D.I.Y. Dad

It's four years now, but not a day passes without remembrances of things past. Here are some I've managed to jot down.

Once I overheard Babuji telling mom that he liked hosing the driveway after a particularly stormy late-summer night, that had left a riffled carpet of glistening mud, decorated by wind-blown leaf motifs, in the uneven driveway, and collected a pool of fickle water in a shallow concavity, where the cement had settled into a subterranean gap created by the exploring roots of a mango tree.

Those were times of an abundant supply of water, and the aspect of wastage, in the process of washing clean a driveway, was unheard of. The collected muck, deposited from the detritus of an entire summer’s dust-accumulated rooftops, and washed down here through sucking, gurgling, flooded drainpipes, one even disgorging a thoroughly disoriented toad, was a couple of inches thick, and even the robust jet of water lacked sufficient force to wash it away. Ergo a maali swept the muddy gruel that Babuji hosed farther and farther away from the house.

Mom’s angst was, with so many helps idling around the property, why did he have to do these menial jobs? There was a simple, direct answer to that question. He enjoyed working with his hands, and a job was a job. He used them to get as close to a task as possible, the only way of extracting maximum satisfaction from a chore. He would have ensured, that the hose was fixed to the storm valve so no water dripped, and the jet he directed, projected at subtly varied pressures of his bent thumb expertly angled, swung around, worked the knotted mud loose just as the broom descended to it. He would have overseen the completion of the task, had the broom swished till no drops flew off its limp bristles, and then stood it in the sun so the remaining stubborn droplets acquiesced to gravity, and the hose eased off the valve, and looped towards its free end, lying exhausted in the driveway, oozing spurts of water as each successively rolled loop drained water through its flaccid length, till not a drop remained in the now flat, multi-looped hose, lest moss and scum form inside it. Both tools had to be returned to their proper places in the garden-cum-tool shed. Only then would he come to lunch, the happiest man on earth.

Dad belonged to the D.I.Y. generation. He relished handyman type odd jobs around the house, squeezing himself underneath washing basins; he didn’t have to try hard, as he was short-statured, but what’s interesting is he’d place himself quite naturally into the best possible position for the physical work involved. There had to be enough elbow room to exert pressure or rotate a monkey wrench, when loosening a sink’s drainpipe.

He also maintained a number of tools to aid him, always pulling out the right ones for a job. If he lacked the proper implement, he would not proceed till he’d procured one, or called in an expert. He had small tricks up his sleeve that worked in a cinch, like when a spanner being used was too big for the head of the nut. Babuji asked for a large screwdriver and wedged its flat head between the side of the hexagonal-headed nut and an arm of the open-ended ‘C’ spanner in a tight fit. When he torqued the wrench counter clockwise it caught, and loosened the nut.

Babuji just loved sending greeting cards and New Year calendars to his family, friends, and acquaintance’s. He supported UNICEF, and bought their greeting cards every Diwali, and his New Year calendars were always of Indian miniature paintings, printed by Chimanlals. The entire process, from choosing and buying cards, writing in and signing them, affixing postage stamps and mailing them, was a closely monitored operation, in which the only step he did not do himself was type addresses on the envelopes.

He maintained serially numbered handwritten mailing lists, with the help of which he set down his salutary greetings inside the card, signing in Hindi, all in red ink, which was a “happy” colour on his palette. Every completed card and envelope used to be numbered lightly in pencil, to match a number and name on his longhand list. This helped the typist retain order on the envelope. Babuji’s oeuvre was in dressing the envelope. The quintessential philatelist, he venerated the stamps he pasted on them. First he chose the most colourful and showy squares and rectangles, forever keen to showcase the best from India, to the world. Then he began pasting them. From a sheet, he folded an entire strip along the perforation, and tore the strip of stamps carefully. Not a corner could be damaged, as it would reduce the stamp’s value, plus reveal a careless philatelist to the world. Once, when I suggested he get the entire lot of envelopes franked at the post office, he looked at me as though he would disown me. No philatelist worth the glue on a stamp would substitute a mechanical device for the gentle little pleasures derived from the use of postal stamps.

Once a strip had been torn, it would be gently folded along the serrations into a gathering of accordion pleats. The first in that face-to-face bunch would be eased open and laid flat on a moistened sponge, held in its round plastic receptacle, so that the film of dry glue succumbed to the moisture; and while the stamp curled upon itself from the sudden moistening, it was instinctively aligned to the upper right hand corner of an envelope, and pressed flat with careful reverence, the pressure maintained till the glue caught. Only then was it separated from the rest of the strip, cast away, perforation by perforation, till it remained in solitary shining splendor, a corner on the envelope, forever Indian. He performed this ritual, without flagging in his zeal, on every envelope.

Then on the upper left-hand corner he would press a self-inking, dual coloured, rubber-stamp that left an impression of a blue aircraft and a red-lettered Par Avion. That envelope-decorating embellishment had to create a perfect right-angled triangle.

The last act was to impress his name and postal address, again with a self-inking rubber-stamp, in the lower left-hand corner of the envelope.

He did not have to do any of these things personally — he could have all of them done professionally at a printing press. The whole she-bang of it, like many of his friends and family did. Many were the greeting cards he received that were printed inside and out without, apparently, the sender’s otherwise busy digits, ever even touching them. Their only connection with that operation would be sanctioning a budget.

But for Babuji, this was an annual ritual through which he touched those that had been a part of his life, whether closely connected with him, or distantly, and he refused to make short shrift of those relationships, of that visible-invisible, blazing-glowing, radiant flame or ember that did after all fan the spirit of his circadian life.

When the bundles of greetings cards were ready to be mailed, guess what the dear man did? He took them to the post office himself, and ensured that the man who smacked cancellations willy-nilly on the tooth-edged paper square, besmirching, defacing it with all the pent up government clerk fury he could muster, desisted his hammering arm and instead, carefully inked the tiniest possible bit of stamp-corner, just sufficient to warrant it “used”, or de-minted, twice over [the first time being when the glossy gum arabica had been irrigated into a colourful limpet on the envelope. That was the quintessential philatelist’s parting watermark. I wonder how many recipients fathomed that shadowy dance of love?

When a spark burnt the lead fuse, he would bring his trusted brown leather toolbox to the electricity panel, unplug the porcelain kitkat fuse, and pry away the burnt remnant of fuse wire. Then he would unspool the requisite length from his fuse wire roll, and insert the new wire in its place, tighten one screw around upon one end of it, and wind the other end clockwise on the screw, so that the length tightened as he wound the screw leaving no slack. Then the lower parallel brass tines were inserted into place, followed by the carefully aligned snap of the upper tines. He beamed a QED when the power was restored.

His experiments with matters electrical frankly scared me. He had no theory to back his forays, except a keen eye that digested how electricians dealt with common electrical problems, and a probing mind that demanded simple and clear answers. I especially feared the clandestine looping of electrical phases, with a ‘C’ of thick wire, to divert part of the electricity coursing into one phase, to ignite the outward supply in a phase temporarily with supply from the APSEB.

But the DIY guy would take a powerful battery-operated torch and descend to the cobweb shrouded electric box. Invariably a help was asked to wave a broom to snare the strands of spidery silk, and then, creaking open the wooden shutters he would hand the torch to the man, directing him to hold it thus, so the beam lit the exact spot he wished. An electric current tester, which stood in the pen stand on his desk just for such emergencies, and which he had grabbed on the way, would then be inserted into an upper crevice of the kitkat to ascertain the ‘dead’ fuse. After unplugging that heavy duty kitkat, he plunged a section of the house into a numbing heavy darkness, stalling every activity momentarily, till he looped the mysterious electricity from one fuse to another, magically, illegally, creating light and dispelling darkness.

Yes, I know it was illegal, what he did, and unethical too, and I don’t have an answer why he did it, except to please his family. And, yes, he was a D.I.Y. dad. One more thing, he wouldn’t touch the electric fuse cabinet with a barge pole, were he, and his help not shod in flip-flops.

Babuji wrote down everything he thought important. He filled books with quotations of all sorts. I never heard him use any of them in his conversations, as he was a man of few words. But he had a firm, set hand, and he chuffed up to the time spent over his cursive exercise books. When my school report complained about my hand, it was a personal affront to him. From the next day I had to show him a page of my cursive detention diligently. I have no complaints. The practice, I think, bore fruit.

Babuji’s worldview was clear. Things were either black or white. It was a bright day when he perceived shades of grey. There was only one way of doing something—the right way.

A book could not be opened and laid flat on a table, as that would crack its spine. A page had to be turned away from clothing while the volume lay in one’s lap, for if its edge scraped cloth, it might tear. There was a way of turning the page too. No hurried and noisy sliding of fingers across page surfaces, no moistening digit tips to gecko pages over. The pointer had to be slid on the upper right hand edge of the page and with a delicate dexterity, and minimal pressure, it lifted enough to slide a few fingers under it, and thus supported, turned. And if, in the process, you got a paper-cut, well, that was the tree’s last act of revenge on being mistreated.

The Gould in Secunderabad Club

On 9 June 2013 I gave a short presentation to members of the Secunderabad Club, on the fantastic John Gould folios of The Birds of Asia that the club holds. Asif Arastu, a dear friend, has now uploaded this presentation on YouTube. There are a few gaffes in there, for which I beg the viewer's indulgence.

The talk is almost 45 minutes long, and you can view it here: The Gould in our Club.

In today's The Hindu

A bibliophile on the wing. By Pradeep Sebastian

A new review of my Birds in Books!

(Pittie, 886)… A brief nomenclature that remains one of the last vestiges of a long history of book collector/dealer jargon rapidly being lost in the book trade’s mad rush to communicate with the general public… the non-initiates, though the money spenders. A bibliophiles pride, often sighting bibliographies ad nauseam, and boasting of the long developed and hand-picked references lining the cataloguers walls. Despite the over 400 bibliographies in my own library (he casually suggests with more than a hint of bravado), the fact remains that 90% of these, and any other such collection, are little more than lists… And until yesterday, I could count on one hand the ones that really stand out as exceptional tools of the trade. Now, I will need my other hand.

Following a brief series of email exchanges with Aasheesh Pittie, it became very clear that he was a bibliographer extraordinaire and that his book, “Birds in Books: Three Hundred Years of South Asian Ornithology. A Bibliography (Permanent Black, 2000, Ranikhet, India)” would be helpful in my work at the very least. I also had the feeling that it would be an enticing volume of exemplary bibliography… My expectations, though high, were far from being dashed.

Arriving from New Delhi only five days after being ordered, the volume is smaller than most exhaustive bibliographies and non-assuming in appearance. But from opening the first page, it clearly becomes a giant among such works. Following the usual prelims, though with deeper detail and background than most, Pittie dives into the core of the matter. The following 739 pages document in painstaking detail 1715 titles arranged in alphabetical order. Each title begins with the bibliographic details of the publication… the total publication report of many bibliographies. But the best of this reference work is the succinct and exact text that follows. Pittie goes on to discuss content, variations of publication, and the significance of each work… matters that are so important to the collector, the researcher, and the book seller. Following this exhaustive inventory, Pittie wraps up with 57 pages of brief biographies of the authors. Throughout, the content is highly referenced, and the end of the volume finds a general index, as well as index’s of new names; and acronyms, co-authors, & co-editors.

Although I love the ornithological works of the 18th and 19th century, this is not my area of specialty. But with a reference like this one in hand, I will likely find myself moving just a little more in that direction.

Lloyd Zimmer

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Improvements in the park!

After almost a year I bought a ticket at the gate and entered Kasu Brahmananda Reddy National Park (KBR) for my morning constitutional. The ticket permits me to walk along identified paths in a part of KBR that is an unofficially designated visitor’s zone for recreational walking. Otherwise, I walk daily in the beautifully landscaped KBR walkway owned by the Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation’s (GHMC), which acts as a buffer zone outside the park, and runs around its circumference.

KBR has always drawn me like a thirsty camel to an oasis. It is a miraculous lung space of typical deccani greenery, in the midst of a burgeoning city. As a natural sponge it soaks up rainwater, sequestering subterranean aquifers and is the catchment for rills that recharge Banjara lake. As a natural asset it is unparalleled by anything that the GHMC’s extended real estate can boast of. A worthy rival would have been Hussain Sagar, but that has been myopically compromised. It’s once sparkling waters, teeming with fish and bird fauna have degenerated into a malodorously inert mega-cesspool that the corporation still proclaims amongst the city’s jewels.

As I warmed into my stride, the quiddity of the landscape began to sink in, for such areas allow you to unselfconsciously meld into their naturalness. There is a becalming ambience intrinsic to wilderness that enfolds you so preternaturally that you do not realize the sense of wellbeing that begins to assuage you with each passing moment. To my mind the sole reason for this is the absence of human despoliation, wherein lies the ageless strength of such landscapes, and their ability to impart solace seamlessly to the troubled.

Dozens of energetic walkers mill around me, absorbing this therapeutic atmosphere. The pros and cons of the rightness or otherwise of this pastime within KBR have been seesawed threadbare by a strong lobby of petitioning walkers and a quasi-sympathetic defendant administration, both having agreed to disagree—the law is an ass.

The contrapuntal logic of declaring a national park, with all its legal restrictions, in the center of Hyderabad is augmented by the APFD institutionalizing walker’s permits by selling annual passes and daily entry tickets. People inundate the park and the concept of carrying capacity goes for a toss. Everyone seems happy for all are ignoring the issue of over-use. There’s always space till the surface tension implodes and the forces that be fire-fight either to increase the number of paths, or physically restrict the number of walkers—lest their enthusiasm trod the park into a parade ground.

In the inevitable fallout of a wilderness area being thrown open to public access, basic civic amenities like paths, to prevent haphazard movement, and convenience areas, to avoid public nuisance and misuse, are provided—so far, so good. The trouble starts when the worthy citizenry wishes to see their surroundings improved. How can there be a path but no parallel hedgerow of foliage or flowering plants? Why not create a small lawn in front of the public convenience? What harm will some exotic flowering trees do? Who can tolerate insipid open scrubland?

While I walk, a sense of uneasiness begins to weigh down my footsteps. Something about my surroundings is out of sync and I am unable to pin it down. I stop mid-stride when the culprit suddenly hits me squarely between the eyes.

Flowering and foliage shrubs have been planted as neat hedgerows all along the sides of the walkways, a sore sight, no different from those hideous hoardings silently screaming their merchandise at commuters of the city’s roads. These saplings have been planted along all the walking trails in KBR. The icing on the cake, the grid of pipes drip-irrigating these exotics! Patches of lawn are spread here and there, and exotic flowering trees proliferate in studied sparseness. Change begins with the first deviation, after which there is no controlling the snowball.

If these ‘improvements’ enhance the beauty of the place, and consequently the pleasure of the perambulator, why am I complaining? Why am I creating a mountain out of a molehill? Because I know that no self-respecting forester, worth his roots, would have committed this sacrilege, unless his hands were forced. And worse, because a perfect environment, adapted to the vagaries of wind and water, is being stealthily modified into one that will demand copious watering and extensive horticultural maintenance, all of which require inputs from the state’s exchequer. And I am not even talking about breaking the law that this abuse of the iconic KBR landscape entails. Have we lost the concept of a sense of place, which ultimately flags our cultural maturity?

Exotics have no place inside a national park, neither in the eyes of the law, nor in the tenets of good science. Those who encourage their proliferation in our ecosystems carelessly sow the wind and depart, leaving future generations to reap the whirlwind. The rampant spread of this virus that desires to change surroundings per whim and fancy, can never be checked, for no single antibody strong enough to resist the infection exists. Do we ever stop to ponder our commitment to the land? On the one hand we uproot entire villages from our protected areas, and on the other, surreptitiously introduce the silent scourge of invasive exotics and allow them to proliferate inside.  How can we, on the one hand, ‘educate’ the translocated villager about the sanctity of an inviolable wilderness protected by national decree, but on the other, unhesitatingly agree to the uneducated whim of every interfering babu?

The genie of government machinery serves all its masters—political, judicial, administrative—with alacrity and with disdain, for the genie fears the righteous act, lest it be viewed as rebellious insubordination, and result in pecuniary and socially humiliating repercussions.

When will we sit up and notice that our mythical cycle of rebirth pales in the face of the daily tantric tango between legal-loophole and law-breaker’s lout, allowing the potential of this nation to be sucked into the drain of chalta-hai mediocrity?

There is a stealthy anarchy that stalks our streets, seeping under every door, leaching into every spirit, breaking down every bastion of integrity and righteousness, fanned by those who spawn it in the corridors of power, systematically planting seeds of that miasmic alliance into the psyche of every Indian—who has begun to think he / she is a law unto himself / herself.

Societies and nations succeed either through the use of force, or through the implementation of public will: not through lawlessness, not through fishing at legal-loopholes, not through loutish behaviour. The maladies India faces can only be remedied by public will that flowers at our threshold—the will to uproot lawlessness, to batten down legal loopholes, and to resist loutish lawbreakers.

I so wish that the forester in charge of KBR puts into practice what he knows best, persuading the ignorant do-gooders to let well enough alone, and allow him to do his job.

My book showcased in World Birdwatch March 2013

When you finally decide to publish your birding notes!

There will invariably come a juncture in the life of a birdwatcher when the desire to record, for posterity, what has been seen and experienced in the field becomes almost overpowering, and that enthusiastic moment, when the observation gets transformed into the black and white cement of print, is vital for ornithology, for the note will now join the library that forms the rank and file of recorded bird study.

But when this journey of the observation, from the mind’s eye to the pen hovers over a blank sheet of paper, it does pay to pause and ponder the very process. What should comprise the framework of the note?

You would have some written notes about the encounter in your field notebook—these should form the very backbone of your paper. If you did not commit to paper or to pixel what you thought was unique and worthy of reporting, then you are on slightly shaky ground, for memory is truly a flighty bird in the bush. So always jot down as many details as you possibly can on the spot. Try and sketch the bird, if a photographic record is not possible. Do not bother about it being pretty, but always aim for accuracy of description. These are your primary data and therefore the very bedrock of your tryst with the printed page.

Once you are convinced that you have something novel to share with fellow ornithologists, you need to bolster that conviction with historical support, for science is indeed the process of building upon earlier blocks, with the inviolable premise of general integrity being the primary ethic of the ornithologist. Search published literature for more information on your theory or observation. Assess the past objectively, logically, dispassionately, and weigh in the balance of fact versus ‘flight of fancy’ whether what you thought was new is truly so. Ponder if what you observed substantially adds to the sum of knowledge. Does it provide any fresh insight? These are the points you will have to ruminate over. Perish the thought of publishing, if it is not so, treating the exercise not as one in futility, but educative.

But if it is true, then zoom out and observe the entire overall picture, to re-assess how your unique observation fits in the larger jigsaw puzzle. Once you are convinced, plunge in and try to go to the source of every available and relevant past record. If this entails delay and tribulations, so be it. For the fruit always tastes best when ripe. Summarize clearly and cogently what you have researched, for you must cite references in appropriate places to support your marshalled data. [The citations should correspond to an alphabetically, chronologically arranged bibliography listed under a references section at the end of your paper.] Do not fear if you plough up more of the field than required, for at least you will have the satisfaction of not leaving any stone unturned. Now separate the cheese from the chalk and prudently select only the most relevant references for your paper.

Conclude with a succinct discussion, about your theory or observation, to arrive at what you have deduced. This is your framework, a foundation based on fact, supported with historical documentation, and a discussion that positively clinches your point of view.

Your work is done, or so you presume. But it is only half the battle won. You need to study the ‘house-style’ of your target journal. By this I mean, begging the indulgence and presumption of the wizened, the way the journal crosses its ‘t’s and dots its ‘i’s; the way it uses capitalization; the lay of geographical terms; the style how citations are inserted; the precise method of the reference section; the taxonomic style; the English and scientific nomenclature it subscribes to, and so forth.

The best way of doing this is to look up any guidelines to authors that the journal might carry within its pages or on its website. You must also try and get a previously printed issue of the journal to help you to study the style of articles published within its covers.

When you have legitimate facts, have completed your homework, and have fully understood the house style, you are finally ready to put pen to paper. When it’s done, sleep over what you’ve written. Review it afresh. Show it to your peers and professors. Encourage constructive criticism with a view to improvement. Badger them to assess the scientific rigour and to comment on language—for your aim is to write in a way that conveys a primarily scientific or semi-scientific subject to a lay, non-scientific readership with both simplicity and accuracy. Trust me, when I say, that your harshest critic at this stage is your best friend, compared to the talons that will inevitably slash your note in the peer review, or worse, the beaks of sharp readers that will slice you like a thrush dispatching a worm.

A paper that is authentic, that has veracity, that has followed the house style of the journal, and whose language is clear and simple, immediately attracts the attention of the perpetually harassed editor, who picks it from the morass of misguided manuscripts littering the desk, joyously recognizing your efforts in making it what it is, and sending it off to one or more peer reviewers—that tribe of gurus who can be either the bane or the benediction of a manuscript, relegating it to the dreaded TO DO pile, if it is tardy, or fervently pouncing on it with zealous red-inked pens if it is not.

Revere the bloodstained shreds of your manuscript when they finally return from their dreaded baptism by editorial fire. Dress all the wounds carefully, meticulously, and lovingly—snipping, stitching and applying salve. Leave no wound unattended for it will surely fester till you are forced to nurse it back to health.

After the mandatory period of convalescence, when you sleep over your handiwork, revisit it once again, calmly and dispassionately, before marching it off once again to the editor.

When finally the printed journal is in your hands, and you see only one name in its many pages, the trauma of labour is instantly forgotten and you, once again, take up your mighty pen.