Thursday, September 27, 2012

Pre-wedding jitters

Glad to get back into field mode after rounds of wedding shopping. I am staying now in a very nice old fieldstation maintained by the BNHS inside the sanctuary. This place is more remote than the IISc base...its closer to the plot - which would give me more flexible working hours. Otherwise it takes me an hour to reach the plot, and I spend 2-3 hours commuting from the base camp to the plot. I am really not sure what is happening about the wedding - the parents are more in "control" of the whole process. The only thing I am sure of is that it is at Regent - and I will have to do the rounds in kanchi silks and kold jewellery. Hope I don't trip and fall. Or worse still, start scratching my many million tick bites...which I am scratching even as I type this mail...

Field-station notes..

Notes from 22nd Sept, 2005 - I guess very little has changed since then! This afternoon was taken up by house-keeping duties - got my room cleaned, and some junk moved out of another spare room (which I can now use for germination experiments). This room I am staying in now has a few windows and is less mustier than the room I was staying in before. With the smoker and the fungus out, I hope I don't have too many allergy problems. Slowly the stories are adding up ...of all the others who have stayed here before. The house I am staying in now used to be Sukumar's house...and then Arun Venkatraman's...and then some other Phd students stayed here with their families. After that it has been converted into a student house - with semi-permanent people using different rooms. And all these people have left something or the other behind - a picture, a magazine or some papers, a tray or some vials, a few bottles of chemicals - and each has its story to tell...and they are never chucked out since the fieldstation manager here (Barnaiah) or one of the assitants will say "oh, that is narendra sir's, he might want it"... But thankfully this house and the other one that we have rented here are spacious enough to be accomodate several people and the junk. We have several rooms just for the junk!