YEOMAN SHOWMAN

May 2022

An orange blur zig-zagged past my nose and faded into the thick green bushes.

Blurs of various colours swish by with great frequency in the Western Ghats, so I did not pay much attention - till the orange blur re-emerged.

This was the first time I was meeting a *Tamil yeoman* - quite the showman.

Wikipedia lyrically describes it as ‘… colour of various shades of reddish-ochreous washed with pale violaceous-grey’.

The yeoman parked right where I was standing to lick the moisture and minerals from the soil. (Since squinting modifiers are notorious in the English language, I’d like to be clear: the butterfly was doing the licking, not me).

This particular Tamil yeoman - official state butterfly of Tamil Nadu - prefers rest and rehydration in Kerala.

In slow motion, I got into a graceless squatting position, requesting my associate to watch my back - and this is not a mere figure of speech. In the wild, if you get immersed like I often do, there’s constant danger to your derrière.

The licking and squatting lasted a good 45 minutes, and we both fluttered off contentedly into safety and shade.

In all, these were a memorable few days: A dung beetle that looked like a mini blue-black rhino; the ornamentally shaped maidenhair fern; a baby kundru/coccinia spouting a flower; a tiny green mosaic cricket; a tiny red cricket that looked like a tractor; our ocherous yeoman; the cloud-speckled sun; a mottled meandering feral cat we call Tintin; and a white one that is yet to be named.

The week after the Tamil Yeoman showed up, another orange blur floated in at the same spot and did the same things, as if to outdo its cousin. This one, the Rustic yeoman, has more cartographic colour patterns and is equally umissable.

Of course, there are the bonnet macaques that troop down from the hills every other day to steal passion fruit and rose apples while giving me disdainful glances.

Notwithstanding the ostracism I am facing, I relate to these monkeys for three reasons:

- The same hairstylist

- Need to doze off after lunch

- Strange behaviour

I feel like Alice in Bandarland.

~*~