June 24~. The first day of monsoon mist, and it's strange how all the birds fall silent as the mist comes climbing up the hill. Perhaps that's what makes the mist so melancholy. Only one hour ago the trees were ringing with bird song. And now the forest is deathly still as through it were midnight through the Bujji is calling to his sister. I can hear him running about on the hillside but i cannot see him.
June 25~. Some genuine early monsoon rain, warm and humid, and not that cold high altitude stuff we've been having all year.The plants seem to know it too, and the first cobra lily rears it's head from the ferns as I walk up to the bank and post office .
The mist affords a certain privacy.
A school boy asked me to describe the hell station and valli in one sentence and all i could say excited i said might have been."
June 29~ we have heralded the arrival of some seasonal visitors ---alia bhatt and survival thousand beaches .
Yesterday afternoon delhi police ke dog from near the servants quarter below the school. A tress move rapidly trunk of the oak trees snapping up insect all the way now that rain here. there is no death of food for the insectivorous bird.
Agust 2~ all night the rain has been drumming on the corrugated tin roof. There's has been no strom, no thunder, just the steady swish of a tropical downpour. It helps me to lie awake at the same time, it doesn't untouched by , and yet in touch with, the rain
August 3~ the rain stops. The clouds begin to break up. The sun strike the hill on my left . A woman is chopping up Strick. I hear the Tinkle of cowbelly. In the oak tree, a crow shakes the raindrops from his feathers and caws disconsolately. Water drips from a leaking drainpipe and suddenly, clean a pure,the song of the whistling thrush emergency like a dark sweet secret from the depths of the ravine. Snakes and rodents, flooded out of their holes and burrow, take shelter in roofs attics and godown. A shrew, weak of eyesight, blunders about the rooms much to the amusement of the children.
Don't kill it, adomonished their grandmother chachundar are lucky --- they bring money!.
And sure enough, I recieved cheque in the mail. Not a very large one but welcome all the same.
March 23~ late march,end of winter.
The blackest cloud I've ever seen squatted over mussoorie, and then it hailed marvels for half an hour .
Northing like a hailstorm to clear the sky. Even as i write i see a rainbow forming.
TANUSRI DAS