A short meditation on writing, and its tools

I gaped, slack-jawed, at the fluid strokes that ‘Mama’s’ steady hand left, as it swept across the graph paper on which Babuji’s philatelic collection was being mounted. His calligraphy seemed an extension of his shoulder, his arm, the gentle firmness of his cupped hand, his carefully fingered penmanship. It was effortless, as though the dip pen he used was a finger trailing ink, a wand. The curlicues of his ‘H’ had me gasping for air. He rendered it with such a mellifluous movement that his years of practise to achieve that élan disappeared in what seemed, casually natural. From that moment I was determined to master at least that one letter of the alphabet.

So I practised. Over and over again; blackening paper of all kinds and shapes—brown paper bags, from the time when stuff was given away in them in shops; the backs of used envelopes, a particular favourite (I made pads of these, after slitting them lengthwise, arranging all the blank sides facing upwards, aligning at least one side, and stapling them); tooling it into the corners of newspapers’ banners; even finger painting the motions on greasy plates, between bites.

By the time I got it in a flourish, the magnet of inevitability pulled all the other letters out of the alphabet and lined them up on the page; I couldn’t resist mastering them in an italicised cursive hand.

In hindsight, now when I reconsider ‘Mama’s’ cursive on those graph-papered philatelic sheets, I can see his amateur’s lack of confidence. The samples of showcase calligraphy that flower the Internet are strokes ahead of his tentative, tremulous style. His hesitant hand may have been curtailed because he may not have been fluent in the English language, and so lacked confidence in using it. He was good at copying words placed before him. I recall now, that he made frequent mistakes, scraping off the truant letter with a few deft flicks of a safety razor. The roughened spot bore re-inking without visible blotting, which saved him the blushes. But Babuji tolerated his lapses, as he was himself in awe of that beautiful script.

Peers, and teachers at school admired a hand that delineated near perfect joint handwriting. It had to be neat and legible. Flourishes were treated with veiled derision, and I will never forget a put down in high school, when my studiously tooled penmanship was struck out with a red nib, and a gory bland letter burned beside the excised one, in all its simple wickedness.

One graduated from a simple, un-joined hand, to cursive, or joint handwriting as one grew, for that was the way to write faster. The pen did not lift off the page after each letter, wasting time. It simply glided from one word to another, magically.

One day Babuji saw my hand and was aghast, or perhaps even ashamed. Vere Foster’s writing manuals were too zealous and missionary for my Jiddu Krishnamurty-principled school, but not so in his books. They were indeed, de rigueur qualifications for a good education. I slogged through several of those slim volumes that must have trained the hand of generations of secretaries.

Soon however, there was a sea change in the entire art. Mechanical objects took over the role of speedwriting. Typewriters became the rage. Their USP’s were several: speed, clarity, uniformity of style, neater, multiple copies, and that feel-good bonus of having worked hard all day banging those typewriter keys. All those bells, and adjustments, and forceful returns of the carriage, the judiciously gathered sheaf of carbon-interleaved paper: a parchment original, followed by two white, or yellow onionskins for copies. Though typing had its own charming rituals, and ushered a revolution in the process of communication, it erased charming social innuendos from the era of longhand writing. It wiped clear the portrait of the person behind the hand. All typed upon envelopes became bland. The task of the postman became easier, but the recipient could no longer delight upon seeing a longed-for hand, nor cringe from one that bore portents. It distanced people from one another. And no one would rub a candle over a typewritten envelope to prevent ink from running in case the post got caught in a shower. The typewriter was a dispassionate medium.

A handwritten letter was often candid about the mental state of the writer: joy, sorrow, grief, urgency, fear, love, all had their own ways of inadvertent exposure, sparking an immediate, intense emotional connect that went far beyond that conveyed by mere words. The blot of a petulant stab of the nib, the faded ink from brushed away teardrops, the electric urgency of a hurried scribble, all disappeared. As did spontaneous art doodled into a letter’s margins, or words written around sketches, or even more involved artwork. And what about the giddiness of the spontaneous note, dashed off from any remote location, in any state of being, however uncomfortable, as compared to the mandatory angular furniture a typewriter required? No more ink-stained fingers identified a scribe. The typewriter was not for such people of letters. An entire facet of handwritten letters vanished with the mechanisation of the art.

But one had to keep up with the Jones’, and learning to type was a must. The efficiency of the apparatus captivated. We became adept at operating it; developed fascinations for its few idiosyncrasies: the aluminium-cased, portable, Baby Hermes with its large letters; the paper supports that swung upright; the two-toned cloth ribbon that came into play when we depressed a special key to raise the ribbon vibrator to align the red inked portion to the hammering type bar for red impressions; the concentration required for spooling in a new ribbon; the delicate jostling of limp onionskin sheets to align edges before inserting a sheaf into the platen; the industrial power of typing full tilt, fingertips kissing the keys, the clickety-clack of the type bars striking ribbon to paper, a mechanical music. Then came electric typewriters, with thermal transfer ribbons, and memory banks; then the metamorphosing digital revolution.

I like to believe that this overpowering dependence upon complicated machinery revived the romantic charm of putting pen to paper. It’s a simple, direct, tactile system of making thought visible, and communicable. Its execution is seamless. It’s results, immediate, tangible, pliable, and effective. One connects to it emotionally, for one has crafted it oneself: each up-stroke, each down-stroke, each curve, and flourish. It imparts the spiritual satisfaction of working with one’s hands, like kneeling in the soil, and planting a garden. The elemental connect between paper, pen, hand, eye, and mind draws out thought.

All those who write, and pride themselves for it (pride being essential here, for I hear that cursive is now considered expendable from curricula, allowing artificiality to usurp another wonderful natural human trait), have favourite tools to ply their trade, collectively called stationery.

In my younger days, writing instruments, pens, pencils, even ballpoint pens, were just that. They never assumed a life of their own. They were tools to accomplish a job. Any attachment between the writer and his or her writing tools was simply functional. The need for speed, however, transformed perceptions. Pens and their ilk, which had sustained the conversion of thoughts into visible words, were sacrificed at the altar of mechanical, and digital speed, and other attendant conveniences. I too was swept up in this wave of change, but not completely.

The metamorphic gene had a spanner in the works—the diary. I had begun writing mine in college, and have kept at it since then. Our relationship has blown hot and cold over the years, but has endured—saving not just shards of a life, but also that delightful made-for-each-other relationship of pen and paper; the intensely personal satisfaction of filling a blank page with cursive thoughts.

I use digital technology all the time to write: e-mail, word processors, and the social media platforms on a smartphone. But thoughts flow only when I stare at a blank page, with a pen in my hand. My first drafts are always physical acts fuelled by the visceral nature of writing in longhand. Once done, they are copied into a word processor. Further drafts, and copyediting may continue on the computer, but often I carry with me a printed version, and copyedit on the go, impulsively, which is only possible with the simple, classic combination of pen and paper. Physical copyediting is closer to playing god with a manuscript, than digital track changes can ever be. I run sentences through with my gore-tipped Pilot Tecpoint. I even walk away from the battlefield, abandoning a bloodied, massacred manuscript.

Initially my diary comprised any notebook with a semi-glossy paper of fine quality, so that it did not blot ink. After a couple of hardbound volumes, I discovered spiral bound notebooks; the convenience of flipping them 360 degrees to bring the recto closer to my body (I am a southpaw), was not only more convenient, but also facilitated working in restricted spaces. A case in point being those palm-sized pads I use in the field when birding. But two years ago the Moleskine seduced me. I couldn’t resist its charismatic antecedence—the object of choice of that intrepid globetrotter, Bruce Chatwin, and his illustrious, multi-talented predecessors, Vincent, Pablo, and Ernest. I’m partial to blank, un-ruled Moleskine notebooks.

For long-form writing I use plain, un-ruled yellow A4 sheets. A sheaf of three or four cushions the pressures of penmanship, and eradicates the inconvenient step, across which the palm’s outer edge perforce rests, if writing upon a gathering of more sheets. Initially I took a pencil to the paper: the traditional, hexagonal wooden one, my favourite being the black-and-yellow Staedtler 2B. I kept several sharpened when writing, working through the lot as they blunted one by one, not breaking the flow of thought to re-sharpen any. That way I also limited the length of my ramblings. I liked the firm resistance of the table, and the crayon-give of the softer lead.

For long I’ve used those fine writing instruments produced by the Japanese Pilot Corporation. I was initially a fan of their ‘HiTecpoint 0.5’, till I graduated to the ‘jV5 Hi-Tecpoint (0.5)’, now marketed by Luxor in India. They are convenient, trustworthy, and satisfying. I still use a red one for skirmishing during copyediting.

The ballpoint pen is a marvellous and ingenious invention, but pedestrian. It has not chutzpah. No presence. It is functional, and dependable even. But lacks the “ah!” moment that the unscrewing of a fountain pen’s cap excites, “I like that pen!”

Fountain pens resurfaced in my life when my brother presented me with a beastly Montblanc Meisterstrük. Life has changed forever since that watershed. I had bought myself a Sailor before the Swiss mountain came to me, but was left uncharmed by its small size, though it is efficient and smooth. It’s improved much with constant use, and my vigorous doodling to run-in the nib.

Sometimes nostalgia shades mundane objects with romanticism. One day I rummaged in a lower drawer, and retrieved some fountain pens from my student days. They stand on my desk now, lovingly rejuvenated and recharged, and fit into my cupped fist with a startling snugness. An astonishingly smooth Parker 51, and a green and chrome Sheaffer. They’ve both withstood the test of time and flaunt their pedigree. I rue that somewhere in the past I disposed a Parker 61 I’d used in school. It was turquoise, with a heritage silver and gold cap, and sucked ink via an unbelievably cool capillary action; one just had to stand it upside-down in an ink-bottle! It had perhaps jammed with disuse. I could have had it cleaned, but didn’t know better.

I like writing longhand. It forces me to slow down amidst the sapping frenetic pace that life is lived out around me. It allows me to savour skills I learnt as a child and have retained. It evokes thought and argument in the mind, it coaxes complete sentences before they are written down, resulting in a cleaner draft; unlike the think-while-you-type hurried writing on computers, where errors can be wiped clean by pushing a button, which is not the point. It connects me with corners and alcoves of my mind, and atrophying surfaces of my heart. It creates a circle that completes me.

When did you, dear reader, write with pen on paper last? 

S is for Shikra[1]

Siraj Ahmed Taher (1942–2010). 

President Emeritus, Birdwatchers' Society of Andhra Pradesh. 

Portrait courtesy the Taher family.

In 2010 I lost two people who were very dear to me. They had studied in the same school, lived out their lives in the same city, had many common friends, at least one common hobby, and both died, within two months of each other, in the same hospital. Both were paterfamilias of more than one ‘family’—philately, and ornithology. Both had a tremendous impact on my life. Their journey into the sun was uphill.

Siraj sahib was passionate about birds. That is how we met the first time, at a meeting of the fledgling Birdwatcher’s Club of Andhra Pradesh [BCAP]. The fact that he was a generation older than me was never discussed between us, while everything else was. The Hyderabad he grew up in, the social culture of tehzeeb that made him what he was, has now vanished. He came to birds in the best way possible: First, pursuing them for sport, once a gentlemanly pastime, played to exacting rules; then swerving towards conservation, like so many of his enlightened contemporaries. I pressed him once, to tell me why he gave up his gun. He’d shot a sambhar once, a poor shot, he confessed. The injured stag blundered off into the forest. Raised in a tradition that valued a pricked conscience, he decided to follow the stricken animal and put out its agony. But the sambhar fought the inevitable for several hours, staying either unsighted, or out of range from its pursuer. When finally he caught up with it, the profusely bleeding animal was finished. The sight of the dead animal, and the realization that here was a living being that need not have died, had indeed tried to escape death, moved him immensely. With the bursting of its heart, that sambhar converted its nemesis forever towards conservation.

After a couple of outings together as part of the BCAP, we began to hit it off. To this too, there was a quirky angle, which showed the apnapan of those days.

One evening he met an old school friend of his in Riyazath Husain’s iconic bookshop on Abid Road, A. A. Husain & Co. After the pleasantries and backslapping subsided, under the convivial eye of the senior Mr Husain, Siraj sahib asked him, “Arre, ek bachcha ata hai hamare chidiyon ke club mein. Tu jaanta kya?” In a city steeped in social niceties, the use of the “tu” was reserved for those that were dear to one; unlike the rough meaning it is ascribed today.

“Apna hi bachcha hai, Siraj,” chuckled my father. Again that tehzeeb—not the grasping “mera bachcha”, but the inclusive, “apna”.

In the next outing, he stumped me with a loud, “Arrey, tum bolaich nahin ki Murari ke bete hain”. Seeing me taken aback, he chortled the bookshop episode. After that, my birding outings had no querulous or disapproving looks at home. I was going out with shareef log. Thus began a life-long association with one of the finest people I’ve known. In some matters he took me under his wing, in some we did things together.

That shareef quality of the man, I think, was ultimately what drew so many people to the BCAP, which was rechristened the Birdwatchers’ Society of Andhra Pradesh [BSAP] upon its registration. The hierarchy of the organization was never apparent to any of the participants. Except for Mr Pushp Kumar, top gun in the Andhra Pradesh Forest Department, who was thus accorded a genteel deference by the elderly birders, the subtle unsavouriness of implied superiority, whether of rank, or knowledge, never left its residue on any of us youngsters. Everyone travelled together in the forest department’s jeeps, all walked to where the birds were, victuals were mutually partaken, and the day’s count discussed later in a much-anticipated circle of friendship. Topical and irreverent banter, and repartee, were the norm. This was an exceptional illustration of the altruistic spirit of those who planned, promoted, popularized, and participated in this pastime. And to my mind, the single factor that contributed to the organisation’s successful promotion of an undoubtedly new concept of outdoor activity for the citizenry of Hyderabad. Plus, who could deny that element of thrill, shrouded in the past of fondly recalled boyhood days, of a Boy Scout’s revving adrenalin, of a golden nostalgia that tugs adults to another shot at nirvana? The wilderness, and its wildlings, does such things to men.

Every specialized activity has its own terminology, and ornithology was replete with enough to confound a polyglot; its lexicon spanned classical European languages, English, Sanskrit, and the immense mythologies of the world’s cultures! This hurdle notwithstanding, our motley group soon cobbled together a bristling argot of nicknames, abbreviated codes, hand and eye signage, and often, a whistled mimicry of surprising drollness, pulsating with distinct onomatopoeic bemusement. Newcomers stood stupefied by this bunch of loonies telling time on a tree while trying to locate a bird! Siraj sahib was privy to this notorious gang, and thoroughly enjoyed the perplexity of the uninitiated. Being accepted into the group was considered a rite of passage.

His sense of fun was legendary. It often kept in good humour a tired, flagging group returning after a day of slim pickings. A master raconteur, he spiced tea breaks with stories from vintage days. In turns becoming moist-eyed-sentimental for the Days of the Beloved, or rasping street-slang Hyderabadi in his baritone.

The BSAP ‘pavilion’ at the first Pan-Asian Ornithological Conference in Coimbatore, 9–16 November 1996. L to R: Siraj Taher, M. S. Kulkarni, Noritaka Ichida (Vice-President of BirdLife International, and Chairman, BirdLife Asia Council), Tim Inskipp, and Maj. Ahmed Abdul Aziz. Photo: Aasheesh Pittie.

For Siraj sahib, every birder was special, and welcome to his home. I met many heavyweights of the birding world there, and cannot recall even one person who was not at as much ease, as he would be in his own drawing room. The city’s birding lads walked in and out as if they were visiting their own homes. To me it was always a special place. I went there for all the reasons that a deepening friendship draws two people to spend time together. Our discussions ranged from ornithology, to social behavior, politics, the philosophy of morality, and ethics; the nuances of Urdu shayari; the importance of art in comprehending the world; the unceasing turmoil that was the status of our environment; the way to take the Society forward—several ideas springing up spontaneously during conversation, which we worked on and made something of. But the deepest moments were the silences we lapsed into between words, ruminating, pondering, or simply savouring thoughts that rush in at the end of a satisfying flow of words. I always took away the comforting thought that here was someone who I could speak with about subjects that shone with clarity once the polishing strokes of give and take had burnished their cantankerous edges.

L to R: Siraj Taher, Richard Grimmett, and Aasheesh Pittie (1996). Photo: Aasheesh Pittie

The heady plan of collating our own checklist of the birds of Andhra Pradesh was cast during one such evening. Why could we not do it? It was the first step to more comprehensive ornithologies—but this was achievable by just the two of us. As often happens, the force with which an idea hits one, it also pushes out and lays bare methodologies for fructifying it in the same instant. I do not think it took us more than half an hour to decide our workflow and apportion our responsibilities. Subsequently, there must have been innumerable meetings to iron out creases, to enjoy quaint discoveries in published accounts from the past, to streamline every step so that both were on the same page with regard to content, presentation, citation, taxonomy, etc. But there was no major change; no rollback of methods; no U-turn on our road map.

Release of the Checklist in 1989, in the corridor of the A. P. Forest Dept., building. L to R: Maj. Ahmed Abdul Aziz, Pushp Kumar IFS, S. Ashok Kumar. I am talking about the work, a stack of which can be seen on the bottom left of the picture. Photo: Aasheesh Pittie.

Comparatively, the translation of the Birds of southern India, by Richard Grimmett and Tim Inskipp (2005), into Telugu, was a minefield. Collaborations were imperative because he only had a good working knowledge of the language, could be the ideal Telugu-speaking ornithologist, but was not proficient enough to take on the entire work himself. Translating the extensive lexicon of birding, into a language that seemed to have no specific, definitive words to suit scientific interpretations, had to be executed by a twin-nibbed pen: One, that wrote with bold hearty strokes, delineating the work; the other, with the fine point, working in all the telling details that illuminated the manuscript. I was the troubleshooter who tried to unclog detritus in the workflow, to ensure smooth progress. Not least of these was dealing with the names for the colours of plumage, “brownish-yellow,” “blue-green”, etc. Ultimately we did get our own Telugu colour palette! Siraj sahib worked hard and long at the manuscript, and may have taken it through at least six proofs, after, often nerve-wracking meetings with the translators. The fine pointed pens scratched away day and night, and I would notice fresh stacks of papers during our daily meetings. He had this thing for coloured inks and would mark up his sheets with differently coloured inks, each colour linking a unique chain of thought. He wrestled with extant Telugu bird names, which were invariably of a generic nature, and had the distinction of coining dozens of new ones. But it was mighty frustrating work, and often did I catch him in a reverie, absentmindedly sucking at the end of a pencil. The lack of a consensus, the engine that could have driven this naming work, rankled him. Invitees never bothered to respond, except a few, for which he was so grateful. Dialect, that verbal filigree of distinctiveness within a language, a culture, tortured him, till one day he realized the only way forward was to ignore it. One could not please everyone. When published (2007), it was a work that justified his sense of achievement, in that of his team, and in his pride that the Society was a co-author.

Siraj Taher speaking at the release function of the Telugu translation of Birds of southern India (2005) L to R: A. K. Malhotra IFS PCCF APFD, Asad R. Rahmani (Director, Bombay Natural History Society), and Shafaat Ulla. Photo: Aasheesh Pittie.

Siraj sahib, and indeed, Pushp Kumar, worked with an extraordinary zeal to promote an awareness of birds among Hyderabad’s citizenry, and as a consequence, highlighted the environment we collectively belong to. The media, both print, and radio, smelled the potential of an unique angle to pitch stories, and people began to discuss birds, the urban environment, and even the activities of the BSAP! Birds have always attracted mankind, and when brought out from the realms of literature, poetry, art, or even mythology, into the ambit of casual conversation, they ushered delight, rekindled memory, nudged people to look around and notice the natural world. The quiddity of our surroundings during our growing up years is deeply ingrained in our bones, recumbent though it may lie as we rush about our busy days. But comes a moment when memory stirs, awakened by a petrichor sprinkled upon our passivity by people like Siraj sahib, and a delightful facet of the natural world is miraculously visible to us. Birds can charm the most indifferent of people!

If passion fuels altruism, the result is joyous. Siraj sahib’s involvement with BSAP was such a phase of his life. Whether he was organizing a field outing; writing in long hand the next month’s programme on all the post cards that he would himself mail at the post office; correcting proofs of the Society’s publications; sitting with the patience of a Buddha for various permissions from a forest official; answering media persons, even when they came unprepared and posed prosaic queries; preparing environmental assessment reports of places he deeply cared about, like Kolleru Lake, and sending them to the concerned authorities on behalf of the Society; speaking to students; chairing symposia—it was all “for the birds”, as though he had an oath in heaven!

Siraj Taher being honoured as the first President Emeritus of the Birdwatchers’ Society of Andhra Pradesh (30 August 2009). Standing L to R: K. Nanda Kumar, Umesh Mani, Shanti Mani, Siraj Taher, K. Bhardwaj, and Shafaat Ulla. Seated L to R: Aasheesh Pittie, J. V. D. Moorty, Sushil Kapadia, and M. S. Kulkarni. Photo: Aasheesh Pittie.

And when his penchant for the living bird needed a rest, out would come his philatelic collection, with birds as its theme! He worked on it whenever he found time, and even displayed it successfully (winning competitions) in several philatelic exhibitions. The forest department regularly petitioned him to display it during their annual Wildlife Week celebrations, and he would willingly oblige. After all, it presented a fantastic opportunity to convert the visiting school kids to a lifetime love of birds, and philately!

He took great pleasure in the company of life-long friends, in the earthy delight of seasonal fruit, in the song of garden birds, in the pressure of his granddaughter’s tiny hand around his finger. In a sense, he did see that world in a grain of sand. And when the end came in the month of January of that fateful year, he had a befitting farewell. A gentle evening descended; the annual numaish that he enjoyed with his dear Ayesha flung high its illuminated, rotating, giant-wheel; Mukesh’s poignant, pathos-filled, “Jeena yahan, marna yahan”, wafted from that direction; and as clods of his hometown earth sprinkled the path of his onward journey, a pair of spotted owlets, his endearingly named Chakwa-Chakwi, exchanged yarns inside a dusty tamarind.

Two months later, that other person, his friend, my father, too passed away.

---

[1] The title is a reflection of Helen Macdonald’s visceral account of coming to terms with her father’s death, through the numbing ordeal of training a Goshawk. I’ve borrowed and changed her book’s title, here, for recalling my time with Siraj sahib has been no less wrenching. Too, he celebrated the shikra.

A lifelong relationship with the bookstore that changed my life: A A Husain & Co.

Books from the floor to the ceiling!

Asif Husain Arastu—Proprietor

Showkath bhai (centre) had a huge influence on my reading preferences.

From the children's section on the mezzanine.

Random thoughts: The place for ashes

‘Scatter my ashes in places that have sustained the flame of my life,’ I nudge my children, when questions of death and the meaningless clutch of final rites enters our conversation. ‘There is no point in submerging them in alien landscapes or waterways, where my soul would wander rudderless. My solace is closer at hand, in spaces I’ve roamed during days of youth, escaping the suffocating over-bearance of civilization. That would be the ultimate celebration of a sense of place.’

But as life progresses, and unprecedented change becomes the single constant, I wonder what would happen if our personal geographies did not survive us; whither our sense of place upon this earth? Will we become outcasts in an unfamiliar terrain, or will we internalize cartographies and etch their landscapes across a remembering eye? If none of them exist till the end of our time, in their entire physicality, in their life-reviving spirituality, in their emotion-igniting empathy, in their anti-artificial naturalness, then will our romantic minds not remain their only record, and our only salvation?

So here I place on record where I would like my ashes to be flung from the hands of those who have known me, and have survived me; flung so that the wind scatters them as per its desire, on landscapes that rustled my hair as I stood knee deep in grassy seas, away from artificiality, amidst nature …

What Shri Zafar Futehally meant to me

When he moved on to happier hunting grounds last year, the world lost a great earth citizen; I wrote of my loss and what Zafar sahib meant to me, to Mrs Futehally.

Books I read in 2014

1. Bombay-London-New York. By Amitava Kumar. 5/5
2. Sightlines. By Kathleen Jamie. 3/5
3. Istanbul: Memories and the city. By Orhan Pamuk. 5/5
4. A portrait of the artist as a young man. By James Joyce. 3/5
5. A river runs through it. By Norman Maclean. 5/5
6. Butterflies on the roof of the world. By Peter Smetacek. 4/5
7. The great work of your life. By Stephen Cope. 2/5
8. An enchantment of birds. By Richard Cannings. 3/5
9. Handling the truth: on the writing of memoir. By Beth Kephart. 5/5
10. Why I read. By Wendy Lesser. 3/5
11. The goldfinch. Donna Tartt. 5/5
12. The elements of style. Strunk & White. 5/5
13. The end of your life book club. Will Schwalbe. 5/5
14. The summing up. Somerset Maugham. 5/5
15. Ransom. David Malouf. 5/5
16. Land of the seven rivers: A brief history of India's geography. Sanjeev Sanyal. 3/5
17. India. A history. John Keay. (Part). 5/5. 
18. The last wave. An island novel. Pankaj Sekhsaria. 3/5. 
19. The collected works of A. J. Fikry. Gabrielle Levin. 4/5. 
20. Discovering birds: The emergence of ornithology as a scientific discipline, 1760-1850. P. L. Farber. 4/5.  
21. This is the story of a happy marriage. Ann Patchett. 3/5. 
22. Arctic summer. Damon Galgut. 4/5. 
23. Macbeth. Shakespeare. 5/5. 
24. A short guide to a long life. David B. Agus. 5/5. 
25. Their fate is our fate: How birds foretell threats to our health and our world. Peter Doherty. 3/5. 
26. The forest unseen. David George Haskell. 3/5. 
27. Fahrenheit 451. Ray Bradbury. 5/5. 
28. The wind in the willows. Kenneth Grahame.  5/5. 
29. Fire season. Field notes from a wilderness lookout. Philip Connors. 5/5. 
30. Four fields. Tim Dee. 5/5. 
31. The narrow road to the deep North. Richard Flanagan. 5/5. 
32. Wilderness and razor wire. Ken Lamberton. 4/5. 
33. People of the book. Geraldine Brooks. 5/5. 
34. In the suicide's library: A book lover's journey. Tim Bowling. 5/5. 
35. Claxton: Field notes from a small planet. Mark Cocker. 5/5. 
36. The art of stillness. Adventures in going nowhere. Pico Iyer. 3/5. 
37. The loser. Thomas Bernhard. Didn't complete. 
38. The song of the magpie robin: A memoir. Zafar Futehally. 4/5. 

ICRISAT diary: 07 December 2014

Lark song

An early morning sun haloed the landscape in golden light as I drove between fields of ploughed black soil, towards the dump near Patancheru cheruvu, where I hoped to see a frisky Bluethroat prance after insects. Lark song suddenly poured in through the open window, and I pulled over to the side of the track. An Indian Skylark was fluttering somewhere between the sun and me. I could not see it, but that did not matter, for it is one of those birds whose song surpasses its physical appearance in attractiveness.

            I simply stood against the car, drenched in the glorious and profuse warbling emanating from his tiny, quivering syrinx. He drifted hither and thither on vibrating wings, exploding with the wound up energy of his voluble performance. I wouldn’t be surprised if his pinions fluttered with the kinetic fervor and excitement that consumed the little creature. I would like to believe that his ecstatic levitation and buoyancy were the result of that full-throated flood of uncontrollable sound rebounding from terra firma in aural waves and cushioning him in the ether.

            Listening to him, all else fades away. I squint into the sun, but the bird is unseen, just his radiant melody floods down mesmerizing me with its repetitive strain, its slyly imitative descants, and its clever improvisations. His stamina is monstrous. The performance just goes on and on, never reducing in volume, never slowing down, and never faltering. Minutes pass and the aerial songster’s luminous art abides. What a magnificent moment; to stand still and listen to an invisible bird pouring out his heart through sunlit skies! To spy his partner crouched beside an upturned sod, awash in that rhapsodic serenade! To realize that the world’s magic, its charm, its achingly simple joys, are so easily within our reach; one simply has to connect with nature, or disconnect from artificiality.

When his time in the sun had run its course, his song ended abruptly, as though switched off, and he parachuted on cupped, outstretched wings, landing unobtrusively beside her. No one who didn’t know better, would believe that this superficially nondescript ball of feather was a virtuoso; that such a drab consumer of chitin and seed be so spectacularly endowed.

That is, precisely, the endearing charm of nature. She reveals her secrets at her own pace. Hurry she knows not, neither tolerates she impatience. But silence, stealth, and solitude are handy at divining her mysteries.

ICRISAT diary: 07 December 2014

Patancheru Cheruvu

As I eased onto the dirt road that is ICRISAT Campus’s boundary with Patancheru Cheruvu, a Purple Heron stood transfixed mid-way upon a connecting track. Its posture was oddly comical; one leg in front of another, halted mid-step, the beak agape, its entire body stock-still. How odd was that! Normally, it should have taken off at my proximity.

            Looking up the road I was to drive on, I saw three mongooses. The fur of one was all ruffled up, as though it had had a vigorous Turkish towel rubdown, after a dipping. Two Herpestes edwardsii were on the right side of the track, and a third emerged under the chain-link fence that marked the boundary. The couple was intent upon something beyond the fence, on Patancheru Tank.

            I followed their gaze and through the ipomea-veined links spied a female Marsh Harrier perched gingerly on semi-floating vegetation. She was clearly uncomfortable, shifting her position this way and that.

            The mongooses looked distinctly unhappy, almost dying to complain about something. After hesitating for three or four minutes, they crossed the road with much raising and lowering of heads, taking furtive sniffs of the air; with minced, floppy footwork, strangely reminiscent of an indecisive hyena. Their attention evidently was riveted upon the harrier, which, momentarily, rose with an eight-inch limp fish hooked on its talons, landed on firmer ground, and commenced breakfast.

            Minutes before this drama Circus aeruginosus was seen harrying water birds, flushing ducks and sandpipers. Clearly it had been on the hunt awhile, as its aggression seemed to flush the birds. But he had no luck with them.

            So who killed the fish? Was it the mongoose trio that did it, creating a ruckus over the prey that attracted the hungry bird that pirated away their prize? Or did the harrier come by the fish first and the mongooses simply coveted it? Did the heron at all play a part?

            Every moment is filled with the drama of life in the wilderness. Luck, and chance, play their hands in revealing the poignancy of a pageant sometimes, which has its delights. Stealth, patience, and watchful silence are no less powerful tools in a naturalists’ toolbox, and provide the greater satisfaction to an inquiring mind.

            The mystery of the behavior of those four creatures remained. Perhaps with my intrusion into their landscape I had perpetrated events that one or the other could not foresee, and a third benefitted!

* * * * *

Eucalyptus plantation, southern perimeter

A Short-eared Owl-sized bird of prey flew away from me on the road bordering the eucalyptus plantation huddled at the extreme southern border of the campus. It must have been perched on one of the trees that lined it.

            Straining through the windshield for some distinguishing features on the rapidly disappearing rear profile, all I could register was an ochre brown wash, concentrated in the tail region. Too, that its secondaries were held perfectly horizontal and the propulsion was from an energetic flicking of the primaries, carpal joint outwards.

            I had stalled the car in my excitement at the thought of an Asio, and could merely watch as it dipped into the leafy sanctuary about 100 m ahead. My adrenalin draining as it disappeared into the trees.

            Viewed upon the horizon from a distance, the trees were impressive, even grove-like. But up close they had the frigid regimentation of plantations. I wondered whether this stood as a windbreak, or for timber. There was no undergrowth. The trees stood like soldiers on parade, at arm’s length from each other. On the other side of the road, a meadow of thigh-high grass flourished.

            I drove on, beyond the point where the bird had disappeared, switched off the car and climbed out into a partially tamed landscape. A railway line paralleled away not far beyond ICRISAT’s boundary, and the combustion engine roared periodically on the outer ring road. But once I put that behind me, the land rolled away nicely without an object of artificiality, a scarce commodity in urbania but a solace for concrete-weary eyes!

            A hen Montagu’s Harrier coasted the eddies above the platinum blonde grass with such effortless ease that one wondered whether that flamboyance was at all the function of heart, muscle and feather. Entranced I watched her slide and turn and pirouette, and albatross into the breeze to gain height, and slip and curve to catch the invisible element repeatedly under her masterly sensitive pinions. All the time her white-framed facial disc faced earthward focusing owlish eyes and ears on the tiniest movement and breath that betrayed fear, in the feathered or the furred. What a formidable combination of power and grace, of locomotion and concentration, of economy and extravagance!

            I walked back, the way I’d driven, pausing now and then expectantly. But no owl flushed. I stood a while, taking in the serenity, and then returned to the car. Just before opening its door I looked along the ruler-straight tree line, and from the apex of a eucalypt, mid-way down that line, a Butastur teesa blazed its white eye at me. Motionless and ramrod straight it stared me down from its height. This was the raptor I’d disturbed and its displeasure lasered me with that lacerating eye. Were its talons kneading its frustration into its perch? Such a soundless moment of heightened consciousness was it, in that pocket wilderness, when I realised that despite all caution and stealth, and desire to mingle, human presence would always remain an intrusion in the world we walked away from.