Just came back from Karanavat... via yeoor. Went there alone just now, and it has totally changed from the last time I've bin there...
Things that have changed since I've bin there last:
-There’s a pink empty cabin type thing... like a watchman's cabin just at the entrance
-The small row of stones at the entrance has been completely demolished.
-There are signs that a road is being planned there, because the path had demarcations in white powder
-Sanjay Gandhi National park now does not even have a broken badminton racket bolting the door. Now there is nothing.
-Many new paths have opened up, and a lot of vegetation has disappeared.
-there was one straight path to the waterfalls, now there are many
It was really scary. First of all, I didn't remember anything. Everything was differing from the picture in my mind. And It was so scary, especially with the picture of kaal's running tiger taking up a prominent part of my mind. I got into the bus for Yeoor at thane station, after waiting for a long time. The bus you are waiting for always comes late. Murphy's law is the ultimate - If anything can go wrong, it will... The bus showed up eventually, and I brought a seven rupees fifty paisa ticket for the last stop. the bus went in such a roundabout way, that I think it went a bit into mulund also. Around one-fifth of the path of that bus and the one that goes to mulund was the same in any case. Then I remembered all the places on the way to yeoor, like the cabin in the front where you are supposed to purchase a ticket for five bucks that no one does. Then there was the air force base, the rock which was always my pitstop on the way of walking up before they put up the dammed concrete fence around two years ago. Then there was the small lake which has a chalk sign warning you of crocodiles, and where we had stumbled across snake skin long ago, and also where we were duped by two forest officials who stole fifty bucks after claiming that wer were hindering their work and rubbing off the footprints of the animals they were supposed to count. Yeah right... Then the yeoor gaon ka dhabha which was another usual pitstop, and finally the imli ka ped just before the entrance. Got pretty nostalgic. Got down from the bus, and walked all the way to the entrance, after mistaking two gates for the gate, and finally stumbling across it.
Damn. There was no broken half of a badminton racket in sight... so the whole thing was fruitless. Almost. Didn't dare to go any further, because when you are alone in the middle of a forest area, even the wind rustling the leaves sounds hostile, and I donno.
I was scared shit. Must control myself more. Actually, a part of me was scared shit, and another part was like, this is stupid, there is nothing to get scared of... etc.
I was really scared, and went along for a while, intending to do I donno what... and found that everything had changed, and there were many paths, and I stopped right there. That was as far as I went...
Then I went back to the gate, under the intention of taking more photos, and exploring just a bit, as that area was closer to civilisation, and I had to jump just one wall to enter a thing called palash resort. I am your basic scardycat. Damn.
So I took a few pics of the gate, went around and discovered a hole in the wall,
so basically if a panther wants to get out, it can... then entered the park, had a look around, photographed a very weird plant, and now the photo has disappeared. Then came out, went to the small stall that has the best vada-pav in thane, better than even kunj vihar. Sure the vada is small, sure the pav is old, but its something in the chutney. And i was a bit hungry, so ate the tasty but totally unhygienic vada pav. There were hens and cocks around, so it was a bit funny watching their behavior, while dropping little bits of vada pav for them. First this hen showed up, with the feathers sticking out in all directions, and most of her back were without feathers anyway. Wanted to photograph her, but was eating, and din't want to get the camera oily now. So I dropped a piece of the pav, and she hesitantly came up to it, took it quickly and bolted. Donno why this behavior... Eventually all the hens gathered, and the cocks drove them away for the food, and all of them hesitated, and then darted to the food and immediately bolted. Any slight movement would send them scattering. The first hen hung around though, in spite of the cocks. I dropped a bit of the vada by mistake at my feet. This the hen did not take for a full five minutes. Eventually she plucked up the courage, but pulled it off in an extremely clever way. I was sitting on this bench, and the food had dropped right next to my foot. She did not come from front of me, but instead, sneaked up to the food from UNDERNEATH the seat! how cool is that! The only way I found out that the food was gone, was that she bolted off in front of me. She KNEW that I could not see her from above the bench. That is the type of thinking that monkeys are attributed with. Hmmm... animals are cleverer than we think they are. For example, I read this book called the thinking ape, I don't remember the author. Just read a bit of it, and the point was that when a female chimp is grooming a male ape that is not the alpha male, she does it behind a rock, and the other male crouches out of sight. I will try to draw up or find the illustration to show this logic. So the alpha male sees only the female behind the rock and suspects nothing. The clever part in all this, according to the author, is that the female can visualize what the alpha male is seeing, and also think what he will think after seeing it. Hello man! - Chicken can do it too....
That was one amazing relevation. Wanted to take the picture of the chicken, but this old man showed up with a staff and sent them all scattering. GAve him a bit of Thums Up that i was drinking because he complained of the sun. He talked only in Marathi and i couldn't communicate with him properly of what was in the bottle. When he took it, he did it as if he was doing something new, and his hands shook a lot. Waited a long time for the bus there, and then it showed up. Then i went and sat in the bus, and tried to take a picture of the dhabha without anyone knowing... I think the cunductor saw me, and I took this picture of the floow of the bus while saying shit! I ws a real scardycat today. Damn again....
Then managed to take a very blurry picture of the stall from the window of the bus, but I didn't want anybody to see me.
The guy in the turban sitting at the edge is the old man I was talking about...
The conductor and the driver sat at the stall for a while, and the bus driver left the bus running, that fool wasting the state's diesel. Eventually, the bus started, the old man got on too, and we went down pretty fast. Only, a few very small children, were traveling a long way to school. All the way to Vartak Nagar from Yeoor. Poor children. Then I remembered that the village still had a water-pump that had to be manually pushed up and down. Then took a rickshaw that played really loud music... long time since I had heard mungna. came home, and now will blog a load of pics.
There was no split at karnavat today, and I got a zero in one test because i was caught copying, but that's ok, no one really cares anymore. Ah well... went right ahead and copied (helped others) in the very tough English test. Damn. Drank ghanne ka juice in the interval... am doing that everyday now. Everyone plays a game called colo-color, where one guy takes the name of a color and anyone with clothing of that color gets hit. More drawings from the guy who got an A. Will blog everything. And yeah, got a total of four marks in an English test, where I picked out answers at random...
ha ha.
I know the order of blogging everything is so weird. Have to photograph the pics that he had drawn, the pics I have drawn, the mango i got, the shells, and... yeah thats about it. And yeah, the magic trick... havetah do that.
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