Sitting On a Croc's Tail

Wasn't easy trying to lift my enormous bag across the platform with people snoring away to glory inches away from my feet. I could see her standing with her mother, looking out for a familiar face so i immediately waved in her direction with my free hand.
I was too excited to say anything more than a high pitched "wats up!" to which i got an equally enthusiastic "can you believe we're actually going to do this?". The place we were heading for, along with a few other (yet to be acquainted with) youngsters was The Madras Crocodile Bank Trust(MCBT) in Tamil Nadu. For most people the idea of catching crocs, weighing them and possibly even hugging them, wouldn't sound too amusing now would it? Well we aren't most people. We literally jumped at the very idea of such a possiblity. I didn't need to hear an Ok from my parents, they knew i was a crazy child long before i knew it myself.
So there we were waiting for Gerry,Kaushik and the rest of the jing bang. Took a while for them to arrive but they did eventually. I looked around me , the people who caught my eye first were these two girls , one with bright red hair with what looked like quite a painful piercing through her eyebrow and another girl half my size with nearly twice as many earrings in each ear. "So this should be interesting", i made a mental note to myself.
Well the weekend was interesting, infact it was so much more fun than i had ever expected from any non-family vacation.The Madras Crocodile Bank was started in 1976 by herpetologist Romulus Whitaker. This bank was started to protect India's dwindling crocodile population and to preserve the Snake catching.The Crocodile Bank occupies an area of 3.2 hectares and has been established with an aim to protect and conserve the endangered reptiles such as Crocodiles, Alligators, etc. The wildlife reserve offers a green bed of lush tropical vegetation, which provides ample shade to the thousands of crocodilians. The main attraction at the Chennai Crocodile Bank is the crocodile conservation center, which is the largest croc-breeding site in India.the Madras Crocodile Bank boasts of harbouring the largest captive crocodile in India - Jaws III - a 30-year-old saltwater crocodile, 16 feet long and weighing about 575 kg. – and still growing!The MCBT is known for successfully breeding one of the world’s critically endangered Indian painted roof turtle, Kachuga.
During our visit there we did a host of things. We started with the cleaning of the Aligator and False Gharial pit. Then came the tagging sexing (identifying the sex) of the Caimans which took most of our day.
On the third day we worked with the marsh crocodiles(also called Muggers). It was a very systematic procedure we had to follow sort of like a protocol. Drag the net through the water from one end to the other, in the process trap as many of 'em muggers as you can. Then pull them out one by one, cover their eyes(makes them feel secure) and tape the mouth. If by any unfortunate chance you happen to forget this tiny step, be ready to go back home limbless. Now comes the best part. You need a minimum of 4 people per croc, so you announce which body part you want to get a hold of and on the count of three POUNCE and hold on as though your life depended on that hold. It isn't easy doing this while the croc under you swishes it's rough tail back and forth hoping for an escape.
Doing this repeatedly for nearly 20 odd crocs took pretty much the entire day, but not for a single moment did we feel tired(did i mention we were fed really well!). We had our friends from BBC running around with us trying to catch every second of this "Fantastic Experience" (as Steve Bradshaw would put it) on camera.
Sigh, this had to end eventually. but never will i forget that weekend with the crocodiles of Chennai, or the people with whom i had to enjoy each minute.We formed one hell of a team!
Come next May, you'l know where to find me =)

The Agumbe Rainforest Experience

Ideal Departure Time: 9:30 pm. Ha!
Actual Departure Time : 12:00 am. Bangalore Traffic i tell ya.
In that time, i think we all sort of began the "breaking of the ice" process with all the people waiting for the bus ride to Agumbe at the St Joseph's Indian School. We were all clad in a minimum of three layers of clothing each, assuming that we'd freeze in the cold without them.
We were headed for the Agumbe Rainforest Research Station (ARRS) to attend a Herpetology Workshop lead by Gerry Martin organised by Wishbone Interactive .
Four of us from Green Shield went along with this really interesting group of people , not really knowing what to expect from the weekend that followed. The amount of knowledge that so easily got washed into our heads was simply amazing. A trip like this really does give you a solid platform to exchange ideas and stories with people (who till about a few days earlier you hadn't even heard of).
We learnt about the envrionment & nature.About what role we play within it. We learnt about various reptiles , amphibians, birds and about the diversity in the flora found in the Agumbe rainforest. Well, I appreciate nature in all its splender a lot more now.
All i can say is that it was only AFTER i reached Bangalore (after the three days of non stop Educational fun and Brilliance ) did i begin to feel homesick.

Over to you - Kritika, Aishwarya & Natasha!

DAY1 : In the excitement of reaching Agumbe we forgot our tedious journey from Bangalore and the incessant rain throughout our journey.
The thought of meeting Gerry Martin, made us light headed as we hurriedly put on our trekking gear including leech socks. We were awed by the Western Ghats and our first sighting of a vine snake, which we promptly took and studied. After lunch a second trek followed late in the evening, when we came across a venomous Malabar Pit Viper . In his brilliant way Gerry showed us how to identify this snake, enumerating its many features. We also saw a very defensive Purple back crab that kept clicking the whole time we tried to calm it down. With the help of Sagar (our little child genius) we also found a plump little Bull Frog sitting quietly under a tree.
Our day ended with us all exhausted, falling asleep in the tents we pitched in the forest.

- Kritika
DAY2 : Warm sleeping bags, fresh air, yummy food and day2 without a bath, now that was heaven. Leeches,those dreadful ectoparasites that just never got enough of us. But the beauty of Agumbe overshadowed the ickiness that the leeches provided. Today we at least considered brushing our teeth (but not everyone put this thought into action :) After a delicious breakfast we got dressed and went to Gerry's cottage for a mini photo session with the snakes we were studying. Beautiful 4 day old King Cobras, pit vipers, green vine snakes and coral snakes were what we got to closely examine.I'm pretty sure though, that the snakes weren't too happy with the perpetual flashes of light coming from our cameras . Srikanth. a second year engineering student had to pay the price for getting too close. He got bitten by the cat sake a venomous snake which fortunately has no effect on humans. Soon after we went for lunch and ate our hearts out and got ready for our walk through the forest to release the pit viper to where we found it.
I was going nuts at this point...high on the snakes would be more like it! I ran around jumping into puddles and pushing people in them as well. The biggest mistake i made was pushing Dhillan ( A worldspace RJ from Bangalore) into a puddle that was deep enough to sink him up till his knees! After which i just kept running for my life. Everywhere i went i just watched my back. The last thing i wanted was to get into his evil clutches!, but fortunately he was sweet enough to let me live ;) Phew. After deleeching ourselves we got lost in the madness of Dhillan and Gerry's jokes , trust me we literally gagged with laughter.
We laughed our way through dinner and waited for Gowri Shankar ( the Conservation Officer at the ARRS) to give us a presentation on Agumbe , the research station and the magnificent King Cobras that are found there. Throughout the presentation we bombarded him with questions left,right and centre! Oh and i have never absorbed so much information just by listening to someone while they explained using a PowerPoint (which had such interesting & crisp facts) . Truly enlightening.The day wasn't tiring enough for us so we stayed up till about 11pm talking ( by the end of which i realised leeches can be quite stupid, what with leaving their heads in our body!) Oh, all of us had just about enough of those foolish things.
We hit the sack and there ended for us, one of the most amazing days Agumbe had to offer.

- Aishwarya

DAY3 : The leeches got a lot more friendly and therefore the snakes around us got more of our attention. Stepping into the shoes of Gowri, Pradeep and other volunteers that morning, we went tracking the King Cobra that they had been working with for the past 5 months. The trail was simply exciting! but the end was a little disappointing because Opha2 (the king) decided not to show. He was hiding in a bush less than 10 fet away and was alerted by the vibrations we sent his way with all our stamping. Nevertheless it was a fruitful hike with the awe-inspiring Gowri answering all our questions.
On our way back to camp, Aishwarya's enthusiasm never died down and neither did Dhillan's thirst for revenge. At first she ran & ran & ran and never looked back. But soon Dhillan caught up with her and before she knew it, she was in the air above a ditch beside which we walking. Koo dos to her though! 'cause she fought him off by kicking the trees & air and everything that came her way.
Back at the camp we lazed around & talked to each other, explored the plantation sites & took pictures of everything we were going to leave behind. The little genius Sagar went exploring with Shyam and returned with an injured Green Vine. On close observation , Gerry found that it was blind in one eye having been attacked.
Kaushik & Dhillan also headed out and came back really lucky with a bold green female Malabar Pit Viper coiled at the end of a branch. Something to be proud of.
Soon it was time for packing up our wet wet clothes, rolling in our sleeping bags, packing up the tents and bringing them all back to camp where -at least for me- a mood of depression set in. Our three day in paradise was over.
Now it was time to say our goodbyes to Agumbe - A place filled with less leeches than Bangalore City (*wink wink*)We all got rides in the ARRS jeep to where the bus was waiting for us. With all the luggage uploaded, we got into the bus and soon we were out, out of the rainforest that soaked us for the past 3 days. I was beginning to miss the leeches and with a blink of an eye, it was all over.
On the bus we were city people, talking about getting back to our routine lives, some of the guys putting on fake accents and amusing themselves, Shyam sleeping on Chetana, Pari & Dhillan & ofcourse yours truly closing her eyes and wishing the departure to be a dream.
Alas kiki woke me up, " We've reached" , she said and my worst nightmare came true. We had reached Bangalore and i had classes in a few hours ( which i did not attend) but i came down to Earth, we all did. And as Pari says it 'Agumbe withdrawal Syndrome' set in.

- Natasha

Thank You Wishbone Interactive -Gerry,Kaushik & Shyam , All at the ARRS and well yes..the colourful people we spent those three days with. Woot!

Designing with a Difference

Oh what fun it was organising our Environment based T-shirt designing Competition.
Every year Mount Carmel has an intra college fest.As always Popular events would include Dance, music, dumb charades..personality!! Events like quiz & debate organized by the Science association are most often forgotten. But we thought that as part of our En Science awareness campaign , we MUST have an event of our own. T-shirt Designing thusly. Cul Week (the fest) had a theme -Street Jam. In keeping with that theme we tried to make our topics as catchy as we could.
* Its getting Hot in Here
** Waiting on the World to Change
*** The Wild Wild West(ern Ghats)
Our winners :-

the plan was to provide the contestants with paper only, the rest they would have to bring themselves. For a long time we dreaded that we would actually end up waiting at the registration desk all day for someone to sign up and eventually have to scribble the designs ourselves.
But Lo & Behold. we had 12 teams. very creative ones. Three Winners. A very Happy Green Shield =)
Considering the fact that this was the first time we were doing something of this sort, we were quite happy with the response we got.
Think out of the box. thats the key. If you have any suggestions as to what our next event could be...Tell us!

Chet.

Green Shield- How it began

Two IT professionals sat around with a cup of coffee in hand. They invented the world’s brilliant software but didn’t know what to call it. One of them looked at the coffee mug and read what it said aloud. The other gleamed. “That’s it. That’s what we shall call our software.” And that’s how Yahoo got its name.

Simplicity. That’s what revolves all big companies and famed institutes. And Green shield is no different. Not to sound too ambitious, it’s just the way we began, seemed to have a lot of similarities with them.

It all began on one fine summer afternoon, on May 22nd 2008. We were visiting a laboratory, located in an area far from civilization. It would perhaps be appropriate to call it ‘an educational trip’.

Having past several fields of barren land, strewn concrete and tar, my eyes grew sore. I was horrified at the sight of it. I began to wonder how painful it must have been for someone to witness this green place turn grey. What happened? Why all this mess?

These questions redundantly occurred in my mind. Someone should do something! Maybe... I should do something… Maybe I can form a team, and we can work together and mitigate the effects of pollutant sources. We can be the people who attempt to change the world!

So I looked at my juniors pumped with energy and renewed hope- It was time, to pull things out my thought bubble and put it in a speech bubble!

I looked at Chets- all animated as she recognized a cluster of nimbus- cirrus clouds, Kat drew a blissful smile across her face lest she seemed sleep-deprived and exhausted from her 4 hour journey to Bangalore. Madhu sits right next to Chets patiently drumming her fingers on her knee, and Yogi was lost in her day dream…

Humph… This aint the best opening scene but nonetheless...

“Ahem… Hey guys, I was thinking, maybe we should get together and form a team and do something, you know, something outside college… what say?”
“Heyyyyyyyyyy!!” Chets jumps outta her seat.
“That sounds great!” Katya adds, “That would be cool!” Madhu pitches in and Yogi smiles in agreement.

During the whole journey back and the following two days, we had absolutely zilch idea as to what we would do as a group, but we decided to tackle the issue one by one. So first we had to christen it and inform Rosh and Meg about it.

We went through a list of names we tried, Green Gundas, Ecotree, EnProtect, Green Protect… and then we finally settled with GREEN SHIELD, ‘Guarding today for tomorrow.’

Many a paper & cloth bag

Nanny(Keerthi) calls me one day saying that we probably have someone who might be able help us with Our 'No Plastic' Drive in college. ' Belaku Trust' , a support group for women( in the villages around Kanakapura ) who make a living by making Gorgeous, simply Gorgeous Cloth and Paper Products.
For Green Shield i think this was quite a big (yet mini) project in many ways. You see it was the first time we were interacting in a very business-like manner with an NGO. Up until now it was all through phone or email , very informal throughout. But here it was suddenly making it to meetings on time,visiting their office in JP Nagar, giving them dates well in advance, placing orders , talking in terms of stock & money ...and well i think you get what I'm saying.
So Rosh, Nanny & i go for our meeting (2pm-4pm slot as Ishviene called it) at Koshys. We (I,for one) expected to see a strict woman in a suit, drumming her fingers on the table impatiently (because nanny said she had been engulfed in the Corporate World for more than a decade!) ...instead however we found three women giggling away to glory( over something Barb said i assume) at a corner table .
The above mentioned name , Barb .. should give you a picture of a really ADORABLE 50 yr old hilarious Australian volunteer(she insists on not being branded a 'tourist'). She along with Malavika (Graduate in CBZ from Christ College, another clown , if i might add. Newly recruited to the Belaku Trust as Coordinater) and Ishviene( the Head of them all).
We spent a good 2 hours discussing all that had to be discussed and even radiating to other (totally irrelevant) issues, starting from the teeth grinding traffic in our city, to a typical day in Dubai.
We struck a deal, they were willing to keep a stall in our College for 4 days during the Cultural intra college fest "Cul Week". The stall would be open to all , from students and teachers, to parents and random visiters. The products which included Notepads, books, files, pens , greeting cards AND shawls, bags, belts scarfs and many such things would be sold at a Special College Discount.
Two weeks later , it was Cul Week. I as always started panicking!! well i had every reason to, we hadn't made any posters or divided the stall work (like we had promised the Belaku peeps) but again as always, everything worked out Perfectly!. We made a grand total of Rs 27, 600 over a period of 4 days, in the process making many college goers happy , spreading our message of saying NO TO PLASTIC ; to switch to cloth and paper instead , spreading social awareness and also having fun in the process (PLENTY PLENTY!!!!).
Not to forget making great friends at Belaku, with whom we hope to work with,
on many occasions in the future.

Big hug , going out to our Green Shield Members - Keerthi, Roshni, Katya( the posters u made in barely 3 seconds were great!) meghna (with your publicising antics), Madhu (who bought so much from her own stall..ahah!), Sapna (our dearest accountant!) Natasha , Aishwarya (for being a stupid and yet smooth seller) Yogi!
So repeat after me,
"Plastic ain't my bag!!"
To see the Catalog of Belaku Trust products, click!
www.belakutrust.org

Chet.