At last! A first copy is at hand!

Will we force the Narcondam Hornbill Aceros narcondami into extinction?

Editorial in Indian Birds vol. 5 no. 5 (published on 5 April 2010).


Human actions, whether direct or indirect, are nowadays almost singularly responsible for nudging species towards their doom. Redemption from such a, potentially, lost cause lies in the adroit harnessing of resources, an assessment of the situation, the application of rigorous science, and hopefully, the forestalling of a threatened species careening towards extinction.

In India, vultures have been the hapless victims of a seemingly innocuous human act—that of using a drug as a painkiller for cattle—resulting in a population crash that teeters on the verge of extinction. Just ten years ago, who would have believed that E. H. Aitken’s laudatory “unsalaried public servants”1, would come to this? In the nick of time, the culprit that caused the vultures’ drooping death was identified. If the drug were to be banned, its usage completely stopped, the vultures would have a slim chance of recovery. Banning a drug is difficult, enforcing that ban, a nightmare. A tug-of-war between players only erodes resolve into time-fed laxity—all at the expense of the vultures’ future.

The Edible-nest Swiftlet Collocalia fuciphaga is found throughout southeastern Asia, but in India, it inhabits only the Andaman & Nicobar Islands. Its pure ‘saliva’ nest is a victual delicacy in southeastern Asian cuisine, wherein lies its nemesis. Protecting the bird in the wild is impossible, given its preferred breeding terrain. The conservation solution is to ranch it in such a way that its eggs are slipped under surrogate Glossy Swiftlets C. esculenta, and its nest, harvested. A misinformed government order placed the Edible-nest Swiftlet in Schedule I of The Indian Wildlife (Protection) Act, 1972, thereby protecting it totally, and paradoxically, blocking the only scientific solution that would ensure its continued survival on the islands. The only way forward was to remove the bird from Schedule I, allow its nest to be harvested, and prevent the species from becoming extinct (in India) by protection!

The third scenario is centered on the 6.82 km2, volcanic, Narcondam Island—home to the endemic Narcondam Hornbill Aceros narcondami. In 1905 the population of hornbills on Narcondam was c200, in 1972 c400, in 1998 c3602, in 2000 c4323, and in 2003 c3404. Why is this bird at a cul-de-sac, when its population has been more-or-less stable over one hundred years? The simple one-word answer is—goats. Lavkumar Khachar’s article highlights this issue and the urgent need for action. Will we allow goats to eat an island from under the Narcondam Hornbill? Indeed, will we allow them to do what we sent a posse of policemen to prevent Myanmar from doing—take the island away from India? Without vegetation holding it together, the volcanic rock will erode over time. Today it may sound fatalistic to say that an island devoid of vegetation might not survive the vagaries of tropical weather, but water and wind are an unstoppably potent force of erosion—and this, a one-way street to environmental disaster.

Island natural histories are mortally susceptible to invasions of flora and fauna and the introduction of goats on Narcondam is an act of criminal negligence, a slap in the face of our cognitive intelligence. The immediate solution is to remove all the goats, both captive and feral, from Narcondam, by whatever means necessary—delay would be catastrophic; implementation might restore equilibrium over time.

Paradoxically we only learn about a critically threatened species when it is already slipping downhill. Narcondam, however, is a situation that can be rectified easily. Yet, it is more than a decade since the late Ravi Sankaran of SACON raised these concerns and alarms in a report published by the institution, as did the late S. A. Hussain of BNHS, in several publications. The Indian government has taken no corrective action up till now. It is still not too late in the day to salvage the situation. If there is quick action, the magnificent Narcondam Hornbill will certainly survive, in splendid isolation, on a wild volcanic outcrop jutting above the storm-tossed waters of the Bay of Bengal—the unquestioned icon of a potential Peace Park between India and Myanmar and a symbol of successful conservation.

—Aasheesh Pittie

¹Aitken, E. H. 1947. The common birds of India. 3rd ed. Bombay: Thacker & Co. Ltd.

²Vijayan, L. & Sankaran, R. 2000. A study on the ecology, status and conservation perspectives of certain rare endemic avifauna of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands. Final report. Coimbatore: SACON.

³Yahya, H. S. A. & Zarri, A. A. 2003. Status, ecology and behaviour of Narcondam Hornbill, (Aceros narcondami) in Narcondam Island, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, India. J. Bombay Nat. Hist. Soc. 99 (3): 434–445 (2002).

⁴Vivek, R. & Vijayan, V. S. 2003. Ecology and conservation of the Narcondam Hornbill Aceros narcondami at Narcondam Island Sanctuary, India. Coimbatore: SACON.

Books in my life: to see ourselves as others see us

Nine lives: in search of the sacred in modern India. By William Dalrymple.

[Bloomsbury; 284 pp.]

The first book of Dalrymple’s that I read, i.e., before Nine lives, was The last Mughal. I loved it for the portrayal of an India I had learnt of almost furtively, in school. If only we were taught history the way it was narrated here. At several instances, as I read, tears welled up, at the helplessness of Bahadur Shah Zafar, not in himself as a person, bereft though he was, but as the legatee of a virasat completely incomprehensible to his insensitive contemporaries. But who is sensitive in times of war, and rebellion?

When Nine lives was published, I bought it enthusiastically, but it stood for almost five months on the shelves, in line with other unread works, biding its time. Then the author came to Hyderabad, and I resolved, ecstatically, to attend his reading. Lurking behind this wish was the bibliomaniac’s thrill of getting a first edition autographed by the author! How I would savour it for all time!

The evening arrived, and with it the tired-looking Scot. The reading went off quite well. He spoke a bit about the book, and read a couple of sections. There was a Q&A session with some interesting back-and-forth, but not without a display of that irritating habit people have at such moments, of expressing opinions rather than querying.

When I walked up to the table, and asked for an autograph, Bill almost snatched the volume from my hand, flattened it to the title page, asked my name, misspelled it and scrawled something illegible across its top, and middle. No eye contact, no moment of any sort of connect. There was a flight to catch at the end … and so …

No sooner did Nine lives resume its place in the lineup on my bookshelf, than a friend borrowed it from the missus! My precious autographed 1st ed! I could only dream of dog-eared pages, and split spines. Thankfully its dust jacket was left behind. Frantically I called the one who held my copy of Nine lives, and she had a good laugh at my genuine discomfiture! But the book came back in immaculate condition.

Now that I’ve read it, I can say that my favourite ‘life’, of the nine, is that of ‘the singer of epics’ (pp. 78–111). I warmed to this story immediately, primarily because it is based in Rajasthan, the land of my forbears (even though I’ve never visited it, except for two trips to Bharatpur, to birdwatch at the famed Keoladeo Ghana sanctuary), and also because it harks back to a time of pastoralism that we urbanites are separated from, but as Indians who survive on a largely ‘backward’ agrarian economy, are able to relate to spontaneously. In this chapter Dalrymple compares that lifestyle to the landscapes and livelihoods in the works of Tolstoy, and Turgenev. Many years ago, conversing with a friend who teaches Russian (he is Indian), I happened to mention that I partook the works of those masters. He asked me why? And I replied that the landscape, the people, and the rahan-sahan, which they wrote of, resembled the leisure and laid-back pathos of Indian pastoralist life.

You must read Nine lives yourself, to sink into the culture of this ancient land, but I’ll take you through some text that I particularly enjoyed. First, there is the incandescent one-liner from the bard, “the flame of my voice only really starts to glow after midnight” (p. 85). Then there is the intimate relationship between the patron and the beneficiary; the thakur and the bard. “Every prominent family of the land-holding Rajput caste, I discovered, inherited a family of oral genealogists, musicians and praise singers, who celebrated the family’s lineage and deeds. It was considered a great disgrace if these minstrels were forced by neglect to formally ‘divorce’ their patrons. Then they would break the strings of their instruments and bury them in front of their patron’s house, cutting the family off from the accumulated centuries of ancestral songs, stories and traditions. It was the oral equivalent of a magnificent library being burned to cinders.” (p. 87).

Before closing I must point you to a review of this work that appeared in Open, which speaks of an uncharacteristic complacency that has crept into this work by Dalrymple. Sadly, I must confess this is true. The editing should have been tighter.

Books in my life: On the shelves in June 2010!

Visit the publisher's blog: In flight reading material

Books in my life: men and their madness for mountains

Mountains of the mind: adventures in reaching the summit. By: Robert Macfarlane. 

[Vintage Books: 306 pp.]

Mountains fascinate me no end, yet, I do not have the you-know-what to be a mountaineer. Altitude drives a peg in my cranium—the pump climbs behind the eyes and works overtime. The vacuum in the rib cage yawns like a chasm.

Occasionally I pick up a book that propels me beyond the stable plain of my flatland existence into the oxygen-starved realm of men, and their madness for mountains.

In the much-acclaimed Mountains of the mind, Macfarlane delves into the psyche of why men climb mountains. The work has as many insights into our characters, as it has descriptions of climbs, and vistas of vertical landscape. It speaks of the pursuit of fear, the concept of geologic time, the fascination for new landscape, and the foolhardy conquest of unbelievable pain, and suffering, both, of those who climb, and those they leave behind—sometimes forever.

One climbs a mountain first in the mind, then physically. It’s a slow process; cannot be rushed, and every climber has to come to terms with time and space that are sculpted and scrubbed over millennia into the ‘aesthetics of inordinate slowness’ (p. 44).

The sense of geologic time that he conveys is what I would like to leave you with. For the entire journey up a mountain, through human history, you will need to read the book.

‘To understand even a little about geology gives you special spectacles through which to see a landscape. They allow you to see back in time to worlds where rocks liquefy and seas petrify, where granite slops about like porridge, basalt bubbles like stew, and layers of limestone are folded as easily as blankets. Through the spectacles of geology, terra firma becomes terra mobilis, and we are forced to reconsider our beliefs of what is solid and what is not. Although we attribute to stone a great power to hold time back, to refuse its claims (cairns, stone tablets, monuments, statuary), this is true only in relation to our own mutability. Looked at in the context of the bigger geological picture, rock is as vulnerable to change as any other substance.

‘Above all, geology makes explicit challenges to our understanding of time. It giddies the sense of here-and-now. The imaginative experience of what the writer John McPhee memorably called “deep time”—the sense of time whose units are not days, hours, minutes or seconds but millions of years or tens of millions of years—crushes the human instant; flattens it to a wafer. Contemplating the immensities of deep time, you face, in a way that is both exquisite and horrifying, the total collapse of your present, compacted to nothingness by the pressures of pasts and futures too extensive to envisage. And it is a physical as well as cerebral horror, for to acknowledge that the hard rock of a mountain is vulnerable to the attrition of time is of necessity to reflect on the appalling transience of the human body’. (p. 43).

Silence of the sparrows

My childhood was spent among sparrows. There were other winged commensals too, that shared those golden days with me, but it was sparrows I felt closest to. Our house had an infinite number of crevices and cornices where these birds nested and a small garden and goshala bordered with stretches of loose sand, that they dusted in. Late afternoons were chosen for this surprisingly disciplined, communal affair. The fine sand had warmed by that hour, from a sun that slipped behind buildings on its journey to the other side of the world, leaving the dusting area in gentle shadow. Manik the gaiwala would have finished chopping fodder for Lakshmi and Nutan, inadvertently scenting the afternoon stillness with moist, sappy, resinous aromas of bruised verdure, setting those bovines into an impatience of nodding heads, flaring nostrils and unbelievably widening eyes, till he poured it into their fodder-boxes, barely avoiding spilling it all around as they nosed the flow of falling pieces. Not that it mattered, for their rough tongues later lapped up whatever dropped outside the box. It was between this time and an hour or so later, when he sat next to Laxmi, on his haunches, with a bucket between his knees to milk her, that the sparrows began their daily ritual. Sometimes they would continue while the milk sang in the bucket.

Twenty to thirty sparrows, cocks and hens, would gather on the ground between the henna hedge and the goshala, in an apparently meaningless flock, till a few of them shook off their listlessness by puffing up and ruffling their feathers, twisting this way and that on a patch of particularly soft sand, forming, in the process, a tiny rim of the fine powder around them. The sand billowed in miniscule clouds around them, passing through their feathers, suffocating irritating lice and mites. Their activity attracted those around and soon there was a line of sparrows patiently waiting their turn at the dusting bowl!  Impatience and intemperance were put down with a sharp peck. Patience rewarded by the duster hopping off, making place for another’s ablutions. It was a safe place in a moment of distraction, for others were alert and shelter from bored canines in search of fun or a deadly shikra, close at hand in the spiky henna. On days they chose not to dust themselves, for whatever unknown reasons, remnants of the dusting patch, with its scattering of tiny depressions, remained on the ground, a microcosm of life’s infinite rituals—meaningful to the observant, hidden from the preoccupied.

The Hyderabad of 20-30 years ago has changed from a city of minarets to one of massive billboards. In our hurried preoccupation with transforming the city into a modern metropolis, we forgot the house sparrow. Perhaps it’s ordinariness, its commonness, it’s dull omnipresence, like some old-fashioned traits—etiquette, sentience, an adab that was unique to Hyderabad—could not keep up with the blinding speed of development, the new culture of big, bright and brash that seized us with a manic frenzy. Before we realized it, sparrows had disappeared from our midst. Increasingly at parties, at street-corner gatherings, at offices and in meetings, the hot question was, “Where have all the sparrows gone? Why have they forsaken us?”

Those are not easy questions to answer. Sparrows have declined in many parts of India, as they have in England. They thrive in some cities—Mumbai, Delhi—but have almost disappeared from others (Bangalore, Coimbatore, Hyderabad). In England its population has dropped by more than 50% since the ’70s. We are not as meticulous about our data, so we do not knowthe scientific trend of our sparrow populations. But we are aware of a reduction in numbers!

If this decline was a question of housing, of modern architecture lacking the extravagance of alcoves, cornices, crevices, and stucco, versus older structures, basking in their resplendence—there are the modern cities cited above that contradict. If the presence of man, so essential for this commensal, was the question—for the sparrow thrives amidst the press of humanity—nobody can complain of a drop in human populations. What then is the matter with sparrows? Is it food, living space, or a combination of various situations? One can but conjecture and theorize.

Food could be a reason. Most families, buy neatly packed grain from shops. Some time ago, these would be cleaned at home and the chaff thrown for birds. But sparrows do not exist by grain alone. They need insects and arthropods too in their diet, especially while raising a brood of ravenous nestlings. The use of pesticides in urban areas, private and municipal gardens and within homes, has increased hundredfold in the past two decades. Their harmful effects are unrecorded scientifically but are graphic in fact. Living space might be a reason—the lack of holes and cornices in modern architectural structures—our eagerness for clean-lined, designer-book homes. How many of us tolerate a bird’s untidy nest within our dwellings? How many, let the web of a spider be? And who wants sandy places in these days of cement and concrete? The very trails within gardens and larger parks are under threat of being cemented and paved! Or is it something intrinsic that was catalyzed by our actions? Perhaps the sparrow needs the society of an unknown number of brethren to survive successfully. That could be a genetic prerequisite. If the depleting populations of certain species reach a critical low in their numbers, they are incapable of a recovery. But what, finally, is the cause of this decline? There seems to be no single answer yet.

One thing however is certain. They have not forsaken us. We have them. The decline of the sparrow is a symptom of a uniquely human malady. Our carelessness towards all other life, save our own. This matters as we have the power to alter our environment like no other living force on earth does. And if we are careless towards life, can we take care of ourselves? Sometimes I wonder which is worse—to be blind or to see and not comprehend?

[Published in The Hindu dated 10 December 2002.]

Books in my life

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer & Annie Barrows
[Bloomsbury; 248 pp.]


I had my sleeves rolled up, while we waded knee-deep among tomes in the stacks of a bookshop, marauding for books for the library of a private club. Dr R., as well-thumbed in his knowledge about books as a writer's thesaurus, casually added an intriguingly titled paperback to the steadily increasing heap of goodies on the floor. I could never resist an odd title, cover, or binding; so I picked it up, and bought a copy. What a lovely investment that was! Thirty percent off the Indian distributor's price; subsequently read by four people (and still in circulation!); so almost free for me!


Let me say straight away that this is another book about books; fictionalized, I agree, but with what a heady recipe—books and the love of reading, letters and the urge to write, WWII, good amongst evil, evil by itself, love for life, rebellion, goodness. Let me also say that one is reminded of the classic 84 Charing Cross [of which another time] while reading this, but there the resemblance ends. Despite mind-numbing ideology, despite merciless peer pressure, despite the repetitive madness that has overtaken the world over the millennia, there be hearts that beat to a different drummer—that people a civilization of goodness and fuel the only sanity there is.


The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society  is a paean for those who stamp ownership rights inside a book, no sooner it is bought, by inscribing their name, and sometimes, address. It begins with a letter written to the owner of a book, from one who now owns it. Friendship blossoms through the mutual pleasure of reading. Stories are spun in real life and real time…and the work takes flight.


I read it in such a dappled daze that there is not a single pencilled remark or underlined passage that I could quote for you. But I can say this with complete conviction:


If you are a reader of books, and moreover, if you love books, this one takes your hand, leads you to your favorite sofa, tucks you in, warms your heart, and soars your spirit.

Books in my life

The uncommon reader by Alan Bennett

I acquiesce to a friend's suggestion, and begin jotting in this blog, a few lines about books that I've read, am reading, or hope to read in the future. My reading habits are notoriously meandering, snagging at benevolent rocks, swishing through clumps of reeds, tickled by overhanging branches, running a short straight course, slowly stagnating in fanning deltas, amalgamating into the soup that holds aloft our collective and individual continents.

Books about books is a genre I warmed to late in life—thus qualifying as an opsimath. I came to it, of course, book by book, but once arrived, a whole new world lay ahead. I wandered onto this uncommon path by way of a genetic urge to collect. Philatelist father…bibliomaniac son. By the way, dad too was afflicted with the gentle madness once, till he passed it on to me. Not that I'm complaining! But about this journey, another time. Now about a little gem that I read, in one sitting, a few days ago, and then passed on to the missus of eclectic reading tastes, who, thank heavens, pronounced it 'unputdownable'.

The uncommon reader of Bennett's endearing work is none other than Queen Elizabeth, who stumbles upon books late in life. As she begins to be drawn into the world of books, her life changes, as do her views about people, administration and governance. Feeling and emotion towards fellow humans bloom in her, despite her equerries' disapproval. The immortal world of words casts its spell and Her Majesty begins to think about what she's reading, and begins to change subtly. Books begin to clarify her thinking, her development as a monarch and a human being…And through her charming infatuation, Bennett speaks about reading and books and their place in our evolution as humans. I'll leave you with a couple of quotes:

'The appeal of reading, she thought, lay in its indifference: there was something lofty about literature. Books did not care who was reading them or whether one read them or not. All readers were equal, herself included. Literature, she thought, is a commonwealth; letters a republic…books did not defer. All books were equal…[reading] was anonymous; it was shared; it was common. And she who had lived a life apart now found that she craved it. Here in these pages and between these covers she could go unrecognised.'

Trekking to Tala Kaveri

A Black Eagle, skimming the treetops, slips over us in a shallow, hesitant glide, as we emerge from the verdure vaults onto the main road. It disappears over the tree line as quickly as it appeared. Its brooding, dark plumage displays the bulging reined-in power of a raptor. Its diagnostic yellow legs seem sinister in their contrast. Quickening heartbeats and a deep sense of satisfaction at this sighting encapsulate the joys of this trek. But let me start at the beginning. 

The hamlet of Bhágmandla (880 m.) is beginning to stir when we reach it at 7.45a.m. on the last day of the millennium. We had started from Peremboocolly Estate (coffee, cardamom, pepper) near Chettalli (1,390 m.), where we are staying, while it was still dark, at 6 a.m. The drive via Madikere (1,170 m.) is bracingly cold and uneventful, except for some spectacular views of the fog-filled stillness of luminescent valleys lit by the spontaneity of a lightening dawn. Pausing to admire one such panorama, we see humps of hills porpoising away into the distance in fading hues of blue as they merge with a silvery horizon. The air we inhale is as fresh as a cut cucumber, and as refreshing. 

 Entering Bhágmandala we spot some pilgrims, returning from a dip in the sangam of the Káveri and the first of her tributaries, the Kannike. "Yes, there is a short-cut to Tala Káveri. You can walk to it," informs a dripping gentleman, wrapped in a soaking white cotton dhoti, shivering in the early morning zephyr, or perhaps with the religious fervour of his cleansing! For it is 

believed that once a year, even the mother of all Indian rivers, the holy Gangá, travels through subterranean channels, to bathe in the Káveri, and purge herself of the detritus of sin left behind by an overload of repentant sinners. Such is the purity of this Dakshin Gangá (the southern Ganges). 

 A helpful police official directs us to park the vehicle in the police station's compound. I suppose that is the safest place he can think of when we tell him our plan, promising to come for the vehicle after five to six hours! While Amitabh drives away to park the car, Prakriti and I ready our packs, stamping at the cold and watching our breath hang in visible clouds as though 

we exhale steam. Soon Amitabh joins us and we start off down an inconspicuous path, leading away from the open area (used by buses to make a 'U' turn) past a school and some government offices. Here we walk under large canopied trees growing on either side of the path. A Black-headed Oriole flits from one to the other, calling as it disappears inside the foliage. Excitedly we peer into the greenery, but the golden bird has vanished. 

 Ahead is a narrow, cultivated valley across which begins the hill we've come to climb. The entire golden-yellow field is covered with stacks of the dry brown crop, neatly arranged in rectangular blocks. The rising sun lights up the entire valley like a richly textured, warm quilt. Little and Median Egrets and a Paddy Bird (in breeding plumage) peck about almost desultorily 

in the fallow field. A White-breasted Kingfisher glowers down its scarlet beak from an overhead wire, concentrating on the field below. In the distance, Red-rumped and Common Swallows appear like musical score on an azure sheet, as they perch in rows on stretches of overhead wires. A few glossy black Jungle Crows mope around for they haven't yet found a victim to chivvy. Some confident Jungle Mynas strut and swagger in a part of the field, as though optimism at the break of day is an auspicious sign! It is at least contagious, for we stride across the fields with alacrity, giddy with lung-fulls of invigorating oxygen and eager for some good birding. 

 Our destination lies a short five km. away (eight km. by the metal road) – not the sort that is reached after hiking a couple of days through uninhabited country, where even the sound of a distant engine's roar does not intrude. But we are promised a trek punctuated with intervals of solitude and top-class, deeply satisfying birding! Since there cannot be a better way of ending one millennium and ringing in another, we jump at the opportunity. 

Scarred paths 

 We find ourselves climbing a slope that is devastated. Habitat decay due to overuse of resources radiates like concentric ripples on the surface of a pond around all human settlements, and Bhágmandla is no exception. On our left, shrubs and trees have been thoughtlessly hacked for firewood. Debris of this carnage lies around on the much-used path, as mute evidence. On our right is a barbed wire-enclosed private estate with young bushes of coffee. I wonder for how long nature will allow our myopia to ravage her finiteness. 

 Taken aback by this unexpected scene we grit our teeth in helplessness and hope that the vegetation ahead is intact. Pausing to survey the damage I espy a movement in the tangle of woody undergrowth. Black-capped Babbler! The adaptability of birds is amazing! It seems like we've stumbled upon a small mixed feeding party. Four Black-capped Babblers rocket exasperatingly from twig to twig, denying me the view that is balm to a birder's soul, till one pauses, bewildered at this contorted thing with enormous eyes! In that moment I have my bird! A few White-eyes, emitting their Tanpuraesque background drone and, a male Monarch Flycatcher, brilliant highlighter-blue, are fellow-hunters. It's amazing how such dazzling birds as the Monarch do not stand out in their surroundings, like neon signs do in urban malls. There are others too, hunting behind the bush. A Tailor Bird "towhits", followed by the mysterious calls of unfamiliar birds. My peninsular birder's ear cannot decipher them. But this sense of mystery is essential for the enjoyment of wilderness. What is there to relish in life if all is known and catalogued and the uniquely human sense of wonder, lost? A lone Brown Shrike observes the scene, perched at the tip of a twig, so still in its vigil that the two seem to merge. Ahead, mercifully, greens begin to dominate browns. 

Greener horizons 

 The sound of avian arguments floats from ahead. Walking past a screen of vegetation we see a tree with a profusion of small blood-red flowers. A species of Erythrina perhaps? The entire feathered neighbourhood seems to have descended for breakfast on its branches. Prominent in numbers and belligerence are Black Bulbuls. They seem to spend more time squabbling and chasing each other than feeding. A Crimson-throated Barbet raps out his monologue from the topmost branch. Four Black-crested Bulbuls guzzle nectar among the higher branches. They belong to the southern race Pycnonotus melanicterus gularis – evident from the telltale ruby-coloured spot on their throats, as though stained in the act of stealing nectar from these blossoms! 

 An hour has passed and this seems a good spot for a bite and a steaming cup of cheer. Sandwiches, fingers of tangy sweet oranges, wafers and hot tea – and before us this amazing drama of nature. Better birding is hard to come by! 

 Rapidly approaching shrill whistles are heard from beyond the tree line. Four male Scarlet Minivets burst into view overhead, pursuing a single yellow female. They seem inflamed with passion while she seems drained of all blood! There is a temporary respite for all when they too settle into the resplendent tree. Two Bronzed Drongos traipse after aerial insects from its branches. A dashing Blackheaded Cuckoo-Shrike arrives. 

 The blossom-studded tree stands in the private estate and may have survived the axe for precisely that reason. But here is an example of its role, its vital nuts-and-bolts utility as an ecological fulcrum in the wilderness. We savour the interdependence that hums here, the co-mingling of life. In the simple act of flowering – a manifestation of its sexual effusion suffused with colour, fragrance and plentitude – it procreates with the unwitting help of other, altogether different Classes of life! Insects, birds and mammals! Unaware of their bizarre dual role in this little skit except that of the gourmand, they descend to the orgy. From flower to flower and from tree to tree they pub-hop, clandestine pollinators and dispersal agents. Its sex for some and food for others. Nature works in intricate ways. Even cyberspace pales when you begin to think of the inter-connectedness of a hundred million species! 

 With orange-scented fingertips we brush at crumbs, rinse cups and rise to proceed. The path begins to climb and the estate gives way to woods that slope away from us, affording good visibility into the canopy. The hill rises on our left, also shrouded with vegetation. Ferns decorate its dew-drenched shoulder. The path itself seems infrequently used and is generously tenanted 

with a variety of mosses and lichens. A gentle silence breathes through the world, reflected in the wholesome satiety of moist leaves carpeting the forest floor, in the companionship of duetting Indian Scimitar Babblers, in the convoy of black ants marching purposefully across our path. Conversation ceases as we realise the worth and effectiveness of other senses. 

 Coming around a bend I see a brown flycatcher perched low in the sun-dappled undergrowth. Muscicapa muttui! According to the Hornbill, 1966 (2):9, the bird was named after a favourite servant "Muttu" by the famous expert on Sri Lankan avifauna, Layard, while he was based in Sri Lanka, the Brown-breasted Flycatcher (also known as Layard's Flycatcher) leads an enigmatic, seemingly furtive existence in its peregrinations across the subcontinent from the northeastern tip to its wintering quarters in the Western Ghats and Sri Lanka. Dull brown in colour, except for a glistening white throat, a pale lower mandible and large eyes like moist dark brown papaya seeds, it seems uninteresting after the panorama of colour we've just left behind. It is confiding. It is quiet. It hunts flying insects with deadly accuracy, flitting after them in the shadowy region below the canopy, like a well-oiled avian missile. The mystery that shrouds its life, its ecology, its mysterious wanderings through our country, its stubborn insistence on inhabiting patches and corridors of evergreen and moist-deciduous forests at just that altitude – knock me onto the floor. I am non-existent in its world, except as the perpetrator and destroyer of its habitat. I wonder whether this exasperatingly beautiful, intricately mysterious world will ever forgive humanity's hard footfall upon its soil! 

 Amitabh has gone ahead, after an orange-skirted apparition. The Malabar Trogon has him thrilled to bits. Neither of us has seen one this close or so clearly. Such a perfectly square-tipped tail! Speechlessly we gape at its exquisite symmetry. At the drape and finery of its plumage. At its uncanny ability to juxtapose a bit of greenery between us. What wouldn't I give to metamorphose into a branch of that leafy hillside, and be blessed by the touch of a Trogon!  

Prakriti, tiring of the climb and impatient to end it, points out a Greater Racket-tailed Drongo. Suddenly we are surrounded by birds. Sunbirds, Minivets, Flycatchers, Yellow-browed Bulbuls, a White-throated Ground Thrush. This is another mixed-hunting party that moves through the forest in an incredible show of cooperation, understanding and, non-violence. Its members cannot comprehend such human values but have none-the-less been selected by evolution to enact them! Each species exploits a unique niche for its food. There is no transgression, no trespassing and no bad blood. 

 Near the top of our climb we emerge from the tree cover to see another estate on our right. This one has very few trees on it. The plains of Kodagu stretch to the horizon. On a lone, pepper draped, densely foliaged tree, as though clinging to the last vestiges of its disappearing world, is a White-bellied Tree Pie. It hunts caterpillars and swallows them with relish, wiping its 

beak beside it on the branch like a truant child might use a tablecloth! Then preens its feathers. I have never witnessed a better distribution of white, black, grey and brown on such a small canvas! I would love to loiter and soak up more 'atmosphere'. As I am sure would Amitabh. But there are promises to keep. 

Nature's thespians 

 On the edge of the hill's shoulder, above and behind us, is a tree that's taller than its neighbours. Five Chestnut-headed Bee-eaters sally-hunt insects from its branches. After a concentrated chase they return in a sweeping, satisfied arc to their perch where the snack is swallowed. Again and again they perform. In this magnificent amphitheatre – with its azure backdrop, its chequered earthy coloured surroundings lit by the oblique rays of a rising sun – their act is so graceful in its simplicity, so unattainable in its perfection and alas so threatened by our callousness that a mixture of emotions – rage, helplessness, futility – jam in my throat. From a branch of the same tree, cantilevered over the valley, a Golden-backed Woodpecker hangs upside-down and knocks on wood. 

 When we hit the main road, we can see the temple-complex at Tala Káveri, still about a kilometre away. It is noon and we are hungry. Perching on the parapet of the road, facing another valley, we pass around soft juicy apples, bone-dry biscuits and another steaming cup. A Kestrel wafts delicately overhead. With effortless ease she slides on eddies of thermals, surveying the 

slopes of the valley for victuals. At the suspicion of one she hovers in mid-flight, as though pinned against the blue sky. Dissatisfied, she planes away to a different part of her beat. Another hoverer, the exquisite, ruby-eyed, Black-shouldered Kite plays the nearby thermals, produced by the gradual heating of the bald hilltops. In the southern portion of the Western Ghats, forests give way to grasslands after a certain elevation. But here I suspect the denudation of these precincts by human hand, not biogeography. 

 It would be simplistic to say that the Káveri exists because of creatures like the White-bellied Treepie and the Brown-breasted Flycatcher. But they wouldn't survive in another environment without the forests that blanket these Western Ghats. And where would the river be without these trees? And us? Where would we be, our history, our culture, the very fabric of our civilisation, without the river? The presence of these birds, as indeed of all other creatures in their appropriate habitats, indicates the health of our surroundings. If we view them as traffic lights on the super highway of our un-controlled 'development'– we might avoid accidents. In their happiness is our happiness. In their survival, ours. Would you now rather say that we exist because of the Flycatcher? 

King of the river: 

The Káveri is home to the Mahseer, a Cyprinoid fish with such spunk that sport fishing aficionados make a beeline for its banks. This magnificently multi-hued, large-scaled fighting fish has a wide-ranging, omnivorous diet that includes fallen flowers, aquatic plants, seeds, insects, earthworms, molluscs, crabs, smaller fish, water-snails, and shrimps. Hundred-pounders 

were often caught 60-70 years ago, five foot monsters with 38-inch girths! The record fish was hooked by G.P. Sanderson and was estimated to weigh 150 lb! Officially, J. deWet Van Ingen landed the granddaddy of south Indian Mahseer in 1946 from the Kabini River, an enormous fish, 5'6" long with a 41" girth and a 10" diameter maw. It weighed all of 120 lb! These sizes are the stuff of dreams today, with the 20-40 pound fish found that inhabit the waters mere shadows of their ancestors. When caught, these fish are promptly released back into their waters. Nirad Muthanna of Bangalore holds the record for an Indian angler (see picture), a massive 99 lb. Golden Mahseer landed along the Kabini after an hour-long battle in September 1999. But life is not easy for the Mahseer any longer. Large fish survive only where commercial angling is allowed. Elsewhere they are not allowed to vegetate at leisure in the fertile waters of the Káveri and its tributaries, not allowed to feel the river run through them when they propel themselves upstream to spawn in slow flowing stretches of clear water. The despicable use of dynamite has devastated vast portions of the river and the life that it supports and dams prevent Mahseer from swimming upriver to their breeding grounds. 

Pittie, A. 2000. Trekking to Tala Káveri. Sanctuary Asia XX (6): 34–38.

Some thoughts on an urban forest: Kasu Brahmanand Reddy National Park, Hyderabad

One winter day, two years ago, two friends and I visited the Kasu Brahmanand Reddy National Park (KBR Park). It was early morning and bright sunshine was trying hard to dissipate the night’s chill. Oblique rays of sunlight sculpted the landscape into crisp textures, surrounding us with clarity rarely found in a large urban agglomeration, like Hyderabad. The park was alive with birds and one of my friends, an Englishman, could not restrain his amazement when he blurted, “they are popping from every bush, aren’t they!” Birds love such days. So do bird watchers! There were at least half a dozen types of warblers scrambling in the undergrowth or falling off the tips of leaves from the outer periphery of tree crowns. A pair of rufousbacked shrikes spoke in a muted sub-song. The ruby-eyed, silver feathered, blackwinged kite—master predator of open scrub and grassland habitats—swung up over the tree line, in one smooth arc, displaying grace and power and joy. Purple sunbirds fussed from branch to branch, one male, resplendent in iridescent purple, flashed red epaulets on quivering wings, as he displayed to a drab olive colored female. Avian music rose from the plants all around us, and filled the air with sounds of sweet exuberance. Such moments are generally experienced in wilderness areas. To be able to experience them within a large city is truly fantastic. Such is the charm of an urban forest!

Detailed and organized taxonomic surveys have not been conducted inside KBR Park. But ad hoc amateur listings of the flora and fauna provide ample evidence that it is a veritable storehouse of local Natural History. Frankly, these creatures have as much right to exist in their habitat, undisturbed, as we have to do so in ours. Their proximity and their presence enrich us. But it is the fashion of the day to evaluate the economic value of everything and not be satisfied by the mere existence of something. So I give some examples of how KBR Park, by its very existence, contributes considerably to our well being. It is a major green lung in our city, and it is free. The government need not spend a single Rupee in its upkeep, as it is natural, unlike parks like Sanjivayya Park, Indira Park and Public Gardens. The vegetation of this Park requires neither water nor fertilizer. It is self-sufficient, as indeed Nature herself is! It cleans the air and absorbs atmospheric, vehicular and sound pollution. It is a natural sponge during rains, preventing runoff, thus allowing water to seep into the soil and recharge subterranean rills. It is the catchment area for water bodies within the city, like Hussain Sagar and Durgam Cheruvu, which the government is promoting as major tourist sites. More ‘benefits’ of the Park can be listed, but these should suffice. How much, pray, is clean air and drinking water worth, to us, beleaguered and gasping that we are, for these basic elements of survival? The answer is obvious and it does not require wisdom to realize the worth of the Park. Just, common sense!

To preserve the nature of this unique Park, its atmosphere of an urban wilderness, there are certain dos and don’ts, which would normally form a management plan for the Park. Indeed, the drawing-up of such a plan should be the first action of the managers of the Park, the A.P. Forest Department. Surprisingly, a plan does not exist! I have been a regular, wide-eyed visitor of this verdant oasis and give below some observations and suggestions on the current management practices in the Park, with reference to the habitat and the public.

HABITAT MANAGEMENT

The most important physical feature of the Park is the wall that encloses it. But for this wall, the Park may not have been what it is today! Therefore it follows that the maintenance of this wall be a primary objective of the management. Any broken portion should be repaired immediately so infiltration, human as well as animal, is curtailed. Woodcutters and poachers wait for such opportunities and may actually cause damage to portions of the wall to ply their trade. A break in the wall opens the habitat for our mammalian commensals—pariah dogs and feral cats. Their accidental introduction into the Park will cause havoc with a fauna that has got used to the absence of such ferocious predators. Ground nesting birds will suffer drastically. The other points of entry for these creatures are the two gates to the Park. These are kept open at different times of the day and are so wide that a persistent dog can slip through easily. A simple “cattle baffler” of spaced out pipes laid over a pit in front of the gates, will prevent unwanted animals from getting into the Park. I have seen dogs sporting red collars, within the Park. These poor creatures have reportedly been collected from various parts of the city, castrated or spayed and released at random, by animal welfare organizations. Many are seen loitering on the roads, petrified and lost. Some fatally ill, since the operation demands rest, which they do not get.

Deadwood is an essential ingredient in the organic cycle of the Park. In it reside insects savored by woodpeckers. When it falls, insects and arthropods break it down so that it is absorbed gradually into the soil, replenishing nutrients constantly, in a classic cycle of self-sufficiency. This deadwood should not be removed from the Park.

As a policy, exotic flora and fauna should not be introduced into the Park. Every action should be scrutinized so that exotics do not inadvertently slip in. Lantana is rampant today and Parthenium gaining ground fast. Thoughtless acts like importing red laterite soil for repairing paths has resulted in the import of seeds of these exotics! The forest department should also stop planting trees within the Park. They should realize that it is a dynamic ecosystem where the results of such acts cannot be fathomed and generally result in the degeneration of the habitat. It should also desist from releasing animals like blackbuck, cheetal, etc., for the area is too small and will be over-grazed by these ungulates in no time. The unwitting transformation of a habitat cannot be part of any management policy. Safeguarding the uniqueness of a habitat, should.

Trails will deteriorate drastically due to the action of water. Sound engineering of paths through low-lying areas will solve the problem. Water will not be constrained to flow through narrow pipes below trails, and invariably washes away the soil around the pipes. In such places, small arch bridges would serve the purpose better. The number of trails should not be increased. Neither should their total length nor width. Of primary concern is the environment through which the trail passes. Minimum interference is the best management policy for any wilderness area

Management of visitors

Education is the best ‘use’ the Park can be put to. As an open-air laboratory of Natural History it provides ample opportunities for schools and other educational institutions for nature education. Concepts of nature study like water regime, soil regime, ecology, etc. can be taught with live specimens and in a dynamic habitat! The department should design and provide necessary educational material in the form of information boards, checklists of fauna and flora, life-histories of prominent species and/or Families, etc.

If the department decides to maintain a portion of the Park as a core area, open only for internal maintenance and special faunal and floral studies, this area should be strictly out of bounds for the public and should be ‘policed’ by the department. A wilderness area cannot be allowed to degenerate into a sports complex even in its buffer zone. Recreation within the Park should be restricted to pursuits related to Natural History only. But KBR Park has a unique problem. It is used by people for walking, in the morning and evening, for physical exercise. Under the law, this is an illegal act within a national park.

When a residential area was planned in Jubilee Hills, the government would have set aside enough land for parks and other recreational activities. If such areas exist, they should be developed and ‘walkers’ redirected to them for their perambulations. If they do not exist, where have they gone?

We cannot create wilderness areas like the KBR Park. It is an enlightened society that recognizes this fact and uses it to advantage, even if it means to let something merely exist!

The bouquet of Benishaan

Benishaan mangoes will always have a flavour in my life that is steeped in the dry heat of the forests of Warangal. When I sit before a bowl-full of this rich aromatic fruit, its hugely opulent bouquet takes me back to that May in 1980 when a group of us had gone to Eturnagaram Reserve Forest. It was hot, very hot. We would pile into a small Willis 4-wheel drive, chauffeured by a short, rustic man, full of wry wit—but with enough patience and bonhomie to survive the crazy ordeal of driving our zany bunch around in the tinder-dry jungles.

It was beedi-leaf season and most of the animals were disturbed by the inflow of hundreds of humans, brought in on daily wages to collect the leaf that is smoked all over India. In search of wilderness, we had come to this forest, like long-weary desert travelers in quest of an oasis. The romance of being ‘on safari’ gave us an unbelievable stamina to tramp through ankle-deep leaf-litter, dry enough to make our feet sound like a chugging train; through mazes of thorny bushes whose sharpened defenses seemed to have atrophied in the heat and parchedness of this land into small, bitter curves of resistance; through the middle of tiny damp floored creeks—whose soddenness could not seemingly evaporate through the almost grotesquely green branches overhead. These so thick and intermeshed that chinks of sunlight fought their way gingerly to reach the numberless shadows and make it a permanently dim dawn below.

The stench of rotting vegetation underfoot stirred by our cautiously palpating, splashy feet, make us pucker our noses awhile. But how long can a man walk through unknown country—brushing aside generations of webs woven to trap thin, vaporous chemicals ensconced within precariously gossamer bodies of arthropods; ducking, so a branch does not scratch an eye; peering up into the world of tense, silent leaves, pressing upon us their humid weight sucked up through numberless trillions of cells in an endless cycle as old as life itself—to glimpse a movement, an odd-shaped leaf, a shadow darker than those around it, so dark in fact that the brilliant aquamarine were subdued into invisibility; the thing upper-most in our minds—to experience novelty! To see, to comprehend, to inhale pristineness! The agony and the ecstasy of this suspense is too much for a wrinkled nose to stand on. It has to fall into normality, alert for other, unknown whiffs that might pump adrenaline, rather than let the methanish vapor of disintegrating fiber distract it!

One day we walked, waded, paddled, and dawdled through the shallow Dayyam Vagu’s cool waters. Hopping gingerly from sandbank to sandbank, like city-dwellers jumping road puddles—we soon realized the futility of it all and simply took off our footwear. Pleasure is walking through calf-deep water, in 40 degrees centigrade, stopping now and then to immerse cupped-hands into the liquid and splash it over one’s head—otherwise so hot as to cook the brain within! At times the walk became palpably purposeless. We kept at it unconsciously, sub-consciously aware of a hidden pursuit. Then some one saw the magical glide of the giant malabar squirrels. Stunned momentarily into silence we stood rooted, while the water flowed below, gently reminding us of natural history. No swinger of ropes within a big top can stir joy so spontaneously in my heart — as did those squirrels that afternoon. Mundane chores of daily life disintegrate into motes of nothingness in front of a facile gliding squirrel! How unaware, how unconscious of our awe, how miraculously distant from our petty troubles! No poet can describe its simplicity. Its perfect, arcing, well oiled falls—from tree to tree!

These forays of ours into the ‘unknown’, would last all day. We would cover 20-25kms at times! Humidity, like invisible rain, made life miserable. The nights were one big sweltering discomfort. Mosquitoes, and so repellent; which used to make the skin clammy. And the total dearth of breeze, as though we were stuck in the Doldrums. Discomfort like this drove me out of bed. I could never make myself go beyond the wash of yellow light, into the darkness. It was something more than the sudden chill I had felt when one night, walking down the path from ‘our’ hut to the one in which BC and M were staying—my feet in Hawaii chappals—I stopped in mid-stride and switched on the torch. There, between my feet, as though caught in the act of some skullduggery, was a 3 inch long black scorpion, waving its tail overhead like a flag. All pretensions of field natural history vanished and within the beat of that second I craved to be an ordinary armchair naturalist! The torch, thenceforth, was kept open. Moon or no moon. I never mustered enough guts to venture into the realm of darkness, so sharply defined by the harshness of the bare electric bulbs. Prominent among my inhibitions must certainly have been some incomprehensible fear. The heart would flutter inside me when I scampered to the dining room, to wake up one of the boys for bed tea. But why did I get up into those early hours, just about to light? Was it because I was an early morning baby and the newness of the world which surrounded me, so drastically different from the soupy comfort of my mother’s womb, still knocks within my breast a beat that hearkens me to rise early in strange places?

There were times during the day when everything became dead quiet, but not at dawn. A dawn chorus lifts the curtain of darkness with its enthusiasm. Bubbles of sound burst forth through the thinning blackness like ribbons of light heralding dawn. How many people who throng to music concerts have risen at break of day to listen to the greatest orchestra on earth? It is said that music springs from the earth, yet so few pay heed to this earth-poetry. It’s spontainity however, needs neither audience nor applause. An end in itself, it is audible to those who comprehend. Have you ever hear the koel utter a false note? Have you ever felt the flow of a magpie-robin’s song falter? Has not the stentoreous sarus clashed like the cymbals of the very earth? Has not the screech of a parakeet embedded itself into your heart? Into this event I used to wake up and listen enraptured as wisps of darkness melted away all around me.

And believe me, it is no different in the city. Wake up one early morning, before the rays of a rising sun have brought the primal blush in the sky, and listen to bird song. There will be fewer musicians, no doubt, but the notes will be neither less true, nor less heart stopping. The koel will let forth in summer and often the dumpy little staidly dressed, pied bushchat, an unobtrusive bit of black feathers, pour lilting notes in short golden arias. But you have to listen. And once you get the tunes into your head, you will recognize the voices anywhere in your life, in whatever situation you be, and will smile to yourself at their familiarity. That will be your intimate and secret treasure.

The call of one family of birds always struck me. The cuckoos. Whether the bi-syllabic call of the familiar koel—urbanized, swank, prankster—or the ventriloquial utterances of the others. The Indian cuckoo, the hawk-cuckoo, the plaintive cuckoo and the pied-crested cuckoo. Their penetrating, persistent calls, like the seconds-hand of earth’s clock, would echo, reverberate, rebound and filter through the woods all day. Like long distance calls, perfected over ages. Wherever we tramped, these birds seemed to follow with their song-lines, themselves elusive. Only hard-headed persistence in following one call, showed up a pathetically drab, indistinct patch of grey and white and black—this and the thrumming air around it, and the silence of the woods magnificently amplifying its try-syllabic call. An Indian cuckoo!

The character of a place, its ambience, is relative to the moods and temporal perceptions of the observer. In Eturnagaram, the bouquet of Benishaan, rising from a bowl in front of me, at lunch and at dinner was overpowering. The heat of the day was a presence unseen and continued in its stillness into night when the temperature dropped marginally but the all-pervading quiescence remained. It was in fact amplified by the repetitive sounds of the jungle reverberating within its leafy confines. There was also a distinct sense of sukoon.

When these thoughts have been set, and all those numberless others, that come like flashes in the mind’s eye and are ruminated upon—can one evaluate the usefulness of a fruit?