New Delhi, Aug. 23 -- The water had gone inside our shoes when we saw it.

Inside an old Aravalli forest, bearing testimony to structures from at least three dynasties, a black creature with yellow feet sheltered from the rain. It was a scorpion, that nemesis from old trunks with forgotten memories, that reading in the horoscope when one looked for meaning on a fresh new day.

The yellow-footed peninsular black scorpion-likely flooded out of its hole-was biding its time till the rain stopped. We were all huddled under a man-made structure: Four of us, one scorpion. Its tail twitched once, raised and alert, but the animal had resigned itself to devoting its waking and nocturnal hours for waiting rather than hunting. There was a perfect tru...