Iam new to this blogging world, and iam not a good writer too. But anyhow iam attempting to write about deer. Deer is a common animal in India, but due to human civilization and spreading cities, it is becoming a rare species. When i came to US , i was surprised to see Deer common in almost all states, but at the same time i felt very sad whenever i see a hit deer on the sides of the highway. In many of the prehistoric tamil literature works and in many indian epics like Ramayana, deer has played a very significant role. More commonly Deer's eyebrows are used as a metaphor for narrating beauty of heroine's eyebrows and the way Kavarimaan ( one variety of deer in India) sacrifices its life to safeguard the prestige & respect of its group is often used as a similie in many movie dialogues.
In my childhood days, whenever any guests come to my home , i used to take the role of a tourist guide and show ZOO ( Vandalur in Chennai) as one of the attractions of Chennai, so much oftenly I used to visit ZOO, moreover it is very near to my home. During those days iam not that much attracted to deer, but much recently me and my friends went for a safari in Natural Bridge Zoo in Virginia state, there i got a very close look of many Deers . On this trip only i realised and started to appreciate the beauty of Deers as mentioned by historical tamil poets. I donno why this change in me, is it due to the closer look of Deer? or due to age ? still not sure but anyhow iam happy for realising it now.
Only few months after that , i was driving back from Houston to Ruston it was early morning 05:00 AM and i was pondering about speeding ticket which i got one hour before on US 59S. I was driving at the speed of 60MPH, suddenly i saw a female deer infront of my car trying to cross from the left side of the road to the right, i donno whether to slow down or maintain the speed, initially i reduced my speed to around 55 MPH and suddenly I remembered the snapshot of me and my friends discussion on how to handle the car when a deer comes across. We were discussing this on our forward journey to Houston, we came to a conclusion that it is safe to maintain the speed on such occasions. So based upon that i didnt reduced my speed below 55 MPH . Bang came the noise, the Deer hit the right side beamlights and a rolling screeching noise was heard for few seconds , still i kept on driving with only one beam light on , smoke started coming out from my bonnet , still i kept on rolling, Engine alarm indicator appeared then i decided to pullover . Slowly i pulled over and went to see in the front , my entire right side around the beam light is damaged . I was searching for some blood stains and any remains of the deer , but surprisingly i didnt find both. The car i used is rental one, a brand new DODGE CHARGER 2007 model , i felt very very sad for both the Deer and the car. But somehow i was consoled by the driver of the towing vehicle. He is a very old man, by judging my melancholy face, he said, "Dont worry my son the deer might not have got killed, it might have got banged a bit and started limping back towards the woods, look we didn't see neither the blood stains nor the body, so cheer up. You are very lucky guy to come out of this accident without any hurts ". I thought for a while and felt optimistic, before the old man left, i felt certain drive within me to give a hug and i did that . I felt his friendly warmth in the cold morning. This gave me full of energy to come back to Ruston and conduct the Diwali celebrations ( first event of our AIS group) though i was physically drained. From that onwards for few days all of my friends called me as deer hunter.
One month after that incident, i got the mood for pencil sketching after a gap of nearly four years, knowingly or unknowingly the first pictrure i drew is a deer couple ( the shown picture) after this only I drew Preity Zinta's picture (1st blog). Though everything got completed well, it seems that the sadness got etched in my heart.
