Fauna, Flora and Lionel

Bangalore is known as the Garden City although the rapid progression and growth of commerce and industry is superimposing a much more industrial landscape on the manicured Raj designs of the past. Life teems about you and you get the feeling that it would not take long at all for Nature to re-assert control and retake the city.

I have never really been one for pets but we do now seem to have a small colony of friendly lizards (geckos) who queue up to share the shower with Mrs Reiver in the morning, but are curiously absent when I present myself to wash away the sweat of a jogette - perhaps they are trying to tell me something? Most other local animals seem largely indifferent: the dogs have mastered lazy dozing to full undergraduate levels, and the cows wander the streets with a 'we were here first' nonchalance and an unerring capacity for knowing where the tastiest morsels of discarded food will be (mmm also undergraduate like).

During my 'out station' visit last weekend the fauna was even more profuse with bullock carts being close to a prime source of business transport, a cow tethered to most village houses and a proliferation of pigs in the streets of Koppal. Our worlds nearly collided several times - partly due to the death race 2000 (the original 70s one with David Carradine?) attitude of our taxi driver but also on parking on the main street for some light shopping - as I opened the car door a passing pig very nearly joined me in the back seat. The lyrics 'We're having fun sitting in the back seat a-kissing and a-huggin with Porky' don't really ring true so I will perhaps not take up bacon-crawling as a hobby.
The pigs however do seem really at home and a natural part of the local environment. Koppal has been very short of rain, as a result the corn and sunflower crops looked very subdued. Two days before we arrived this all changed, the heavens opened, and the road to the office we were using was partially washed away - this mean we had to walk to and fro on the Sunday. This was a blessing in disguise as in doing so I encountered a truly memorable sight walking up to the office - an enormous warthog half submerged in a stagnant pool of mud with the most self satisfied smile on his face I have seen since Robert Kilroy Silk disappeared from daytime television. In my head there was disco remix of Lionel Richie crooning that he was 'Easy Like Sunday Morning' featuring samples from Flanders and Swann..... ' And there let me wallow in glorious mud..' - Ed Stewarts Junior Choice clearly has long term stickability.

So life goes on back in Bangalore, with three wheel son my wagon i will just keep rolling along, maintain my High Hopes and start to worry only if I start seeing little mice with clogs on - where? - there on the stairs - beside the ghosts of Pinky and Perky.