Exploring Unknown Nature of Nature

After having hostel supper, I was in my room with my laptop, searching old files and folders, and deleting the one no longer in use. Rihana’s song 'What's my name' was playing and I was trying to imitate her voice, my fingers were busy in deleting useless files. One of my hostel mates knocked at my door and said, “Tomorrow, we are going on a trek to Karol Tibba, {Solan (H.P.)}. Do you want to join us?”  I muted my song and replied, “Trekking? Yes, but early morning!” She assured me that there will no need to worry, as the arrangements had been already done by my classmate and she left.

 I am very passionate about nature and so could not say ‘No’ to this opportunity. This was the first time that I was going to trek with strangers, although some of them were familiar faces that I had seen in UHF campus (Nauni). I trusted her and so I agreed to her invitation. At midnight, I packed my bag and went to sleep thinking about which dress to choose for the next day adventure. I decided and set up my mind to wake early so that I should not be late.

Every morning of Nauni valley is very refreshing and invigorating and affirms my faith for precious life and beautiful nature. I am a student of Nauni University very close to nature, love to see vibrant phenomena of nature every day and night. I find myself very lucky to be born in the lap of Himalayas and fortunate to be studying forestry subject. I usually keep peeping outside my window to get an eyeful panoramic beauty of nature, it gives me the strength to start my work. 

Sunset in UHF Nauni

                 Today I have to trek Karol Tibba of Solan, famous as Pandava gufa. Six of us started our journey around 7 A.M. after buying fruits and vegetables for cooking lunch at the top. It took more than 2 hours to reach the Pandava gufa. It was an amazing underground, moist dark cave with lots of bats inside. Their screeching and moist slippery rocks of the cave gave us thrills. I was trying to make my way in the dark and absorbing the incredible feel of that moment. Sound of water drops from the crevasse of the rock, the noise of bats, all seemed different and made me pause to think about nature’s creation. We were beneath the surface, so came out after fifteen minutes after watching narrow tunnel inside the gufa. (Local people believe that Pandavas from Mahabharata lived in this long tunnel of about 28 Kms and its end lies in Pinjore, Haryana). Above this gufa was a temple adjoining to a small wooden house. I guess there was no other house nearby, as we tracked the remaining journey through a dense forest. We found an old lady outside the house with two dogs, which looked very healthy and active. We visited the temple and after that sat near the house to interact with the lady as we were very curious to know how she lived amidst the dense forest. She told that her spouse went down every day for work and returned back in the evening. We lived happily together with two dogs. Many a time, during the night, we sensed the presence of leopard but have not been attacked so far. From so many years we didn’t get any harm, so it’s like nature’s harmony and we love this place. She added further that during the day time, many visitors and trekkers come to like you, so I passed my day time interacting with them.

We thanked that lady and took her to leave. On returning from the gufa, we collected dry fuel woods and shrubs for fire. We found plain grassland where we decided to cook lunch. That view was heaven, we were surrounded by clouds, and the floated wind was playing with our hair, the sun seemed to move so fast behind the clouds that we could observe its movement with naked eyes. We cooked our lunch which included rice and paneer sabji, behind the shrubby ridge as the wind blew aggressively. Finally, we had our delicious lunch, interacted with one another and started becoming friends. We enjoyed with group singing, photo session and laughing together. We were at an altitude of about 2000 mts and felt cold at midday, covered neck with a muffler. The above blue sky was covered with patches of the clouds and a circular ring was moving from east to west, the adjacent green mountains were covered by Deodar and Pines forests. Farsight visibility was low, as floating clouds spread whiteness. While descending, we came across a herd of cows and goats on that grassland with shepherds. I collected various unknown Himalayan plant shrubs for identification during my return journey, because that’s what foresters do during any visit.

"Cooking is like unifier and Food is symbolic of love"

Next morning I went to my Forest Products Lab, with a sequence of work plans in my head. On the stair near the Lab, I met with Dharmu uncle who is a renowned taxonomist of our department and a commendable plant identifier. I showed all the collected samples to him for identification. I was really impressed when uncle mentioned the genus (Initial word for any scientific name) of all plants specimen which I had collected from Karol Tibba. He commanded me to come to his office for clear identification. Uncle opened an old yellow-paged book with lots of plants detail with identification key in it. He observed the leaves shape, veins, color, flowers so curiously and identified species (next word to genus for any scientific name) by using that book and gave me one by one with mentioning their names; “This is Indigofera pulchella, another Jasminum humile, then Cotoneaster microphyllus and so on…… all were new to me, so I wrote the plants’ name at the upper right edge of the paper and folded them between the sheet with regular intervals in a rough notebook. Some of the live samples that I could not collect, so I showed their images to uncle from my phone. Uncle tried to identify them and said in low voice, “Whenever you need to identify the plant, try to bring live samples with its flower. Do you want to see real samples and learn how to do identification in the field in real sense?  “Yes I do, let’s go ‘I shouted in excitement.

Uncle and I went to the medicinal field near the university cafeteria, where I noticed a Kapoor tree standing at the entrance. There was a small wooden shed where field lady staff was busy in crushing some plant seeds. I finally entered the field of medicinal plants; most of the plants were in the blooming stage. Uncle pointing toward a flower, he asked me to bring it to him. I identified it as a Hibiscus flower with purple color and gave it to uncle.

What is its family? How did you identify? He asked.

I said, ‘I remembered’.

‘Ohoooo rata hi lagana, inn professaro ne baccho ka beda gark kiya he’. He shouted furiously.

I said, ‘then how?’ reciprocating his tone. He handed over that flower to me for description.

See the flower carefully, observe what you see and tell me, he said politely.

I grew numb at his reaction and didn’t know what to say. I was thinking if I know this plant from my knowledge, and identify it to tell people that ‘this is Hibiscus’. Then what’s wrong in it. I thought so hard on this and could not think of other criteria for identification.

Uncle said, “Don’t cram image of the plant and never fill your head with color and shape only, this plant belongs to Malvaceae family because its flower has fused male and female part. Remember always”. He showed me fused characteristics of three different flowers of the same family and request to observe under the microscope for enlarge view.

He showed me another plant and asked again to identify it; I said Lily as its image was in my mind. He said, ‘Yes good, how?’

I was speechless again and tried to speak in a low voice, “Six Petals and white flower”

Then uncle clarified that Lily family has different colored flowers also with different shape, even Asparagus belongs to Liliaceae family. You can identify it with 6 Petals and 6 anthers.

I was shocked to learn that the green shrubby Asparagus belongs to Liliaceae family.

                  “Amazing nature” I sighed with thinking and noted down all information on my notebook.

All this identification aroused my curiosity further and I asked uncle to tell me more. Uncle replied, “Enough for today, search more about them from your Google Baba but confirm from books also. Library has very old and good books on Himalayan Plants with key identification. Visit there and spend time with them. You can also ask me any time within one week as after that I am going to retire from the University”.

“Where do you go after that? (Looking at uncle’s phone, which was not as smart as the uncle was in his subject). Can I contact you through whatsup or facebook?” I asked.

He said, “Lots of job offers are coming, but I want to gulp rest for a while from work, so not thinking about joining any place shortly. But I will come to the Department when in need. During this conversation, his phone rang and he remarked humorously, “See how busy I am!” And I laughed vigorously at it.

I thanked him and came back to the hostel for lunch. On my way back I thought of making my own herbarium by collecting Himalayan shrubs and grasses and compiling them together. After lunch, I went inside my room and placed all plant samples between newspapers for drying and kept them under the mattress to make them ready for the herbarium.

From there I start making my Herbarium and still working on it.

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After a year:-   Pending work…………. Procrastination, Why this is so???

                                                                                             Answer Please…