Yeoman Showman!
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We share with you another photo story by Amit Kumar where he describes about Yeoman whom he thinks as a Showman. Enjoy the pictures clicked by him with his creative writing describing the experience.
An orange blur zig-zagged past my nose and faded into the thick green bushes.
Blurs of various colours swish by with great frequency in the Western Ghats, so I did not pay much attention – till the orange blur re-emerged.
This was the first time I was meeting a Tamil yeoman – quite the showman.
Wikipedia lyrically describes it as ‘… colour of various shades of reddish-ochreous washed with pale violaceous-grey’.
The yeoman parked right where I was standing to lick the moisture and minerals from the soil. (_Since squinting modifiers are notorious in the English language, I’d like to be clear: the butterfly was doing the licking, not me). _
This particular Tamil yeoman – official state butterfly of Tamil Nadu – prefers rest and rehydration in Kerala.
In slow motion, I got into a graceless squatting position, requesting my associate to watch my back – and this is not a mere figure of speech. In the wild, if you get immersed like I often do, there’s constant danger to your derrière.
The licking and squatting lasted a good 45 minutes, and we both fluttered off contentedly into safety and shade.
In all, these were a memorable few days: A dung beetle that looked like a mini blue-black rhino; the ornamentally shaped maidenhair fern; a baby kundru/coccinia spouting a flower; a tiny green mosaic cricket; a tiny red cricket that looked like a tractor; our ocherous yeoman; the cloud-speckled sun; and a mottled meandering feral cat we call Tintin.
Of course, there are the bonnet macaques that troop down from the hills every other afternoon to steal passion fruit and rose apples while giving me disdainful glances.
I feel like Alice in Bandarland.
(I’ve made up the cricket names. I don’t even know if they are crickets. Feel free to edify.)
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