LT COL NOEL ELLIS 24/V/2025 It was a lovely morning, the sun shone bright and the sky was as blue. My visit to the Mandir side beyond our colony boundary wall was due in quite some time. They had put barriers by deploying thorny Kikkar branches to block the entry of stray cows, near the mandir. It was time to give it a check. Aim was to meet my very old good friends ‘The Peafowl’ family. I keep hearing their calls, beckoning me to say hello to them but I did not respond. Today, was the time to spend some time with them. As I reached the side gate, there was a flock of BIRDS trying to scavenge some scattered grains. People were not feeding them like they used to. Maybe, people had gone on summer holidays. Even their water bowls were dry. I requested the guard there, who seemed totally disinterested. I asked the ‘Tittahri’, about the rest of her friends. She too just kept feeding. Then I asked Robin. She was busy singing and bobbing her tail with ...
LT COL NOEL ELLIS 23/V/2025 How do you like to have your drink? Some like it shaken and not stirred, some ‘on the rocks’, some like it ‘neat’, some hide it in coke, some straight for the bottle, and some don’t mind ‘Tharra’. I will not talk about ‘Hooching’. “Alcoholics’ can drink all the above. But what about my birdie friends? Birds can drink water from anywhere. It could be from a river, a pond, a nala, even a drain. Some get used to a homely environment, love to have it from their bar aka an earthen bowl. It is like having a cold drink in this heat. For birds their ‘bar’ is like the ritual of going to fetch water at the village well where they congregate. They gossip, tease, fight, nudge and even shoo each other away. Two to three sips and it is all done. No one wastes it, no one gets drunk and no one minds drinking straight from the same bottle. It was like the younger days when we shared one beer bottle amongst frie...