Stick, Kaliveli and I

Stick:
Stick and I go back ages, okay at least back to first year of college and that is seven bloody years ago!

We are poles apart - she is a pole and I am a monstrous gothic column - but we still get along on green issues and make films together. Pitifully low-budget documentaries, but still, something of a cause.

Okay, now why the name? Obvious. Why even on our recent Kaliveli trip, she had me panicked yet again thinking that I had lost sight of her. Watching out for each is an unspoken code that we have on shoots and recces. And my B.P. kept shooting up in no-signal zone until I realised that one of the poles in the distance was her.

Kaliveli:
In the meanwhile, the road to the Kaliveli (Kalu-veli in Tamil) was a slushy delight though I could see how much the wetland has shrunk. Earlier, it used to be visible from the East Coast Road, now shrimp hatcheries and paddy fields are ruining its delicate fresh-brackish water mix.

Imagine these wetlands, estuaries, lagoons and lakes and ponds all at once on a map - don't they make a fascinating hydrological system? Someday, I want to make an illustration of these water bodies, at least the ones in Madras and Pondy.

Though the paddy fields are part of Kaliveli's problems, it looked beautifully green, and we spent ages talking to the locals. The fresh air did us passive smokers wonders - we have an editor who can work only with a tobacco I.V.

and I:
And I have realised that my kurta-trousers, socks-floaters, hat-sun glasses attire works against good conversation with these locals, many of them were wearing only a komanam. Next time, I am gonna do a Tamil-films village-teacher routine. Must-remember accessory - the umbrella.


Back home, we holed in at the editor's studio to fast-track some of our work and I had my first red-bull. It tasted like cough syrup and I gulped it down likewise. But nothing could stop me from sleeping like sloshed, and Stick and the editor slitting each other's throats. Sue, sue red bull.


And Stick's jaw drop at first encounter with the species Universitias professorius was hilarious. But that warrants a separate post.