Forest trails- the story tellers of the jungle

It is easy for the inexperienced eye to easily conclude “Oh these forests have no animals” when they don’t seen any animal. Contrary to their notion, the exact opposite seems to be happening to a person who knows to read the tell tale signs animals leave behind and unfold the story that would have been enacted by the denizens of the jungle. Picturesque descriptions of such stories in forests have been excellently narrated by Jim Corbett and Kenneth Andreson in the numerous classics they have written. Most of the stories they encountered seems to still be the same for any keen observer who steps into the forests especially on to the jeep tracks or beat roads as it’s called.

Recently, as a part of accessing the impact of Sorimuthian pilgrimage on the forests; a team undertook extensive occupancy surveys along the roads near the main road where there is vehicle movement. Teams of 2-3 individuals walked on these roads and documented any signs of animal movement in its various forms from Hoof or Pugmarks, excreta, scent mark, scrape marks etc on the ground. Each such encounter invariably had some small little story to tell and was indeed one of the factors which kept the enthusiasm going in doing such thankless and seemingly monotonous work.

On one such survey along the famous “Puckel’s path” our team comprising of Abisheka, Dr Ganesh , Samuel and Seshadri began a survey at around 1530hrs, rather late in the evening. We soon encountered a lot of evidence of Chital and sambar and were having this gut feeling of sighting some or the other animal like the Sloth bear, which had been previously sighted by Rajkamal on the same trail. At some distance away from the main road, we came across fresh, beautifully preserved pugmarks of a sloth bear who had very casually ambled along the road which was laden with fine clayey soil brought in by the recent rains making it perfect for imprinting the human like paw in it. The marks seemed so fresh that for a moment, we all looked around to possibly catch a glimpse of the bear which might just be around the corner! The bear had walked on the road for more than 100m and all of a sudden, we saw pugmarks almost one fourth the size of the adult and realized that the bear was accompanied by its cub. The cub, as per the discontinuity in pugmarks, had come almost all the distance piggy back and had got down and walked with its mom for a short  distance before they had turned into the forest and disappeared in the mix of grass and thorn scrub. Such are among the countless other stories that lay wait to be stumbled upon by passing naturalists with keen eyes to decipher the treasure locked up in form of signs and clues!

Wish I were a monkey!

Little did I know what I was getting into when I agreed to work in the Forest canopies. “Climb trees?”, “What do you mean?” would be the obvious response of any person who has never climbed a tree before even in the wildest of dreams! And needless to say I was no different.

Soon enough, I was in KMTR, with the harness around the waist and busy climbing up the trees in search of epiphytes. With some initial hic ups I managed to attain the comfort level in climbing trees but the hurdles to carry out the work were aplenty and as a matter of fact were taller than the trees themselves!
One day the assistant does not turn up, the other day the bus does the same and yet another day, the bike has a puncture! If none of these happen, the rain gods decide to be kind enough and burst open the clouds; thus singing an end to the work in the canopies.
With time on my side, I managed to overcome these hurdles to some extent and managed to partially finish the work and each day was invariably associated with a lot of exciting things be it the sheer contiguity of the forest canopies or the sightings of the canopy dwellers up close.

After having seen much of the diversity of life up there, I always kept wondering “why do so very few people work in this field of canopy ecology?”
Of late, I have been having experiences which seem to answer my question.
In this context, I would like to share a day’s experience which almost shattered my will to work in the canopy. The day started with a wonderful sunrise and a clear sky which was a very good indication that rain gods still in deep slumber and soon myself, Mutthu- my ever smiling assistant and Mythri- an enthusiastic undergraduate who volunteered to assist me in the work, went to the field to sample trees and what followed was one of the worst field days if may say!
First, the rigging which was done a few days back was not proper and in the effort to set it right, myself and Mutthu attached a karabiner to the free end of the nylon thread and hauled it up only to see it dangling up the tree stuck in the thick undergrowth of the selection felled forest. A hard thug and both the thread and my palm got effortlessly cut. With a heavy heart, we set to rig the tree again using the sling and it took six hard tries to finally get the thread up there with more than a dozen cuts on my palm while trying to pull the misfired thread from the understory.
When we finally got it up, the climbing ropes were quickly hauled up as we had lost more than two hours in getting the most critical part of climbing right. But we realized that the ropes were inclined in an angle and impossible to climb up and my brilliant self decided to use the laws of gravity and attached the harness itself to the rope to the hauled it up thinking the weight will drag the rope towards the bole of the tree due to gravity .But with the understory, the rope decided to defy the laws of gravity and stayed half way up the tree! No amount of tugging seemed to even budge the rope and poor muthu had to climb a short tree with calamus all around to pull the rope back to ground.
All was set and we were relived that things were in place and soon realized that the thinner ropes used to haul the rope and my backpack were so badly entangled in the leaf litter that it took a good one hour to unwind the mess but meanwhile, Mythri managed to climb up the tree.
After four hours under the tree, we finally made progress with Muthu and Mythri up the tree and me half way up. On reaching the top, we were rewarded by some excellent views of the Black eagle at eye level and the Mountain imperial pigeons flying out of Syzigium trees below us and I was also able to record calls of a canopy frog. But bad luck seemed to have climbed the tree with us, as soon as I reached up and sat down to write; the pen slipped off from my pocket and went straight down! We would have ended up writing with a marker pen if not for Giby who popped in to see how we were doing and generously sent up a pen. With a lot of branches to sample for epiphytes, we were comfortably seated on the tree for the next five hours, living on bananas for lunch and a little water. Coming down took a good one hour. The packed lunch of cold idly, equally cold sambar and stale chutney was finished in no time and later, we spent a good two hours in the night un-entangling the rigging thread.

Though the mess we had been into was largely the doing of the new nylon ropes which coiled faster than a constrictor, coiling the thinner strings beyond easy un-entanglement, I too had a considerable role to add to it due to some foolish ideas like sending up the harness itself up!
Such experiences are one of the many difficulties in accessing the canopy and carrying out rigorous research activities are surely one of the deterrents which has since long kept many people off the forest canopies and those who have pioneered this field of ecology were for sure driven by the taste for high adventure, beauty, diversity and complexity of interactions which take place within it.

At a snails’ pace!

Snails are often used as a rule of thumb to mock at the pace at which an activity or an event is occurring and when I would encounter snails of various kinds in the canopy, I used to wonder as to how long it would have taken for these slow moving creatures to reach the tree tops about 25m above where they usually live and what makes them travel so high.

No doubt that the decaying matter on the forest floor is comparatively higher than the canopy soil organic matter, something must be up there which makes them do the epic journey. And once on top, they seem to be equally at home among the moss and organic matter collected in the forks of the numerous branches radiating from often big trunk- may be this small patches offer more nutrition than the ground litter. I have often encountered these snails in the canopy and generally un- common on the floor. On would easily think like I did that the time taken by the snail to come down (if at all it does) would also be at an equally slow pace. However, I was proved wrong when I came across this strange and unique situation where the snails seemed to have seen us canopy people going up and coming down on ropes and learnt from it (or is it the other way round?). With amazing stability and dexterity, this snail was coming down from the tree top on a single thin strand of slimy mucous, like we rappel down on ropes! Though it would take days to reach the top, they seem to have evolved and adaptation over time to come down rapidly as if they too understood the Newton’s laws of gravity and it seems that an evolutionary adaptation, at least in this case has not been happening at a snails pace!

Leech (ate)

You walk with chappals in the forest? What about the snakes and leeches?
I’m sure many of us would have heard or perhaps asked Drs Ganesh and Ganesan when they are out in the field-be it the evergreens of Kakachi or the wetlands in search of birds and paddy fields in search of rodents and owls outside KMTR. They seem to be at ease taking a walk through the forest in “Hawaii” chappals. And to the above question, both laugh it off saying “well, we have been doing so and are still around!”
More than snakes, which are pretty few in numbers in the rainforests, one should be bothered about the zillions of leeches which seem to spring out of nowhere soon after a light shower. I have been witness to both of them being attacked if I can say, by not less than a couple of tens of leeches at any point of time and they unassumingly pull them off as and when they happen to stop to observe something and more often than not, Dr Ganesan carefully removes the bloodsuckers and puts them in the forest rather gently!

It so happened that when we went on a trek on Green trail with Dr Tor. Dr Ganesh, in his usual attire of chappals got a generous share of blood donation done by the middle of the day while others were protected by anti leech socks and Snuff powder. On reaching a stream, TG decided to put the ecosystem services of nature to good use and dipped both legs (one after the other of course) in the stream and to much of our amusement, not less than 200 fishes came and feasted on the blood which had clotted and dried all over his feet and in no time, his feet were as good as new with no sign of blood whatsoever only to get back to the bloodied condition in a couple of minutes later.
Though I must say I have seen Dr Ganesh with shoes at some point of time, I have never seen Dr Ganesan with shoes, both in fact say chappals are better to pick out leeches as and when they climb and are comfortable to walk with. To me however, having been brought up if I can say with camouflaged anti- leech socks when in a forest; walking with chappals, let alone Hawaii chappals sends shivers down the spine and more so, on the thought of scratching the wounds of leech bites like a rabid creature for not less than a couple of months thereafter.

Seen it Killed It.

Have you not seen a cobra? You roam around so much in forest how come you have not seen one?

A question many would ask when I claimed not to have seen a cobra in the wild. Having handled and seen various venomous and non venomous reptiles till date, I somehow never had this chance of seeing a spectacled cobra, let alone handling one!

 Yesterday, Tapan, my roommate in the hostel came all excited into the room carrying something in the book.  Known for not having the habit of exchanging pleasantries, i went directly for the book and asked him what was in it.

 lo behold! A small cobra between the pages of the book!

As I saw the seemingly lifeless snake, many things went through my mind as to how it died, how he found it and the way he had carried it to the room! One by one, all the questions were answered through systematic bugging if I may call it; Parallely pulled out my camera to photo-document the snake. He very picturesquely and emotionally explained how a cyclist passing on the road ran over it (intentions not known!) and how himself and Sharon, a senior stood helplessly watching the snake writhing in pain and doing death rolls like crocodiles until it lay still on the road where it was run over – in front of Pillai Vinayagar temple (what a place to die I say!! It would go straight to heaven!). Another passing ecologist confirmed the snake to be dead and safe to pick up following which, tapan got the snake to the room between the leaves of his book.

 Partly listing to tapan and cursing those idiotic people who do such harm to these harmless snakes, I kept shooting the snake holding it in my hand, for a moment something told me the snake was not dead but kept the thought to myself not telling it to vivek or tapan. A while later, I dug out a forceps from my bag (Pandora’s Box if one could call it!) and forced open the jaws of the juvenile snake, a clear examination of the teeth tongue, breathing tube etc were done and observed with a lens and the length measured with a thread. The cyclist had neatly gone over the head and jaws were almost sealed. 

 I wanted to take some more pictures of the eye before calling it a day and put the snake down. The next moment the snake came alive! Started coiling and writhing in pain, each time rolling on its back and doing loops. Tapan’s joy knew no bounds! I quickly started a video, also debating with vivek on “humane” ways to put an end to the snake’s misery which was followed by a heated argument followed with Tapan - a true die hard activist and optimist wanting to release the snake and let nature take its course where as us, practical optimists who knew the snake was suffering and would not make it in the wild.

Not being one of those to listen to others opinions, me and vivek decided to kill the snake ourselves. By the time, the death roll was over and the snake fell motionless again, the only movement happened when I picked it up again, the death roll went over again lasting for about half a minute after which there was no movement. May be it breathed last that time, but to ensure the misery has ended, I got some cold water from the freezer and put the snake in it into a specimen collection vial. In a few minutes, the cold blooded snake must have met its end for it dint seem to move. Much against the will of my room mate who had found it and got it to us…

A round of post death ceremony for the snake and a couple of classmates observed and paid their last respects to “Naagaraaja” with which, we kept it in for the night only to hand it over to Sharon the next day who wanted to put it back to Mother Nature after showing it to friends.

Having felt happy myself to have done some good, I continued with the days work not worrying about the snake but got a shock when another senior of mine pulls out a snake from his pocket and shows me the same snake and tells “Look, Cobra”!!

How it exchanged hands and ended up there I wouldn’t know! Not do I want to!

Not bothering much of the snake, me and vivek asked him how he found it and how it had died-

“Someone found it, it was impaled with something in the neck”

 I did want to pretend to curse the one who killed it and portray myself as a good gentle caring soul…But decided not to, for reasons not worth mentioning here.

So much so for seeing and eventually having to kill my First Spectacled cobra!

Kalliveli-A dry baked wetland

After much of dilly-dallying as to go birding or not, myself and my classmates decided to give an open invite to our classmates to go birding to Kaliveli wetland. The last minute inputs from the seniors in college saying that the place is “Papad-dry” and we could not see any bird did not quite dishearten us and nine of us left at 0600hrs from the college only to end up waiting on the ECR till 0700hrs for the bus, generally with blaring music to come by. When one finally came, he asked us to get down at PIMS and said the tank was a kilometer from there. On reaching PIMS, we were told by a local “Chai-shop” owner that the wetland is some 5 odd km from there (it wasn’t so much though!) and arranged a share auto to go there. Nine of us got in and reached the tank by 0900hrs. Having fixed the autowallah for our return trip, we set off into the vast wetland. Where the water was, no one knew!











A small orientation to a couple of new inductees to the world of bird watching was facilitated and the strict dos and don’ts were made clear. The place, as our dear seniors had told, was indeed dry to the core and of the many miniature tanks carved out into the flat wetland only one had water in it, a pair of grey herons, sandpipers etc greeted us. A lone pied kingfisher female sat there for over one hour watching nine of us scampering around watching the birds with just two binocs to spare!
By around 1000hrs, a lone falcon was seen taking off with something in the talons and as it was against the sun, we were able to get only a short glimpse of it before we lost sight of it. A little later, a flock of eleven spoonbills came in from the NW part of the tank and began to descend, before everyone had a good look at them, someone pointed out at another flock of large birds soaring in the sky, soon binocs exchanged hands and the birds were identified as painted storks which were gaining height on the thermal, which I guess were in plenty! By the time the birds were identified, the spoonbills were nowhere in sight! We could not have seen them even if they landed in this huge wetland.
After a frugal breakfast of biscuits and water, we seemed to have made progress by covering some distance only to be stopped by a pair of Kentish plovers among 30 red wattled lapwings in the dry grass. Another good half an hour was spent with this very obliging pair of birds.
By 1100hrs, the sun needless to say, was beating down our backs and the new inductees were starting to squat on the ground whenever the group stopped- the first indications of wanting to return started to show!











Having pestered them to continue walking, we did a loop in the baked, dry tank (don’t know if it was the tank bed!) which was about 1km and reached the place where we were supposed to be picked up by the very friendly autowallah. Having bargained with him, he agreed to drop us to the university and this time, he had got a friend who very obligingly offered to take us to another wetland with lot of birds. Something told me that he was not all that a nice chap and I declined the offer saying we were really hungry and wanted to return. My suspicion came true when we got down, the autowallah a local, living near the wetland offered to take us on a bike the next time we go and also gave us pin point locations as to where to see many birds. On further questioning- “I go there with guns to shoot birds” came the reply. He also told that the place is a bird reserve which attracts a lot of “Paravais” when it is full of water. I am not quite sure if he meant the taste!

A shield tail and an awful stench!

Shield tails or Uropeltids as they are called are one of the few snakes which are rarely seen and easily missed due to the unique character of burrowing into the leaf litter rich soil of the forest floor. These relatively small snakes are evolved to lead a life in the underworld- eyes almost not seen, the head narrow pointed and sharp, the body smooth and glossy and the tail has a shape as if it was unassumingly cut off with an axe and this is how it gets the name as shield tail.
I came across three species of these non-venomous snakes and in two of the occasions, they were seen lying on the road soon after a heavy downpour and on one occasion, it was dug out from the rotting leaf litter when we were in search of snails. The snake which was later identified as walls shield tail was very quick in disappearing into the litter mass while the other two on the road, did not have the evolutionary advantage of burrowing into a thick layer of asphalt!
The snakes one yet to be identified and the other known as the Pied bellied shield tail which were found on the road were needless to say picked up for photo documentation and give them a second life by releasing them into the forest away from speeding vehicles. On both occasions, I ended up having a nauseating feeling due to the pungent scent in the urine of the snake which is known to be an anti predatory trait developed over the years. The smell, strong like that of garlic and rotting meat in addition to a weird smell which cannot be put in words took a bucket of water and a good lathery soap to ward off. So good was the evolutionary trait in those snakes that it effectively worked on creatures which try to save it from death too!

Elephantophobia!

Elephants are one of the creatures which are revered and feared equally. These magnificent creatures are very deeply rooted to the culture of people and complexly intervened in the ecological process of the forest dynamics. They are known open up new paths and make way for other creatures to forage in the dense forests, they are known to peel off barks thus killing the tree, raid paddy and sugarcane crops and are known to chase and trample those who ignore the innumerable warning signs given by them and cross the limit.

Lot of research from ethology to ecology has been carried out with regard to elephants and many more are still underway however, little work is done on the effect, both psychological and physical of elephants on humans in elephant habitats (mostly on the lighter side!).

The movement of these creatures can be easily detected!

The amount fear generated in the minds of many people especially the assistants, the integral part of a researcher is astounding. All of a sudden the ears prick up, eyes become sharp to notice any movement, both limbs get set to run or climb a tree, whichever is earlier and the stride becomes one that of a spy in an enemy zone and all this is accompanied by discussions on when where and how the elephant has passed, how far it has moved and what time it takes for it to be on our backs. This is often associated with problems like instances where the assistant takes the lead as in one case, all I saw was my assistant running with chappals in his hand and i realized the elephant was heading right where I was standing and followed suit albeit the chappals in hand!

When he was at the back as in another case, he once froze silently without telling me that there was a tusker right ahead of me and I almost walked to trunk shake distance of the giant! End of most cases, one ends up in coaxing and pleading him to continue the work reasoning that the elephant has moved away and is safe to work. Recently when sampling trees for epiphytes, we came across huge tracks of elephants on the trail. Thought the track was visibly a day old, the whole place carried the pungent odour of elephant and going by the size, we guessed it to be a lone tusker. This along with the large imprints of the elephant on the soft soil along a stream seemed to have scared my assistant a lot for he tried to stop us from proceeding further but he yielded to my persistence and agreed to work there for the rest of the day but strongly disagreed to come to work from then on!

The day next, we caught a glimpse of two elephants bathing in the stream near the “wooden bridge”.

People of Nalmuku in general and surrounding tea estates seem to be petrified by these gentle giants due to past experiences and gross exaggeration of the same. When they are on the bus and if they happen to see elephant dung on the road, they end up warning almost everyone who is walking along the road about elephants in the bushes along the road. In reality, their fear is not always exaggeration for elephants in that area maintain a regular route of movement, they start from the forest near Kakachi and move on and along the road via Nalmuku, spend some time in the tea estates and continue further up into the forests of Kodayar all the while leaving a tell tale signs of their movement on the road. though they spend some time in the tea estates, they do not indulge in crop damage but only browse in the corridors but that creates enough fear to prevent people from picking leaves form that field of estate! Prevention seems to be better than the cure in this case.

In search of the Thar!

The south western hills of KMTR, covered by vast areas of high elevation grasslands are one of the southernmost strongholds of Nilgiri thars,one of the two hardy mountain goats in india whose other relative is found in the Himalayas with a large disjunction between them and the Hills near Valve house and Muthukuzi (in the southern tip of the western ghats )are indeed one of the best places to catch a glimpse of these hardy mountain goats.The hills are also home to the Great pied Hornbill, they though not disjunctive as the thars are equally rare and elusive; hills of Top slip being an exception.

On our recent trip to Valve house, I spotted a solitary male Thar on a hill almost two kilometers apart (encircled) and was also rewarded with generous sightings of Great pied horn bills on six occasions.

the hill where i spottedthe thar.

The thar seemed to be well at home on the hill, resting on a rocky outcrop soaking the sun, the hill so steep that no human must have set foot on it was riddled with green grass, intermixed with Pheonix sp trees and many more rocky areas seemed to be a perfect for the goats. On further exploring, we came on to a rock where we could see the Hope’s lake and lower Kodayar settlement and for the next three hours our noses were drowned in the pungent odour of thar urine!

The scent, so strong, kept lingering long after we left the place.

It dint take much time to realize that we were on the rock which thars use to defecate and there were at least 50 odd dung piles of various sizes and since they all were of different decay conditions we realized that the rock was a common defecation ground for the thars. Having enjoyed the serene atmosphere and making some images, we headed back towards the bike and caught a glimpse of the Rufous bellied hawk eagle, a couple of Pipits and Hornbills!

The Loud harsh call of the bird made us halt on the tracks to see two birds flying out of the forest going past very close to the rock where we earlier sat. While we were observing them, one more came out from the same place and followed the other two; though they were about a kilometer away, we were able to enjoy the sight through good field glasses.

Stopping for a quick brunch of boiled egg, vada and wild mangoes, we continued our walk along the road and sighted four species of butterflies and saw the hornbills on three more occasions.

The clouds no where in sight till then, suddenly built up and seemed as if it would pour in an hour’s time which sent us scurrying to the bikes and reach Kodayar before the rain starts.

March of the monkey brigade

The annual Sorimuthian festival in KMTR on the banks of Tambaraparani , attracts people in large numbers, young and old alike. This attraction has been so strong that it has become a tradition to pay a visit to the temple annually for the people of Alamgulam. They come in large numbers like the annual mass migration towards food resources by the wildebeest in the
Serengeti plains of Africa.


Such resource driven mass migrations though very rare in our country occur at various instances; Be it pigs, dogs and scavenging birds congregating at garbage and offal dumping sites, movement of ant colonies towards food resources and the rising of dark clouds of mosquitoes from paddy fields and moving into villages and cattle sheds.
A similar incidence was observed during the Sorimuthian festival too. There was a sudden increase in the number of house and jungle crows, occurrence of large troupes of bonnet macaques, going up to 60 individuals, wild pigs numbering up to 16 in a herd, and the occurrence of house cockroaches amongst various other road killed forest organisms, around the temple. Camera traps we set up at strategic locations around the temple before and after the festival captured just one or two pigs and no bonnet macaques at all and at the same time, the mammal occupancy surveys showed a low number of the apes and pigs and there were hardly any crows to count before and after the festival where as, during the festival, there was a sudden increase in the number of pigs, bonnet macaques and crows around the temple and they were captured by the camera traps while feeding on garbage and waste food dumped in the forest by pilgrimsThe only way the increase in abundance is possible is by the movement of animals into the temple area from various other parts largely to capitalize on the abundant food resources in the form of waste food and garbage, generated in large quantities but ineffectively disposed. Though the scavenging animals were efficient in clearing some amount of the waste, they face the risk of death as they might feed on the plastic which got in un-noticed, and fall sick due to the consumption of food which they normally not used to eating.
More intensive studies in future may yield information about the origin and the local migration route these opportunistic creatures take to reach the temple, the pressures on the local habitat due to the intrusion in large numbers and the impact on the health of these animals will become clear.

Hot water at your own risk!

As a kid I remember being told by my near and dear ones to be very careful with electricity, having got little jolts of the same at times of not being cautious I sure do know what it feels to get electrocuted. And I suppose all of us would have got such advices and are very cautious when there are wires with open ends around.

First few days I spent in singampatti near KMTR, got me all sorts of breathing complications due to a very dirty room and the cold water bath added to my misery. When the Sorimuthian kootam (will write about it later) was over and Dr ganesh took me to Kodayar where my work would actually happen, I was quite happy to see the placid surroundings, mist or rather cloud covered mid elevation evergreen forests, calls of great black woodpecker resonating in the tall forests and the gaurs glistening in the early morning sunrise on the hills due west. All this made the place all the more beautiful!

Chetan, my colleague was showing me around the quarters where we stay and in the bathroom, I set my eyes upon two nails projecting on the wall, curious as I was, asked him what it was and got a shock when he told me not to touch it even in my dreams as it is fed live through the transformer and the nails are used to fit the heater to heat water. With that, I still had not understood what the “heater” was the impression I had was a typical water heater element which is to be dipped into the bucket of water. I forgot about it till a month later when I moved in to stay and start my work in the field.

Soon I realized what the Heater Chetan had talked to me about was- there was a heating element true, wound on a normal 4X10 cm cardboard with two leads connecting two single core insulated wires hooked at the free ends. Still confused as to how it works, I asked Vivek, another colleague of mine to demonstrate the operation of it, and looking at the sparks flying when it was hooked on to the nails I was surprised, shocked and taken aback at the same time!

It took me quite some time to get used to the fact that such dangerous equipment is used to heat water. A cold water bath atleast wouldn’t kill people!

Having stayed there and gotten used to the weather there, I realized that the cold water bath can actually kill as the temperature goes down to about 8 degrees in winter and decided that death in the hands of the heater was a better bet and began using the same, it became a regular thing to any one of us who are there to explain the functioning and repairing of the heater to any new comer.

Once a lady called mythri came to volunteer for my work in the canopy and after a long tiring journey in the bus, we reached Kodayar by late evening and being a gentleman, I asked her to freshen up first and then I would do the same, she obliged and left to the bathroom, suddenly I realized that I had not followed the protocol of telling her about the nails and rushed in asking her to wait and all of a sudden there was a mild squeak and a long silence of a few seconds which seemed like donkeys ages.

The worst possible things ran through my mind as I jumped across the living room to the bathroom to see what was wrong.

There I saw mythri standing and staring at the nails, speechless. On seeing me she pointed to the nails and on it was the room key, which she had delicately hung on the nail to keep it safe. It was in fact so safe, no one could get it out! Relived that she was safe, I got a wooden stick, used to hoist our celphones when talking and removed the key thanking the stars for saving her life.

And after that a long advice and a little bit of exaggeration of how close to death she was followed and I think it did serve the purpose of making her aware of the dangers of such silly mistakes that she stopped using the nails to heat water and either muthu my assistant or myself had to do it for her.

What I still don’t understand is why would anyone with any little common sense, hang a metal key to a nail visibly wound around by a wire!