been a bit disappointed in a couple of game reserves in Tanzania where lions were concerned!(Friends from Dar will remember searching for lions in vain all day at Ruaha and on another day peering from the train into every bush in Seleous!)But this was to be our lucky weekend!
We came upon a pair of magnificent males sleeping back to back near a bush.And they were to be the first of more than thirty lions and lionesses that we saw in a span of thirty six hours!Sometimes they were ambling near our vehicles,sniffing at the tyres,staring at the many cameras that were clicking.At other times they were ignoring us royally and grooming themselves just like your pet cat at home would!If they moved into the grass and lay down,it became the perfect camouflage for them.A pride of twenty was sun bathing in the mild morning sun right in the middle of the road,like the cows in Pune are so fond of doing!
And then on our second evening we came across six lions devouring a Maasai cow they had just killed!It was a gruesome sight as the cow had been completely disemboweled and the lions were tearing into the flesh with little roars of contentment.Our guide told us they know they are not supposed to kill cattle and so are feeling guilty about it!This was proved two minutes later when another tourist's camera made an extra loud click and two lionesses ran a few meters away from the kill!Earlier,when they had been innocently lying around,the cameras had not affected them at all!Understandably,the Maasais were upset about their cow and we heard that the bush officials had to intervene to cool tempers.
A few hopeful hyenas and jackals hovered around the site,awaiting their turn once the kings of the Savanna had had their fill.Bald headed vultures patiently sat on a tree to scavenge the last remains of the ill fated cow.
We were also fortunate to have seen three cheetahs,an animal  that has become extinct in India.We spotted a leopard(pun intended!),a rhino strolled by marking his territory,countless hippos splashed around in the river,a large family of banded otters gambolled nearby.The crocodiles refused to show themselves!

As we drove back to our camp on our last evening,heavy rain-clouds covered a part of the sky,turning it into a deep blue-gray colour.On the western side,we could see the golden orb of the setting sun- it's last brilliant rays turning the yellow Savanna grass into spun gold!As the first fat rain drops began falling,the fragrance of wet earth wafted over the plains and a beautiful rainbow appeared across the sky.It was nature at it's best and most vivid!Never have I felt more like a blip on the horizon,as we all are,as I did then!Only Mother Nature has the power to make us feel insignificant when we least expect it and it will do us good to remember it,now and always....