Dragon
A half moon in a hazy sky and low tide. Sleepy early morning walkers, yawning, stretching. The post-monsoon air is cool but damp. Thoughts turn inwards. The haze penetrates already foggy minds, and a dream like quality envelopes the sea and sky and sidewalk. No one pays attention to the unusual visitors hovering over the trees.
Marine Drive is lined with Barringtonia asiatica, commonly called the Fishpoison tree. This is a singularly unfortunate name for trees lining the ocean but still, these badam lookalikes are hardy shade givers. The salt air and diesel fumes don’t seem to affect them – they are thriving. The insects find the large silky pink and white flowers intoxicating – bumble bees hover drunkenly over the buds and blooms, sipping and slurring their way over the canopies. The butterflies are more genteel – tipsiness is harder to identify as they flit carelessly from one nectar pot to another.
There are no drunken bumblebees or butterflies this morning though. They must have decided to stay out of the way of the latest onslaught. There are reports from around the city of the arrival of these invaders in their hundreds. Their large bulging multifaceted eyes, the strong bodies, the wiremesh wings. These are hunters at the top of the evolutionary game. The dragonflies have had a hatching. They hover around each tree – dozens of them. Looking up at the grey sky around a Fishpoison tree, an ever changing pattern emerges as the little bombardiers circle and zoom in flight paths known only to themselves. At face level, each insect is a marvel of engineering. The eyes are huge and take up most of the head – glowing compound jewels. As if that’s not enough for a clear world view, some simple eyes are thrown in as well. The body is beautifully streamlined, heavy but not bulky like a moth’s – even a butterfly seems plump in comparison to these svelte fliers. And the wings! Fragile looking but tough and powerful. Metallic, iridescent sometimes when sunlight reflects dazzling off their surface. Not this morning though. The sun is hidden by the haze and the dragonflies are clearly demarcated against the sombre sky.
Something about the blooming Fishpoison trees attracts them. Perhaps a largesse of tiny insects that they can feast upon. They dive and swoop fearlessly, never colliding, a silent and steely corps de ballet, all shimmering wings and shiny tutus.
The eye is drawn upwards in this sunless sky. Far above, the kites are circling. The fish must be rising in the low tide waters. Two black headed gulls fly inland from over the waters, their wings held taut to ride the smallest current. Lower down, smaller unidentifiable birds are now attracted to the dragonflies. I see one snapped up in midflight. The hunters are now the hunted.
Dragonflies. Their prehistoric ancestors were large, with wing spans up to thirty metres. They haven’t changed much, other than the obvious reduction in size. They are beautiful creatures, skimming over ponds or divebombing under cloudy skies. Harbingers of changes in humidity, Marine Drive is transformed this sullen morning by their jewelled presence.
Butterflies are beautiful and fragile in a more conventional sense but I have a liking for these predators with paper wings. Turtles and dragonflies, vultures and hyenas – there is something special in these creatures that lies hidden in plain sight. In their powerful jaws and wings, in the inelegant flippers and hard exteriors, in the muscled bodies and wicked claws, there is a strange beauty of strength, precision and efficiency.
The dragonflies will be gone tomorrow. For now, they have invaded Marine Drive and laid claim to its air space. I watch them, walk forgotten, until the sun bursts through the clouds and all at once, shines too brightly to look up anymore.