Wheels of change and relics ...

Jalahalli is an area about 30 kms from the centre of Bangalore, or so to speak.

Kenneth Anderson, the famous Irish hunter-writer who lived in British India before the 70's writes about an incident in Jalahalli. This must have happened somewhere in the 60's. He talks about a Jalahalli that is a mildly forested area with lots of wastelands and areca nut plantations. Large areas of scrubbed thorny land merging into the forests. There, he tells the story of a leapord who strayed into one of those plantations, and the story of the people who try to get rid of it. The leapord fights valiantly and mauls and kills a number of people though he himself gets badly shot, incarcerated and injured, and dies of blood loss and fatigue.

Turn forward for just about fifty or so years, which is well within the range of an average person's life, and look at Jalahalli now.

Now Jalahalli is a bustling suburb, buildings and shops and broad roads, apartments and maddening crowds. Not even a remote sign of shrub lands and such. Leapords live only in children's stories and the Discovery channel.

The turning wheels of change have rolled them far back and away. They are now old, forgotten;

They have been made relics.


and yet, in this turning wheels of change, something remains the same, constant, immutable throughout;

which is, open your mind, and see, the land, the canvas, the earth ...

and one Malayalam poem snippet,