Every single leaf

One new neighbour has just cut down a peltophorum because it ruins the view of her shiny new house with the weird landscaping and All! Glass! exterior. Another tree nearby has had branches cut off to make way for a pole that will have their personal transformer perched on it.

At other times we have heard other neighbours complain that:

1) The trees shed too many leaves and their servants (yes) complain about having to keep sweeping.

2) The trees cut off all the sun. Apparently this is a bad thing.

3) There's no place to park because of trees on the pavement.

I'm actually surprised that they don't cut down trees during Diwali, because, you know, rockets.

Meanwhile, spring continues. The Tabibuia have flamed their yellow and are shedding. The figs have come and gone. The pungamaram's tender green is everywhere. The badam has finished with the red and has settled into summer's bright green. The rain trees still drop long seed pods that always, always, embed themselves into the softening tar on the road which, given the state of it, is an improvement.

Soon, even the leaves that so annoy our neighbours will cease to fall, though every cut branch and trunk will continue to put out shoots.

Clearly this last is something our neighbours will not stand for. Hence this:

Completely besides the point that this tree was outside a GHMC park and it wasn't for any of the people around here to burn it down.

I don't want to move. I'm wondering how I can persuade my neighbours that the desert - any desert - is the best place for them. 

not the King Doof Gang

Yesterday, as I was getting extra milk, I saw the road outside the All New! Cop Shop! in Jubilee Hills swarming with OB vans. Grocery stores are hotbeds of gossip, so of course I asked what the fuss was about. I expected nothing less than some breaking news Telangana development or the busting of some pre-Diwali terror plot (as a friend said on Twitter, how can anyone tell there's a blast when so many crackers are being burst?)

Turns out it was a bunch of kids with no driving license and plenty of time and eggs. "VIP children," is how the guy handing me the milk put it.

One neighbour is delighted. Someone threw a rock at his car the other night and the cops refused to register a compliant because he had parked his car on the road. But hey - the King Doofs are still on the loose. Expect more excitement in the days to come.

(Sigh. Yes, quiet festival time, this. Happy Deepavali to you guys too.)

Wilderness Tips: 2

When the potholes upstream grow large enough to contain water from the sewage that flows a good 100 yards away downstream but which sewage has been brought back on the wheels of the million trucks that pass; when the millionth-and-one truck arrives at half past three in the morning and takes an hour and a half to offload granite blocks; when said truck gets stuck and roars like a trapped and wounded animal...

...is when you buy yourself earmuffs, noseplugs and cocoon for nights and wellies (even in a failed monsoon) for the days.

It has often occurred to me in the last couple of weeks, that someone should invite Herzog to come and make a film on our neighbour building the mountain. The project has the right mix of lunacy, obsession and futility that would appeal to the man.

Wilderness Tips Part 1.

Saturday Night (Recorded)

I live in a surreal locality. It only looks rural and enchanting if you don't actually live here. If you do, you know that weird things happen more frequently than not. Such as, young men are liable to accost you and ask the way to the Bhoot Bungalow.

This Bhoot Bungalow (also known, locally, as Ghotala) is the very Heart of Weirdness. And in my more confessional moods I admit to myself that I feel partially responsible for this: after all, I once got married on the terrace of the house there and basically walked to my own wedding in rubber chappals. I may have set in motion a series of events that now comes back to haunt me (no one please say, what did you expect - it is a Bhoot Bungalow)

After that marriage, it occurred to the owner that he wasn't putting his over 40 acres of land to good enough use. The film shoots started, then TV serials. Eventually, after a major film was shot here and a gigantic set constructed, no one had the heart to tear it down. Subsequent productions altered the basic set - a large Charminar-y kind of structure in Jaipur pink - a little bit, tweaked the colour here, put in a street there, or a few shacks, and before you knew it, it was a permanent settlement.

More recently, the owner's brother has sanctioned the dumping of all kinds of construction debris there: not just a dump, but a whole mini-mountain. A hundred trucks pass by everyday, carrying small boulders, mud and such-like and they climb to the very top of the heap where they let go of it with small explosions and mudslides.

Occasionally, the place is hired out to parties. It is these that I chiefly object to. When it's once a year, one learns to grin and bear it; but when it's every Saturday, as has become the practice, I want to weep and drum my heels on the ground.

But this Saturday, when the organisers had done checking the sound (it was loud. I think that's the effect they were aiming for), I decided I would not lie awake all night resenting them and wondering if I could, should call the cops to complain about the noise and the sleep of decent citizens and taxpayers. I decided I would check out what was happening on the party scene, just aurally, as it were.

Being a DJ must be much like being an editor - one primarily makes decisions about whether to do smooth and seamless or startling and revealing juxtaposition. But whoever this guy or girl was, the music was 1) from what was playing in nightclubs three years ago or thereabouts, 2) Punjabi retro-cool, with lots of - yes I know - Daler Mehendi, 3) standard filmi populars such as 'Pappu Can't Dance' and 'It's The Time To Disco' and finally 4) very, very loud. My window panes were rattling in time to the bass.

The party was taking place in the ruins of the permanent set. The recent rains had torn off some of the scaffolding and had very likely churned up some of the unpaved ground. I was imagining all those people, the heat of bodies, arms upflung, hearts thudding. Above, the clouds had gathered and were obscuring the eclipse that had begun.

It rained and still they went on. Some people left. I know because their cars hissed by, the lights sent lacy leaf patterns travelling on my wall. The music stopped. It was only a little past midnight. One half-hearted (and incoherent) announcement later, a loud cheer went up and the music began again.

Were they getting wet? Mud-spattered? Weren't they afraid for their equipment? Did they even know there was an eclipse on, far above the rainclouds, where the bruised moon was turning yellow or orange, more wild than the dancing, taking as its due the little tribal ritual being enacted far below?