“Berry” enjoyable Sunday….

We went to Mysore this Sunday, not on a picnic, but to try some processes out at a factory near the city. The whole thing took several hours, but it was a successful experiment, and we returned home to Bangalore at 5 a.m on Monday morning!

But I can extract the utmost enjoyment from anything...and the first thing was the drive out to Mysore.... I looked at the flowers... I enjoyed the beautiful weather....(there were just a few occasional showers though, no settled rain) I looked at interesting buildings on the way...here's a lovely old building in the traditional idiom on the Kanakapura road that I have admired for many years...I am always afraid that it might not be there on the next trip... And there was this old beauty near the factory (in fact on the road from the factory to Ranganathittu, where I drove in the evening to do some birding) Sometimes the architecture is incongruous and amusing, like the turrets and battlements on this theme park: I enjoyed the break we took for a leisurely lunch at this place on the Mysore Road....(Indra Dhanush, "bow of the god Indra", means Rainbow,a fitting place to go to during the monsoon!) I also enjoyed some of the sights ON the road... I was amazed by the ingenuity with which the little passengers in this van ahead of us had rigged up a swing and were having a great time...which law-bound child strapped into a child-seat in a "developed" country could have this much fun while travelling on the road? I'm sure THESE children would never ask, "Are we there yet?" And here's a picture of how to organize a travel group ( especially note how comfortable the boy in the right-hand-side corner of the van is!) At Rangathittu area (I didn't go to the actual river landing as it was beset with Sunday crowds of beer-bottle-bearing youngsters, but stopped at the canal just short of the gate to the river, and walked around near the canal) I observed this heady-smelling wild jasmine that we call "Adukku Malli" in Tamizh, I don't know its scientific name... Then, of course, the birds; I didn't see any unsual ones, but as the sun dipped to the west, all my known friends came out to say hello. The CATTLE EGRETS followed a herd of goats and sheep around, as they went grazing; the worms that the hooves threw up were food for the birds... One thing I had wanted to get a picture of for a long time was the sight of a WIRE-TAILED SWALLOW *WITH* its wire tail; usually, the ones I have seen don't have them! I got this (not a birding quality) shot of two of them against the sky, on the wire: Here's another pic of one of them. This, too, is not a "birding" quality photo, as I could not get the all-important catchlight in the bird's eye, as it was very low light and I was shooting almost directly upwards..but it's SUCH a graceful bird, I decided to include the pic! It was lovely to see this INTERMEDIATE EGRET (like the three bears in the Goldilocks story, egrets come in three sizes, the Papa or the Great Egret, the Mama or the Intermediate Egret, and the Baby or the Little Egret!) enjoying the water of the canal... If I looked carefully, I could see the little PURPLE-RUMPED SUNBIRDS preening themselves in the lantana bushes: And at sunset, I loved this picture of the HOUSE SPARROWS, collecting in droves and writing the music for their sunset birdsong, in their own presence on the telegraph and electricity wires....

Finally, I captured the sunset in my wing mirror as I turned to go back to the factory….

But this was not the end of the day,sorry, evening. The processes/trials that we were conducting were not yet finished, three of our personnel were overseeing it, so, since the owner of the factory had booked tickets for the latest Rajnikanth blockbuster, “Sivaji…the Boss”…we drove the ten-odd kilometres to Mysore, watched the 8.30 pm show (er, I slept through some of this OTT movie, and that’s also my review of the movie, !) came back to the factory, the work was over at about 2 pm, and we then drove home with our personnnel snoring in the back seat....I think I extracted as much enjoyment out of every moment of my Sunday as I possibly could!