When justice is a distant dream even for human beings, who cares about birds and animals around us? When Kerala government’s proposed judicial city becomes a reality, the first casualty will be the pristine forest of HMT Kalamassery.
The fragile ecosystem, considered to be the lungs of Kochi city, is a biodiversity hotspot, home to over 80 species of birds, 74 species of butterflies, 65 species of plants, 35 species of spiders and 9 species of mammals and countless other living beings
As one of my favourite haunts, I’ve spent countless hours photographing its avian life. Last summer, deep inside the woods, I noticed a bulbul bathing in a pot someone had left behind. For over two months, I returned daily, devoting four to five hours to capture these winged beauties splashing.
Fearing the loss of a perfect, fraction-of-a-second frame, I glued myself to the viewfinder, as I was in meditation. The wait was transformative, yielding hundreds of beautiful, freezing frames of bathing beauties in various plumages. A select few were recently published in the popular travel magazine, ‘Manorama Traveller’. The rest is my treasure.
