'Birds in Books' … discovered within another book!

My good friend C. Sasikumar discovered my book within another that he was reviewing. Here is his review. Please see the penultimate paragraph.

Review: Birds and People

Birds and people

By Mark Cocker & David Tipling.

London: Jonathan Cape. 2013.

Hardback (22 x 28 cm), pp. 1–592.

Rs. 2,999/-.

As bird books go, this whopping doorstopper took eight years in the making in which 600–800 people, from 81 countries, responded to the authors’ invitation to contribute. The responses of 300 people were selected and woven into the mesmerising and encyclopaedic tapestry of Mark Cocker’s lucid narrative. Stitched into its landscape are 350 spectacular photographs that David Tipling captured on visits to 39 countries on all seven continents (an enterprise worthy of a book in itself!). Birds and people covers 144 families of birds, of the over 200 families currently recognised, that encompass the world’s 10,500 species (it does not cover 59 bird families).

So what kind of bird book is this, dedicated “to all those 650 contributors from 81 countries…?” “Birds,” says Cocker, “are fellow travellers of the human spirit, and have also colonised our imaginations, as if we were one further habitat to conquer and exploit.” This work then is an evocative summation of the “living lore of birds”. “It is a sourcebook on why we cherish birds” (p. 10). The authors however, are quick to point out that it is far from exhaustive. To do justice to the subject, they say, would easily cover twenty such volumes (p. 11), for mankind and birds share a relationship that goes back in time, perhaps to the very advent of man. Much of this relationship must surely have been lost over aeons, but that which remains as our living lore of birds, is still an enormous storehouse of recorded culture. Yes, birds have indeed affected us so much that they exist as integral parts of all facets of our lives. Birds and people reveals how they feather our literatures, echo in our music, are icons of heraldry in our aggressions, hover in our mythologies, energise our visual arts, pepper our tongues, are food on our tables, ornament our vanities, and even terrorise our frailties.

This book is not so much about birds, as it is about us, and it is not so much about us, as it is about our relationship with these feathered bipeds. It is about how birds have entered our very spirits, at every conceivable level—aural, spiritual, mortal, immortal, physical, mental, victual, and practical. We have absorbed them into our life-streams so completely that we edify them as beacons of our emotions and character—fear, love, wonder, threat, aggression, horror, dominance, depression, joy, valour, grace, and desire, to name a few—even though we cannot, yet, understand those of the birds themselves.

When one writes the history of human civilisation from the point of view of mankind’s interactions with birds, the canvas is immense, stretching into the foggy realms of myth, legend, and prehistory. Multifarious aspects of this imbibing, of bird by man, are explored in Birds and people. It provides an ever-expanding vista of this human-centric relationship, opening innumerable leads into mythology, history, fable, literature, song, film, and art, covering realms at once personal, as well as encompassing the myriad human communities in the world, in an apparently unending journey of discovery, and celebration of our obsession with birds.

The text rejoices with glorious poetry, like D. H. Lawrence’s evocative paean to the wild turkey (P. 46):

“Your aboriginality

Deep, unexplained,

Like a Red Indian darkly unfinished and aloof,

Seems like the black and glossy seeds of countless

         centuries.”

Or the more familiar skylark-adulation of Shelley (p. 423):

“Like a poet hidden

In the light of thought,

Singing hymns unbidden,

Till the world is wrought

To sympathy with hopes and fears it heeded not:”

It tells stories: How we’ve pirated the symbolic use of feathers from birds, as implements that enhance behavioural traits, and donned them as ornaments to bolster our own insubstantialities, like the use of feathered ceremonial headdresses. Our fears and superstitions are hounded by bird imagery. Our religious iconography is replete with it. Our heroic glorifications of valour are idolised by invoking birds that are at the pinnacle of food chains, consummate symbols of strength and speed.

But I do not even begin to touch the tip of the iceberg here, the true lodestone lies within its covers.

The more I browse its pages, the more I am drawn into the spell of this mesmerising one-sided relationship, because its cognitive absorption is only our privilege. The bird has no active involvement in this association, besides that of living its life; indisputably unaware of the universally overpowering effect it has had on another earth-dweller.

How many volumes would such a work from India take up, two, three? Multi-lingual, multi-ethnic, multi-cultural India has a man-bird association that permeates her multiplicities in all their mind-boggling diversity—documenting which would be a challenging and fulfilling project for an Indian anthropologist or ornithologist.

This volume mentions India in at least forty entries, and quotes from eight works on Indian ornithology. There are, however, just a handful of Indians listed in the authors’ acknowledgements. This is unfortunate, for the project was widely publicised, and a larger participation from India’s burgeoning fraternity of ornithologists would have brought a lot more to the authors’ table. It is immensely heartening to see a unique facet of Dr Salim Ali’s ornithological contribution eulogised in Appendix 2, “he was also alive to the human ‘story’ in the lives of birds and his observations are full of colour, feeling, wide scholarship and good humour,” (p. 534).

There cannot be a worthier ambassador, than this book, to spread the message of conservation and preservation of birds, and for its immense archival value as a chronicle of humanity’s immemorial need for coexistence with birds. It should find a place in every public and institutional library as a compendium and tool for education, for conservation, for advocacy among administrators, and as a companion for the bird-enthusiast, whatever her level of interaction with the “blithe Spirits” of the natural world, for the sheer joy of reconnecting with them in the comfortable recesses of a reading chair.

Published in Indian BIRDS 9 (4): 108–109 [2014].

Random thoughts on reading 'The Last Wave: An Island Story' by Pankaj Sekhsaria

To write the story of a people who are as incommunicable and incomprehensible as the Jarawas—is well nigh impossible. Whatever we try to think about them, write about them, or imagine about them, in whatever way we interpret their behaviour, we do so from our point of view—for we are not privy to theirs.

~~~~

At the book launch, after the conversation between Pankaj Sekhsaria and Usha Raman, someone from the audience observed that the Jarawas did not come out well in the novel. I thought, ‘now they’re telling Pankaj how he should have written his book!’ But that gentleman was spot on. How could they have? Tanumei and his ilk, who had the ‘misfortune’ of being forced into contact with us, first due to medical reasons, and then due to the sinister pull of a certain type of Pavlovian conditioning, were jostled into that circle of human livelihood that harks more of the rough and tumble of the working class, than into the invariably presumptuous cerebrations of the staid, educated, more ‘cultured’, if you will, types. And a rough stone quickly gathers up the common morass, unlike the patina of one that’s seen more of life. All we are able to give the ill-fated Jarawas that brush against us are a mouthful of curses, the naked leer, and an ultimately debilitating addiction for tobacco and hooch. We also pacify them with bananas and coconuts. Their brief interactions with our types either draw out the cuss words, to the gallery’s delight, or the sullen, sometimes mildly threatening demeanour of the ‘untamed savage’, demanding intoxicants or victuals. So, they do come across in bad light—but is that not because we apply our judgmental standards to their responses to our own behaviour towards them? And if we applaud, or acquiesce, then are we not the guilty party?

~~~~

It crossed my mind, that evening that given our abilities of comprehension and empathy, the Jarawa is perhaps akin to what we pompously call ‘wildlife’. We, they and us, exist in different realms, connected to each other only by the physicality of our planet. If we cannot understand our fellow denizens, can we expect them to understand us, or our evidently destructive ways? If we know that we need to save the planet from ourselves, are we willing to extend that knowledge to embrace all life within its encircling enlightenment? Since the inception of our natural science curricula, and the resulting innumerable studies of life forms, has one cheetal admired our firelines? Has one cheetah brought a blackbuck to our picnic? And if they did, do we have the wherewithal to comprehend? All our studies seem to work towards ensuring our own continuum. Is not the ultimate aim of conservation biology a safer world for us? To manage habitats and wildlife we cull populations under controlled conditions, yet our own explodes exponentially. Are we even remotely concerned for the well being of other life forms, if it were to be at the expense of ours?

~~~~

Pankaj observed that the local borns feel they too have a right to the island’s natural riches, even though most of those treasures only remain in the out of bounds Jarawa Reserve, that people nurse great angst against this sacrosanct area, which supports a paltry Jarawa population. How and when will we educate ourselves to the fact that the entire world supplies us, our greed, and yet we covet the slip of land that must barely fulfil the Jarawa’s need!

~~~~

So, in trying to understand the Jarawa, the protagonists endeavor to comprehend those who live closest to the ‘uncivilised’. Perhaps motes of Jarawa psychology, Jarawa civility, Jarawa dignity will waft into their constantly searching empathies. Physical contact with the Jarawas is electrifying but frustratingly incomprehensible. Would comprehending them save them, save their way of life, or will it civilise them, corrupt them to ours? Will we, after learning how they survive in those humid, forbidding forests, strive to re-afforest our own lands and adopt their ‘liberated’ lifestyle? Or will we patent the chemical they use to intoxicate the honeybee and name a multi-million dollar conglomerate built upon that fortune, Jarawa Inc., immortalising forever the great Jarawa for their unparalleled contribution to the advancement of human civilisation?

~~~~

Despair and tragedy appear and disappear. Hope springs forth to carry the day. One person is all that’s required to make a difference. So we like to believe. But we will remain fools, being fooled all the time, unless all of us become that person.

8 July 2014

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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