January 2019 – Riya's own space

Yesterday, an often regular old lady entered the bank and the first thing she uttered was “Hey you are wearing a beautiful top that makes you look pretty”. I smiled and only smiled. I could hardly respond to her. Instead of feeling nice and happy about it, I slightly panicked inside. What I was taken aback with that she has grown old , we had some good moments and one day she will leave us all . I know this sounds weird to our ears when everyone knows its a fact, and still doesn’t like to be reminded . What this very little incident reminded me of that “There was this really really really nice lady customer who use to come to my bank branch quite often , who had a loooong name . I called her Maria ma’am ( which was neither her first or last name, I liked it that way ) .She was around 85 to 86 years old and had super glow with calmness on her face . Her personality somewhat personified my character( I think) . She seemed to be a satisfied person with children and grandchildren settled in country and abroad. She walked nice and tall for her age and took care of every banking need mostly on her own. She was too polite in nature. But why am I talking about her all this while ? Read on ……

The thing with her was that i really liked whenever she came . No matter what the situation i am in she made me feel calm with just her presence . And the most significant thing was that she liked me the exact way back . Her job was mostly done by the branch manager but without fail , she came to me every time to talk to me for a few moments , while we looked at each other with Awe.

She was a real fan of the constant smile on my face and my cheerful attitude . Every time we talked , she cued me how delightful it is to feel the positivism and calmness when in the same room as me . Irrespective of the crowd handling and the other work pressures, I spread laughter that help her relax and vice versa. And I used to reply her with ” Your presence is the reason behind my smile and it usually broadens when you are around ” . She was really a nice lady with a warm cozy heart , I could feel that through the glass shield between us.

A few days went by , I didn’t see her . One day one of her grandson came to deposit some cheque , I have seen him with her earlier, so I asked him about why isn’t she coming on her own , if she was okay due to her old age ? What he replied was really hard for me to digest and I knew , maybe I would never see her again . She had throat cancer, last stage and due to the old age she couldn’t tolerate the chemotherapies as well . I showed my helpless concern and he left. A few weeks later he came again and this time before leaving the premises he came to my counter to forward the good wishes that directly came from Maria ma’am . He said that she was happy to hear from me .That was the very last time I heard anything from her. She couldn’t survive to see the new year calender of 2019 . She left us . What she left with me was her optimism towards life and the temperament that we shared .. I will always remember her.

And then comes the most sad part of being the banker , no matter how much you are emotionally attached to the person or how awful you feel , you have to do the banker’s job.We settled her death claim towards her children . I have always been this emotional kid , but only did I realize after joining a PSU , Where we directly connect to public and their almost personal lives. I had this type of connection with people in Kolkata before , but I had hardly imagined this would happen in a state where the language is also unfamiliar to me . I guess that sums up to just being me all the time .Its just me !!!!!

Hello folks. I am already a week late to wish you all an amazing new year 2019. May all your wishes come true this year and hope you start doing whatever you have planned and failed to start doing till now. Because you know what, its very important to start, to make the first move, because if there is no 1st move, there will never be a second and you can never achieve what you want. Hence, make the FIRST move. Speaking of first, I am here sharing my first post of the year and it had to be a birding one.. So here it is- my another very beautiful experience of birding adventures in North Goa.

The next sunday after my Pilerne lake bird watching activity , I was looking for some place nearby to bird. My husband suggested borda lake, as he had heard about the lake from some one but did not have much knowledge about birds being there. I started googling the same and what I end up with this amazing place in Donwaddo in Salvador-do mundo. What we understood is that Borda lake must be somewhere closeby to this area or one of the waterbody in here are named as borda. May be next time when we explore more over that lake, we will know the difference (if there is any).

This migratory bird watching place is very easy to reach. What all you need is a smart phone with GPS on 😀 Just ask google to take you to “ Migratory birds Area in North Goa”. The first search option will take you to Donwaddo. It is a huge marsh/ wetland seperated with a well maintained pitch road. AS soon as my eyes struck the board, I wanted to jump off of the activa, but I waited till it stopped as it was been ridden by my husband who accompanied me to have a beautiful december sunday morning in nature.
The day started off with beautiful sighting of brahminy kites .We had to stop there and then. The whole landscape was worth skipping a breath. There were more than few adult kite taking the most stunning perch on one broken branches each within a circumference.

After spending few moments taking snaps and satisfying eyes, we moved on to my first lifer Siberian stonechat -female.As it was road side, I quickly set up my tripod to have more stable pictures of my lifer.

I was not quite happy with its perch on wire and that’s when a little big bird came and sat a meter away from the little one. I turned my cam to find out its a long tailed shrike. Another lifer 😀

I followed the shrike for sometime till it gave me most beautiful natural pose. As a bonus, he was hungry and had a breakfast bite infront of me. After getting close up and eye level shots of the shrike we moved ahead a bit.

There was this very little blue kingfisher flying here and there not letting me capture him even for a second. While I was tracking the little cutie, a spotted dove flew and sat in one of the bushes closeby. It was that close that my zoom couldn’t even capture its whole body. As I was struggling with zooming in-zoom out , it obviously flew away. (PS: I need more practice :P) But a quite ok shot of a lifer is good to go.

My next shot was that of a Stork billed kingfisher. A big sized kingfisher with red lipstick beak with really loud voice. I cropped off the body part to keep the cemented perch out of my frame. So here is a close up of Mr. Stork billed kingfisher.

As we moved ahead, we saw a number of egrets, black winged stilts on one side and a few cormorants on another. As we went a little further, there is an offroad on the right side which we took and decided to take the vehicle along. And there I got some of the very beautiful shots.
Common or little kingfisher (finally on a clean perch)

Indian cormorant (preening)

Indian cormorant ( drying up wings)

Oriental darter (shining as a star)

Oriental darter stretching its long neck further

We rode till we couldn’t ride anymore. I loved that particular village road. It has what we call “PEACE”. I had my moment with serenity (as always) and we turned back to reach the starting point again. I still had hopes to see a few more birds on the go and get some really good frames.
Purple heron (perfectly camouflaged with the dry grasses)