"Why this particular fear of the mandala"? I asked him. "The cobra is poisonous, and they're here in greater numbers. You never mention a cobra sighting."

It's a blue-topped bright-green world now during June, and more avians than ever in the twelve years I've known the place have flown into the plantation.

The birds kept up their pitiable cries for over a half-hour. I cannot say what was up with them. Did they sight a cat? Was one in their numbers cuckolded?

When he brought his machete crashing down, slicing the banana and the vibhuti, and cracking the coconut, there wasn't in this year's poojé the yellow of yolk or the goo of egg-white.

Such a death everybody had been anticipating — somebody would go like this, somebody other than them. Everybody was proved right, all but a 40-year-old, owner of the plantation next to ours on our east.

I take a last look at the glowing mist that has filled the trees and capped the hills. It is as though a cold white heat has rimmed this world, this enormous bowl ringed by hills.

Every morning, the planter should walk everywhere in his plantation — the trees and the pepper and the coffee seek his smell.

It's all very promising. A deep trench is dug on our boundary for a high wall to stand. A micro-economy has sent out its baby roots.

Three or four matches were on simultaneously — quite often, a hit from one game sent the ball to the field of another.

I said out loud that I'd build a study by the tank if I owned a plantation, but the planter didn't quite approve. "Snakes," he said. In the manner in which he said it, there appeared to be other threats as well that he wouldn't speak of.