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Shoes and other stories: Vegetables

Follow the stream on your left and as you cross the last bridge to the reach the domkyrkan, you will find a small vegetable market only on Saturdays. Farmers, mostly from Enköping come here to sell there produce which includes mushrooms, leeks, berries, honey and pumpkin among other things. This market is frequented mostly by old people. People who hate 6-minute microwave food right out of the freezer racks of an Ica store. The market also tells quite a lot about Sweden’s rich agricultural history.

I met Jack, originally from Thailand, runs a small little farm outside of Enköping with his mother and four sisters. His mother along with his sisters migrated from Thailand when Jack was four years old. Jack did not mind a photo with his mushrooms.

Another interesting man was Tim. He too owned a farm outside Enköping. Tim is super-interested about eco-farming. He was happy to hear about our project and wanted to help. He believed that the damage caused to the crops when no pesticides are used can be handled with extra labour and maintenance. As of now, Tim opened his farm to us for research and sampling. He also invited me to a party at his farm on 15th of August!

Tim refused to pose. So this is as close as it gets.

You should check him out here

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Shoes and other stories: Uppsala Diaries I

What do you do this weekend in Uppsala if you are not a fan of Snoop Dogg? You visit the art galleries and museums Uppsala has to offer.  

I wandered into one such art gallery displaying an installation called the shoe stories: Everybody looks at your shoes, do you?

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Sikkim to Sweden

We visited Sikkim almost two months back. The long car rides to the field site grew on me. The unending lines of wild strawberries, buttercups and Primulas were a treat. We got a small yet clear window to work. Five days straight, the sky was clear only with occasional evening rains. This proved fruitful for our volatile collection. As Shannon says,"It was awesome...we could have been dead in a landslide". Although we were caught up in few landslides here and there due to the massive earthquakes, it went pretty smooth.

The problems started later, in our own lab . The GC-MS was completely under-optimized. Engineers and us could not make peace with its analysis. Maybe because we skipped the coconut-breaking part when it first arrived. The next month was one of the toughest time in my life. Nothing was working  and we had no clue why. Thankfully, with help from engineers, servicemen and my colleagues, the peaks arrived. Not exactly with the sharpness we wanted them, but it did come.

As I sit in a dim-lit corner of the airport waiting for my flight at 2 o clock in the morning, I retrospect Sikkim and the taste of the salty tea.

Let us see what Sweden's got in store.

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Breakfast,bureaucracy and a beautiful city.

The journey to Gangtok was long but not for a second felt tiring. Up to the development area, Nettle and fern was full so had to settle with the BlueBell, which we thought, was two-storey but actually is six-storied .We had sort of a re-union at this cosy little place downhill, met Mahesh abruptly and drowned my tiredness in a peg of Old Monk. Not to mention I slept like a baby.

Breakfast, Oh Breakfast!! Probably had the best breakfast in a long time at the Nettle n Fern. Amazing place with an amazing view. It is one of those places which grow into you. Place like these really tests the elasticity of your happiness.

A ride down to the forest department, needed to get the paperwork in place.

In Place!!! Wait what was I thinking. In Bengali we have an expression "michrir chhuri" which literally translates to "knife made out of sugar". Permit not given as of now,doors to be knocked, pressure to be meted.

As we consoled ourselves over Chilli Pork and 'Dans'berg beer at HotLix, we discussed about the city and ferrel dogs. Did you know when domesticated pets become wild they really screw up the actual wildlife?

It is raining and I'm off for a reassuring cup of coffee to Rachna's- a small bookshop uphill. There's something about the people here.

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The watchful protector.

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Just what I needed to read at this point of time in my life. Why , man why????

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An opening note

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,  Than are dreamt of in your philosophy."

One of the big ones was on a flower about six feet away from me. Arumoy, stood behind me with a gigantic shadow cast on the ground. He is not a field person. The reason he came with me that day was to assess the bee situation. Often I would catch some A.serrana bees in my sweep net by mistake and the episode which followed was not pleasant. I prepared to sweep the net one more time. Suddenly something moved between the bushes.

Arumoy was curious, I ignored him. Must have been a lizard. One sweep and big guy was inside it. I almost basked in glory- this was the first catch in 2 days.

I looked between the bushes, where the sound came from. It was long and brown, an elegant cobra.