Milwaukee Masala

A Croak of Wisdom: A Modern Aesop’s Fable Remember Aesop’s tales of clever animals teaching us life lessons? Well, nothing in those pages prepared me for frogs and toads hosting nightly symphonies right in my backyard. And you, dear reader, can share with me the life lesson once you discern it. Let me set the scene: the sun dips below the horizon, the pond across the way glints under a sliver of moonlight, and — BAM! — the air explodes with croaks and chirps so loud you’d think the amphibian world was plotting world domination. Honestly, these frogs must believe they’re the headliners at some exclusive pondside EDM festival. Frogs have been serenading me (needlessly, I might add) for a while now. Back in Kolkata, after a good rain, I’d hear them lulling me to sleep during summer vacations spent with family. I can still picture those big nights on the courtyard near the pond: my brother was persuaded to put on a full performance of Bengali folk songs (which, yes, I had helpfully trans...

I must’ve missed a step somewhere in raising my kids. I grew up on a steady diet of British and Indian literature — think Aesop’s Fables and the Panchatantra . Don’t ask me exactly where things went sideways, but somehow they made it through childhood without ever reading the story of the geese and the turtle. Poor things. Then again, my boys think I missed something in my childhood — I didn’t read The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings until I was an adult, after I’d crossed the pond to the good ol’ US of A. So I guess it all depends on where you’re standing to decide what’s wrong with the picture. Let me set the scene for you: a lush green lawn edged by a runoff pond, beautiful reeds swaying in the breeze, and — oh yes — the incessant, honking cacophony of Canadian migratory geese, determined to ruin the peace. Honestly, these geese deserve a citation for disturbing the neighborhood. But I digress…  One night, after yet another bed-time symphony of honking echoing through the d...