March Month Origins & Nature Observations PDF

# March ## Theme: The World Around Us. The names of the months come to us from the early Roman calendar. At first, there were ten months which had been named and two that had not been named, and all twelve months were given names. March, then, was the first month of the year. After this the order...

# March ## Theme: The World Around Us. The names of the months come to us from the early Roman calendar. At first, there were ten months which had been named and two that had not been named, and all twelve months were given names. March, then, was the first month of the year. After this the order of the calendar was changed, and all twelve months were given names. ### Matching the months with their origins | Month | Origin | |---|---| | January | named after the Roman emperor, Julius Caesar | | February | named after Juno, queen of the Roman gods | | March | named after Janus, the two-headed Roman god of doorways and new beginnings, depicted with two faces looking in opposite directions. | | April | stands for ten - the tenth month of the older calendar | | May | named after the Roman emperor, Augustus Caesar | | June | named for Februa, the feast of purification | | July | month of Mars, the Roman god of war | | August | stands for seven, the seventh month of the older calendar | | September | stands for nine, the ninth month of the older calendar | | October | comes from the Latin *Aprillis* | | November | month of Maia, a Roman Earth goddess | | December | stands for eight, the eighth month of the older calendar | ## A Keen Observer of Nature March is an unpredictable month: one day can be as cold as any in winter, the next as warm as any in spring. It may be as dry as a desert one morning and, by sundown, as wet as a monsoon night. Fresh falls of snow in the mountains of Kashmir or Himachal bring chilly winds to the capital. Strong winds push clouds up to freezing heights, convert raindrops into ice, toss icelets up over and over again till they are too heavy to bear and let them descend on the Earth as hail. Take a close look at a hailstone and you will notice that it is of a milky-white colour and consists of layers of ice like skins on an onion. I used to wonder why hailstorms did not occur in winter months when it is cold, but in spring or early summers when it is warm. Now I know it takes strong winds to make hail. I have often put away my woollens by the middle of the month and taken out my summer clothes, only to put back the cottons and once again get out cardigans and warm socks. What they say about May in England, can be said of March in India: 'Never cast a clout till March be out.' The sun also continues to behave erratically. It comes up earlier by more minutes than it goes down in the evenings. Humans are not the only ones to be fooled by the weather. Insects, said to be endowed with an extra sense of forecasting the weather, suffer heavy losses. Mosquitoes, flies and moths, which come out of hiding to pester humans, suddenly find the weather turn inclements and are frozen to death. In my diary I record the first time I hear crickets chirp. This is usually in the second week of March; probably somewhat earlier in my apartment than in other homes as I have a log fire burning every winter night. A cricket's chirp can be a reliable substitute for a thermometer; the hotter it is, the faster the cricket chirps. If you do not believe me, try the following experiment: count the number of chirps per minute, divide the total by four and add forty. The total will give you the temperature of the room in Fahrenheit. ## The Vagaries of Weather: Holi The vagaries of the weather make Holi, the festival of colours, a chancy affair. It usually falls some time between the latter part of February and the end of March. Some years, only the young are out with their long tube-syringes, buckets of coloured water and red powder to fight mock battles, yelling 'Holi Hai! Holi Hai!' Other years, it is warm enough for the middle-aged and the old to risk being doused. What experiment does the author suggest for guessing the temperature? By mid-March the mulberry tree (shahtoot in Hindi; Morus alba in Latin for the white-fruited variety) has both flowers and leaves. For a few days its caterpillar-like fruits are free to all for picking. Bauhinias are still in flower, though now with leaves around them. Mango trees are covered with a powdery cluster of blossoms. In March both birth and death are much in evidence. On the one hand you can see the grapevine and madhumalati-Quisqualis (meaning Who? What?) indica, a name given to it by a Dutch botanist because of its eccentric manner of growth-add new leaves every day. On the other, neems, mahuas, jamuns, peepals and banyans are shedding their foliage. Of the dying and the reborn, peepals and banyans have the most delicate of new leaves; pale pink, silky-soft and beautifully shaped. If you want an offering from nature as your bookmark, you cannot do better than press their leaves in your album. The leaves of which trees does the author recommend as bookmarks? Why? Most birds start making their nests in March. Vultures and kites, which started off earlier, are busy making nests. For some years I have watched a couple of white-backed vultures (I presume they are the same every year) choose the same cleft¹ in the branches of the Ailanthus overlooking the Golf Club swimming pool. This tree is common in Delhi. Its Latin name Ailanthus (tree of heaven) excelsa (very tall) is summed up by its Hindi name Mahavriksh (the great tree). There are quite a few specimens in the Golf Club and along many roads. Its flowers, which come out late in February, are hardly visible, and its fruit, which drops by June, cannot be eaten. However, its soft wood is used for making packing cases and matchsticks. Some vultures seem to have a sense of history and like to rear their young in ancient buildings. A pair of neophrons¹¹ has for years occupied the same niche in the western wall of the Bara Gumbad in Lodi Garden. As Englishmen make a fetish¹2 about hearing the first cuckoo in spring, I record the first time I hear the koel's full-throated cry rather than the half-hearted gurgles¹³ that one hears during winter months. In Delhi, their throats open up in the first week of March, and get clearer as the days get warmer and as nesting season draws nearer. About the same time the papeehas (hawk cuckoos) begin to announce their presence. What do you think the narrator means by the phrase 'their throats open up'? Bird song can be heard round the clock: crow pheasants' deep throated hook hook hook, tree pies' harsh overture¹4 followed by a tinkling of bells, and golden orioles' fruity mellifluous¹5 calls, can be heard every morning. On a warm afternoon, the tuk-tuk-tuk-tuk of coppersmiths (basanta or the crimson-throated barbet) sounds very much like the short blasts made by the diesel-operated flour mills in villages. No songbird in India can match the magpie robin (shama or dayal). It usually sings only in the early hours of the morning or at twilight and evening. When does the magpie robin sing? In March, the Lodi Gardens and the Buddha Jayanti Park are much frequented by picnickers. The Buddha Jayanti Park specializes in planting masses of the same flower for each bed; the Lodi Gardens has quite a few flowering trees and beds of pansies, phlox, salvias, violets and other delicate varieties of flowers. A good time for visiting parks is the afternoon of Holi after the coloured-water sports are over and most people are tired or engaged in post-Holi feasting. In the Lodi Gardens, purple bougainvilleas, the most luxuriant and pristine 16 variety of the species, make a splendid show. To be seen among the birds are owlets, sitting in holes of old walls taking the sun in with their eyes shut, and shrikes. You can generally spot the bay-backed and rufous shrikes on the lower branches of trees. The shrike is also known as the butcherbird because of its nasty habit of impaling¹7 live insects on thorns. In the last week of the month, spring vegetables and fruits flood the market. Cucumbers and kakrees (tar) are on lunch menus. Watermelons, both cantaloupes and muskmelons (tarbooz and kharbooza), are available in the market. In recent years their quality has improved. In my younger days you had to be an expert to tell the sweet melons from the tasteless. One only bought kharboozas said to have come from Tonk or Saharanpur. Today you have to be unlucky to bring home a flat-tasting melon; most of them are sweet and succulent ¹8. Closely following on the heels of these earthy' fruits come mulberries, both the white and the purple variety. Mangoes from the south and the much-fancied Alfonso from the Konkan coast can be had for a price in fruit shops catering to the rich. But for locally grown varieties of this king of fruits you have to wait for a few more weeks. **Khushwant Singh (1915-2014)** was a novelist, journalist and historian. He was a widely read Indian columnist. He wrote three weekly columns that were reproduced by over fifty journals across the globe. He was most famous for his novel Train to Pakistan. He is also known for his translations of Urdu poetry as well as Sikh texts.