1ST MAY

I looked at the weather forecast for the week, it confirmed my worst fears - sunny spheres beamed back at me, no clouds, no rain, no wind, just sunshine and temperatures of 42 C every single day...this is Gujarat, the driest and hottest state in India, apart from Rajasthan.  Saturday, 1st May, marked the 50th anniversary of the founding of the State of Gujarat...the economic engine of India .....so I took a rickshaw ride around town to see how they celebrated this auspicious event.  Festoons of lights, in the tricolor of the Indian National Flag, are draped over every Government Building, including Inland Revenue, which looks more like a popular discotheque, than a place of serious accounting, lights decorate every shrub and tree on every traffic circle, garlands of lights are draped over walls - Baroda has turned into a mini 'Vegas' !

They've even brought out a book on Baroda's medicinal herbs and plants - they are all located in the Vice Chancellor's Garden, which would explain a new statue I noticed, peeping over the fence - he is brightly gilded and god like and represents the physician to the gods and keeper of herbal remedies.  Coriander is the herb most people would never be without and in the summer, chai is made with mint, rather than ginger, which is a winter warmer.

This is also the mango season - they hang from trees like huge elongated green baubles, and the Indian Cuckoo is heard everywhere - a strange call, which increases in intensity as it goes up the scale, sounding increasingly hysterical. " It's associated with summer and mangoes,"  Trupti explained to me.  She went on to tell me about the King Cobra which had lived in a drain in their front garden - it would come out at night and slide off to hunt in the open fields nearby - it didn't bother them at all, but it did bother their night watchman.  He would sit on a chair outside their front door and the cobra would come out with much hissing and hood extended looking at him with malignant disapproval, until the frightened man was forced to move his chair to another part of the garden.  This game went on every night, but in the end the neighbours were so afraid, that they implored them to get rid of it.

The trapping of this King Cobra became the major event of the street, with everyone watching, from a safe distance, as they first flooded the drain until a very angry snake emerged and was deftly encouraged into a waiting bag by the snake handler - who then announced that it was female and there could be young ones - a cry of horror went up from the crowd at the idea of possibly another 30 of them !  Trupti now has no need of a watchman, as nobody will come near the property for fear of meeting one of the offspring !