Binoculars slung over my shoulder, and bird, butterfly 'n' spider book in my backpack, I quietly make my way up the hill behind my house.

It is a hill like any other; bare and rocky in some places, but good enough for the larks and the lapwings, and dense, bristling undergrowth elsewhere. I have often explored it, from the bare hillsides to its thick, forbidding greenery --and the mystery still remains.

Whilst in higher secondary school, I decided to produce cashew feni and spent a summer scampering over the hill, collecting seeds and fruits from morn till dusk. It was hard work, but also very exciting and when I finally sold my two sacks of cashew seeds in Bicholim and gifted the feni to my relatives in Bombay it was well worth the exercise.

Twice I startled hares, whom my dog Kim pursued hotly, but in vain, and once I saw what must have been a jungle cat. But my most thrilling (and chilling) experience was when my brother Brian and I were gathering cashew seeds one late afternoon.

We were examining the leaf litter in an area never before visited; this was where the water rushed downhill during the monsoon, creating a deep trench and nurturing dense, dark undergrowth where even the sun was not welcome . Suddenly we heard loud shrieks coming from one of the trees. We both looked up, and I've never forgotten that sight . There was a huge snake coiled loosely in the branches of a tree, swallowing a bird. The snake looked at. us, and continued ingesting its prey, and the poor bird continued to yell its head off. Brian and I didn't waste a moment; we picked our baskets and fled.

Twice I have seen a jackal and her cubs frolicking in my backyard; perhaps she finds it safer here. But I no longer hear the jackals howl at night - or foxes, as the stories go. For this, I somehow feel very responsible. What happened?

One evening exhausted, I sat with my camera a few metres away from some bushes. I heard some rustling and immediately trained my camera on the bush, eager not to miss a shot. The rustling grew louder, and out came a huge monitor lizard.

Since I was quite still it had not noticed me and plodded slowly towards me. I kept my zoom lense trained on it and waited for a closer shot. It came closer. And closer. Then its eye filled the zoom lens and I could no longer click because it was simply too close. I removed my head from the viewfinder to get a better view of the monitor lizard.
This was a fine fellow, the biggest monitor lizard I had ever seen - I could have reached out and touched him. The slight movement however, startled it, and off it went, in a flash.

I still hadn't got a picture!

Mongoose and monitor lizards continue to prowl, but the peafowl venture forth more cautiously. The small green billed malkoha is even more shy and will only reveal itself briefly every afternoon in the clearing opposite my house. And come January, the black eagle will stop here for a week.

The trees buzz with birdsong. From the fluty calls of spotted babbler and high pitched Tickell's blue flycatcher, to the cackling tree pie and lonesome yellow-cheeked tit, to plaintive cuckoo (rarely seen but often heard) - it all makes for a memorable symphony.

Spiders spin their magic , too. The wolf spider hunts under the stones, the brown lynx spider stalks its prey amongst the wild lantana leaves, but the Giant Wood Spider, builder of the largest orb web, merely waits patiently...

I live here not only as a voyeur. Often, I have ridden my bike to the cemetery at the top of the hill and kept the ghosts company. And listened to a million stars, for they have much to say.

Hundred metres from my house, the river meanders its way into the valley, flanked by the paddy fields. They too have a song; I ignore neither.

As a kid, I ran up the hill whenever I heard the steamer sound its horn up the Mandovi river and would frantically wave out to its passengers, never mind they could not have noticed me! Later in the evenings, I would sit on a rock and watch the trawlers go out to sea.

The hilly-billy days are far from over. Next year I plan to do a basic mountaineering course in Uttarkashi, and continue to trek up Goa's wonderfully beautiful hills in the border areas.

I guess the call of the hill doesn't fade away …. it just gets stronger.