Oberlin Shansi 3/27/24 Oberlin Shansi 3/27/24

Between Frames

By Anokha Venugopal ‘23, Keystone Foundation Fellow

There is the beautiful mundane, like the dogs I say hi to on my way home. There is also the beautiful insane: being able to spend a week in Mudumalai Tiger Reserve for ‘work’; groggily answering the field center door at 6:30 am to Justin Anna (Anna: older brother, a term of respect) armed with a smile and a pair of binoculars, asking me if I’m ready to go birdwatching. We walk down the road, through a small clearing in the bushes on the side of the road, and find ourselves in a vast grass landscape. Frozen, heads tilted all in the same way, staring at us are a group of white spotted deer, many of them with fuzzy antlers burgeoning from their heads, boys to men.