WRITING OUTDOORS A Natural Reader

Edited by Stephen Alter

WWF – Hanifl Centre for Outdoor and Environmental Study Woodstock School TABLE OF CONTENTS The Enchanted Forest 66 Prerna Singh Bindra

Jungle Lore 73 Jim Corbett Writing Outdoors 1 Introduction Stephen Alter The Himalaya in Indian Ornithology 90 Salim Ali Outdoors 11 Anita Desai Establishing the Sanctuary 109 Billy Five Encounters 13 M. Krishnan Trees 120 Ruskin Bond Are Warblers Less Important Than Tigers? 23 Madhusudan Katti Discussion Points, Exercises and Essay Topics 132 The Whistling Hunter 28 Authors 144 A.J.T. Johnsingh 148 The Folded Earth 40 Acknowledgements Anuradha Roy

Why Save Tigers? 43 K. Ullas Karanth

Escape From the Sanctuary 50 Bill Aitken

The Saga of Harjit 61 Dhriti K. Lahiri-Choudhury WRITING OUTDOORS Ancient poets and philosophers drew inspiration from India’s rich and diverse ecology, Stephen Alter her forested plains, rivers and mountains, as well as the sea. Both the and the epics contain episodes set in the jungles of the subcontinent, a primal wilderness that is both discomfiting yet protective of those who enter its green embrace. The poet Kalidasa composed narrative verse and drama that celebrates nature. His Meghduta contains one of the most remarkable metaphors - a cloud shaped like an elephant that drifts over the verdant countryside. Observed from this flying jumbo the landscape below is described with lyrical precision, curiously similar to satellite images we find today on Google Earth.

The earliest invaders and travellers to India were struck by the lush fertility of the land. The Greek historian Megasthenes, who followed in the footsteps of Alexander, could barely contain his sense of wonder for the natural resources he discovered:

India has many huge mountains which abound in fruit-trees of every kind, and many vast plains of great fertility intersected India has a long history of nature writing, going back to some of the earliest literature, by a multitude of rivers . . . It teems at the same time with including the Rig Veda, which contains several hymns to nature. One of these is of all sorts - beasts of the field and fowls of the air - of addressed to Aranyani, goddess of the forest: all different degrees of strength and size. It is prolific, besides, Aranyani. Aranyani. Timorous spirit of the forest, elusive goddess in elephants, which are of monstrous bulk, as its soil supplies who vanishes amidst the leaves. You do not ask: Where is the food in unsparing profusion...’ 2 nearest village? Lost in the wilderness, I hear a chichika echoing the crickets, Many centuries later, Mughal writers, too, were struck by the complex array of the alarm cries of animals. Could it be a hunter? Do I see a hut? species that they encountered after crossing the Hindu Kush. The Baburnama and At twilight your presence fills the forest. I listen in vain for cow Tuzk-e-Jahangiri, both imperial memoirs, describe the and other creatures bells. Insects creak like the unoiled wheels on a cart laden with observed in India, colourful elements of the land they conquered. Court painters were firewood. commissioned to copy miniature images of these species with scientific accuracy. Afraid of the shadows, I hear imaginary voices, graziers calling, Scribes who recorded the emperor’s memoirs included both physical descriptions as the sound of an axe. Silence.I am alone in the forest at night. well as accounts of the bird’s or ’s behavior. Aranyani, gentle spirit who threatens no one. Unlike the tiger you feed on fruit. You do not lie in ambush like the bandit. Of all the visitors, interlopers and invaders to enter India, the British were the most Mother of wild creatures, your untilled forests are full of food, enthusiastic naturalists. Volumes upon volumes of research on plants, trees, insects, fragrant incense and sweet herbs—Aranyani, accept my prayers, reptiles, mammals and birds were produced by amateur and professional scientists. sheltering goddess of the trees. Botanists like J.D. Hooker made extended expeditions into the Himalaya, catalogu- ing and classifying thousands of different varieties of flowers, shrubs and trees. Ani- (Rig Veda 10.146)1 mal life, particularly those species identified as ‘game’, was of particular interest to 1This rendition is based on several translations, particularly Wendy Doniger’s ‘Lost in the 2McCrindle, J.W., Ancient India as Described by Megasthenes and Arrian. (Calcutta.Chuck- Forest’ from The Rig Veda ervertty, Chatterjee& Co. 1960)pp. 29–30. 1 2 colonial hunters who expressed curiosity and admiration for their prey, even as they decimated the population. The hunter-naturalist became an iconic figure during the Wild life? That is how we refer to the magnificent animals of Raj, entering the jungle with a rifle in one hand and a pen in the other. G.P. Sander- our jungles and to the beautiful birds that brighten our lives. I son’s Thirteen Years among the Wild Beasts of India is a classic example of the genre, wonder sometimes what these animals and birds think of man which combines zoological research with bloodsport. Under British rule, man-eater and how they would describe him if they had the capacity stories became a popular subject in India, a junglee variation on detective novels, in to do so. I rather doubt if their description would be very which the hunter pursued an elusive killer through the forest, picking up clues along complimentary to man. In spite of our culture and civilization, the way - identifying pug marks, blood stains and alarm calls. in many ways man continues to be not only wild but more dangerous than any of the so-called wild animals . . . 4 Jim Corbett is the best known of these hunter-naturalists. Born in India, he had a closer connection with the land than most of his British compatriots. He approached After more than 64 years of freedom, Nehru’s words remain prophetic as the success nature with a sympathetic and observant eye, even as he tracked down man-eating stories of conservation have been heavily outnumbered by failures. India’s forests tigers and leopards, one predator pitted against the other. Corbett was among the first have shrunk dramatically and even those few areas marked out for preservation have to voice concern about dwindling populations of wildlife, particularly tigers. In a been seriously degraded. While the human population has multiplied exponentially sentence that has been quoted more often than any other statement on Indian wildlife, to 1.25 billion citizens, less than 2,000 tigers remain in the forests of India, not to Corbett writes: ‘The tiger is a large hearted gentleman with boundless courage and mention shrinking numbers of other species. when he is exterminated - as exterminated he will be unless public opinion rallies to his support - India will be poorer by having lost the finest of her fauna.’ 3 Unlike Today, more and more writers have taken up the cause of conservation. The Journal many of his contemporaries, Corbett was acutely aware of the fragility of nature and of the Bombay Natural History Society and other scientific periodicals publish its vulnerability to human encroachment. academic articles while magazines like Panda and Sanctuary promote an awareness of ecological issues in a popular forum. Though the overall picture may be bleak, it While the earliest nature writers in India chose subjects such as trees and animals, is encouraging that a new generation of naturalists has emerged in India. Whether simply for their beauty and exoticism, or the spiritual and emotional sentiments they they are botanists or birdwatchers, a small yet committed band of young people are evoked, twentieth century authors like Corbett and F.W. Champion, began to express learning to appreciate the natural heritage of India, which has been so sadly neglected a need for conservation and the importance of shooting animals with a camera instead and willfully destroyed. of a gun. Today, most nature writers follow this tradition, composing their books, ٭ essays and poems out of a desire to protect and preserve the almost-emptied pockets of nature that remain within the ever-expanding domain of man. This Reader is a modest attempt to encourage nature writing and thereby promote Both before and after 1947, Indian authors began to explore the country’s natural history an awareness and concern for India’s forests, mountains, deserts, rivers and oceans. with an independent eye. While there were those who continued with the man-eater Through the written word we can understand our place in nature, as well as the genre, others, like Salim Ali (himself a hunter-naturalist) and M. Krishnan, were more responsibilities of being a dominant species. This collection of essays, articles, concerned with field research, and preservation. Part of the encouragement stories and extracts offers a limited sampling of nature writing from India. All of for studying and writing about nature came from India’s first Prime Minister, Jawaharlal the pieces in this anthology were published after Independence, many of them in the Nehru, who was a strong advocate of conservation and helped establish national parks past decade. They have been chosen as examples of good writing but also for their and sanctuaries. In a foreword to E.P. Gee’s The Wild Life of India, Nehru wrote: variety of approaches to both subject and style. The primary purpose of this Reader

3 Corbett, Jim, ‘On Man-Eating’ in Jim Corbett’s India, ed. R.E. Hawkins (New . OUP, 4 Nehru, Jawaharlal. ‘Foreword’from E.P.Gee’s The Wild Life of India (London.Collins) p. 5. 1978) p. 247. 3 4 is to provide teachers and students with a collection of published texts, which can If that doesn’t make sense, then I suggest you read the thirteen selections in this stimulate discussion and debate, while serving as models of effective nature writing. anthology, and you’ll know exactly what I mean. A series of discussion points, writing exercises and essay topics are included at the end of the book to reinforce the themes and issues in this anthology. ٭ While tigers and elephants remain the flagship species of conservation, a student writer should not feel that he or she must travel all the way to the Kaziranga or In many ways, rhetoric is the antithesis of nature. Rules of written discourse have Nagarhole National Parks in order to find suitable subjects for an essay about nature. little to do with biology, earth sciences or geography. Like everything we do, writing Even in cities like Mumbai or Delhi, plenty of topics are waiting a few feet from involves both a theoretical framework as well as a practical process. Most writers your doorstep. It could be a palm squirrel on your roof, or a worm in a flowerpot, don’t think about these things when they are composing an essay or a book, but it or the grass that grows out of the cracks in a concrete sidewalk, or even the wind is useful for student writers to understand some of the fundamental approaches to that blows monsoon rain against a window on the eighteenth floor of a multi-storey writing that can help them organise their thoughts and observations. A standard building. Nature is everywhere. It needs to be observed. It needs to be understood and curriculum of expository writing divides basic composition into ‘rhetorical modes’, identified. It needs to be appreciated. It needs to be photographed and drawn. It needs which provide simple templates for beginning writers.While this can be an effective to be expressed in words. method of analysing the writing process and a source of worthwhile exercises, it must be emphasised that none of these rhetorical modes are etched (or fossilised) in stone. Obvious though it may seem, ‘nature writing’ is an ambiguous phrase that is difficult To use an analogy from science, they are more like hypotheses than laws. It is also to define, for it covers a whole range of exposition, from academic papers to editorials important to recognize that nobody writes exclusively in one rhetorical mode or the in daily newspapers. Most of the time, however, it implies a scientifically informed other. Most writers mix them up to good effect. yet literary approach to any subject in the natural world. Thankfully, that eliminates political and military memoirs, computer manuals, and books on spiritual wellness. Here, then, is a simplified approach to rhetoric, with a focus on nature writing: But where do you actually draw the line? A Ph.D dissertation on the enzymes found in the digestive tract of a mouse deer is generally not considered nature writing because •Description: This is the most basic and obvious mode, in which the writer records it is too specialized and technical for most readers. Similarly, a nostalgic reminiscence his or her observations, using one or more of the five human senses - sight, smell, about the colours of a rainbow, and how these reflect poetic moods, doesn’t really sound, touch and taste. For example, a writer who describes an elephant might tell us qualify. Good nature writing lies somewhere in between. It can be fiction but usually how large it is, the shape of its trunk and other physical characteristics, what noises it isn’t. It often employs techniques of journalism but goes beyond simply reporting the makes, the texture of its skin, the smell of its dung.(Hopefully, nobody would taste an facts. It is usually written in the first person, with the author being part of the story, elephant.) Descriptive writing may appear simple but it needs to be exact in its details, but the human element is always secondary. It identifies different species using their particularly spatial relationship (above, behind, below, etc.) and it must evoke a visual common or scientific names but it is much more than a field guide. Sometimes it is image in the reader’s mind, using both facts and metaphors. Classical writers from illustrated with photographs or drawings but the writing always stands on its own, Kalidasa to Amir Khusrau often compared elephants to mountains, which helps create creating vivid images in your mind through the power of words on a page. a mental picture of the animal. Good description combines empirical evidence with poetic imagery, using language both as a mirror and as a lens. Though impossible to explain within a single dictionary definition, ‘nature writing’ is, essentially, a well-researched, thought-provoking piece of prose that focuses our •Definition: The distinction between description and definition is often blurred. attention on anything that human beings haven’t invented, built or programmed. While a description tells us what something looks or smells or feels like, and where

5 6 it stands in relation to other things, a definition attempts to tell us precisely what it for words have been invented to represent objects, feelings or ideas, through a process is and isn’t. A good example might be the ‘monsoon’, a word that almost everyone of association. Not only do we identify similarities, but differences as well. Contrasting understands. We can describe the growing humidity before the monsoon arrives and opposing objects or elements helps bring them into clearer, sharper focus. It is perfectly the dark clouds that gather on the horizon, like a herd of elephants, bringing the first possible to describe, define or classify something by explaining what it is not, rather heavy drops of rain . . . But what is the monsoon, exactly? In simple terms, it is an than what it is. Comparison and contrast is the easiest way to handle either a familiar annual weather pattern that builds up over the Indian Ocean during the months of May or unfamiliar subject. A nature writer might, for example, choose a specific river as and June, blowing in across the subcontinent in a north-easterly direction, bringing the subject for an essay. Let’s take the Kaveri, which flows through Karnataka and hundreds of centimetres of rainfall. That could be one part of a definition but it can Tamil Nadu. Metaphorically, the author might compare the Kaveri to a python, a slow- also be expanded to include an explanation of how the monsoon affects the foliage in moving reptile, swollen at places and curving with serpentine grace across the forested different regions of the country, how ferns and moss and fungi emerge during rain-filled rim of the Deccan plateau. On the other hand, the writer could compare the Kaveri to months. A definition can be as simple or complex as a writer chooses but it must give the the , two very different rivers, though they have much in common. By placing reader a clear sense of what the subject is, beyond just giving it a name. one beside the other, we gain a better understanding of both.

•Classification: The natural sciences are all about classification, or taxonomy. After •Narration: Tell us a story. Human beings, as a species, seem to have an instinctual defining a plant or animal, we place it in context with other species. Greek and Roman desire for narrative. From earliest man, who recounted hunting exploits in fire-lit writers, like Aristotle and Pliny, tried to organize the natural world into different caves, to the shelves of bestselling novels in airport transit lounges, there is a basic, categories and relationships, sometimes referred to as a ‘chain of being’ or ‘ladder insatiable demand for stories. That’s what writers do. We provide sustenance for of life’. Early Sanskrit writers were equally interested in creating well-ordered lists a reader’s imagination. Nature writers must be good storytellers for their subjects of plants and creatures. Palakapya’s Hastyayurveda, the seminal text on elephants, contain many different narratives and it is important to pick the right thread with which outlines an elaborate series of categories for Elephas maximus, based on colour, to snare a reader’s attention. Narration requires both a voice to tell the story and an demeanor and size. For a nature writer today, it is important to understand scientific audience to hear or read the tale. Determining who your audience will be is one of the systems of classification and to be able to use these delineations effectively. But there first steps in constructing a good story. How old are they? How much do they know are other ways in which a writer can employ classification as an effective rhetorical about the subject? What kind of stories do they like? Creating an appropriate voice tool. For instance, if you are writing about sand on a beach, it isn’t essential to is important, too. If you are telling a story about geological change in the Himalaya, determine exactly what minerals it contains and where they lie on a periodical chart. tectonic forces that have formed the highest mountains in the world, over thousands Nevertheless, you might tell your reader about the different textures of sand and broken of millennia, your voice might carry a tone of authority and detachment. However, seashells you can feel under your feet, or the variations in colour as the tide recedes, if you are recounting a trek across a Himalayan glacier, full of dangerous crevasses or the array of shapes and sizes of granules you discover after scooping up a handful and seracs, then your voice could be more immediate and suspenseful, a first-hand of sand. What first appeared to be an endless expanse of sameness, suddenly contains account of the rocks and ice, the crumbling snow beneath your boots, the first ache of so much variety, it has to be differentiated and grouped into a range of similar and frostbite in your fingers. Most important of all: something must happen in a story— dissimilar elements. something changes, something is revealed. That’s why we listen to stories, because they have a progression of events - a beginning, a middle, and an end. We want to •Comparison and Contrast: One of the most effective rhetorical modes that supports find out what happens, whether it’s the life-cycle of a mosquito or a mountaineering description, definition and classification, is the use of comparison. A metaphor or expedition to the summit of an unclimbed peak. simile is exactly this. We create an image in our reader’s mind by telling them what something looks like, or sounds like, or smells like. Language is all about comparisons,

7 8 •Persuasion (or Argumentation): The most challenging form of writing is on your walk and carefully made your observations, check reliable sources to confirm the persuasive essay, which attempts to influence a reader’s opinion. It uses all the identities of the various species and phenomenon you encountered. Whether you of the other rhetorical modes with the single purpose of arguing a point of view. look up a certain insect online or consult a traditional field guide, note down its Descriptions can be persuasive, just as stories can reveal what is right or wrong. names, its characteristics and behaviour. Use these details to inform and enrich your For a nature writer, who wants to communicate an urgent need to save the habitat writing. This doesn’t mean everything you describe in your essay must be given Latin of an endangered species, or the rapidly multiplying dangers of Global Warming, or common names, but your writing will be far more successful if you tell us that you it becomes a matter of life and death. First of all, make sure you have clearly saw ‘a verditer flycatcher perched on the branch of a banj oak’, instead of calling it defined your argument. It should not be vague or conditional, and the simpler the ‘a little blue bird in a big green tree’. Careful research will make an expert out of the better. Always, be specific. Tell us that a glacier has receded 800 metres in three most inexperienced author. years instead of just saying it’s shrinking. Anticipate other points of view and refute them effectively. Persuasive essays are a written form of debate, in which the writer But above all else, learn to listen to the language of nature. It is essential to be attuned advocates an opinion. Just like a good storyteller, you need to be aware of your to the vocabulary of forests and deserts, the whisper of rain falling upon the broad audience. Will they be sympathetic or skeptical of your point of view? How much leaves of a teak or the hushed murmur of wind unfurling curtains of sand. Hear what do they already understand? As you present your argument, make sure your facts are the red-wattled lapwing has to say: ‘Did you do it? Did you do it?’Or the lament of correct and convincing. Your descriptions must be clear. Define important terms and a great Himalayan barbet: ‘Unneai!Unneai!’(Injustice!Injustice!)Here in India, there elements of a problem, precisely. Metaphors can be persuasive tools. ‘Meltdown’ is are wild dogs that whistle and deer that bark. What does it mean when we hear the a stronger phrase than ‘temperature shift’. Comparing climate change to a malarial alarm cries of jungle babblers? Are these birds warning us that a leopard is near, or fever is more convincing than simply calling it a global challenge. State the problem. signalling the danger of our human approach? Summarize the issues. Draw clear conclusions. Think of yourself as a lawyer whose client is nature. The judge and jury need to understand and appreciate your passion Nature writing can be one of the most rewarding pursuits, because it gives us an for the future of this planet. opportunity to translate our encounters with a world that does not require our presence, yet constantly invites us to become part of its mystery. Learn to write with the eyes Now, go on. . .get outdoors! That’s the most important piece of advice for any student of a scientist, the ears of a musician, a gardener’s sense of smell, the fingerprints of a of nature writing. Of course, you can sit in your room and compose a perfectly good detective, and a poet’s tongue. But first of all, go on . . . get outdoors and explore the essay about the natural history of a cockroach, but it’s only when you step out for knowledge, pleasure and inspiration that we receive from nature. a walk in a park, in a forest, or along a mountain path, that you will discover a multitude of subjects to inspire and intrigue you. Before putting pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, take the time to look around you and observe the hidden secrets and complexities of nature. You can stare at an acorn for an hour and still not observe everything about it. Good nature writers are always on the lookout for something new and different, even when their subject is common or mundane. Try to see what nobody else has seen before and then, when you finally sit down to write, try to make your reader visualise what you describe, through a fresh set of eyes.

Do your research. Many readers are under the false impression that nature writers retain an encyclopedia of facts inside their heads, which isn’t true. Once you’ve been

9 10 OUTDOORS slithering new length, leaving behind on the path a shroud, transparent as gauze, fragile as glass. Once he had come upon a tree with long, cream-coloured cylinders Anita Desai for flowers, attracting armies of ants coming to raid their fabled sweetness and sap, armies that would not be deflected by the intervention of a stick, a twig, and would From The Artist of Disappearance, Random House, 2011. persist till they reached the treasure, and drowned.

Outdoors, the spiders spun their webs in tall grass, a spinning you would not observe unless you became soundless, motionless, almost breathless and invisible, as when he had seen a praying mantis on a leaf exactly the same shade of green as itself, holding in its careful claws a round, striped bee buzzing even as it was devoured, which halted when its eyes swiveled towards him and became aware it was being watched.

And there was always the unexpected - lifting a flat stone and finding underneath an unsuspected scorpion immediately aroused and prepared for attack, or coming across an eruption from the tobacco-dark leaf mould of a family of mushrooms with their ghostly pallor and caps, hats and bonnets, like refugees that had arrived in the night. Or a troop of silver-haired, black-masked monkeys bounding through the trees to arrive with war whoops, or sporting like trapeze artists at a circus, then disappearing like actors from a stage that the forest provided.

And everywhere were the stones - flat blue splinters of slate, pebbles worn to an irresistible silkiness by the weather and that could be collected and arranged according to size and colour in an infinite number of patterns and designs, none of which were ever repeated or fixed.

Infinite - unless you were like Bhola who always brought with him a catapult and Outdoors was freedom. Outdoors was the life to which he chose to belong – the life almost automatically raised it whenever he saw a dove or a squirrel that could be of the crickets springing out of the grass, the birds wheeling hundreds of feet below brought down with a shot. Ravi was not for such sport; a heap of dead feathers or in the valley or soaring upwards above the mountains, and the animals invisible in fur were for him as unnatural as for the slain creature. Ravi was interested only in the variations and mutations of the living, their innumerable possibilities. the undergrowth, giving themselves away by the occasional rustle or eruption of cries or flurried calls; plants following their own green compulsions and purposes, almost imperceptibly, and the rocks and stones, seemingly inert but mysteriously part of the constant change and movement of the earth. One had only to be silent, aware, observe and perceive - and this was Ravi’s one talent as far as anyone could see.

Outdoors, Ravi had watched as a snake shed itself of its old skin, emerging into a

11 12 FIVE ENCOUNTERS and filled me with wonder. I recount some here. M. Krishnan ٭ From Nature’s Spokesman: M. Krishnan and Indian Wildlife, Ed. , Long ago, I was in service in a small princely state in the Deccan, in a narrow, green Oxford University Press, 1997. valley girt round with a double ring of hills. The flora was distinctive (as noted nearly a century ago by J.S. Gamble in his monumental Flora of the Presidency of Madras), the bird life was rich and the mammalian fauna varied, featuring sambar, wild pigs and leopards among the larger animals. My official duties were heavy and laborious, but compensated by unspoilt nature all around.

I do not shoot, and disapprove of all hunting, but my best opportunities for seeing animals lay in joining the occasional shikar parties organised, usually just outside our state. If there was to be a beat, I like to stay with the beaters: that way one could see many birds and small animals usually missed, hares, mongooses, monitors, snakes and the like. A hillside was being beaten towards the guns on top by a dozen men, and I had been posted as a stop - that is, to turn what came along a game path back into the beat. It was almost evening, and I was standing where the path ran through a line of tall bushes, blocking the gap. In those days I used to supplement my olive- green clothes with a cap having a deep peak and side-flaps to prevent incident light causing my spectacles to glint. I stood some distance from a bend in the path, and nothing came towards me. Then, as the beat was nearing its end, a pair of four-horned antelopes came tripping round the bend.

The chowsingha, or four-horned antelope, is the only wild animal which, in the For over six decades, right from my college days, I have been wandering over the buck, has an additional pair of little knob-horns above the eyes and below the regular forests and scrublands of India, investigating their wildlife. And in all that time, and spike-horns on top of the head - the doe is hornless. Even otherwise it is unique in spite of dangerous risks run in ignorance of animal ways, only on four occasions - exclusively Indian, without any close relative anywhere, capriciously distributed have I been in the shadow of imminent death; once when I almost walked into an across the country on low hilltops, given to drinking every day during the hottest enormous sloth bear while looking up at the fruits on a tree, and thrice when following hours, and unlike most antelopes, not gregarious but going about by itself or in a pair. wild elephants on foot by myself - it is best to go alone, for a companion doubles the It is small and compactly built, just two-foot high, a greyish brown on top and furry chances of being detected. There was no time to feel frightened then: one is wholly white below, and has a dainty gait. preoccupied with escape, and it is only after escaping that one’s liver turns to water and belated fright-reaction sets in. Strangely, it is not these crises that I remember I stood stock-still and the pair came tripping along in no hurry, almost side by side. most vividly, but comparatively minor encounters with wild animals that excited me, They did not see me till they were quite near, only some 10 feet away, and then

13 14 froze instantly, and half-squatted. Then they rose in a brace in the air and flew right There was no bush to hide us, to try running away would most probably provoke a overhead, to my incredulous surprise. The most athletic of our animals, the leopard, charge, and standing still we were conspicuous. We sank to the ground and crouched could not have jumped so high from a standing start - in my thick-soled boots and low. ‘Take off your clothes,’ whispered Mara urgently. For a moment I did not cap I stood six-foot tall, and they cleared my head with a cubit to spare! By the time understand him, then did. He had already stripped, and gathering the fresh elephant I could turn around, they had disappeared into the bush cover behind me and I just dung in front of him in his hands, was smearing it all over himself. Quickly getting stood there, almost unable to believe my eyes. Then slowly my amazement turned to out of my clothes, I followed suit. It was nauseating, but necessary. The ground a feeling of relief and gladness, that they had escaped the beat so comprehensively. breeze was blowing directly from us towards the elephants - the overpowering stench of the still-warm dung would mask our man-smell.

,The two cows sauntered to the trees ahead of them and went in. To our consternation ٭ we noticed that a cow with a young calf, and behind them a big tusker, had now come The road from Masinagudi to the Moyar hydel project is over a dozen kilometres on to the clearing from behind us. We continued to crouch and stay still. Slowly the long. On one side of it is the concrete-flanked Maravakandi canal, carrying the waters cow and calf crossed to the trees in front, but the tusker stopped directly in a line with of the project, and on the other the north-eastern border of the Mudumalai sanctuary. us, and very near: he was less than the length of a cricket pitch to my left. I dared This part of the preserve features alternating stretches of dense forests and clearings, not turn to look, but after what seemed an unbearable ten minutes, and was probably and wild elephants frequent it after the rains. The rainwater collects in shallow, linear two, I glanced sideways. He was standing at ease, flapping his ears (always a sign of pools in some of the clearings, and elephants like to drink at them, standing five or contentment), with his trunk lowered right to the ground - and he had sharp, curved, six in a row. I had long wanted to photograph them drinking here, and that forenoon murderous-looking tusks! After an age, I stole another sideways look, and he was still offered the opportunity. there, flapping his ears.

A herd was approaching a clearing through the forest, a large boisterous herd to judge The most remarkable thing in existence is not the behavior of wild elephants but of by its many voices. Old Mara and I stood on the road, facing the clearing. He knew the human mind. By now my curiosity had overcome my dreadful apprehensions, and the area well, and I did not, and he said the herd would cross the clearing, enter the inch by inch I turned a little to my left to watch. The tusker was standing at a patch belt of forest beyond, and proceed through it to a sandy clearing still further off where of Mimosa pudica (the sensitive plant, the ground herb whose tiny, feathery leaves there was a chain of pools: we should give them time to get to the water, and then take shrink and close when touched) covering the ground in a flat, dark-green spread. the path they had taken through the trees, the only path there was to those pools. I do The spread was in bloom, with a great many tiny flower heads, like miniature pink not like having anyone with me on such occasions but needed Mara’s guidance, for it badminton balls, dotting it all over. Laboriously the great beast was gathering the is easy to lose one’s way in dense cover. flowers in the crook of his trunk-tip and conveying them carefully to his mouth!

We did not have long to wait. The elephants came on to the clearing in small groups, After a while he too crossed over and disappeared into the tree cover, and getting to twenty of them, and entered the belt of trees beyond. We waited ten minutes for any our feet, we raced to the road, crossed it, and plunged into the Maravakandi canal. lagging behind to come out, and none came. We had to go quite some distance into The water here is never clean and clear, but there was a distinct current, and in no the clearing to reach the point of entry into the tree cover, and overshot it. And as time at all it had washed our skin free of every trace of elephant dung. In my hurry, I we were retracing our steps, we saw that two cow elephants had entered the clearing had left by clothes behind in the clearing and sent Mara to get them, while I climbed just behind us, and were crossing towards the trees. They were to our left, between out and let the sun and air dry me. us and the road.

15 16 (PS: I can find no reference to elephants fancying Mimosa pudica flowers in the hung with long, green, paired follicles along its pliant coils - obviously, a plant of literature on the animal, but can vouch for this authoritatively. Incidentally, the the Aclepiadaceae (Pergulariadaemia, as identified later). Taking the hat out of my flowers have a faintly acid taste in the human mouth.) handbag, I collected lengths of the twiner complete with follicles, so that the twin fruits would stabilize the pendent veil of their lengths. Securing them in place, I put on the hat and ensconced myself on the stone slab. * Soon it was apparent that I had overdone things a bit. The hanging greenery in I have seldom photographed animals from a hide. I have often used treetop hides front of my face was too closely spaced and in the way of clear vision, even of easy overlooking a forest pool or path to observe wild elephants in safety, unknown to breathing, and the twiner had a strong, foul smell. Thanks to the slipknots, this could them, but taken very few pictures of them then. And at the Guindy National Park be easily remedied, but as I raised my hand to do so, five chital came into view, around the Madras Raj Bhavan, I felt the need for a ground-hide to study the native feeding steadily towards me - three adult hinds, a young stag in velvet, and a half- blackbuck and the introduced chital closer than I could otherwise. grown fawn. I froze, and watched.

I need not explain why I felt this need, except to say it was for evidence to substantiate They were both grazing and browsing, cropping such ground vegetation as there was, my reasons for chital thriving in places into where they have been newly introduced, and feeding on the foliage of some bushes: they were partial to the follicles I had left to the detriment of the native herbivores. Preliminary reconnaissance disclosed a behind on top of the bushes, standing up on their hind legs to get at them. By now further problem. It was no use setting up a ground-hide at a selected spot. At Guindy, they were very close, and I wondered when they would spot me. Then the hind in the men are constantly moving about and the animals, while used to human proximity, lead trotted right up and snipped a follicle off my hat, and at once the rest joined in, keep their distance and shift ground frequently. I needed a portable hide. tugging at the fruits from all around so that the hat stayed miraculously wobbling on my head. Then it fell away, and at once they scattered and bolted. It then occurred to me that with a modification of what I wore in the field, no hide was necessary. Over the years I have acquired the ability to stay still and to move, if I Chital are short-scented. How was it, then, that from so near they had failed to notice must, in slow-motion. My stained and patched brownish green trousers and bush-shirt my sweaty man-smell? Had the stronger smell of the fresh-cut twiner masked it? I do were inconspicuous, and if I had a light, wide-brimmed hat from which a veil could not know the answer to these questions. I never tried the experiment again. be hung, to mask my face, that should do. A khaki soft hat, such as some policemen wear, seemed best, and I bought one at a second-hand clothes shop. Then I consulted an acquaintance who had worked as a sempstress, for the veil, and she advised not a * fixed veil, but a number of slip-knot nooses around the brim from which thin green twigs could be hung, for better camouflage and to enable me to see through readily. I made an early start on elephant-back, so as to be at the expanse of up-and-coming This she was kind enough to stitch on herself, and armed with my new headgear, I set grass in time to see what was feeding there, but on the way we chanced on a huge out for Guindy after lunch. lone bull gaur and followed him for almost two hours. It was nearing noon when we reached the slope lush with fresh grown tall grass. There was no animal to be seen, but By three o’clock I found a promising spot, with no men near and a flat stone at something had fed there quite recently. There was a darkish furrow in places going the foot of a wood apple tree to sit on. The ground in front was bare and brown up the sea of bright green grass tips. It was Maasthi, my mahout and companion, who with sparse patches of low herbage, but there were some tall bushes. A soft-haired, noticed this first and pointed it out to me. leafy twiner with a sticky white juice festooned two of the bushes: it was in fruit,

17 18 We went a little way up, for a closer look. It had rained in the night and the ground was moist and impressionable. The unmistakable, so-human footprints of a large * sloth bear zigzagged up the rise, and alongside the track the grass had been bitten off in sheaves. I remarked to Maasthi that the bear must have had quite a feast here. He Late in the year, when cyclones hit the south-eastern coast, I was at Point Calimere shook his head. in a tiny cottage on the beach. Very late one afternoon, it grew suddenly dark, black rainclouds blotted out the sun, and a high wind sprang up. By the time I could close ‘Bears do not eat grass,’ he said. and bolt the door and the two small windows, the storm was upon me.

I assured him they did, and that I had seen them feeding on fresh grass with gusto. Torrential rain beat down on the steep tiles, thunderclaps crashed overhead and the Maasthi had great faith in my knowledge of animals, and had often consulted me wind’s voice rose to a banshee shriek. Not a drop of water penetrated my retreat, built when in doubt—he had also told me things I did not know, which I subsequently to withstand the elements. My food was being brought from outside, and I could not found to be factual. He knew perfectly well that I would not make a positive assertion hope for dinner, but I thought this primeval fury could not last all night, and sat down unless it was true, but this once he was unable to accept my authority. He said that stoically to wait. There was no let-up, and by four in the morning I fell asleep to the I must have seen what I had seen elsewhere, not here - here, bears did not eat grass. strident lullaby of the cyclone.

I asked what animal, then, had guzzled the tall grass here so zestfully - there were A hammering on my door awoke me, and when I opened it, it was bright outside no other tracks on the ground, not a single hoof-print. However, I did not argue the and seven o’clock already. The Forester was there with a flask of hot coffee and point further. I was already feeling peckish, and it would take us an hour and a half to a substantial pack-breakfast. I was feeling famished, but ate sparingly, for it was get back to the rest house and lunch. We decided to be at this pasture early next day. important to go out at once to see what damage the vegetation and animal life had suffered. The Forester vetoed the outing: there was an almost overpowering wind And when we were there next morning, the bear was also there, busy with his blowing just above the ground, and he had experienced considerable difficulty getting breakfast. For a while we watched from behind a thick-boled tree. He was facing to me. He was lath-thin and insubstantial: I was almost twice his weight and in hard away from us, but we could see him quite clearly. He fed choosily, taking his time, condition. Picking up a light 35 mm camera, I ploughed my way to the sea. selecting a tussock of tender grass and bending its top to his mouth with a paw to munch it up. I was keen on a photograph if I could get one, but had to get closer - he I have never known anything like that two-level ground wind. Up to knee height there was already halfway up the rise. Not following in his wake, but keeping to one side was no stir of air, and then till well above one’s head there was an almost solid blast of it, we moved the elephant up, and at once he began to hurry. He had his back to us of faintly sibilant wind, repulsing one. I had to lean into it to force my way through. still, but had somehow sensed our presence. I called a halt so as not to panic him, and The sea, flat and placid at Point Calimere, was calm again, but it had run amok in the he went right up to the bare, stony top of the rise and bending his head low down so night. The wreck lay scattered high up the shore, shellfish, squishy molluscs, broken- that the crown almost touched the ground, looked at us from between his legs! For up crustaceans, bits and pieces of long-drowned wood, and small fishes - nothing nearly a minute he stared at us like this, and then went down the other side of the rise large and, surprisingly, no seaweed. at a bobbing run to vanish into the forest. I was astonished at the way the vegetation had survived the cyclone’s violence. Trees Maasthi turned to me in utter puzzlement. and bushes here are tough and flat topped: they had bowed their crowns to the raging wind, and except for twigs and branches torn off and flung around, had escaped ‘Would we have seemed upside down to the bear?’ he asked. unscathed. The ground vegetation was unaffected: in places, ephemeral little pools

19 20 had drowned it, but the sand would suck in the water by nightfall. streak along the flanks, and the jaws in a beak armed with teeth that could probably bite through one’s arm. I felt no fear - only amazement and wonder. Then, as suddenly Round a bend, I came upon a pair of jackals scavenging on what the sea had thrown as they had come, they raced away, far into the sea. I have seldom felt so thrilled. up, and seeing me they decamped into the bushes. A little beyond some 200 brown- headed gulls were sitting tight on the wet sand in a long row, all facing the air current, These dolphins are the only wild animals that have a strange affinity to humanity. waiting for the wind to die down. They ignored me as I passed very close by them Right from Greek mythology to Mediterranean tales there are accounts of their and took some pictures. Further still, I came to what had been a little bay the previous friendliness towards men. I had read these accounts, and thought them only charming day, now scooped by the storm into a miniature lagoon extending far up the shore legends. and about seventy yards across. The opposite bank was topped by ground vegetation and through its tangle I could just glimpse what looked like the heads of some large sea-birds.

The sea at Point Calimere is quite shallow for quite some distance from the shore. A few days earlier, I had spent an hour standing waist-deep in the sea, photographing the assorted crowd of gulls flying around the incoming boats for the guts of the catch being tossed out. I had been sternly warned by the fishermen not to be so foolish - there might be sting rays in the shallows that could inflict a fearful injury.

Far out to sea, I could see dolphins circling and occasionally leaping up into the air. I had seen them here in the sea many times, always too far away to be clearly watched. There was nothing else in sight, and I wanted to have a look at the birds on the further bank before turning back.

To go all the way round would be progress through the buffeting wind, but I could easily wade across. I walked into the water, which came only up to my knees, and then to my waist, and was half-way through when I was suddenly almost shoulder- deep in it. Evidently the storm-tossed sea had dug into the sandy bottom here, and it was best to get out of the trough: holding my camera at head height, I turned round. Something long and live and heavy brushed gently against me in the water, and I stopped dead. Again something long and thick brushed my back, hardly touching me. Then the dolphins were swirling around me, in a whirligig of joie de vivre.

There were half-a-dozen of them, circling at high speed and skimming the surface now and again to throw up an impetuous spray. I just stood there, holding the camera pressed to my head, utterly spellbound. These were common dolphins, eight-foot long and sleekly streamlined, steel-grey on top and white below with a yellowish

21 22 ARE WABLERS LESS IMPORTANT THAN TIGERS? benefit. Given the limited funds and manpower for conservation (research and action), is it not better to focus on the mega-fauna and let the mini- and micro-fauna Madhusudan Katti take care of itself? The only small creatures one should worry about then are those that may form part of the food chain leading up to the larger focal species. From In Danger, Ranthambhore Foundation, Ed. Paola Manfriedi, 1997. Before you accuse me of a biased perspective (which is undoubtedly true, for I make my living watching little warblers!) let me state that, in defending these little creatures, I am also arguing in favour of a broader ecological perspective in conservation, one that goes beyond the charismatic mega-fauna and starts looking at species more in terms of their ecological role in the system rather than their appearance, charisma or tourism potential! So what is the ecological role of my favoured little leaf warblers?

Leaf warblers (genus Phylloscopus) must surely rank among the least glamorous vertebrates, so utterly lacking in charisma that even many die-hard birdwatchers dismiss them lightly, scarcely bothering to try and even identify them to species level. Part of the problem is, of course, the fact that they are all small, dull-green coloured, and highly active in the forest canopy, making identification in the field difficult. It is only rarely - either when one is truly nuts about birds or when the fate of one’s PhD thesis hangs on such identification - that one develops the eye for the subtle morphological, auditory and behavioural differences between species. These difficulties in identifying species, however, need not bother our busy manager too much, since the leaf warblers are all pretty similar ecologically as well; their role in the forest is largely independent of their taxonomic status, except insofar as structural aspects of their foraging microhabitat within the forest canopy are concerned.

All 18 species of leaf warblers occurring in the Indian subcontinent are migratory. Now what kind of a stupid question is that? Everyone knows that tigers are more They breed during the temperate summers from the Himalaya north to the Arctic important, being large predators, as apex species, at the top of the food chain, flagship Circle, and take over the peninsular forest, including those in the Himalayan foothills species for conservation . . . etc., etc., etc.! These are arguments I have to face often and much of north-east India, from September through May. While each individual enough when I tell people I am studying warblers - in the Kalakkad Mundanthurai may weigh only seven to 11 grams (this range includes all species, give or take a Tiger Reserve! For some reason, studying these tiny, non-descript, common birds is gram), one may still emphasise the term take-over when describing their relationship thought to be an entirely trivial, indeed arcane, academic pursuit of little practical or to their forest habitats: they number in the billions and form probably the most conservation value. ‘What can studying little birds tell me about the habitat of large abundant avian guild in the subcontinental forests during our tropical winter. My mammals, which are my primary concern?’ asks the reserve manager. On the other study at Mundanthurai (in the southern Western Ghats) records a density of six to hand, if we focus on the larger mammals - the apex species philosophy of Project eight leaf warblers (of two species) per hectare of forest - usually any given patch Tiger - and do our best to improve their habitat, other species will also naturally of forest may have two to three species, depending on the type of forest. I doubt

23 24 whether there is any forest habitat in India that does not host at least one species compounds produced in response to caterpillar nibbling; and the plants make fewer some time of the year. Picking a random hectare from my 20 hectare study plot at flowers and fruits as they are forced to spend too much energy on self-defence, in Mudanthurai, I find six leaf warblers (of two species) making it their home for seven turn making the nectarivores and frugivores unhappy; and regeneration of the forest to eight months - for these are territorial individuals that remain on site for much of slows down as fewer seeds get produced and dispersed; and the ground starts to dry the winter. And what do they do during this period? Eat insects, mostly. Humdrum faster because the canopy is thinner and more sunlight gets in! I leave you to work out as their lives may sound, they spend over 75 per cent of their waking hours foraging the rest of the ecological cascade effects on your own. For now, I’d be happy if you for insects (and other arthropods, but insects predominate) in the foliage. Since they simply pause to appreciate the job done by the nondescript little green birds—the leaf are not concerned about finding mates or raising young during this season, and want warblers - and their insectivore colleagues that travel thousands of kilometres every merely to survive in good shape for the next summer, their other activities - preening year to eat all those insects. and maintaining territories through vocal and visual dialogue with neighbours - do not take much time. Hmm . . . a bunch of small, dull birds spending most of their day Before you start protesting that you will never contemplate removing all those birds, peering at leaves in search of insects - do I seem to be only weakening the defence? and that I am just another doomsayer, consider the fact that 80 per cent of the warblers Not really . . . not really . . . (especially the green leaf warbler, which is the most common one here), as well as the next most abundant migrant (Blyth’s reed warbler), spending each winter at Consider the fact that each leaf warbler, on average, eats three insects every waking Mundanthurai come from the forest in the hill regions around the Caspian Sea, from minute (this is averaging over all their activities throughout the day). Since they Turkey east through Kashmir, including bits of southern Russia and Afghanistan. forage by picking prey off a substratum - mostly leaf, sometimes also twigs and Now imagine that these hills - breeding grounds for so many migrant insectivores flowers - the prey largely consists of herbivorous insects. In the case ofmyone - are deforested on a large scale (either directly by us or through effects of global hectare on Mundanthurai, it is mostly leaf-eating caterpillars. A single leaf warbler climate change) cutting down the bird population by 90 per cent. Such a decline is thus eats an average of 180 insects every hour, or about 1,980 per day (assuming an not very unrealistic, as those studying migrant forest birds in the Americas will tell average 11-hour working day from dawn to dusk). The six individuals on our plot you - though they worry more about forests in the wintering areas being cut down thus rid the plants of almost 12,000 insect pests every day! Multiply that with the rather than in the breeding grounds. In fact, over the past two decades, Americans number of days (200 to 250) when they are in residence on that one hectare plot and and Europeans are increasingly facing the prospect of another Silent Spring. Not, you may begin to appreciate the service they render to all the plants. Now I ask you to this time, due to the factors mentioned in Rachel Carson’s clarion call in the 1960s consider removing these warblers from the study plot, since they seem to take away - overuse of chemicals in agriculture at the height of the green revolution—but a so much research and conservation energy from your more favoured mammals, and suite of other human activities that have hit the habitat of avian migrants in both picture the forest as it may appear in a few weeks’ time! The scenario could become their northern breeding grounds and southern wintering grounds. Many species of even more dramatic if you (in your large-mammal chauvinism) remove all the other migrant songbirds, which enliven the northern spring after the dreary and silent insectivorous birds from the plot as well: I estimate each hectare of Mundanthurai’s winters, have been pushed to the brink of extinction—some, like the Kirtland’s forest has at least 40 insectivorous birds, including other warblers and flycatchers warbler, down to a few scores of breeding pairs—over the past two decades, even (both resident and migrant), minivets, shrikes, drongos, babblers, etc. The average as my ornithologist comrades in the West are racing against time to figure out the number of prey may come down to just over two per bird per minute - which gives causes of these declines, so that we may try to reverse the process. The culprits are, a total of about 5,000 insects per hour, or 55,000 per day, in every hectare of forest! of course, us humans: deforesting the tropical wintering grounds, fragmenting the Remove those insectivores, and don’t be surprised if in a few weeks your plants temperate forests into suburban woodlots more accessible to human subsidised nest start to appear ragged, with their foliage tattered; and your endangered langurs predators such as domestic cats and other small carnivores (wild or feral) thriving become unhappy because so many leaves are now packed with toxic anti-herbivore on our garbage, and directly subsidising populations of non-migratory nest parasites

25 26 like the North American cowbird through backyard bird feeders, enabling them to THE WHISTLING HUNTER survive the harsh winter, and fool over 200 gullible species of songbirds into raising their offspring! We seem to be particularly adept at causing damage to the ecological A.J.T. Johnsingh fabric of this planet, even when we mean well - feed them poor little birdies in the winter, or the cute racoons at night. From On Jim Corbett’s Trail, Permanent Black, 2004.

Getting back to our continent, where we have no information on population trends of forest birds at all - whether resident or migratory, in tropical South and South-East Asia, or temperate Russia, Mongolia, and Siberia—declines paralleling those on the other continents are very much on the cards, if, indeed, they haven’t occurred already! Given the contempt that these migrants have for human geopolitical boundaries, their populations are subject to forces beyond the control of any one national conservation agency, let alone the manager of a single tiger reserve. If their populations are found to be declining as drastically as many New World migrants have over the past several decades, mammal chauvinists may be reduced to haplessly watching the habitats of their favourite creatures getting degraded.

Do you think even the tigers might get worried about such a scenario? Is it worth studying these warblers, trying to figure out what makes their populations tick, and how to save them and ensure they continue to keep all those insects down?

Are warblers less important than tigers? Isn’t the question itself meaningless?

It was early on a winter morning in 1977. From my room in Bandipur village, the shooting hide near Thavarakatte - the pond in the Bandipur Tiger Reserve - was a kilometre away. Thin mist made a Japanese water colour of the forests around the pond. I walked cautiously towards the hide, looking out for wild elephants.

The shooting hide, built long ago by a Mysore maharaja, was in the middle of dense lantana, bamboo and dry deciduous forests which had an abundant population of wild pig, chital and sambar. Tiger, leopard and dhole naturally hunted in this area frequently. The hide had mud walls, with several holes to shoot through, and a tin roof. It stood under a large Terminalia bellerica tree. Visibility was much better from

27 28 the shooting hide as a road ran in front of it for about 200 metres and a ten metre view- facing the trail along which the sambar was emerging. I was so tense with excitement line cut through the scrub to the left of the hide for about 150 metres. I had discovered I could barely breathe. The sambar doe emerged from the scrub with an extended that Thavarakatte was the best place in Bandipur to observe large mammals. I used to neck and dilated nostrils. She had rolled back her eyeballs so that the whites of her sit either inside, or on the rooftop or on a tree to wait for dholes. Exciting encounters eyes were visible. Every hair on her neck stood erect. She snorted and stamped her with elephants were numerous in this area as well as tiger and leopard sightings. forefeet as she walked. It was a formidable threat display.

Soon after I sat down on the hide’s rooftop, a lone sambar’s alarm call broke the Contrary to my expectations, the dholes, instead of pouncing on the doe and tearing silence of the forest. This was followed by many alarm calls of sambar and peafowl, her to pieces, split into two groups, giving enough space for the doe to walk through a sign of the presence of a large predator. I stood on the rooftop for a minute, carefully safely. A yearling and another adult doe followed the first doe; all of them walked looked on either side of the view-line to verify that there were no elephants and through the dholes unharmed. Meanwhile some more dholes, which had flushed out then jumped down from the rooftop and hurried to a large rosewood tree (Dalbergia these sambars, joined the six on the view-line and entered the scrub jungle behind latifolia) closer to the view-line, about 100 metres from the hide. my tree. A little later a muffled scream of a fawn, which was immediately followed by the cracking of bones, indicated that the dholes had eaten their morning snack. I often went to the forest in rubber Hawaii chappals: I found these best for wading After the hunt, the dholes probably went to the pond to drink because when I saw through water, walking over mud and climbing trees. I had to climb trees several them again they were all coming from that direction. They lay down to rest when they times in a week to avoid elephants and to find a comfortable and safe perch to wait for came to the cool shade of a rosewood tree. A little later four sambar does came out of and watch dholes. Wearing flip flops had a flip side though; it made me vulnerable to the scrub and, as a team, chased the dholes here and there. The dholes pranced about Russell’s viper (Vipera russelli)and the common cobra (Naja naja) which I frequently playfully with the sambar chasing them. I contemplated how inappropriate it is to call encountered. But this vulnerability forced me to tread the jungle carefully and silently, these graceful hunters ‘bloody killers’ as they normally are. which is vital in approaching and observing shy animals in a dense forest. These Asiatic wild dogs are rust or sand coloured, weigh around 16 kilograms, and By the time I had perched on a large branch about four metres from the ground, stand approximately 50 centimetres at the shoulder. Their length, including a long, the jungle around me was painted by the golden light of the morning sun. As I sat black, bushy tail, is about 135 centimetres. Females are somewhat slighter of build watching, with camera and binoculars on my lap, a sambar stag with magnificent but cannot easily be differentiated from males at a distance. hard antlers ran out from the scrub jungle in front of me. I could hear the commotion of several animals running through the scrub jungle. Of the dhole’s nine sub-species, three definitely occur in India. These are Cuon alpinus laniger in Kashmir and Ladakh, Cuon alpinus primaevus in Garhwal, Soon six dholes came trotting on the view-line from my left and when they came Kumaon, , Sikkim and and Cuonalpinus dukhunensis south of the closer to my tree they stood, spread in a single line within a distance of 15 or 20 Ganges. The dholes found in the Namdapha area in Arunachal Pradesh could be Cuon metres, facing the scrub jungle. Their soft whines, restlessness and the occasional alpinus adjusts from northern Burma. The genus Cuon is distinguished from Canis twitching of muscles on their bodies indicated that they were all excited by the by the more rounded ears and proportionately short muzzle, a characteristic that gives impending morning hunt. I looked towards the area which the dholes were intently dholes their extremely powerful bite. Dholes have only two molars on either side of watching and soon discerned the movement of animals walking through the scrub the lower jaw instead of the usual three. Thus, the dental formula for Cuon is incisors jungle in the direction of my tree. 3/3, canines 1/1, premolars 4/4, molars 2/2 = 40. The usual pattern in the family Canidae is incisors 3/3, canines 1/1, premolars 4/4 and molars 2/3 = 42. The first to emerge was an adult sambar doe. Meanwhile, the dholes had come closer,

29 30 Dholes used to occur as far north as the Altai mountains of the former USSR, perhaps climb. The dholes, instead of chasing me, abruptly turned back with a short alarm in southern Siberia, where they are now extinct. From there their range extended growl, and disappeared into the bush. radically southward encompassing Mongolia, much of , Thailand, Indo-China, the Malaya peninsula, Sumatra and Java. Dholes are found in Tibet, Nepal and India Another myth is that the dhole hunts its prey in relays. According to this theory one but not in Sri Lanka, Borneo or Japan. dhole runs after the prey till it is tired and then another dhole pursues the prey and this change of hunters goes on until the prey is too exhausted to run. Thereafter, all the dholes join together and kill the prey. I never observed this to happen. Of the They occupy an enormous variety of habitats. In the northern reaches of their range 48 chases I witnessed in Bandipur, in 44 the dholes chased their prey for only 500 dholes inhabit dense forest, river gorges and mountainous alpine regions. In the rest metres; only twice did the chase go beyond 500 metres. Teamwork and speed enabled of India they exist almost exclusively in dense forests and thick scrub jungles where them to kill their prey within short distances. It would be impossible for one dhole there is sufficient prey and water. Dense montane forests are their preferred habitat to pursue one particular prey for a long distance through the dense Indian jungle in Thailand. where many individuals of different prey species and different prey signs confuse the animal that is chasing. Not long ago hunters and wildlife managers thought that dholes were responsible for the decline of various deer species, which in fact was due to overgrazing, habitat loss I observed that dholes employ two strategies. One, which I observed while sitting and poaching. Phythian Adams, a retired Indian army officer, wrote in the journal of up in the rosewood tree, was to flush out prey to waiting dholes. The other was to the Bombay Natural History Society in 1949, that the epithet ‘a perfect swine’ may go in an extended line through the forest and attack at once, alone, without flushing with every justification be applied to the wild dog, whose nature and habits may be the prey out, when suitable prey is located. It is possible to identify which strategy summed up in a single word - ‘bloody’. He concluded that except for his handsome dholes adopt only at the beginning of the hunt, as at the end, in the melee, it would be appearance the wild dog does not have a single redeeming feature, and no effort, fair impossible to differentiate the two strategies. or foul, should be spared to destroy these pests of the jungle. As recently as 1964, E.P. Gee did speak up in favour of dholes, but in a lukewarm fashion. Dholes play a useful It is believed that dholes urinate on the eyes of the prey, making them blind, and then part in the general set-up of nature, he said. They keep the deer on the move, and kill them. This is as improbable a technique as would be keeping butter on the head so favourite grazing areas do not become over-grazed and therefore impoverished. of a pond heron and catching the bird when the butter melts and blinds the bird! It Otherwise, he commented, there is very little to be said in favour of these animals. is also reported that dholes urinate on leafy branches, force the prey to run into the Not surprisingly, the dhole was one of the much maligned and persecuted species in branches, make them blind and then kill them. This again is an impossible technique the Indian jungles and until 1975 it even carried a bounty on its head - even if a paltry for a dense jungle and I saw no evidence of this. one - of 20 rupees. The reason dholes are called ‘bloody’ is that they kill much larger prey by biting off Many myths are woven around the dholes. These add up to making them seem chunks of meat and by evisceration. Often killing occurs in daytime, witnessed by almost human in their supposed malice and deviousness. One myth: dholes attack if people. One March evening, atop the shooting hide when darkness was just gathering, people run away from them. I had an opportunity to explode this myth. One morning my attention was abruptly drawn to a silent struggle between a large chital stag with a in Bandipur, I observed nine dholes coming out of the jungle to a forest road, and fine set of hard antlers and a group of seven dholes. Two or three dholes were biting, immediately I took cover behind a large tree. The dholes were 50 metres away and and hanging on to the rump of the stag, thereby rendering it completely immobile, were trotting in my direction. To see their reaction to my running away from them, I while others attacked its flanks. The stag was trying to fight off the dholes by came out and ran in full view of them to a tree 30 metres away, which I could easily swinging its great antlers, which never came in contact with the dholes. Throughout

31 32 the struggle the dholes remained silent while the deer cried out its agony three times. with a leaf between the lips, thus producing a shrill note similar to the distress call Suddenly one dhole caught the snout of the stag and pulled it forward while those of a deer fawn. at the rump continued to bite and pull it backwards. Eventually the helpless stag was dragged down and the dholes started eating it even before it had died. Although Like most other large carnivores, the dhole has an amazing ability to consume large predation is as much a biological process as grazing, to a layman such a sight is quantities of meat. A pack of fifteen could easily eat a yearling sambar male of 90 to repugnant and bloodthirsty. However, dholes are biologically predators and since 100 kilograms, each dhole consuming about five kilograms of meat, which is a little they lack the killing bite of the large cats they can at best kill prey larger than over one-fourth the body weight of the dhole. This capacity to gorge is thought to themselves only by biting off chunks of meat. As blood loss and shock rapidly lower enable them to live without food for a few days; this, however, has not been verified the prey’s resistance, the animal, thus weakened, becomes easier to overcome. Close in the field. Once I managed to collect almost all the kills made by my study pack examination of numerous fresh kills clearly shows that dholes are particular about for about fifteen days and calculated that during this period, on the average, each holding on to the nose of stags sporting hard antlers, obviously to prevent themselves dhole ate 1.8 kilograms of meat. One of the benefits of pack life, in addition to from being stabbed by these lethal weapons. Often, in the process of biting off chunks providing the capability to bring down large prey several times heavier than a single of flesh from the rump of adult stags, dholes bite off the scrotum: this has led to the dhole, is the efficiency with which kills are eaten. Even the bones and skin of young belief that dholes intentionally emasculate their prey. This too is a misapprehension. and smaller prey are eaten. When larger kills are made, the dholes may come back Faced with smaller prey like hare and chital fawn, dholes instantaneously kill them even to scavenge on the dry skin. This habit of scavenging also enables dholes to with one bite and a vigorous head shake. appropriate kills of leopards and tigers and on many occasions leopards have actually lost their kills to dholes. Stealing of kills from other large sympatric predators can One cloudy evening I was atop the shooting hide and heard repeated chital alarm calls be dangerous. I have seen once a dhole pup, nearly six months old, killed and partly and sounds of some other animals. I saw three dholes, that stood facing west, as if to eaten by a leopard; the potential robber had become a prey. intercept an animal. Soon a big chital fawn, chased by another dhole, came running in the direction of the three waiting dholes. The fawn, when it saw the dholes, veered One fear about the dhole is that a high density of its population can suppress tiger to the right, but the dholes also swiftly moved as if to block its way. Then the fawn and leopard populations. This need not be true, as there are several behavioural and leaped across the dholes. When it landed six to eight metres away from the dholes, all ecological parameters which help these predators to avoid conflict with one another. four of them fell on it almost simultaneously. There was only a short muffled scream. There is temporal and spatial variation in their use of habitat. Dholes are largely diurnal, Within a minute the fawn’s entrails were thrown out and by this time the entire pack while tigers and leopards prefer to be nocturnal. The shy tiger and leopard generally was on the kill. avoid open habitats and dholes use them without any inhibition. Tigers generally prefer prey heavier than 100 kilograms while the leopard and dhole largely kill prey Dholes, though they look like dogs, do not bark. The most interesting call of the dhole around or less than 50 kilograms. K. Ullas Karanth, the tiger specialist, has observed is a whistle. How it produces the sound is an enigma. The whistle call can be imitated this kind of prey selection in the Nagarahole National Park, which is adjacent to the by blowing into a medium-bore empty rifle cartridge and in the past hunters used to Bandipur Tiger Reserve. In Bandipur, dholes showed a preference for male sambar trick dholes by mimicking the call and drawing dholes closer to shoot them. Dholes and male chital and my limited experience of sambar and chital kills of tigers and separated from the rest of their pack whistle to reassemble after an unsuccessful hunt leopards seemed to suggest their preference for female sambar and chital. Females, and even lone dholes whistle to discover the whereabouts of their pack members. which spend considerable time in cover to give birth and nurse fawns, are more prone I have never observed dholes whistling to maintain the cohesiveness of their pack to stalking predators like the tiger and leopard. In addition, the kill data also suggests while the hunt was in progress. Sounds play an important role in the lives of dholes that the dhole, a coursing predator, kills mainly young or old animals while the tiger and they can be attracted not only by imitating their whistle, but also by blowing air and leopard, as they hunt by stealth and surprise, can kill prey of all ages.

33 34 All dholes look alike to a casual observer. Attentive and prolonged observation, Venkataraman, who has done several years of research on dholes in the Mudumalai however, can help us differentiate a few individuals based on variations in their Wildlife Sanctuary near Bandipur, explains that such large packs could be caused by colour, and shape of the ear and tail. ‘Bent Ear’ was one such individual I grew to the absence of suitable areas nearby for the emigrants to occupy. recognize. My first prolonged meeting with him was on 4 January 1977 when I went to the dhole den at around eleven in the morning. Bent Ear had already returned In Bandipur, the pups remained in the den until they were 70 to 80 days old and, from the hunt and was resting in front of the den. The leaf litter was so dry I found it during this time, they did not visit the nearby waterholes. They possibly got enough difficult to walk without making a noise. My approach had alerted him and, pricking water from mother’s milk and the meat regurgitated by several of the pack members. his left ear, he looked in the direction of the sound. I crawled to the cover of a rock I also observed that pups were shifted from one den to another when people disturbed 40 metres from the den, and, lying under a bush, I observed him. the dens.

He had an unusually thick neck and a pale white throat, chest and belly. His tail had The pack cared for the pups even after they had left the den and the adults treated a bend as if it had been broken. His scrotum hung loosely, showing he was aged. them with special concern and solicitude until they were four to five months old. Throughout the three hours of observation he was suspicious of my presence but During this period the adults would hunt either very early in the morning or late in never came close to investigate. This was probably because of his dislike for the hot the evening to avoid both the presence of man and the heat of the day. The pups were sun, which scorched the shadeless areas. When I left the den he was sleeping in the left in hiding during these hunts and the absence of a couple of adults in the hunting shade. The rustle in the bush made him raise his head lazily and open his eyes a little, party even suggested that some adults stayed behind to guard them. Even when the but he again fell into a deep slumber to while away the hot afternoon. pups started following the pack on hunts, one or two adults escorted young stragglers. The pups were permitted to monopolise small kills like chital fawns and when food Thereafter,I observed him several times. He appeared to be the leader of the pack and was insufficient the adults, who had eaten earlier, regurgitated meat for them. When was extremely fond of the pups. When the pack had made a kill of a small animal the the pups were about seven months old, on occasion, when food was insufficient, pups would run to him, pestering him to regurgitate extra meat. I soon developed a adults were reluctant to regurgitate meat. The pups, however, chased the adults and strange affection for this aged hunter who flitted freely through the forest. He led a appealingly nibbled the corners of the adults’ mouths until food was regurgitated. daring life. Alone and unafraid, he slipped without any hesitation through the thickets that I entered with much reluctance, with bated breath and a tense body. When he One heavily foggy winter morning, I made my way to a large tamarind tree about suddenly disappeared in April 1978 I felt a pang of sadness which stayed with me for 500 metres south-east of Bandipur. Perched on the tree, I heard the hushed scream a long time. of a sambar fawn 150 to 200 metres from Bandipur village, an obvious sign of a kill. I hurried to the place, where a flock of jungle crows had already reached. Jungle During my study in Bandipur I came to understand the mechanisms of pack size crows in Bandipur tenaciously follow dholes to feed on the kill remains and were of regulation. In the first year of my study, in the month of November, just prior to the immense help to me in locating dholes. I waited to give sufficient time to the dholes birth of some pups, the pack of fifteen was suddenly reduced to seven or eight animals. to settle on the kill as I wanted to approach them and take some photographs. This was unexpected. The diminished pack had three females but one gave birth to eight pups. Also, at no time were two packs seen operating in the same area, which The crows were sitting on the top of a dead tree, looking down and cawing. Minutes suggests that the dholes could be territorial. I realised that mortality, emigration of a ticked by and abruptly the dholes growled and ran in different directions. For a part of the pack before the arrival of pups, breeding by one female, and the dhole’s moment I thought that they had fought among themselves, which made them disperse territorial nature may be the mechanisms that regulate pack and population size. In and, as I waited for them to reassemble, the crows landed on the kill site: evidence spite of these mechanisms, sometimes pack sizes of 20 to 25 dholes are reported. Arun that the dholes were not at the kill. I went ahead cautiously. The crows flew up the

35 36 dead tree when I approached them, and except for the splattered blood and hair and government rewards to encourage the continual destruction of wild dogs in all reserve few splinters of bone, there was no sign of a kill on the short green grass. I walked forests. This was practised throughout India but only certain agencies kept a record of around the kill site and found on the dew-covered grass, tracks of two persons who how many dholes were killed. had come from and gone back to Bandipur village. Anger swelled in me when I realized that the kill probably had been stolen. The clearly visible tracks led me to a For 21 years, from 1912, the average yearly destruction of dholes in the area controlled Kuruba tribal hut on the outskirts of Bandipur village. Some jungle crows were sitting by the Nilgiri Game Association in south India numbered 38 and the reward offered on the grass rooftop of the hut and cawing, and other crows were flying around. All for each dhole killed was 20 rupees; which was a covetable amount in those days. this clearly indicated that the kill was hidden somewhere either inside or near the hut. This promotion of killing was continued by the Association and between 1939 and The Kuruba family and their neighbours, however, denied having any association 1964, 309 dholes were slayed. with the kill. Fortunately for the dholes, the tide has turned. The last dhole was shot in Bandipur One of the major objectives of my study was to evaluate the impact of dhole predation in 1975 and being a part of Schedule II of the Indian Wildlife Act, 1972, the dhole is on chital and sambar and, therefore, every kill was valuable to me. I realized I had now totally protected from hunting. Unless there is permission from the chief wildlife to report the stolen kill to the forest department to put an end to this illegal activity. warden of the state, the dhole cannot be legally shot. Neither wildlife managers nor I went to the office of the range forest officer who was aware of the problemof conservationists believe any longer in the accusation that dholes can suppress tiger local people stealing kills. I was able to convince him that such stealing, if unabated, populations. Since the inception of Project Tiger, many tiger habitats, such as Kanha, could seriously affect my study and also the delicate prey–predator balance that Melghat, Simlipal, Bandipur and Periyar, that also harbour dholes, have shown a exists in the Bandipur Tiger Reserve. Determined to put an end to this disturbance, significant increase in tiger numbers, which would not have happened had the dholes he accompanied me with two guards to the hut of the tribal. An intensive search been containing tiger numbers. brought out a 30 kilogram sambar fawn wrapped in sacks hidden in a corner of the hut. I removed the jaw of the fawn for ageing it by studying tooth emption, and pieces My study on dholes in the Bandipur Tiger Reserve from 1976 to 1978 was fraught of lung and liver for an investigation of parasitism. We left the carcass at the kill site with discomfort and dangers. One major problem was my allergy to ticks, which in the fervent hope that the dholes would come back to feed on it. were abundant in the jungle. Initially, the tick bites led to fever and itching, and, though, eventually, the fever stopped, the itching continued and I never developed Since time immemorial, in every association with man, the dhole has been the loser. immunity to the bites. Some of the bites itched for months. The healed bites, which Jungle tribes all over the range of dholes have been following dholes and appropriating were all over my body, were black. Soon I looked as if I had had a serious attack their kills down the years. Given this parasitic association, tribes such as the Gonds of smallpox. Dangers from elephants were many. Once, while looking for kills, I in Madhya Pradesh never harm dholes directly. Another way in which dholes are walked into a sleeping cow elephant in a dense scrub and mistook it to be dead! I harmed by people is by den-digging and killing of pups. This happens mostly in areas foolishly made horrendous sounds by beating two sticks of dead and dry bamboo to where dholes prey on livestock. In such areas, carcasses of livestock killed by dholes verify whether the elephant was dead; the cow came out charging with her tiny calf are also poisoned. For example, Lieutenant Colonel R.W. Burton in an article written on her heels. I was in my early thirties then and had the confidence to run and escape in 1941 in the journal of the Bombay Natural History Society, recommends the use of elephants. This confidence, which enabled me to escape from two very bad chases by strychnine bi-hydrochloride for poisoning dholes. elephants, was shattered when a conservator of forest, who was accompanying me, was tragically killed by a young tusker. Thereafter, for several weeks I walked with Burton thought that as the stock of deer in all parts of the country was rapidly great fear in my heart. Any rustle caused by a heavy-bodied animal in the bush sent lessening, it should be the policy of the Imperial Forest Department to offer sufficient a chill up my spine.

37 38 I spent over 5,000 enjoyable hours in the jungle and observed dholes for a little over THE FOLDED EARTH 100 hours. My project was the first PhD study by an Indian biologist on a free-ranging large mammal. Nearly 25 years have passed since my field study and there are many Anuradha Roy questions that need to be answered to fully understand dhole biology and ecology. Some of them are: What prevents Cuon alpinus primaevus from returning to prey- From The Folded Earth, Hachette India, 2011. rich areas like the Corbett Tiger Reserve? What diseases periodically wipe out dholes in reserves like Kanha and how are these diseases transmitted? What happens to the migrants and what is their social status? What is the genetic status of the different dhole populations? Several short-term studies focusing on different populations of dholes and long-term study of three or four neighbouring packs in an expansive dhole habitat, with several dholes individually marked and some radio-collared, are urgently required to unravel many of the existing mysteries about the dhole.

The sky over our heads here in the mountains has not the immensity of the sky I grew up with in the Deccan where it spans the entire planet, broken only by the building- sized boulders that sit here and there on the open flatland of the plateau as if a giant’s child had collected them from the giant’s river and dropped them like marbles on a playing field. In the hills the sky is circumscribed. Its fluid blue is cupped in the palm of a hand whose fingers are the mountains around us. We too are cupped in its palm and while there is a feeling of limitless distance, we have, at the same time, the sense that here on our hill is where life begins and ends. Here is where sky begins and ends, and if there are other places, they have skies different from our sky.

39 40 Our town spans three hills. It is far away from everywhere and very small. If you look up residence in the corners of the rooms: slow-moving black scorpions, confused at it from the other side of the valley at night, you see darkness dotted here and there moths that banged into lights, green-eyed spiders whose legs could span dinner plates. with yellow lights half-hidden by trees. On every side there are mountains and forests, stretching many miles, interrupted only by tiny hamlets and villages so small that My cottage was at the edge of the spur on which the Light House stood. When I lay they might have just five houses and nothing but a foot-beaten path connecting them in bed, what I saw framed in the window was the Trishul. At its base, invisible at this to the main road miles away. To the north of our town are the high ; ice- distance, was the lake where Michael had spent his last hours. Nothing but miles of white peaks on the other side of which lie Tibet and China. On clear days, eastward, forests and wave upon wave of blue and green hills between us. you can see the five pyramids of the Pancha Chuli, which are at Nepal’s door.

When you come up to our town from the plains, the dust-gloomed, table-flat land begins to slope upward at Kathgodam, folding itself into hillsides, and in less than two hours the trees change from banyan, mango, banana and sal, to pine, oak, cypress and cedar. Everything looks sharper-edged in the clear air, as if your bad eyesight has been inexplicably cured. Ferns fountain from rock faces, flowers blossom on stone. In fertile areas, the hills are terraced into green and brown circles of wheat fields with squares of white, where the peasants’ slate-roofed cottages are. The dishevelled small towns are soon left behind, and then you pass gushing mountain rivers and barren cliff sides pin-cushioned with cacti, deep forests and still grey-blue lakes. By the time you are in Ranikhet, you have travelled from the tropics to temperate lands.

This was the town to which I came after I lost Michael. Father Joseph used his network to get me a job at St Hilda’s, a church-run school. I found a cottage to rent, on an estate called the Light House because it was so situated that the mansion on the upper grounds caught the first rays of sun on its eastern windows, and the last of them on its western lawns. My landlord, whom everyone called Diwan Sahib, lived alone in the crumbling mansion. Down the slope there was a set of brick and mud rooms clustered around a beaten earth courtyard and cattle sheds. Charu lived here with her grandmother and an uncle, Puran, who was often called Sanki Puran because he did not seem to have all his wits about him.

My own cottage, close to theirs, had once been stables where herders were housed in a room above the stalls for horses and cows. The cottage now had two whitewashed rooms of stone, one above the other, and a small veranda. The wooden planks of its floors creaked and shifted with age. The kitchen and bathroom, tacked on later, stood at odd angles to one another and to the house. None of the windows or doors fitted well. Icy draughts surged through the gaps in winter, and in the monsoon insects took

41 42 WHY SAVE TIGERS? this planet. Ecological modeller Simon Levin compares the earth’s biosphere to a ‘self organizing, complex adaptive system’ in which each little cluster of component parts K. Ullas Karanth influences the overall functioning of the system through feedback loops. He suggests that loss of species could have unpredictable and possibly dangerous consequences From The Way of the Tiger, Universities Presses, 2006. for us. Ecologist David Tillman argues that biological diversity itself may provide stability to our ecosystems.

Population biologist Paul Ehrilich illustrates the danger of potential species losses, with a dramatic example: the ecosystem is like an airplane in which we are passengers. We can go on removing the rivets that hold the plane’s wings up, one by one, for quite a while. While no single rivet may determine when we will crash, ultimately one particular rivet surely will. Each species that we extirpate is like one more rivet pulled out from our plane.

Going beyond such arguments that urge prudence for the sake of the future, we can see that tiger habitats provide us with tangible benefits even now. The forests that clothe the tiger’s habitats are also watersheds of major Asian river systems such as the Ganga, Brahmaputra, Irrawaddy and Mekong. These forests regulate the flow of water after the seasonal rains and protect the soil underneath from erosion. The survival of these forests is therefore critical to the welfare of millions of farmers who depend on these rivers. When we protect tiger forests from logging, overgrazing, fires and conversion to cropland, we are not indulging in a luxury that we cannot afford in a poverty-stricken, overpopulated world. We are, in fact, protecting the soil–water resources that sustain millions of people in Asia.

These tiger forests are also treasure troves of biological diversity. They harbor millions of species of plants, insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals. These Saving wild tigers in an overpopulated world now means locking up productive life forms took millions of years to evolve and we have only just begun to document farmland in wildlife reserves, and suffering occasional depredations on livestock and their extraordinary variety and diversity. Consequently, we barely understand the even human beings. Yet, for over a quarter of a century now, we have kept up the complex ecological linkages among these plants and animals: certainly not enough to efforts to save wild tigers. Is this rational behaviour on our part? Why should we try predict how the elimination of one species may affect the fate of others. to save tigers when so many other urgent human problems demand our attention? Often, extermination of species can disrupt links between predators and prey, Ecologists who study the earth’s ecosystems and try to model their dynamics argue flowers and pollinators, fruits and the dispersers of their seeds. Collecting specimens that the plant and animal communities that share our planet contribute to the stability in museums, arboretums and zoos cannot prevent the cascading effects of species and functioning of biological and chemical cycles that make life possible for us on extinctions. Wild plants and animals have to be primarily saved wherever they

43 44 occur in living landscapes around us. Tigers are an integral part of these complex saving wild tigers. Tigers, and the plant and animal communities that sustain them, ecosystems. are products of millions of years of natural evolution. Don’t they have a right to survive and evolve as nature intended them to, at least in some parts of the once green The diversity of plant and animal life needs to be preserved because of the immense earth that we have drastically modified? current benefits and future gains that it can bring to us. Most of our crop plants and domestic animals are bred from wild relatives and can potentially benefit greatly from The tiger is, undoubtedly, one of the most beautiful of all nature’s creations, and the vast, barely tapped wild gene pools. Many of our current drugs, as well as sources has inspired human cultures over millennia. No one has expressed the ethical and of energy, fibres and structural materials come from a few exploited species that we aesthetic imperative for saving wild tigers more eloquently than biologist George have discovered. As biotechnology becomes an increasingly important weapon in Schaller who said in 1993: ‘Future generations would be truly saddened that this our fight against hunger, homelessness, poverty and disease, the role of those as yet century had so little foresight, so little compassion, such lack of generosity of spirit undiscovered life forms will become even more central to our own welfare. Yet the for the future that it would eliminate one of the most beautiful and dramatic animals natural habitats that harbor potentially useful life forms are being lost every day in a that the world has ever seen.’ massive extinction spasm that we have inflicted on nature. Sometimes, we humans seem determined to burn this unique insurance policy that nature has generously Critical Questions in Tiger Conservation. provisioned for our future. For all the above reasons, the world’s scientific community, most governments, Wild tigers are the warning lamps that indicate how healthy natural landscapes conservation agencies and a wide section of the public agree that saving rare, continue to remain in the face of our onslaught; their survival is as useful to us as the extinction-prone species, such as the tiger, is a global necessity from both practical oil-pressure lamp on the dashboard of a car or the battery life indicator on a laptop and moral considerations. The consensus on this issue is remarkably broad, and cuts computer. across political, ideological, national and cultural boundaries. Even more remarkably, this consensus has crystallised within a relatively short period during the last quarter The remaining tiger habitats are wonderful laboratories of nature, an irreplaceable century. However, all this does not make the actual task of tiger conservation any less library of life. They possess, in a large measure, what conservationist William difficult. While there is agreement as to why we should save tigers, there are widely Conway calls ‘nature’s ability to surprise us’. In these we can study nature at work diverging views on how we should go about doing so. Many vexed questions are and benefit from the knowledge we gain. In our attempts to destroy the remnants of raised and debated. such forests to meet some temporary need, human society seems to be behaving like a mob of illiterates bent on burning down an ancient library. Should we advocate policies that promote the coexistence of tiger populations amidst human settlements, or should we strive for separating the two as much as we can? To Moreover, the wild landscapes that now harbour tigers comprise less than 5 per cent what extent are activities such as agriculture, raising livestock and collecting forest of the land in most tiger range countries. One cannot imagine any pressing problem products compatible with tiger conservation goals? Can economic development faced by the three-billion-strong population in Asia being solved by sacrificing these projects be reconciled with tiger conservation? Is the international trade in tiger body nature reserves. Problems such as poverty, landlessness, hunger, disease and social parts the most important factor in driving the tigers’ decline or is it the depletion of the discrimination have remained intractable over centuries. Their ultimate solution lies tigers’ prey base by local villagers? Should tiger habitats be managed by decentralised in using the remaining 95 per cent of the land outside the reserves wisely. local authorities or by organised governmental efforts? Should we emphasise tough law enforcement to protect tigers or should we focus on people-friendly policies that Apart from such practical reasons, there also are ethical and aesthetic reasons for keep the tigers’ human neighbours happy? Should we motivate local people to save

45 46 tigers through commercial incentives or by appealing to their sense of local pride, recognizes a new subspecies in Peninsular Malaysia and concludes there are culture or tradition? Do we need more or less money to go into tiger conservation six extant tiger subspecies. schemes? How important are the issues of genetics and captive breeding in saving • Many people think that white tigers are a rare variety that need to be wild tigers? How can captive tigers help wild ones? How do we measure success conserved. Actually white tigers are genetic mutants derived by repeatedly or failure in tiger conservation - by the amount of money we spend, the welfare crossbreeding the progeny derived from a single wild-caught ancestor. While provided to local people or by actually going out and counting wild tigers? Are we white tigers are undoubtedly rather cute oddities, they have little conservation succeeding or failing in our collective efforts to save tigers? Is the tiger a lost cause, value. or is there some reason for hope? • It is often believed that tigers in captivity provide stock for reintroduction into the wild. The fact is that it is more cost-effective to protect habitats so The Role of Reliable Knowledge that wild tiger populations can recover, compared to raising expensive captive tigers that have little hope of finding suitable new habitats for reintroductions. The answers to these questions differ widely, but in the end they boil down to two things: which conservation activities should be emphasised and what proportion of Let us take the bland assertion that, in Asia, tigers have happily coexisted with resources should be allocated to each. Different conservation prescriptions arise from local people over thousands of years. It then follows that policies that make local differences in perceptions about what wild tigers need and about our own impacts on people unhappy – restricting farming, livestock raising and the collection of forest these needs. Much of the discord arises because of a lack of reliable knowledge about products in critical tiger habitats – are unnecessary to maintain viable breeding tigers. To illustrate this let us look at some opinions that are widely shared among the tiger populations in the future. The reality, however, is that during this period of world’s tiger conservationists: alleged happy coexistence, the distributional range of breeding tiger populations has probably shrunk to one per cent of its former size. For the tigers at least, the history • It is often stated that there were 40,000 tigers in India at the beginning of the of coexistence has not be a happy experience. twentieth century and that only 3,000 or 5,000 or some other number, survive now. The first number is merely an opinion expressed by a naturalist 40 years Look at the dire prediction made in 1993 by many of the world’s leading tiger ago, and the latter numbers are only guesses without any solid basis. Yet these conservationists and repeated by the media, including Time magazine and the BBC, so-called ‘facts’ have gained wide currency through repetition in the foreign that wild tigers were in deep trouble and would go extinct by the year 2000. While press. wild tigers continued to be in trouble in the year 2000, they were certainly not extinct. • Another famous, oft-repeated quote is that the largest contiguous wild tiger There is a chance that tigers may indeed survive the twenty-first century, at least in population in the world today survives in the Sunderban delta, in India and some parts of their range. Bangladesh. In fact, mangrove forests are poor-quality tiger habitat, with apparently low prey densities. Recent studies suggest that the high tiger It can be seen from these examples that many of the differences in possible approaches numbers reported are more likely to be the result of poor counting methods. to saving tigers arise because of lack of reliable knowledge. Two basic biological Although a unique and important habitat, the Sunderban is unlikely to support traits of tigers – its large size and carnivorous diet – impinge on every conservation the largest contiguous tiger population in the world. decision we have to make now. • It is widely believed that there were once eight tiger subspecies of which five survive now. However, a recent biogeographic study suggests that there Understanding the tiger’s biological needs so that we can accommodate them – to the were only two tiger subspecies, whereas another molecular genetic study extent we can – in our vastly complicated agenda for human progress is a crucial part of the conservation enterprise. Gaining such understanding through the application

47 48 of science is therefore essential for the process of conservation. Science derives its ESCAPE FROM THE SANCTUARY strength because, as a philosopher said, “science works”. Science works in the real world because of the methods it employs to gain knowledge. Rigorous methods and Bill Aitken evaluation of the results are what set tiger science clearly apart from tiger lore, legend and hunter’s tales. From The Nanda Affair, Penguin Books (India), 1994.

However, tiger conservation is an activity that we humans undertake – not tigers themselves. Therefore, tiger conservation must involve a human dimension. The social, economic and cultural dimensions of conservation cannot be ignored by anyone seriously working to save tigers. Tigers have inspired humanity from its pre- historic past through historical times to the modern day. Tigers were worshipped as deities by primitive cultures and have served as royal mascots. They are now used in corporate logos that sell a variety of products, from ice cream to sports cars. Our primary challenge is to channel this human fascination for the tiger into positive conservation action.

It felt good to be alive as we sloped down to the sanctuary camp. The all-encompassing mist prevented the fixing of landmarks but the green expansiveness of the rolling moors announced this could be nowhere but the sanctuary of the Goddess. We headed towards the roots of the mountain where across the sunken bed of the South Rishi the black ragged rocks supporting reared up to reveal ramparts eroded by the undermining, scouring elements.

Expedition litter announced the main camping site where a small stream ran past white encrusted rocks to make more vivid this emerald dell. Alongside was a rock

49 50 shelter built with stones to make a reasonable if constricted cave. Against our better could actually deduce from the junk the nationality of the parties. Yugoslavian biscuit instincts the porters pulled up roots of the brush undergrowth to make a fire. Normally wrappers lay alongside British sardine tins and Coca Cola cans from America shared we did not abuse the hospitality of the environment but now were too tired to bother space with jettisoned medical supplies from Indian military sources. The mess was about the ethics involved. The porters went off rummaging but their beachcombing an affront to the Goddess and the illusion that the people who could do this to the did not yield anything useful. Next morning they declared they would continue the most beautiful of Himalayan wildernesses qualified as sportsmen never stood more march to Nanda Devi base camp (another eight-kilometre scramble up the South exposed. Shipton and his Sherpas had honoured their surroundings by the limited Nanda glacier) to rescue some tinned supplies they had hidden from a previous visit. size of their party and genuine exploratory motives for being there; since then the I was undecided about my programme, feeling quite happy to have got this far, and sanctuary had been violated by the greed for fame and the mindless urge to keep up unambitious to cross the river and set foot upon the mountain. The cave was cold with the record books. and any comfort was totally lacking from its claustrophobic dankness. We spent a wretched night unable to sleep, my exhaustion from failure to eat now catching up to As I sat on the cave roof, facing the black ramparts across the echoing river, the add to the misery of altitude. shredded mist higher up the mountain suddenly revealed a patch of blue. It was the first hopeful sign in five days of wet marching that the weather might clear. In the morning I decided I wasn’t up to the extra march. Prithwi had given me a tiny Contented, I sat back to breathe in the pleasure of the moment and as I idly stretched image of Nandi the bull to offer at the feet of Nanda Devi and I decided I would begin in the warming air the great moment happened. The top layer of cloud began to thin the day by building a small shrine on the roof of our rock shelter for this offering and, tantalizingly, the outlines of the main peak began to flicker into recognition. I to the Goddess. This meant searching around for slates to pile up around the metal couldn’t believe my eyes. Unknown to me, I had built the temple to Nandi exactly image. To keep warm I fell to the job with a will. After fifteen minutes I was pulled facing the Goddess. It seemed a minor miracle that the sun should choose this moment up with a pain in my chest and realised how careful one has to be at altitude. By now to reward my labours. As the reluctant beauty of the mountain strove to outwit the the morning was distinctly warmer and wisps of cloud streamed away to announce parting cloud cover, I was aware, almost painfully, of the strong erotic pull this peak a weak sun trying to break through. The five days I had been on the trail had not yet of passion had on me. It was almost as if a spiritual striptease was being performed. yielded a single snow peak but in spite of the aesthetic short-changing I remained I could only gape as the revelation neared its climax. The sun climbed to disperse happy at having broken through to my goal. It was a joy just to be there in the riffling the upper band of mist and lo! The full breathtaking face of the mountain coyly winds of the meadows, where snow pigeons went screaming by and black choughs floated into focus. Only her peak was revealed, as lovely a portrait in ermine as any with yellow bills performed their leisurely stalls. Bird life had not been abundant but queen could wish for. She sailed majestically against the brief blue of eternity and I the need to keep one’s eyes glued to the dangerous trail had not allowed for much could not take my eyes off this stunning apparition. Everything I desired had come to straying interest. I was also disappointed at not sighting any herds of bharal. The fruition. There was a feeling of utter fulfilment and a song of thankfulness welled up porters advised me to accompany them to ‘base-kin’ (base camp) where I could be from that core of contentment that follows the union of heaven and earth; the perfect sure of a sighting but I was content and had no wish to leave the meadows. end to all our striving.

They then decided their round trip of 16 kilometres to collect a tin of mince was not The Goddess remained clear for the hour it took the porters to pack our reduced worth the effort. They also preferred to laze and recoup their lost energy. The cave baggage. Having experienced darshan of Nanda Devi, nothing remained but to was forever full of billowing smoke that wrung out our tears. Brushwood was the only return and share it with those I loved. It was early afternoon when, at last, we tore fuel as the juniper bushes had all fallen victim to earlier expeditions. This denudation ourselves away from her loveliness and turned our backs on the Goddess’ enchanted was not the only trace these earlier visitors had left behind. The unacceptable face realm. Still the mist clung to the base of the mountain and obliterated the extent of of the sanctuary was the sprawl of expedition junk rusting along the stream. One the swelling moors. Unlike the other parts we had traversed, here the grass of the

51 52 sanctuary overcame all attempts by the flowers to hold sway. There were brilliant clumps of searing yellow along the small sanctuary camp stream but these served Once across the first danger, the porters accelerated towards the second, the creaking only to highlight the immense expanse of turfed delight that sprawled to the horizon. bridge over the Rishi at Deodhi. Now there was no stopping us. We simply took the obstacles at a run, one at a time, but with never athought of the consequences. We Intoxicated by the glow of our surroundings, we slowly made our way to the portals were free of the menacing river and, happily tired, seemed to have won our way and sat down under the cairns to bid a final farewell to the peak. The porters dozed off in home. The day’s retreat had covered three paravs and our speeding feet had put 30 the warm sun and left me to breathe in full wonder of this extraordinary manifestation kilometres of the gorge behind us. We settled under the dank Dibrugheta overhang of sanctified nature. It was now clear enough to look down the branching course to eat a dish of celebratory sweet porridge, confident that we would be back in Lata of the North Rishi and spot the great white rock that marked the junction of the the next day to make offerings at the Devi’s temple. At three in the morning, I was Changabang glacier. The Goddess carefully kept her snow treasures under lock and woken in cold drifting rain and told it was time to start. The nala was noisily swollen key as if to suggest I must come back if I wished to see more of her jewels. and the log by which we had entered was now under six inches of crashing white water. I stared glumly at this development while the porters examined other reaches We climbed slowly over the boulders and made camp for the night at Patalkhan. The of the spoiling stream and concluded we had to try from where we were. Another log small cave seemed perfectly adequate and I found all my fears of the descent had reared out of the river at a desperate angle but did not span the entire width. It fell evaporated. To aid our retreat, I had picked up a pilgrim staff with a ferrule from the short by some six feet and any progress by its slippery offer was doomed to end with sanctuary camp that would ease the next day’s passage. The porters produced a tin of a plunge into the icy swirl. To add to the pall of defeat the moon that had struggled mutton from their renewed searchings but my stomach was totally turned off at the against the drizzle now chose to go behind the mountain. The porters leapt up on the suggestion of any non-vegetarian article of diet. I lived on packets of soup powder upreared log and began to prise out boulders along its lie hoping to ease the surging since the effort to swallow anything more substantial made the act of swallowing a flow by their removal. gamble against the urge to vomit. Despite the battering the body had undergone my mood was buoyant. That night the moon shone as the river growled in the echoing Nathu’s strength was so uncontained that he managed to break off the ferrule of the canyon. Now, to my rejuvenated ears, its music was no longer menacing. The Devi ice axe. I was reminded of how Sathya Sai Baba had blessed the pick and wondered had muzzled her watchdog and the gorge no longer held any threat. why his protection seemed now to have deserted us. The porters were shouting for me to get started but I bawled back that there was no way I could cross the log - couldn’t The challenge of the Rhamani slabs was put behind us early next morning. Aided by even see it under the white pressure of furious spilling water. my stick and the helping hand of the porters we cleared the face with only one stretch of protective rope required to be threaded through the conveniently placed pitons. Then Pratap shouted words that gave hope - ‘Peet per jayega’.Nathuwould carry Vaikunth Siri was successfully negotiated (the so-called stairway to heaven) and as me across on his back. I had never been in any doubt about the porters’ strength and we eased our way along the catwalk discovered by Shipton and Ang Tharkay, one had initiative but to risk their lives to bail out a comparative stranger seemed a remarkable to marvel at how this impassive gorge could yield such subtle links that guaranteed display of loyalty. Each season sanctuary streams washed away mountaineers and access only to the most ardent of probers. In the cold morning, the panic that had porters and so fierce was their bore that the bodies were never found. I was all for accompanied my scary ascent was missing. Similarly, the return crossing of the Trisul waiting till morning but Pratap argued that the earlier we tried the lower would be Nala was done with business-like dispatch. My earlier petrified crawls were now the level of water to be contended with. With an enormous hoist Nathu took me on turning into more confident assessments of the challenge. It was thoughts of failure to his shoulders. I found myself clinging like a monkey as he kicked a way across that sapped one’s ability to take victory in its stride. Not skill but conscious poise was the full force of the water. He was wearing an old pair of discarded expedition boots the lesson of that descent. which he saved for special occasions. Most of the time he went barefoot, but wore

53 54 boots out of caution at camp sites to guard against the danger of broken glass (another awesome architecture of that noble cirque of Garhwal, nor the breathless atmosphere sad comment on modern mountaineering culture). It seemed to take an age for his of natural sanctity struck one as so real. Beyond my state of heightened inebriation one foot to risk another step. I had closed my eyes to the clamour of the hysterical the soul had momentarily glimpsed itself. swimming water that seemed to bay for blood. Though I dread getting my feet wet - let alone relish the prospect of drowning - I had never felt safer than on Nathu’s back. My diary was full and to sketch the thrilling lines of Nanda’s soaring peak, emerging There was a reassuring smell of goats about him and, if he slowly worked his way from the depths of the gorge, I had to resort to the medium of birch bark, a soft and across the rising log, his full strength revealed itself. Without dunking me in the white permanent record easily torn off from the trees along the way. We turned our steps swirling cascade, he managed to lower himself from the log into the full sweep of the splashily through the sopping meadows that led up to the Dharansi crossing. Soon the raging torrent. Then, with the river bed under his feet, he crashed a way through to sun climbed over the barrier of Nanda Devi’s huge configuration and played upon the deposit me on to the sandy edge. colours of the flowers underfoot. With the wind in one’s hair and the simple pleasure of walking homewards through the emerald expanse around Raj Kharak, I found It was a heroic moment and I thumped him on the back in appreciation. It was not myself possessed by a conviction every bit as commanding as the vow that had led just the achievement of fulfiling a voluntary responsibility that impressed but the me to savour the sanctuary. Just when I had achieved in full measure the culmination inherent fighting qualities of a simple village thakur on display. Lesser men would of a 20-year-old desire, I discovered another spontaneously settling upon my brow. have waited till morning or left me to find my own way across. But the code of the There was the distinct impression of the Goddess prompting me to write about the Lata men demanded the contracts entered into for darshan of the Devi were to be wonderment of her sanctuary, to get down in print, before it faded, the maddening honoured fully. It was this tremendous demonstration of loyalty that touched me most fragrance of her spangled monsoon largesse, and to seek to convey, no matter how and I presented my watch to Nathu as a token of affection for his big-heartedness. It feebly, the benison of her grace, even through this crude medium of a mountain had been given to me by my guru and so would pass from one compassionate hand lover’s notings. I can never forget that walk to Dharansi for it happens to be the only to another. time in my life when I was aware that I was fully conscious.

Nathu now would leave us to divert to a shepherd’s camp at Malathuni. He had The mood did not last beyond Lata Kharak but the certainty it generated did. It was to collect a goat for a village ceremony and would meet us later at Lata Kharak. I as if instead of falling in love one had become one with the beloved. It never pays climbed very slowly up the steep bank of conifers lining the nala, then leaned into to analyse the affairs of the heart since love refers to the mysteries of eternity rather the incline of the tiresome pull up to Malathuni in the pre-dawn stillness. The grass than being derived from the products of time. My feelings in the sanctuary echoed was sloshy underfoot and gave off the swish of monsoon saturation. The fullness of uncannily the words of the alchemist Thomas Vaughan, brother of the poet. In his sap seemed appropriate to our condition. Here we were staggering up a killing slope Golden Treatise of 1650 he wrote: ‘All things when they first proceed from God are more dead than alive, half-starved from the rigours of altitude and worn out by the white . . . of a celestial transcendent brightness . . . There is nothing on earth like it punishing nature of the trail, yet we felt absolutely fulfilled and tingled with aliveness . . . She a celestial transcendent brightness . . . There is nothing on earth like it . . . even unto the uttermost pore. A sort of mystical veil of well-being seemed to descend she yields to nothing but love . . . This is she and these are her favours. Catch her if over our vertical slog and, as we crested the ridge, an air of hushed holiness overtook you can.’ the sanctuary and all that was part of it. Nanda Devi reared up grandly in a royal sweep of purple power as fire flashed upon her summit in the first arrows of an eager Vaughan summed up my mesmerizing darshan of Nanda Devi when the peak so dawn. Against this kiss of life the rest of the sanctuary peaks rose in solemn array, a languorously had shaken herself free of the clouds, for all the world like a beautiful stunning spread of spires, lowers, crags and pinnacles awaiting in the grey stillness woman aware of an admirer, watching and arranging to show herself off to maximum the promised touch of regal warmth. No cathedral had ever stood out grander than the effect. Vaughan’s description of the felicity that follows the seeker of nature’s secrets

55 56 closely resembled my feelings on that walk, a hallowed experience of passing The feeling of plenitude that peaked after escape from the frank facing of difficult through a minster without walls: ‘Lookon the green youthful and flowery bosom of challenges was the result of what the modern alchemist George Gurdjieff would have the earth. The stars and planets overlook her and they shed down their golden locks called a supper-effort. One was distinctly aware of Gurdjieff’s definition of choices: like so many tokens of love. Do but look on the daily sports of nature, her clouds and ‘better to die seeking to wake than live in sleep’. The truth learned in overcoming the mist, the scene and pageantry of the air. What glorious colours and tinctures doth she physical odds was that Nanda Devi’s beauty and religious appeal were both real, the discover. A pure eternal green overspreads her and this attended with innumerable physical up-thrust of granite as well as the subtle presiding presence of the Goddess other beauties, roses red and white, golden lilies, azure violets, the bleeding hyacinths of . with their several celestial odours and spices . . . Know for certain thou hast discovered the sanctuary of nature. There is nothing between thee and her treasures but the door. The next challenge was to recognise the benevolence of the Devi in the animality of Thou hast resolved with thyself to be a co-operator with God. Have a care thou dost village worship and stomach the crude sacrificial behaviour of her more primitive not hinder His work. Take heed therefore lest thou set nature at variance with herself.’ devotees. The courage and loyalty of the Lata porters had introduced me to this lower element in the mystique of the Devi and one would have to face the reality of squalid The remarkable merging of ecology and theology in these alchemical formulae catches reactions in religious practice as unflinchingly as the noble. The wholeness of nature exactly what Dr Jung was later to describe as the fierce animality of nature. It was had been the chief lesson of the sanctuary. The grim facing of one’s goal left no time extraordinary to find in Vaughan the very thoughts that had coursed through my mind for the conventions of caste and hierarchy. One learned eagerly from everyone and in the negotiation of the sanctuary. The crossing of the Trisul log had been a vivid everything. Shipton’s description of a paradise where the wild blue sheep grazed exemplar of the alchemical art - the union of fire and water. One of the mantras of unafraid of man had been outlived by the pressure of mountaineering ambition. The the medieval inquirers into the art of transforming gross nature into gold was vitriol, Bhotia mastiffs who from habit trailed after their Lata masters had caused the bharal a codeword whose first three letters invited the seeker to ‘enter into the earth’. The to withdraw from their traditional grazing meadows, now no longer safe from man. brute impact of the sanctuary had caused a profound shaking up of my consciousness. Crop protection guns were brought in to take advantage of the innocence of nature’s Its naked threat had served to bring back the raw edge of fear and the sense of blessed original arrangement. By the mid-sixties Indian mountaineers were boasting in the relief that follows survival. Crossing the rivers one was acutely aware of both the Himalayan Journal of how many bharal they had shot for the pot. The smuggling in destructive potential of water and its limitless energy. Nature taught that any force of a nuclear spying device had apparently been the occasion for the building of our one-pointed in its drive was unstoppable. Clinging face-down on the birch and fir flimsy bridge across the Rishi. Thus, we were in no position to blame the plutonium poles above the maelstrom one was entirely at the mercy of the elements but at the backpackers for without their efforts we would not have been able to enter the inner same time wholly in charge of one’s fate. It was the resolve to work with nature that sanctuary. would extricate the body from its predicament. Any negative reaction might result in the wrong move and quicken dissolution: ‘For this fire and this water are like two lovers; they no sooner meet but presently they play,’ noted Vaughan. Here, he catches * the paradox of the Devi, both gentle and ferocious and states the incongruity of her mountaineering devotees who approach with love yet leave behind their litter. The Nanda Devi had come into the news in 1978 but for political, not religious, reasons. conflicts in nature and oneself were brought home by the dangerous quest to touch The story broke in America when a former CIA agent gave the San Francisco fringe the hem of Nanda Devi. The experience, had I undertaken it just for altitude gained magazine Outside a story entitled ‘The Nanda Devi Caper’. It supplied details of the or a place in the record books, might have missed out on the real trophy—the rare placing of a nuclear spying device in Nanda Devi sanctuary to monitor the deployment opportunity to learn more about the mystery of selfhood. of Chinese missiles along the Tibetan border. The cloak-and-dagger rumours that went around international climbing circles (even the staid Alpine Journal referred to

57 58 the subject) gave off too much smoke for official denials to be taken seriously and the for commerce, reduced from the status of divine messenger to that of dollar involvement of top-class climbers in CIA operations was widely assumed. earner. It confirms the planetary insensitivity of the extraordinary decision to risk In his Himalayan Handbook (a remarkable work of reference that lists the ascents pollution of the headwaters of the Ganga and marks modern blindness to the long- of the main peaks) the mountaineering historian Joydeep Sircar notes under the term environmental fall-out of hasty reactions. Perhaps it is an honest indicator of entry ‘Nanda Devi’ that a secret Indo - US expedition in the mid-sixties sought to the human situation that at the heart of one of the world’s last pristine Himalayan instal a nuclear fuelled device. Presumably, the main peak with its flat top described wildernesses, now declared a heritage site for the delectation of future generations, by Tilman was the logical goal, and the most likely route to it up the Coxcomb we deliberately introduced the deadliest substance known to our species. ridge from the south sanctuary. Since no official details have been published from the Indian side beyond confirming that the device was planted—then lost, tobe substituted by another device on a neighbouring peak which was retrieved—we only have newspaper reports and mountain hut gossip to go on. The well-known American climber Galen Rowell in his book on the 1975 US attempt on K2 feels obliged to end with vigorous denials that the team was in any way part of a CIA operation. The vehemence unintentionally indicates that American spying involvement was suspected to go beyond the Indian Himalayas.

The folly of placing a nuclear device above the last discovered source of the Ganga, as well as illustrating the panic-stricken nature of modern political decisions, services to distinguish the mountain lover from the modern breed of mountaineering mercenary. It appears that a whole generation of India’s climbers was seduced to work against nature and was forced by their official calling to conspire to pollute the sanctuary. There is poignancy in such folly, and the saving grace of duty unquestioningly performed when our insecurity leads to panic and snowballs into collective hysteria. Instead of viewing the presence of a nuclear device ticking away at the heart of the world’s most ravishing mountain wilderness as the outward sign that idiocy and not freedom is our human birthright, we can see this curious paradox of beauty and the beast as proof that ’s wife also swallows the world’s poison. In accepting both the crude villager and the complex mountaineer as her devotees the Goddess Nanda shows herself even-handed in her bliss-giving.

While re-writing this book in the English Midlands 26 years after the air crash in the Alps, the wreckage of Dr Homi Bhabha’s aircraft was stumbled upon by some British climbers. Amongst the litter of frozen cargo were the gruesome carcasses of Indian monkeys destined for the loathsome laboratories of vivisection. What irony that , the healing agent of the gods, who flew to Nanda’s neighbouring peak to pluck the life-saving herb, should in our more enlightened age be caged

59 60 THE SAGA OF HARJIT of an emblem of the place, and was unquestionably the most talked-about personality of the region. Dhriti K. Lahiri-Choudhury For a long time the army supply depot at Bengdubi was his favourite foraging From A Trunk Full of Tales, Permanent Black, 2006. ground, till elaborate elephant-proof barriers denied him his prerogative. A visibly shaken army officer once reported to me that the elephant was white, a ‘safed haathi’ in fact. ‘I tell you, sir, saw the damned thing myself in the morning. Milk white, I tell you, and it wasn’t Sunday morning either.’ Apparently, the previous night Harjit had broken into a warehouse storing flour and sugar. The officer saw him in the morning emerging from the place, covered with the stuff, and was never the same man again. When white elephants begin appearing, can pink ones be far behind?

Harjit was certainly not the shy and retiring type. He seemed to seek the forests more for shade than cover. His total disregard of human presence occasionally led him to escapades wholly regrettable.

Lalji was once camping at the forest rest hut at Bamonpokhri in Kurseong division. One day, at the incredible hour of two in the afternoon, the people in the hut suddenly saw an elephant’s trunk snaking in through the open window. Hastily all backed against the opposite wall, as the huge proboscis went unerringly for the bunch of bananas hanging in one corner of the room. Moments later the indignant company saw their next morning’s breakfast disappearing through the window.

A few months later Harjit took to visiting Lalji’s camp daily. There he was one day, at about four in the afternoon, determinedly approaching the hut. Everybody shouted, everything metallic—pots, pans, buckets and all - was beaten lustily, without any apparent effect. Finally, Lalji himself, armed with a borrowed single-barreled Harjit was a gigantic solitary makna (ed. male elephant without tusks) in the prime shotgun loaded with no. 6 shots, took his desperate last-ditch stand on the veranda, of life, about 10’3” at the withers, and reportedly blind in the left eye. The Bengdubi barely thirty feet from Harjit, in defence of his bananas. It was a battle of nerves. army camp had christened him ‘Harjit’ after one of the past camp commanders who They waited face to face in tense silence, each waiting for the other to make the first reportedly had the same physical handicap. move. Not a single flap of the huge ears all spread out, not a twitch of the tail. After a long wait Harjit changed his course, pretending he had intended to go the other way His range was the Kurseong division forests of North Bengal, west of the Siliguri - all the time. Darjeeling road. Here, he moved like a liege lord with the air and assurance of one owning the place. For years this one-eyed buccaneer dominated the life of the local Once in the dead of night there was a frantic telephone call from the house of the people, extracting grudging seasonal tributes. Over the years he had become a kind vice-chancellor of North Bengal University to the local police station. Harjit was on

61 62 ‘dharna’ in front of the portico. It took hours to dislodge him from there. Tough is hut fled leaving an invalid old man behind. The elephant stood within a few feet of the lot of vice-chancellors these days all over the country, but never was it tougher. the groaning man demolishing the paddy, but not touching him. On another occasion, a near blind old man was trying to protect his crop by shouting and waving a flaming This sort of thing, obviously, did not help to improve Harjit’s public image. torch about. After a while Harjit, for it was none other than Harjit who was his guest, finding this bobbery distasteful, resolutely approached the man, took the brand away Understandably, Harjit was the bete noire of the elephant squad of the forest from his hand, threw it away, and calmly went back to his supper. It was minutes department, recently constituted to combat elephant depredation. Their effectiveness before the old man realized what had happened. against Harjit raiding crop was nil. Spotlights focused on him were ignored; flaming torches thrown at him were either stamped out or thrown back. Shotgun pellets fired Harjit, then, was no hater of man. His was a case of not loving man less, but loving at his legs caused only a muscular twitch, the sort of twitch one sees on a cow trying paddy, maize, flour, banana, salt, and, of course, country liquor, a hell of a lot more. to dislodge a fly on its back. When pestered by people he made impressive demonstrations of threat, purely, it seems, as a matter of form; for, as a rule, these were never pressed home. One winter the squad’s credibility received its severest drubbing from Harjit. It was a freezing Dooars night, and the old sinner, as was his wont, was on crop. After battling I saw him last in June 1977 close to the Pankhabari road near Rakti Jhora bridge, a valiantly, albeit unsuccessfully, for hours to drive him off the paddy fields, the squad massive bulk standing nonchalantly among the tea bushes. It was about nine in the retired in frustration to a nearby village and lit a fire to warm themselves, attended by morning, by which time elephants with any respect for elephantine custom and usage a jeering crowd markedly deficient in the milk of human kindness and that heavenly retire to the depths of the forest, far away from the madding crowds of smelly bipeds. gift, sympathy. In a few minutes, Harjit appeared on the scene and appropriated the We got off our vehicle, approached him close, and got ready the cameras, taking a fire, whereupon all scattered like chaff before wind. For the next couple of hours or wary note of the ominous wet ‘musth’ patch on the temple. so, Harjit stood there soaking in the warmth, while the shivering squad members watched helplessly from a distance. The cup of their ignominy was full. After the first click Harjit turned to face the camera. Soon, however, he felt reassured, and went back to a contemplation of whatever it is that elephants contemplate Harjit’s ruling passion in life was food and, let us face it, for all his charm, Harjit was standing among tea bushes at such hours of the day. And so it was past an hour before a dedicated gormandizer. Once the urge for female company came upon him, and he long. Meanwhile busloads of people, cars, army vehicles carrying jawans, lorries and decided to abduct a female elephant belonging to a herd which was passing through. tractors overflowing with tea garden workers, all intent on enjoying the fun, had piled This action of Harjit, who appeared as brazen about love as about food, was resented up on the road. The roadside was fast assuming the character of a village fair. Harjit, by a bull temporarily attached to the herd, an enormous tusker. A night long battle despite his habitual insouciance, was getting restless. of the giants followed. In the morning, a terribly battle-scarred Harjit was forced to withdraw from the arena. For several weeks there was no news of him, and people We decided to break away from the crowd, and went to Bamonpokhri to fetch Lalji. began to wonder if Harjit had at last paid the wages of his accumulated sins. But one When we returned at about eleven, Harjit was still there. However, the sun was evening he was back, on crop, as usual. getting warmer, and Harjit decided to move on to thicker shade across the river Rakti.

Harjit might have been a glutton, but he bore no malice towards man. He was no killer. It was an unforgettable sight, the great bull stalking majestically across the bare dry Actually, there was no established charge of deliberate and unprovoked manslaughter bed of the river, his towering height, now clear of tea bushes, fully exposed. A quick against him. A story goes that in some village near Panighata on the border with ‘whoosn’ in midstream, a momentary pause on the fringe of the forest across the Nepal, he knocked down a hut to get at the stored paddy within. The inmates of the jhora, and the vision in reddish-brown was gone, leaving a strong feeling of ‘bird

63 64 thou never wert’ in us. THE ENCHANTED FOREST

As has been noted before, Harjit’s besetting sin was gluttony or ‘gula’, one of the Prerna Singh Bindra seven deadly sins, with an occasional dash of lechery or ‘luxuria’, another of the deadly ones. Further, he had allowed his ‘gula’ to cloud his reason, to corrupt his From The King and I, Rupa & Co, 2006. will. He, alas, thought nothing of knocking down huts to get at the stored foodstuff within. In 1976, he reportedly damaged over forty huts in one night. In July 1977, he again damaged a few. Wages of sin being what they are, the death sentence was passed on him. Harjit had gormandized once too often. When Harjit had to go, it was a melancholic day. With him went a touch of drama which coloured the everyday life of the area. The Kurseong division forests have never been the same again. It was a true tragedy of character, the tragedy of one who ate not wisely but too well.

Manas is home to three big cats: tiger, leopard and the elusive clouded leopard. Besides, Manas has over twenty species of globally threatened animals. For some fauna, like the hispid hare and the pygmy hog, this forest is the only refuge. A blonde simian, the golden langur, inhabits the canopy by the river Manas. And Manas offers an even rarer commodity—tranquility. Strange peace in a jungle ruled and ravaged by the gun for over two decades. But then, over the years, Manas has worked its magic even on the most hardened heart. Poachers with a macabre record are today diligently protecting the animals they once killed. They now work with the forest guards, their bitter enemy of yesteryears. That is the miracle of Manas. Little wonder then, that this forest holds a multitude of titles: world heritage site, biodiversity hotspot and a

65 66 tiger reserve. All that is said about Manas is an exaggeration, a hyperbole beyond It is an unusual morning, a pleasant contrast from the polluted, grey dawn back the realm of possibility. ‘It’s heaven on earth,’ promised a friend. An article dating home. I walk down the river - so clear that I catch my own reflection. The water back a decade said, ‘If God ever thought of settling on earth, Manas would be his murmurs, gurgles, then crashes as it gathers speed over the rocks, unaware that it is chosen home.’ I take it all with a pinch of salt; these are old grandma’s stories. I figure an international border. Overhead, a storm breaks; it is the whooshing and honking nostalgia has tinged memory with a rosy hue, a yearning for paradise lost. Almost. of great hornbills as they fly across the river, from India into the royal Kingdom of For years the park was closed to visitors. Even when it partially threw its gates open, Bhutan. Even from this vertical distance I can recognize the bulk of this bird with its visitors stayed away. For over two decades, extremists held Manas under siege, and outlandish curved beak. lawlessness reigned. Peace had given way to savagery, the silence broken not by the roar of the tiger or the trumpet of an elephant but by the crack of a gun. Animals were Crossing frontiers is a ritual, often repeated in the course of the day. I am told that slaughtered indiscriminately, so were the people. Infrastructure was destroyed, trees Bhutan, with its concentration of fruiting trees, is the feeding ground of the hornbills were cut and grasslands flattened. Now, the tide has turned and the colour of death no and India is where they come home to roost. In the nesting season, the male brings longer bloodies the pristine blue of the river Manas. back the ‘daily fruit’, while his lady brings up the kids, locked by him in a hollow of a tree. He feeds her through a slit and it is a partnership that has stood the strength I finally travel to this reserve in early 2005, intrigued by its history and its turning of time. Later in the day, I witness a courting couple. They sit close together. Then fortunes, skeptical of all the fairy tales I have accumulated about the wonders of this the male forages in the tree, testing several figs for their ripeness. He selects one fabled land. I drive past golden grasslands so tall and dense they hide even the bulky and runs the fruit to and fro in his beak, mashing it to a pulp. With unexpected grace silhouettes of elephant herds, their presence advertised only by the occasional squeal for his size, he offers it to his mate who throws it down her gullet. Then she feeds of their young. Then, the woodlands begin, lush green foliage preceding the tangle of him, and back and forth they go. Somewhere here lurks a lesson for fragile human trees, vines and creepers. Timid barking deer dash for cover, while the bolder sambar relationships. look on curiously, almost disdainfully at our noisy contraption. Unlike the crowded tiger reserves of Ranthambhore and Bandhavgarh, where vehicles are virtually a part It is inevitable that I follow the hornbills, in a wooden dingy used by forest guards of the scenery, the denizens of Manas are yet unaccustomed to gawking humans. patrolling the park. Armed guards accompany me too, and even though the park’s The road veers towards the ageing, yet utterly charming, Mothanguri forest rest bloody history stays in my mind, the gun appears intrusive in this spectacular house, atop a hillock by the mighty Manas. Vividly coloured capped langurs chatter landscape. The boat gives itself up to the rhythm of the river, lolling and swirling incessantly on the branches above. Brilliant fairy bluebirds contrast with the bright as it follows the waves. The waters of both countries unite, in utter disregard of red flower of silk cotton and the golden oriole regales us with his haunting melody. I international boundaries, like the birds above. Two huge, pointed horns, attached to a spot a hare hopping urgently into the bushes and my heart misses a beat; I am certain bulky wild buffalo, poke out of the river. it’s the hispid hare, a greener, bulkier version of the common variety. It was thought to be extinct, till rediscovered in Manas. As it turns out, it is a case of mistaken The boat wedges itself on the bank and I step on royal Bhutanese soil. I need no identity, but the imagination flies free in the wild, and if I err, who cares? passport, no one questions my credentials. A placid army of foresters greet me, and over a cup of lal chai I feed their curiosity. No, I am not a scientist, not a government I close my eyes. The gurgling, gushing sound of the emerald blue river takes over my official either. Here, I am but a child of nature, smitten by her beauty and curious to senses; the fresh, clear air soothes my jagged nerves. Nothing said about Manas is explore her wonders. They wave me inside, nature is no one’s property: it belongs to an embellishment, if anything even the greatest eulogy is an understatement. It is the everyone. refuge of the divine, a gift to us mortals. A few steps later, I meet my fellow avian travellers, dozens of great hornbills. Most

67 68 lovingly feeding their mates, while others forage for themselves. A few doze, nestled used against it. Many were killed, and morale was at its lowest. against the crook of the huge Bandardimatree, their heavy heads dipping forward, like old men unwittingly falling asleep in their armchairs. ‘Militants destroyed everything in this park. They finished off the rhinos. There were numerous tuskers, but all killed for their ivory. I patrol Manas, every day, but it’s I am dwarfed amidst tall trees rising out of flowering shrubs. Perched on them are the been a year since I have seen tuskers,’ rues forest guard Babulal Oraon. He has been animals that have brought me here, the golden langurs, found only in this tiny patch our shadow for the past two days, a rusty .315 rifle slung over his shoulder. It’s not of the earth. These blonde beauties, and the commoner and drabber langurs back an antique showpiece purely for effect. It’s a weapon he has used repeatedly and home, are all part of the same family; the former being the most glamorous members brutally against the enemies of the park. In his career he has had over 100 encounters of the clan. and killed 32 poachers. Once he was badly injured and beaten up by the hunters, but battered and injured, he fought on, delivering them to justice. For years, he faced a They are a huge group, well over two dozen, and I settle down on a fallen log, my death threat and still thanks the unknown face that risked his life to save him. The late eyes and lens fixed on the primates above. The langurs reciprocate my curiosity, a Prime Minister decorated him for his courage. He has not fought the particularly bold member fixes his beady eyes on me, his tiny black face framed with battle alone: there are others who maintain a lonely and risky vigil, underpaid, indeed tufts of fur smoothing down to a golden coat. A few assorted pairs diligently groom sometimes unpaid. All uncertain of their tomorrows. each other, combing and parting their blond hair. Essential to the beauty regime, I assume, when blessed with such luscious tresses. Their efforts have paid off. The rhinos, once locally extinct, are back. Hoof prints have been seen. Rhinos have a habit of defecating at the same spot and there are My attention shifts to a tiny simian nestled at her mother’s breast. I gather it is the reports of dung heaps, and big ones at that. Which is good news indicating that there baby of the family surrounded by a cache of adoring aunts. One hugs her close, then is more than one rhino using the common lavatory. another takes over, carefully cradling her in her arms. She is handed back and forth between clearly smitten adults, but oh-so-carefully. Why do we humans assume that Now, the battle is over, and the enemies of yore have joined hands. Ex-poachers, we are the only ones blessed with emotion? That we are ‘higher’ beings because we foresters, militants bonded by the love of Manas, work towards its protection. It is to can feel, while other animals live in a sterile world. I tear myself away, exceedingly uncover this story of poachers turning over a new leaf that I went to the eastern side unwillingly, as the pelts of the langurs shine golden in the morning light. I wonder of the park. This particular visit has taken months of meticulous planning with letters, if this paradise can be my permanent abode, the only option is the very charming faxes, mails going back and forth, peppered with doubts and reciprocal reassurances. summer palace of the king of Bhutan. I still await the invitation. For years, Kokilabari has been no man’s land, laid siege by Bodos, a rebel tribal group fighting for their own land. For years, the forest was ravaged, its animals slaughtered That Manas thrives today, we owe to its rag-tag army of foresters. Ritesh mercilessly. But now the Bodos are protecting the animals they once shot, allegedly Bhattacharjee, deputy director of the park, told me that in the last six years, eleven to partially fund their movement. Under the aegis of the Mauzigendri Eastern Manas of their men have been killed. He took me to Bansbari, a shattered skeleton of a Eco-Tourism Society, conserving Manas and promoting it as a tourist destination is a forest chowki. It had been razed to the ground, only the charred and stunted walls goal aimed towards earning an alternate income. remained. Guards were slaughtered and department elephants shot to death. That was February 1989. On the same morning, all the anti-poaching camps within the park I am the first honoured guest; the army soldiers at the check post are astounded at were attacked. The militants were well-armed and flush with money, the guards had my arrival. Tourist, they mutter disbelievingly but graciously wave me in. We bump rustic, non-functional guns. The forest staff was not trained for guerilla warfare, nor along roads designed to induce the worst backache and are frantically waved down was it equipped with automatic weapons to counter the mines and explosives being by Bodo women. Repeatedly, I am pulled down from the car, luminous eyes gaze at

69 70 me in wonder, tentative hands smooth down my hair, bolder ones pinch my cheeks. slaughtered eighty. He bagged two tigers; of deer he has lost count. The prize though Initially, I am alarmed at the assault, but it dawns on me that it is an intense curiosity was Kurusu or the greater one-horned rhinoceros. The hunters would go in a group, that drives them, the joy at being confronted by an outsider. To me their beauty, about a dozen of them, sometimes more, tracking the animal in the forest. To find wrapped in hand-woven dokhnas and filigree jewellery is exotic, and I guess they one took them many weary days, rampant massacre had put an end to the season reciprocate the feeling in me, a creature oddly adorned in ragged jeans and pulled of plenty. ‘For the horn,’ says Budhesar, ‘I usually got one lakh seventy thousand down by assorted cameras. As soon as I arrive at the modest tourist home, the women rupees.’ When it reaches the ultimate customer, the costs multiply manifold, thanks break into a dance. Each movement has a meaning, each graceful turn conveys a to the misguided notion that the matted hair that constitutes horn, serves as a magic message. They throw their arms wide open to welcome a guest and wave swords at elixir for impotency. Joysaran, another ex-poacher, takes me to the Khwisifurhri the enemy. waterhole. He points to the water, the real elixir of life, where animals came to quench their thirst. It made killing easy, all the poachers had to do was wait patiently I am particularly entranced by the fire dance in which women swallow the flames. for the unsuspecting creatures in scorching summers. He had been party to a rhino Throughout the dance, the fire is used as a metaphor for anger and how it isa hunt here - perhaps the last of them, a few years ago. The killing was indiscriminate, destructive force. In the end the anger, or fire, is quelled. The dance takes on a special voluminous. With lawlessness ruling, other unsavoury elements had joined the fray. intent, as a metaphor of the bitter battle against Manas and its denizens that has The forest became a killing field, flowing with rivers of blood. finally met its end. He has given up the gun, they all have after February 2003 when a new settlement Next morning, I enter the jungle, riding on an elephant. I feel like an ancient explorer, was signed for the creation of Bodoland. It goes beyond a surrender of violence: the stepping on territory hitherto unknown to man. My thighs ache as I sit astride the Bodos are actively protecting and managing the park. Twenty-seven Bodos patrol bulky giant, but I can vouch that there is no better vehicle for jungle roads. The the park round the clock and, last heard, had seized a cache of over seventy guns. great animal sways beneath us to a uniform rhythm. Seated 12 feet above ground I Budhesar did his bit, too. Stationed at his rickety watchtower in Tanganmara, he enjoy a vantage view of what lies beneath, and the capped langurs hollering above nabbed seven men armed with sophisticated weapons. The society has built roads for us seem closer as well. A wild boar hurtles itself at our striding pachyderm, snorting better patrolling and has started grassland management, burning tracts of old grass derisively. I am not surprised at this mismatched battle, the boar is a plucky creature, before the monsoon so that the fresh showers will allow the new shoots to grow. This known to even take on a tiger. Having made its presence felt, it departs, followed is a vital tool in grassland management as new grasses attract herbivores and with a soon after by a dwarfed version. This is not a piglet, but the pygmy hog, yet another healthy deer population, carnivores and other animals, too, will flourish and breed. creature endemic to this park. This jungle is not just a jungle; it is a miracle. The Miracle of Manas. How else A few hours later, I meet Budhesar Bora, a diminutive man packed in a wiry frame. do youexplain trigger-happy poachers and terrorists now fiercely protecting the His eyes sparkle and a smile steals over his serious countenance ever so often, sanctuary? Or bitter enemies joining forces to cherish the park? Budhesar terms ‘his’ dimpling his cheeks. We are perched on a fallen log in Tanganmara amidst elephant park extra-special; the day before Babulal, the forest guard, had called it his paradise. dung deposited minutes before. Two years ago, the tusker wouldn’t have passed by I agree. unconcerned and unharmed. One shot from the gaazimara, the Bodo name for the locally produced gun, and the mighty giant would have toppled. His tusks would I must leave Manas, but Manas will never leave me. have been chopped off and sold across the border in Bhutan, at Rs 3,300 per kilogram.

Killing the elephant comes easy to Budhesar, and by his own admission he has

71 72 JUNGLE LORE is rejoicing in anticipation of the pleasures that lie ahead, plentiful food, warmth, and the reproduction of life. The migrant birds are packing into small groups, these Jim Corbett groups will join others, and on the appointed day and at the command of the leaders of the pigeons, paroquets, thrushes, and other fruit-eaters, will fly up the valleys to From Jungle Lore in The Second Jim Corbett Omnibus, Oxford University Press, their selected nesting grounds while insect-eaters, flitting from tree to tree, in the 1991. (Jungle Lore was first published in1953.) same direction and on the same quest, will cover at most a few miles a day. While the migrants are preparing for departure and the regular inhabitants of the foothills are selecting each his own mate and looking for a building site, the combined population of the jungle are vying with each other in a vocal contest which starts at daylight and continues non-stop until dark. In this contest all take part even the predatory birds whose most vocal member, the serpent eagle, while showing as a mere speck against the blue sky, sends his piercing cry back to earth.

While instructing troops in jungle warfare I was in a forest one day in central India with a party of men among whom were several bird enthusiasts. High in the heavens above us a serpent eagle was circling and screaming. The party was a new draft from different parts of the United Kingdom, destined for Burma, none of whom had ever seen a serpent eagle. Waiting until we came to an open glade I pointed to a speck in the sky. Field glasses were produced and disappointment was expressed at the bird being too far away to identify or to see clearly. Telling my companions to stand quite still I took a three-inch-long reed from my pocket, and sounded a note on it. This reed, split at one end and blocked up at the other, reproduced with great exactitude the piercing call of a young deer in distress and was used in my training for signalling, for it is the only natural sound to be heard - both by day and by night - in jungles in which there are deer, and it was, therefore, a sound least likely to attract the attention of an enemy. On hearing the sound the eagle stopped screaming, for though a serpent From November to March the climate of the Himalayan foothills has no equal, and eagle, living principally on snakes, he does not despise other flesh. Closing his wings the best of these five months is February. In February the air is crisp and invigorating he dropped a few hundred feet and then again started soaring in circles. At each and the wealth of bird life that migrated down from the high mountains in November, call he came nearer, until finally he was circling just above tree-top level where the in search of food and of warmth, is still with us. The deciduous trees that have stood party with me had a close and clear view of him. Do those who were in that party of gaunt and naked throughout the autumn and winter are bursting into bloom, or fifty, and who survived the Burma campaign, remember that day in the Chindwara are putting on a mantle of tender leaf buds of varying shades of green or pink. In jungles and your disappointment at my not being able to make the eagle perch on a February spring is in the very air, in the sap of all trees, and in the blood of all wild branch close enough to photograph? Never mind. Accompany me now on this spring life. Whether it be on the mountains in the north, or the plains in the south, or in morning and we will see many things just as interesting as that serpent eagle. the shelter of the foothills, spring comes in a night. It is winter when you go to bed one night and when you awaken next morning it is spring, and round you all nature You have traveled far on the road of knowledge since that distant Chindwara day.

73 74 Self-preservation has taught you that the human eye has a field of vision of 180 intimidate enemies, and to convey water to the porcupine’s burrow. The quills readily degrees. Pin-pointing sound which at first you found so difficult is now second nature fill with water when submerged, and the porcupine uses this water to keep its burrow to you. And having learnt when a boy the difference between the smell of a rose and cool and free of dust. Porcupines are vegetarians and live on fruit, roots, and field of a violet you can now identify each tree and plant by the smell of its flower even crops. They also consume the horns shed by deer and the horns of deer killed by when that flower is at tree-top level, or hidden deep in the jungle. But much as you leopards, wild dogs, and tigers, possibly to obtain calcium or some other vitamin have learnt and greatly as the knowledge has added to your confidence, safety, and absent in their normal food. Though a comparatively small animal a porcupine has a pleasure, much still remains to learn and on this beautiful spring morning we will add big heart, and he will defend himself against great odds. a little to our store of knowledge. For a few hundred yards above the aqueduct the bed of the watercourse is stony and, The canal that forms the northern boundary of our estate, and in which the girls except where a game track crosses it, we shall find no more tracks until we come to used to bathe, is conveyed across the watercourse I have previously referred to by a long stretch of fine silt, washed down from the foothills, on which the tracks of all an aqueduct. This aqueduct is known as Bijli Dant, which means, ‘lightning water the animals that use the watercourse as a highway show up clearly. This stretch of channel’. The original aqueduct built by Sir Henry Ramsay was destroyed by lightning ground is flanked on either side by dense lantana in which deer, pig, peafowl, and many years ago, and because of a local superstition that lightning is attracted to a jungle fowl, shelter during daylight hours and into which only leopards, tigers, and given spot by an evil spirit, usually in the form of a snake, the old foundations were porcupines venture at night. In the lantana you can now hear jungle fowl scratching not used and a parallel aqueduct was built that has been functioning now for half a up the dead leaves, and a hundred yards away on the topmost branch of a leafless century. Wild animals that visit the village at night from the jungles to the north, and samal tree is perched their most deadly enemy, a crested eagle. The eagle is not only who do not like wading or jumping the ten-foot-wide canal, pass under the aqueduct. the enemy of jungle fowl, he is also the enemy of peafowl. These are his natural prey So on this spring morning we will start our walk from this point. and the fact that there are as many old birds as young ones in the jungle, is proof that they are able to look after themselves. For this reason I never interfered with crested On the sand in the passageway under the arch of the aqueduct are the tracks of hare, eagles until one day, on hearing the distressed cry of a young deer, I hurried to the kakar, pig, porcupine, hyena, and jackal. Of these the only tracks we will look closely spot and found a crested eagle holding down a month-old cheetal fawn and tearing at are the tracks of the porcupine, for, having been made after the night wind had died at its head, while the distracted mother ran round in circles striking at the bird with down, they are free of drift sand. Five toes and a pad and each footprint is distinct, her forefeet. Desperately as the brave mother had tried to rescue her young one—and for a porcupine has no need to stalk and does not superimpose one foot upon another. of this the scratches and blood on her muzzle bore ample proof—the great eagle had In front of each print is a small hole in the sand made by the porcupine’s strong nails, been too much for her, and though I was able to dispose of her enemy I was unable to on which he depends to a great extent for his food. The hind pads of porcupines are do anything for her young, beyond putting it out of its misery, for even if I had been elongated. This projection, or heel, is not as marked as it is in the case of bear. It is, able to heal its wounds I would not have been able to restore its sight. That incident however, sufficiently marked to distinguish the track of a porcupine from the tracks has cost the lives of many crested eagles in the jungles in which I have hunted, for of all other animals. If you want further confirmation, look closely at the track and though it is difficult to approach close enough to shoot them with a shotgun, they you will see a number of finely drawn lines running between, or parallel to, the track. offer a good target for an accurate rifle. The bird on the samal tree, however, has These finely drawn lines are made by the long drooping quills of the porcupine when nothing to fear from us for we have come out to see things, and not to deal with the they make contact with the ground. A porcupine cannot cast or project its quills, enemies of young deer. In my catapult days the greatest battle in which a crested which are barbed, and its method of defence or attack is to raise its quills on end eagle has ever been engaged took place on a stretch of sand, in the bed of the river, a and run backwards. At the end of a porcupine’s tail are a number of hollow quills, little below the Boar bridge. Possibly mistaking a fish cat for a hare the eagle stooped not unlike long wine glasses on slender stems. These quills are used as a rattle to on it and either because he was unable to withdraw his talons, or because he lost his

75 76 temper, became involved in a life-and-death struggle. Both contestants were equally some unexplained way. Both these assertions, and others that were advanced, were well armed for the battle; the cat with its teeth and claws, and the eagle with its beak incorrect. The sound is made by the animal’s mouth in exactly the same way as all and talons. It is greatly to be regretted that photography at that time was confined to other vocal sounds are made, and is used on various occasions: as, for instance, when studios and movie cameras were unknown, and that no record was made of that long- uncertain of a seen object, when disturbed by a gun dog, or when pursuing a mate. drawn-out and desperate battle. If a cat has nine lives an eagle has ten, and it was The alarm call of the kakar is a clear ringing bark, resembling that of a medium-sized lives that ultimately proved the deciding factor. With one precarious life still in hand dog. the eagle left his dead opponent on the sand, and trailing a broken wing went down to a pool in the river where, after quenching his thirst, he surrendered his tenth life. While the kakar has been crossing the watercourse a large flight of insect and fruit- eating birds has approached us from our right. In this flight are migrants as well as Several game tracks lead on to the open ground from the lantana and while we have local inhabitants, and if we stand where we are the birds will fly over our heads and been looking at the eagle a young kakar stag has walked out of the lantana on to you will have an opportunity of studying them as they perch on the trees and bushes the watercourse, fifty yards away, with the intention of crossing it. If we freeze and on both sides of the watercourse, and also while they are in flight. Birds, except remain frozen, he will take no notice of us. Of all the animals in the jungle the kakar when they are very close, are difficult to identify by their colours when sitting where gives the impression of being most on his toes. Even here on this open ground he is they have no background or when seen against the sky, but every species of bird can walking on tiptoe with his hind legs tucked well under him and at the first indication be identified while in flight by its shape and by its wing beats. In the flight that is of danger, be it conveyed by sight, sound, or smell, he will dash away at top speed. approaching us, every member of which is either chirping, twittering, or whistling, The kakar is sometimes described as being a mean and a cowardly little animal, and are two varieties of minivets, the short-billed scarlet, and the small orange-breasted. unreliable as a jungle informant. With this description I do not agree. No animal can Minivets perch on the topmost leaves and twigs of trees and bushes, and from these be called mean for that is exclusively a human trait, and no animal that lives in the commanding positions keep darting into the air to catch winged insects disturbed by densest jungles with tigers, as the kakar does, can be accused of being a coward. As their own kind or by other members of the flight. With the minivets are: for being an unreliable informant I know of no better friend that a man who shoots on foot can have in a jungle than a kakar. He is small and defenceless and his enemies Six varities of tits.The grey, yellow-checked, blue-winged, red-billed, white-eyed, are many, and if in a beat he barks at a python or at a pine marten, when he is expected and the common green. to bark only at a tiger, he is more to be pitied than accused of being unreliable. For Four varieties of flycatchers.The white-browed fantail, yellow fantail, slaty-headed, to him and his kind, these two ruthless enemies are a very real menace and he is and verditer. only carrying out his function - as a watcher - when he warns the jungle folk of their Sixvarieties of woodpeckers.The golden-backed, black-naped green, rufous-bellied, presence. pied, yellow-naped, and the scaly-bellied green. Four varieties of bulbuls.The golden-fronted green, white-winged green, white- The kakar has two long canine teeth or tusks on its upper jaw. These tusks are very cheeked crested, and the red-whiskered. sharp and are the kakar’s only means of defence, for the points of his short horns are Three varieties of sunbirds.The Himalayan red, purple, and the small green. curved inwards and are of little use as weapons of defence. Some years ago there was a long and inconclusive correspondence in the Indian press about a peculiar sound In addition to these birds, which number between 2 - 300, there are a pair of black- that kakar make on occasions. This sound can best be described as a clicking sound, headed golden orioles who are chasing each other from tree to tree, and a lesser resembling that made by the bones used by Christy Minstrels. It was asserted by racket-tailed drongo who, though not as aggressive as his big brother, has nevertheless some that, as the sound was only heard when kakar were running, it was caused by acquired several juicy morsels from the flight he is guarding, the last being a fat larva double joints, and by others that it was caused by the tusks being clashed together in industriously dug out of a dry branch by the pygmy pied woodpecker. The flight of

77 78 birds has now flown over our heads and disappeared into the jungle on our left, and dread enemy and barks, and a second later is followed by the old female whose alarm the only sound to be heard is the scratching of the jungle-fowl in the lantana, and the call, ‘tch’, resembles a sneeze. The young ones are now silent and confine themselves only bird to be seen is the crested eagle, patient and hopeful, on the topmost branch to bobbing their heads up and down, and making faces. The troupe appear to know of the samal tree. instinctively that they have nothing to fear from the leopard on this spring morning, for if he had been hungry and out to kill he would not have walked out on to the Beyond the lantana on the right is an open stretch of park-like ground, on which grow open watercourse as he has done, but would have crossed either higher up or lower a number of big plum trees. From this direction now comes the alarm bark of a red down, and approached them unseen. Being as agile, and little heavier, the leopard monkey, followed a few seconds later by the excited chattering and barking of fifty experiences no difficulty in catching langurs. But it is different with red monkeys, or more monkeys of varying ages and sizes. A leopard is on the move and as he is for they retire to the extremities of thin branches, where the leopard is afraid to trust on more or less open ground it is unlikely that he is trying to secure a kill, in which his weight. case he is possibly making for one or other of the deep ravines in the foothills where leopards are often to be found during the hot hours of the day. Winding through the With head held high, and the morning sun shining on his beautifully marked coat, plum trees is a path used both by human beings and by animals. This path crosses the leopard is now crossing the fifty yards of open ground, paying not the slightest our watercourse two hundred yards farther on and as there is a good chance, I would attention to the langurs clustered on the trees he is approaching. Once he stops, and almost say a certainty, of the leopard coming along the path, let us hurry forward after looking up and down the watercourse without noticing us as we sit motionless for 150 yards and sit down with our backs against the high bank on the left. The with our backs to the bank, he continues unhurriedly on his way. Climbing the steep watercourse here is 50 yards wide and on the trees on the left-hand side is a large bank he disappears from our view, but as long as he is in sight of the leader and of the troupe of langurs. The warning given by the red monkeys has been heeded, and all old female they will continue to send their warning call into the jungle. the mothers in the troupe have got hold of their young ones, and all eyes are turned in the direction from which the warning came. Let us now examine the tracks of the leopard. The path where it crosses the watercourse runs over red clay, trodden hard by bare human feet. Over this clay is a There is no need for you to keep your eyes on the path, for the young langur who coating of fine white dust, so the conditions for our purpose are ideal. We will assume is sitting out on the extreme end of a branch on the tree nearest the path will give that we did not see the leopard, and that we have come on the tracks by accident. The us warning of the leopard’s approach. Langurs act differently from red monkeys first thing we note is that the pug marks have every appearance of having been newly on seeing a leopard. This may be due to better organisation, or to their being less made, and therefore that they are fresh. We get this impression from the fact that the courageous than their red cousins. All the red monkeys in a troupe will chatter and pile or nap of the dust where it took the weight of the leopard is laid flat and smooth, bark at the same time on seeing a leopard and where the jungle is suitable they will and that the walls of the dust surrounding the pads and toes are clear cut and more follow it over the tree-tops for considerable distances. The langurs act differently. or less perpendicular. Presently under the action of the wind and the rays of the hot When the young look-out sees the leopard he will give the alarm call of, ‘khok, sun the nap will stand up again and the walls will begin to crumble. Ants and other khok, khok’, and when the leader of the troupe, taking direction from the young insects will cross the track; dust will drift into it; bits of grass and dead leaves will be one, sees the leopard and takes up the call the young one will stop. Thereafter only blown on to, or will fall on it; and in time the pug marks will be obliterated. There is the leader and the oldest female will give the alarm call - the female call resembles no hard-and-fast rule by which you can judge the age of a track, whether it be the pug a sneeze - and no attempt will be made to follow the leopard. And now the young marks of a leopard or tiger, or the track of a snake or a deer. But by close observation look-out stands up on all fours, pokes his head forward and jerks it from side to side. and by taking into consideration the position of the track, whether in an exposed or Yes, he is convinced he can see the leopard, so he barks, and one or two hysterical in a sheltered spot, the time of day and of night when certain insects are on the move, companions behind him follow suit. The leader of the troupe now catches sight of the the time at which winds normally blow, and the time at which dew begins to fall or

79 80 to drip from the trees, you can make a more or less accurate guess when the track look all round. The following is my reason for the warning. I heard a leopard calling was made. In the present case we have satisfied ourselves from the appearance of the repeatedly one night, and from the intonation of the call I concluded it was in distress. track that it is fresh, but this is not the only interesting point about it. We have yet to Before daylight next morning I set off to try to find out, if I could, what was wrong determine whether the leopard was a male or a female, whether it was old or young, with the animal. During the night it had changed its position and I now located it on and whether it was a big or a small animal. The round shape of the pug marks show a hill some distance away, where it was still calling. Selecting a spot where a game- it was a male. The absence of any cracks or creases in the pads, the round toes, and track led on to an open glade, and where I would see the leopard before it saw me, I compact appearance of the entire pug marks show that the leopard was young. With lay down behind a boundary pillar and answered the call. Thereafter, for a matter of regard to size, here again only observation and experience will enable you to judge half an hour or more, call answered call. The leopard was coming but it was slow the size of animals by their pug marks, and when you have gained this experience about it and was coming very cautiously. Eventually when it was a hundred yards you can assess the length of either a leopard or a tiger to a possible error of an inch away I stopped calling. I was lying flat down with my elbows resting on the ground or two. The Koals of Mirzapur, when asked the size of a tiger, measure the pug mark and my chin resting in my hands, momentarily expecting the leopard to appear, when with a blade of grass and then, laying the blade down measure it with the width of I heard the swish of leaves behind me and on turning my head, looked straight into their fingers. How accurate their method is I am not in a position to say. For myself I the muzzle of a rifle. Late the previous evening Cassels, deputy commissioner of prefer to guess the size or length of an animal from the general appearance of its pug Naini Tal, and Colonel Ward had arrived at the forest bungalow and unknown to me mark, for whatever method is adopted, it can at best be only a guess. had shot a leopard cub. During the night the mother had been heard calling and at crack of dawn Ward set out on an elephant to try to shoot the mother. Dew was on A little beyond where the path crosses the watercourse there is a narrow strip of firm the ground, and the mahout was well trained, and he brought his elephant up without sand, flanked on one side by rocks and on the other by a high bank. A herd of cheetal a sound until only a fringe of trees lay between us. Ward could see me, but he was has gone along this strip of sand. It is always interesting when in a jungle to count not as young as he had been and, further, the early morning light was not too good, the number of animals in a herd, whether cheetal or sambar, and to take note of the and he was unable to get the sights of his rifle to bear accurately on my shoulders, so individual members. This enables you to recognize the herd when you next see it he signaled the elephant to go forward. Mercifully for all of us, when the elephant and to assess casualties, and, further, it gives you a friendly feeling towards the herd cleared the fringe of trees and was only ten yards from me, and when the mahout - as being one that you know. If the herd is on open ground it is not difficult to count also an old man - was pointing and Ward was leaning down and aligning his sights for the stags, note the length and shape of their horns, and count the hinds and young a second time the elephant released a branch it was holding down, and, hearing the ones. When, however, only one of the herd is visible and the others are in cover, the sound, I turned my head and looked up into the muzzle of a heavy rifle. following method of inducing the hidden animals to come out into the open will, nine times out of ten, be found effective. After stalking to within a reasonable distance of The herd of cheetal whose tracks we are looking at, and in which we are now the deer you can see, lie down behind a tree or a bush and give the call of a leopard. All interested, went along the strip of sand the previous evening. This you can tell from animals can pin-point sound, and when the deer is looking in your direction project the night insects that have crossed the tracks, and from the dew drops that have fallen your shoulder a little beyond the bole of the tree, and move it slowly up and down on them from an overhanging tree. The herd may be a mile or five miles away, out once or twice, or shake a few leaves of the bush. On seeing the movement the deer on an open glade or hidden in cover; even so, we will count the number of animals will start calling; and its companions will leave the cover and range themselves on in the herd and this I will show you how to do. We will assume that when a cheetal is either side of her. I have on occasion got as many as fifty cheetal to show themselves standing, the distance between its hind- and fore-hooves is thirty inches. Take a stick in this way to enable me to photograph them at leisure. I would like, however, to add and draw a line across the sand at right angles to the tracks. Measure thirty inches one word of warning. Never try calling like a leopard, or any other animal, unless from the line you have drawn, this will be easy for your shoes are ten inches long, and you are absolutely certain you have the area to yourself, and even then keep a careful draw a second line across the sand parallel to the first. Now take your stick and count

81 82 the number of hoof prints between the two lines, marking each print with the point little plant that will not only cauterize but also heal your wound better than anything of your stick as you do so. The result of your count is, let us say, thirty. Divide this else that I know. The plant, which is found in all jungles, grows to a height of twelve number by two and you can be reasonably sure that there were fifteen cheetal in the inches, and has a daisylike flower on a long slender stem. The leaves are fleshy and herd that passed that way the previous evening. This method of counting animals of serrated, like the leaf of a chrysanthemum. To use the plant break off a few leaves, any species, whether wild or domestic, will give accurate results for small numbers, rinse them in water to wash off the dust - if water is available - and then squeeze the say up to ten, and approximate results for greater numbers, provided the distance leaves between finger and thumb, and pour the juice freely into the wound. No further between the hind- and fore-feet is known. In the case of small animals such as wild treatment is needed and, if the wound is not a deep one, it will heal in a day or two. dogs, pigs, and sheep, the distance will be less than thirty inches, and in the case of The plant is well named, Brahm Buti, ‘God’s flower’. large animals such as sambar and domestic cattle it will be more than thirty inches. Many of you were my good comrades in the Indian and Burma jungles during the For the information of those who were not with me during the years of training war years and if I worked you hard, because time was short, you will long since have for jungle warfare, I should like to assert that it is possible to glean a lot of useful forgiven me. And I hope you have not forgotten all that we learnt together, as for information from the footprints of human beings in a jungle, whether seen on a road, instance: the fruit and flowers it was safe to eat; where to look for edible roots and path, or game-track, or in fact anywhere where the footprints of men in motion are to tubers; the best substitutes for tea and coffee; what plants, barks and leaves to use for be seen. Let us assume, for the sake of interest, that we are in enemy country and that fever, sores and sore throats; what barks and creepers to use for stretchers, and for we have come on a game-track on which there are footprints. From the appearance making ropes to sling heavy equipment and guns across streams and ravines; how to of the footprints, their size, shape, absence or presence of nails or sprags, iron shod avoid getting trench feet and prickly heat; how to create fire; how to obtain dry fuel or plain heels, leather soles or rubber, and so on, we conclude that the prints have not in a wet forest; how to kill game without resort to fire-arms; how to cook or make a been made by members of our own force, but by the enemy. This point being settled dish of tea without metal utensils; how to procure a substitute for salt; how to treat we have to determine when the party passed that way, and the number of men in the snake bites, wounds and stomach disorders. And, finally, how to keep fit and conduct party. You know how to assess the time. To find out the number of men in the party we ourselves in the jungles to live at peace with all wild life. These and many other will draw a line across the track, and with the toe of one foot on this line take a step things you and I, from the mountains and plains of India, from the villages and cites of thirty inches, and draw a second line across the track. The number of heel marks of the United Kingdom, from the United States of America, from Canada, Australia, between these two lines will give the number of men in the party. There are other New Zealand, and from other lands, learned together. Not with the object of spending interesting things you can learn from the footprints, and one of the most important of the rest of our days in the jungles, but to give us confidence in ourselves and in each these is the speed at which the party was travelling. When a human being is moving other, to remove our fears of the unknown, and to show our enemies that you were at a normal pace his weight is distributed evenly over his footprint and his stride is better men than they. But much as we learnt in those days of good comradeship we from 30–32 inches, according to his height. As the speed is increased less weight falls only touched the fringe of knowledge, for the book of nature has no end as it has no on the heel and more on the toes, the imprint of the heel gets less and the imprint of beginning. the toes greater, and the length of the stride gets longer. This process of less heel and more toes continues to get more apparent until when running at full speed little more We have still much of our spring morning before us, and we have now arrived at the than the ball of the foot and the toes come in contact with the ground. If the party was foothills where the vegetation differs from that on the flat ground we have recently a small one, ten or a dozen in all, it will be possible to see if any were limping, and traversed. Here there are a number of ficus and plum trees that have attracted a variety blood on the track will indicate that one or more were wounded. of fruit-eating birds, the most interesting of which are the giant hornbills. Hornbills nest in hollow trees and have the unusual habit of sealing the females into the nests. If you ever get a flesh wound in the jungles I will show you a small and insignificant This habit throws a heavy burden on the male, for the female moults and grows

83 84 enormously fat during the incubation period and when the eggs - usually two - are over salt-licks and over water is prohibited, but poachers are no respecters of game hatched she is unable to fly, and the male has the strenuous task of providing food laws and, as dismantling the machans had no effect, I eventually cut the tree down. I for the whole family. By this ungainly appearance, his enormous beak fitted with a have heard it stated that carnivore do not kill at salt-licks and water holes. However, sound-box, and his heavy and laboured flight, the hornbill gives the impression of considerate carnivore may be in other parts of the world, in India they certainly have having missed the bus of evolution. And his habit of sealing up the nest and leaving no compunction about killing at salt-licks. In fact, it is at these places that they do only a small hole through which the female projects the tip of her beak to take the most of their killing, as you can see from the bones and the horns partly eaten by food the male brings her, possibly dates back to prehistoric days when the bird had porcupines that you will find in the vicinity of this salt-lick, and in the vicinity of all more powerful enemies than it has today. All birds that nest in hollow trees or that salt-licks that are surrounded by forests in which deer and monkeys live. make holes in trees in which to nest, have common enemies. Some of these birds - tits, robins, hoopoes—are quite defenceless and the question, therefore, arises why Let us now climb the hill above the salt-lick to a point from where we can get a bird’s- the hornbill, who by reason of its powerful beak is best able to defend itself, should eye view of the foothills and the forests that lie at their feet. Before us stretches the be the only one of these many tree-nesting birds to consider it necessary to seal up forest through which we have just come to our starting point, the canal. This forest its nest. Another unusual habit, which the hornbill does not share with any other bird is as nature made it, for it has little timbre of commercial value and has, therefore, that I know of, is its habit of adorning its feathers with pigment. This pigment, which escaped the devastating hand of man. The light green patches in the foreground are is yellow and can be readily wiped off with a handkerchief, is carried in a small shisham saplings which have grown from seeds washed down from the foothills by sack above the tail and is laid with the beak on to two broad white bands that extend monsoon floods. Later, when these saplings grow to maturity, they will provide the across the width of the wings. Why the hornbill finds it necessary to paint these white best timbre for cartwheels, and for furniture. The dark-green patches with clusters of bands yellow with a pigment that washes off every time it rains, I can only attribute red berries are runi trees, which provide the powder known to commerce as kamala. to camouflage against an enemy, or enemies, that it suffered from in bygone days. For When the poor people who migrate in winter from the high hills to the foothills in the only enemy it occasionally suffers from now is a leopard, and against a leopard search of food and warmth - as do the birds - can spare a day from their regular operating at night camouflage is of little avail. labours, old and young resort to the jungles to collect kamala. Kamala is a red powder which adheres to the runi berry, and the method of collection is to cut down the In addition to the hornbills there are a number of other fruit-eating birds on the ficus branches, strip the berries into big shallow baskets, and then with the hand rub the and plum trees. Among these are two varieties of green pigeon, the Bengal, and berries against the sides of the basket. The powder when freed from the berries drifts the pintail. Two varieties of barbet, the crimson-breasted and the common green. through the cracks in the basket and is caught on a cheetal skin, or square of cloth. Four varieties of bulbul, the Himalayan black, common Bengal, red-whiskered and A family of five - a man and his wife and three children—working from sunrise to white-cheeked. Three varieties of paroquets, the rose-ringed, the Alexandrine and the sunset can, when the crop is plentiful, collect four pounds of powder worth from blossom-headed. Scratching among the dead leaves and eating the ripe fruit dropped one to two rupees, according to the market price. The powder is used in India and by the other birds, are fifty or more white-capped laughing thrushes. These thrushes the Middle East for dyeing wool, and until dishonest middlemen started adulterating were the last to migrate from the high nesting-grounds and will be the first to return kamala with brick dust, it was extensively used in the United States for colouring to them. butter. The powder is also used for medicinal purposes, and mustard oil in which runi berries have been boiled is used for rheumatism. Near the ficus trees is a fire-track, and crossing it is a well-worn game-track which runs straight up the hill to a salt-lick near which there is a saucer of water fed by a Interspersed with the shisham saplings and runi trees, are feathery-leaved khair trees. tiny spring. Between the salt-lick and the water is an old stump. Here a stunted kusum These khair trees, in addition to providing the foothill villages with plowshares, tree stood, in the branches of which poachers repeatedly built machans. Shooting provide a cottage industry for tens of thousands of poor people in the United Provinces.

85 86 The industry, which is a winter one and is carried on day and night for a period of four Beyond the canal, our starting point, is our village. The vivid green and gold patches months, produces a commodity known locally as kach, and to commerce as catechu. show where the young wheat is sprouting, and where the mustard crop is in full It also produces—as a by-product—the dye known as khaki, used for dyeing cloth flower. The white line at the foot of the village is the boundary wall, which took and fishing nets. A friend of mine, a man by the name of Mirza, was, I believe, the ten years to build, and beyond the wall the forest stretches in an unbroken line until first to discover khaki dye, and the discovery was accidental. Mirza was one day it merges into the horizon. To the east and to the west as far as the eye can see is leaning over an iron pan in which khair chips were being boiled, to make kach, when limitless forest, and behind us the hills rise ridge upon ridge to the eternal snows. a white handkerchief he was carrying fell into the pan. Fishing the handkerchief out with a stick Mirza sent it to the wash. When the handkerchief was brought back Mirza Here, as we sit in this beautiful and peaceful spot in the shadow of the mighty found it had not lost any of its colour, so, reprimanding the washerman, he told him to Himalayas, with the forest round us putting on a new mantle of spring, with every take it away and clean it. Returning with the handkerchief the washerman said he had current of wind bringing with it the sweet smell of flowers, and with the air throbbing tried every method known to his trade of removing stains, but he could not take the with the joyful songs of a great multitude of birds, we can forget for a spell the colour out of the small square of linen. It was thus that Mirza found he had discovered strains and stresses of our world, and savour the world of the jungle folk. For here the a fast dye, which is now produced in the flourishing factory he erected at Izattnagar. law of the jungle prevails. The law that is older and infinitely better than man-made laws. The law that permits each individual to live his own life, and that anticipates Mingled with the many shades of green—for each tree has its own individual colour - no troubles or sorrows for the morrow. Dangers there are for all, but those dangers are vivid splashes of orange, gold, lilac, pink and red. The trees with orange-coloured only add zest to life, and, while keeping every individual alert and on its toes, take flowers are dhank Butea( giondosa) which produces a ruby-coloured gum used for nothing from the joy of living. And that there is joy all round you, who can now pin- dyeing silk of the finest quality. The trees with the three-foot-long showers of golden point sound, recognize every bird and animal from its call, and assign a reason for the bloom are amaltas (Cassia fistula). The two-foot-long cylindrical seedpods of this tree call, have ample proof. Away to our left a peacock is screaming his mating call and contain a sweet jelly-like substance which is used throughout Kumaon as a laxative. from that call you know he is dancing, with tail-feathers spread, to impress a bevy The trees with the big lilac-coloured flowers are kachanar (Bauhinia). The pink are of admiring hens. Nearer at hand a jungle-cock is crowing defiance to all and sundry kusum trees and the mass of pink shading from delicate shell to deep rose, are not and is being answered by others of his kind who are equally defiant. But of fights flowers but tender young leaves. The red are samal (silk cotton) trees the flowers of there are few, for to fight in the jungle exposes the contestants to danger. Away to our which are loved by all birds that drink nectar, and by paroquets and monkeys that eat right a sambar stag is warning the jungle folk that the leopard we saw an hour ago is the fleshy flowers, and by deer and pigs that eat them when they fall to the ground. lying out on an exposed spot basking in the sun. The stag will yell until the leopard Later in the year the samal flowers will give way to large woody seedpods. When the retires for the day into heavy cover, where he will be screened from the prying eyes hot winds blow in April these pods will explode like anti-aircraft shells and a white of informants. In a thicket below us twenty or more white-eyed tits, white-winged cloud of silk cotton (kapok used in life-belts), each section carrying a seed, will drift bulbuls, and grey-headed flycatchers, have found a spotted owlet dozing in a leafy away in the wind to regenerate nature’s garden. All seeds that are not carried from bower and are calling to companions to come and see what they have found. They one place to another by birds or animals are provided with buoyant material or with know it is safe to approach and scream into the wise one’s very ears, for only when he parchment sails or propellers, to enable the winds of heaven to carry them from place has young will he occasionally kill in daylight. And the owlet on his part knows that to place. There are, of course, exceptions, one of which is the gotail which bears a no matter how much he is feared and hated by his tormentors, he has nothing to fear fruit like a small green apple and which no bird or animal eats. This tree grows on the from them, and that when they tire of their sport they will leave him to his sleep. In banks of rivers and the water does for its seeds what birds and animals, and the wind, the air all round there is sound, and each sound has a meaning. The liquid notes, the do for other seeds. Another is the coconut, which is provided with a husk that enables most beautiful of all the songs to be heard in our jungles, is a shama wooing a bashful it to float and be carried by the ocean waves from shore to shore. mate. The tap-tap tapping is a golden-backed woodpecker making a hole in a dead

87 88 tree for his new home. The harsh braying is a cheetal stag challenging a rival to battle. THE HIMALAYA IN INDIAN ORNITHOLOGY High in the heavens a serpent eagle is screaming, and higher still a flight of vultures are patiently quartering the sky. Yesterday, first a Himalayan blue magpie, and then a Salim Ali pair of crows, showed the vultures where a tiger had hidden his kill in a thicket near where the peacock is now dancing, and today as they circle and soar they are hoping From A Bird’s Eye View: The Collected Essays and Shorter Writings of Salim Ali, for the same good fortune. Permanent Black, 2006.(This essay was originally published in1981.)

As you sit here, alone or in company with a friend, you can realize to the full what your knowledge of jungle lore means to you, and how greatly that knowledge has added to your confidence and to your pleasure. No longer does the jungle hold any terrors for you, for you know there is nothing for you to be afraid of. If the necessity arose you could live on the jungles, and you could lie down where-ever you were and sleep without any feeling of unease. You have learnt to maintain direction, to be conscious at all times of wind direction, and you will never again lose yourself in the jungle no matter whether you move by night or by day. Hard though it was at first to train your eyes, you know now that your field of vision is 180 degrees and that every movement in that field will be seen by you. You can enter into the lives of all the jungle folk, for you have learnt their language; and being able to locate sound, you can follow their every movement. You can now move silently, and shoot accurately, and if the necessity ever arose again for you to face an enemy in the jungles you would not face him with an inferiority complex, but with the full knowledge that no matter what his reputation you are a better-trained man than he is, and have nothing to learn or to fear from him.

It is now time to wend our way home, for we have a long way to go, and Maggie will be waiting breakfast for us. We will return the way we came and as we pass the strip of sand on which we counted the cheetal tracks, the path by which the The Himalayan mountain range is a gigantic physical barrier which cuts off the leopard crossed the watercourse, the fine silt washed down from the foothills, and the Indian plains from the high plateaux of Tibet and central Asia. On the one hand it passageway under the aqueduct, we will drag a branch behind us. This we will do to bars the northward passage of the moisture laden south-west monsoon currents, and obliterate our tracks, and all the tracks we saw this morning so that when we visit the on the other it serves to insulate the plains of northern India from the severity of the jungle again tomorrow, the next day, or maybe the day after, we will know that all the continental climate of Asia - the scorching desiccating winds of summer and the icy tracks we see date from the time we last passed that way. gales of winter. These factors are responsible for the marked differences in the fauna and flora of the northern and southern aspects of the mountains; an abrupt change in the environment strikes the observer immediately upon his crossing the main Himalayan axis. The ornithologist soon misses such familiar companions of his trek up to this point as the white-capped redstart (Chaimarrornis leucocephalus), whistling

89 90 (Myiophonus caeruleus), snow pigeon (Columba leuconote) and alpine chough to 300 feet flowing amongst tropical scenery, through a valley whose flanks rise from (Pyrrhocorax graculus), and suddenly finds in their place species not seen before. 5000 to 12000 feet above its bed.’ The range constitutes the boundary between two of the six zoogeographical regions of the earth, namely the Palaearctic (Europe, north Africa, stretching across north and Geologically speaking, the Himalaya are of recent origin and it is unlikely that the central Asia) and the oriental region south of this, which is subdivided into the Indian, avian endemics confined to this mountain barrier date further back than the Pleiocene, Indochinese and Indomalayan sub-regions. and possibly came considerably later. As suggested for the High Himalayan insects by Mani (1956), evidently the avifauna also represents, at least in part, a geographical Mean temperature drops at an average rate of 10C for every 270 metres of ascent, relict fauna of the Pleistocene of central Asia. Mani remarks, furthermore, on the the drop being steeper and more rapid above 1500 metres. Thus, the lofty Himalaya deep penetration of the range by insect forms of the tropics and subtropics up to encompass the entire spectrum of temperature, from tropical heat near the base - in relatively high altitudes - a phenomenon associated with local microclimates and the tarai, bhabar and duars,and in some inner valley - to arctic cold at the heights, humidity consequent on the penetration of the tropical evergreen forest types pointed through the gradation of subtropical, temperate and alpine, the arid areas above being out by Hooker. From entomological and botanical evidence it seems valid that the under perpetual snow. This wide diversity in physiographic condition gives rise to climatic conditions in the Himalaya during the Pleistocene glacial period were not altitudinal belts or ‘life zones’, corresponding closely to the climatic zones of latitude too severe, and permitted the existence and distribution of animals and broad-leaved in continental Asia, except that on the high mountains these zones are telescoped trees such as the horse-chestnut (Aesculus indica). The Himalaya thus acted as a vertically instead of being horizontal. Though diffusing into one another at the seams, refugiumand many animal species found there today do, in fact, represent Palaearctic these life zones are often sufficiently clear-cut in their flora and fauna for the altitude relicts. to be roughly predictable without the aid of an aneroid. In fact, one of the joys of trekking in the Himalaya for the observant naturalist is the changing kaleidoscope of The Oriental element in the avifauna is richly represented in the eastern Himalaya the biota as he ascends from one altitudinal belt to another. In the alpine zone of the and gradually diminishes westwards until in Kashmir and farther west it ceases to high Himalaya which corresponds to the arctic tundra, scrub replaces forest above be a significant constituent, its place being taken by Palaearctic forms. The largest the limit of tree-growth, and depending upon the degree of moisture, only certain number of genera of birds of the forested area from Arunachal Pradesh to south-east xerophytic annuals and perennials grow along with the dominant lichens and mosses Kashmir occurs also in the hills of western China and northern Burma but not in - as in the tundra. The snow-line, because of the difference in latitudes (e.g. Srinagar peninsular India or the Palaearctic. The infusion of Yunnan and Szechwan avifauna is c. 340 N, Thimpu c. 270 N) is lower in the western Himalaya than in the eastern; in strongest in the eastern Himalaya and west to central Nepal. The Gandaki river summer between c. 4500 and 5500 metres, in winter down to 2450 or 2750 metres. in central Nepal (not Arun-Kosi in eastern Nepal as previously thought) has been shown by the Flemings (1976) to be the dividing line between the avifaunas of the The altitudinal zones of vegetation, particularly in the eastern Himalaya, are of the western and eastern Himalaya. In floristics too western Himalayan flora differs from highest interest to the student of bird ecology inasmuch as each of them harbours a eastern Himalayan in a greater representation of conifers; while European elements more or less characteristic avifauna of its own. Perhaps nowhere in the world would are conspicuous in the former, Malayan, Chinese and Burmese elements are in the one find so much diversity in climates and vegetation telescoped into so circumscribed latter. a space. Hooker gives a dramatic example of Sikkim: ‘From the bed of the Ratong, in which grow palms with screw-pine and plantain, it is only seven miles in a direct line The distributional radiation of birds in the Himalaya has evidently been from western to the perpetual ice . . . In other words, the descent is so rapid that in eight miles the China and Assam and not from peninsular India. Blanford’s explanation of the process Ratong waters every variety of vegetation from the lichen of the poles to the palm of seems eminently valid. He says, ‘When glacial snow and ice spread, the tropical the tropics; whilst throughout the remainder of its mountain course, it falls from 4000 fauna which may at that time have resembled more closely that of the peninsula

91 92 was forced to retreat to the base of the mountains, or perished. Assam valley and the references cited at the end. There are, however, a number of families, or groups hill ranges south of it afforded a securer refuge—being damp, sheltered and forest- of birds, or individual species, which are either peculiar to the Himalaya or are so clad—than the open plains of north India and the drier hills of the country south of narrowly associated with the mountain range as to call for special notice. Some of these. During the glacial period the Palaearctic forms survived in greater numbers these birds are of special interest not only for their aesthetic appeal but because so since a considerable percentage of the genera recorded from the Tibetan sub-region little scientific data are available concerning their status and ecology on account of of the Palaearctic are not found in the Indomalayan sub-region. As glacial conditions their living at heights beyond the ceiling of the average ornithologist, and of their receded the Oriental fauna re-entered the Himalaya from the east.’ rarity and restricted habitats. It is to be hoped that this account will help to fill the gaps for observant trekkers and mountaineers. Two such examples among the raptors Bird families endemic to the Himalaya, not found in peninsular India, are road- or birds of prey would indisputably be the golden eagle (Aquila chrysaetos) and bills (Eurylaemidae), honey-guides (Indicatoridae), finfoots (Heliornithidae), and the lammergeier or bearded vulture (Gypaetus barbatus). The magnificent golden parrot-bills (Paradoxornithidae). Two monotypic genera of the pheasant family eagle is a large and powerful hunter, dark chocolate-brown (almost black) with a (phasianidae) are endemic to the Himalaya, namely Catreus (chir pheasant) and tawny rufous hind crown, nape and hind neck. It usually keeps in pairs, frequenting Ophrysia (mountain quail). Both are considered by Ripley (1961) to be Palaearctic desolate rugged mountain country with crags and precipices, between c. 1850 metres relicts. A third endemic genus Callacanthis,a cardueline finch, is also not found and summer snow-line (3000–5500 metres). The species, in a number of other elsewhere besides the Himalaya where its only species burtoni occurs in wet and geographical races, or subspecies, ranges widely over the Holarctic region, south moist temperate forest between elevations of 1800 and 3000 metres. to north Africa and the USA. The Himalayan subspecies, daphanea,also spreads to Turkestan and from eastern Iran to central Asia. Its prey consists of pheasants, snow- In addition to these, Ripley (1961) shows that fourteen Palaearctic endemic species cock, chukor, hares and occasionally larger mammals such as musk deer and the are confined to the Himalaya, without adjacent relatives, and give strong evidence of young of mountain sheep. being relict forms. As notable among these he mentioned the wood snipe (Gallinago nemoricola) Himalayan pied woodpecker (Picoides himalayensis), black-throated It is difficult to understand why the lammergeier is so commonly referred to as golden jay (Garrulus lanceolatus), smoky leaf warbler (Phylloscopus fuligiven-ter), pied eagle even by otherwise fairly knowledgeable sportsmen. Except that they are both ground thrush (Zoothera wardi), crested black tit (Parus melanolophus), beautiful huge spectacular raptors found in similar high Himalayan biotopes and nowhere else nuthatch (Sitta formosa),and two species of bullfinch (Pyrrhula erythrocephala and within the Indian subcontinent, there is little justification for confusing the two. The P. aurantiaca). lammergeier is less massive than the golden eagle. It has a fully feathered cream- coloured head and neck, silvery grey-and-black upper parts, and is rusty white below. Other interesting forms, though not occurring in adjoining Tibet nor in the Indian In sailing flight the comparatively narrow, pointed wings and longish wedge-shaped subcontinent south of the Himalaya, extend more or less along the entire range. While tail are diagnostic, while the ‘goatee’ of black bristly feathers at chin, especially it would be tedious to give a bare listing, there are certain groups and individual conspicuous in profile, clinches its identity. The so-called bearded vulture is a purely species which merit special mention since they lend character and distinction to the mountain-living form found in the Himalaya between c. 1200 and 4000 metres and avifauna of the Himalaya. sometimes seen sailing majestically even above 7000 metres. The same subspecies, aureus, inhabits the mountains of south-east Europe (Pyrenees, etc.), south Arabia The avifauna of the Himalaya, thus, is mainly a conglomerate of Palaearctic and and eastward to north China. Two other subspecies occur: one in the mountains of Indochinese elements, the former predominating in Kashmir and the western section, north Africa (Algeria, Morocco, etc.), the other in Ethiopia to south Africa. The the latter in the eastern area. This is not the place for a catalogue of all the birds lammergeier is best known for its habit of carrying aloft large bones, like the femur to be found in the mountains. Such a list is available in several of the more recent of an ox, and dropping them on rocks, often at regular ‘ossuaries’, from a height of

93 94 50 metres or more, in order to splinter them. The bird then descends to feed on the startlingly different in looks that initially it was even described as a different species fragments of bone and the marrow, which largely comprise its diet. from the cock. Successive observers have remarked upon the ‘stupidity’ of members of a covey coming out in trustful inquisitiveness to a companion fluttering in its On many counts the family Phasianidae - pheasants, jungle fowl, partridges, quails death throes, and thus being killed one by one by the ambushed hunter - a shameful - collectively and popularly known as ‘game birds’ - may be regarded as the most commentary on the vileness of man rather than on the bird’s stupidity! distinctive bird family of the Himalaya. The Himalayan pheasants, whose centre of distribution is primarily the Indochinese sub-region of the oriental region, include The genus Tragopan, or horned pheasants, have the shape, proportions and carriage some of the most fascinating, spectacular and gorgeously plumaged birds in the of partridges. The males have a great deal of resplendent crimson in their plumage. world. They are so eagerly sought by private collectors, aviculturists and zoos The sides of the head and throat are naked and brilliantly coloured in most species. everywhere, but particularly in the Western countries, that ruthless exploitation for In addition, they possess two long brightly coloured fleshy horns, one above each profit, chiefly by poachers and smugglers, has reduced the population of several eye, which are erected during courtship display. A brilliantly coloured and patterned species to dangerously low levels, threatening their extinction in the wild. Happily, fleshy apron-shaped bib-like wattle on the throat is fully expanded at the same time, most pheasants breed freely in captivity, and it is hoped that by re-introduction of heightening the bizarre effect. There are four species within Indian limits, which captive-bred stock into seriously depleted areas it may be possible in some measure live at altitudes between c.1400 and 4250 metres descending to slightly lower levels to rehabilitate the more vulnerable species. Poaching, as well as large-scale habitat in severe winters. The western tragopan, T. melanocephalus (Punjab, Himalaya, destruction for the construction of roads, and other dubious forms of economic Himachal Pradesh, Garhwal) is probably the most threatened species at the present development, is the main cause for the declining number of this remarkable group time and needs extreme protection. It is included in the Red Data book of the IUCN of birds. The genera of Himalayan pheasants concerned are mainly Ithaginis and also in Schedule I (totally protected species of the Wildlife (Protection) Act, (blood pheasant), Tragopan (horned pheasant), Lophophorus (monal or impeyan 1972, of the Government of India. pheasant), Lophura (kaleej pheasant), Pucrasia (crossoptilon) and peacock pheasant (Polyplectron), though somewhat marginal, also merit a rightful place among the The genus Lophophorus is represented in the Himalaya by two species of remarkably avifauna of the Himalaya. beautiful pheasants, namely the impeyan or Himalayan monal (L. impejanus) and Sclater’s or the Mishmi Hills monal (L. sclateri). They are stoutly built, dumpy The genus Ithaginis, blood pheasant, with the single species cruentatus, and numerous birds shaped like the snow-cock (Tetraogallus spp.), but distinguished by the highly geographical subspecies, is distributed in the eastern Himalaya and associated refulgent bronze-green, purple and blue plumage of the males. The face is more or mountain ranges of China, from Nepal to Kansu. In not extending westward beyond less naked and coloured bright blue. The two species are readily distinguished from Nepal, the blood pheasant graphically exemplifies the Chinese influence in the each other by the shape of the crest. In the impeyan, the crest is composed of feathers eastern Himalayan avifauna. It is a bird of the highest altitudinal zone among the with naked shafts and a spatulate end: in Sclater’s it is of ordinary feathers which are true Himalayan pheasants, affecting steep pine forest with rhododendron, juniper short and curly. The females of both are rather similar: brown, mottled and streaked and ringal bamboo scrub near the snow-line, alternating seasonally between c. 3600 with paler and darker colours, with a pure white throat and a bare pale blue patch and 4300 metres altitude. Three subspecies are recognized within Indian limits. The round the eyes. They have a short crest of ordinary feathers. These pheasants live in blood pheasant is a large, gaudily coloured partridge-shaped bird, chiefly grey and high oak, rhododendron and deodar forest with open glades and sheep pastures, at apple-green, with a mop-like crest, black forehead and crimson throat. A black- between 2500 and 5000 metres altitude. While the impeyan is confined more or less bordered bright red naked patch surrounds the eye. The upper breast is splashed with entirely to the Indo - Pakistan Himalaya, Sclater’s inhabits the section in Arunachal crimson, like fresh bloodstains, and there are similar splashes also on the shoulders Pradesh and the contiguous parts of south-east Tibet, eastward to north-east Burma and the tail. The female - bright rufous-brown with ashy-grey crest and nape - is so and Yunnan.

95 96 The commonest and most abundant genus of the true Himalayan pheasants in long backward projecting crest of hair-like plumes, bright crimson naked patch round Lophura to which belongs the kaleej (L. eucomelanura) together with a number of the eye, and above all the long pointed tail broadly barred with black and grey, provide extra-limital Indomalayan species. They are all distinguished especially by the long, a good identification key for the cock. The hen is rather similar but has a shorter tail. pointed, arching tails of the cocks which are laterally compressed and ‘roof-like’, as To make this list of pheasants comprehensive, it seems pertinent to add two other in the domestic and jungle fowl (Gallus) - their closest allies. Kaleej may further be genera, even though their inclusion among the true Himalayan avifauna may be identified by their coloration which is chiefly a glistening metallic black in the male, somewhat equivocal. and reddish-brown in the female. The latter lacks the characteristic sickle-shaped tail of the cock. In both sexes there is a bushy backwardly directed crest and naked The genus Crossoptilon, eared pheasant, is predominantly Chinese. Of the three bright scarlet face. Within the Indian Himalaya five (or six) races of the kaleej are species known, only one (C.crossoptilon) enters Indian limits on the extreme north- recognized from north-west Pakistan to Arunachal Pradesh, and in the associated east fringe of Arunachal from its main range in adjoining south-east Tibet, north of Assam hills. Popularly known as kala murgha, kaleej share their native habitat with the Himalayan axis. The eared pheasant is a large, heavy and showy bird chiefly blue- red jungle fowl, particularly at the lower altitudes. They are found in all types of grey in colour with a laterally compressed metallic blue-black tail, the long arching forest - sal, oak, rhododendron, spruce, etc. - from c. 400 up to 3600 metres. They disintegrated central rectrices recalling ostrich plumes. The crown is velvety black, live amidst heavy scrub and undergrowth, and like jungle fowl, are partial to the and the sides of the head naked and deep scarlet. The ear-coverts are prolonged to neighbourhood of water and terraced cultivation. protrude behind like horns (for ears), hence the bird’s popular name. The sexes are alike, but the male is larger. Our subspecies, C. harmani, Elwes’s eared pheasant, The genus Pucrasia, koklas pheasant, contains a single species macrolopha, found lives at altitudes of between 3000 and 5000 metres. on grassy hill-slopes at the edge more or less along the entire length of the Himalayan system, from Afghanistan of rhododendron and juniper scrub. Where unmolested, as in the neighbourhood of to eastern China. The species is enigmatically absent east of Nepal, but after a Buddhist monasteries, the birds become astonishingly tame and even come to be fed considerable break in the distribution in reappears farther east in Yunnan and the by the monks. mountains of China and Mongolia. Four geographical races, or subspecies, are recognized in the stretch between Afghanistan and Nepal, based on minor differences Finally, we have that elegant and quietly beautiful genus Polylectron, the peacock of coloration and plumage pattern. Both sexes have the face fully feathered and with pheasants, of smallish birds reminiscent in their shape and bearing of spur fowl. a well developed occipital crest. The cock has two long tufts of metallic-black plumes Several species are found in the Indochinese countries and Malaysia but only a single on either side of the crest, springing from the ear-coverts, which are erected in nuptial one, bicalcaratum, with two subspecies, in the north-eastern part of the subcontinent display. The overall coloration is largely grey, black and chestnut, and the sexes are - Sikkim, Bhutan, Arunachal, etc. It is a bird of grey, grey-brown and buff plumage, dimorphic. The koklas are seen in wooded ravines on steep hillsides in oak and studded with brilliant metallic violet, green blue eye-spots or ocelli on the mantle conifer forest with heavy scrub and ringal bamboo undergrowth, within an altitudinal and fan-shaped tail. The male has a short frowzled upstanding crest. The peacock range of 1500 or 4000 metres. pheasant is a low-elevation bird, normally not found above c. 1200 metres. It lives in the dense tropical foothill jungle of the Himalayan complex and is an inveterate The genus Catreus contains a single species, the chir pheasant (C. wallichli). It is skulker, keeping to heavy undergrowth and almost impossible to flush even with a endemic to the Himalaya and confined to a restricted range from north-west Pakistan dog. (Hazara) to west-central Nepal (Pokhara between c. 1400 and 3500 metres elevation). It lives on steep rugged hillsides in oak forest covered with tall grass and scrub and One of the most elusive, intriguing and little-known members of the pheasant family, dissected by wooded ravines. It is an extreme skulker, taking to its legs when hunted, and of the entire Himalayan avifauna, is the mountain quail, Ophrysia superciliosa. and reluctant to fly unless flushed by a dog. The closely barred pale rusty upper parts, This bird has defied all attempts to rediscover it since the last specimen was collected

97 98 in 1876. It was originally described for science in 1846 from a living pair, supposedly to Malaysia. In the Himalaya it affects mixed broad-leafed and conifer forest in the from ‘India’ that had found its way to a private menagerie in England. Not until its neighbourhood of bee nesting cliffs and rock scarps. No definitive data are available discovery in the wild around Mussoorie, many years later, was the exact provenance on the ecology of the Himalayan honey-guide though by interpolation of what is of the species determined and the type-locality fixed. In all there are only ten museum known about its African cousins its general life pattern can be constructed. The name specimens of the mountain quail extant, five in the British Museum and the rest in ‘honey-guide’ arises from the fact that by means of certain well understood calls and America. The only locality in which the species is known is the of action, such as flitting from tree to tree in front of a honey-questing human or other the western Himalaya, all the specimens having come from elevations between 1650 mammal, the bird guides the seeker to a comb and shares the remnants - honey, larvae and 2100 metres – Jharipani (a little below Mussoorie), Benog and Bhadraj peaks and wax - after the honey has been taken. An extraordinary anatomical adaptation of behind Mussoorie, and Sher-ka-dandda peak near Naini Tal. It was conjectured at the bird is its ability to digest that which few other animal systems can assimilate. the time that the mountain quail may be a migrant, but since the bird has not been Thus a considerable proportion of its diet apparently consists of beeswax. In Africa, recorded from any neighbouring country or anywhere else in the world, its origin and honey-guides of this genus are known to be brood-parasitic on barbets, laying their status continue to remain a mystery. It is hard to account for its extreme rarity unless eggs in the nest-holes of the latter and leaving the dupes to foster the hatchlings. the species is already extinct. The taxonomical position of Ophrysia is somewhat Recent observations by two American ornithologists in Nepal, though not yet fully equivocal. The structure of its wing is reminiscent of the spur fowl (Galloperdix);the confirmed, suggest that the Himalayan honey-guide has a novel type of breeding short stout bill, long lax plumage and the stiff bristle-like feathers on the forehead biology, described by them as ‘resource-based non-harem polygyny’. The male holds are features that recall the blood pheasant (Ithaginis) the bill and forehead bristles are a bee’s comb, or group of combs, as his territory throughout the year and mates with also very much as in the bush quails (Perdicula). In size the bird is between a grey all receptive females that visit it to feed during the breeding season. These may total partridge and a grey quail, but the tail is proportionately longer than in either. The up to twenty or more! Males without a territory apparently seldom have a chance of sexes are dissimilar. The male is dark slaty-brown overall, with distinctive black- mating (Cronin, Jr, and Sherman, 1977). and-white face markings and a broad white eyebrow; the female is largely cinnamon- brown with a pinkish grey face and a less prominent white eyebrow. The bill and feet Ward’s trogon (Harpactes wardi) is found in the eastern Himalaya, from central in both sexes are red. The birds are reported by early collectors to live in coveys of Bhutan eastward, between 1500 and 3000 metres. This pigeon-sized bird is similar five or six in tall grass from which they could be flushed only when almost trampled to the commoner red-headed trogon but is much larger (overall length 40 cm). It is on. They pitched into the grass again after a short heavy flight - and are therefore in brilliantly coloured; the belly is crimson-pink in the male and primrose yellow in the behaviour also very similar to the bush quail. female. The tail is graduated and its feathers squarely truncated at the tip. The central retrices are black and the lateral ones pink in the male and yellow in the female. The Among the many other groups and species of birds peculiar to the Himalaya or which bird is seen either singly or in separated pairs in subtropical forest amidst bamboo have special interest and significance in the context of Himalayan ornithology, the and evergreen undergrowth. It feeds on large insects and berries. orange-rumped honey-guide (Indicator xanthonotus) is one that merits immediate attention. It is a rare species, and little is known of its ecology. The family Red-billed leiorthrix or ‘Peking robin’ (Leiothrix lutea) is a sprightly bright-coloured Indicatoridae (Order Piciformes), closely related to the barbets (Capitionidae), is sparrow-sized bird, grayish olive with a bright yellow throat and breast, a pale eye- African in domicile, being represented in that continent by three (or four) genera and ring and a scarlet bill. The wings are black with yellow-and-crimson edges. In the thirteen species. One of these genera - Indicator, with two species - has a curiously female, the crimson of the wings is replaced by yellow. It breeds between 1500 and disjunct transcontinental distribution in south-eastern Asia: I.xanthonotus occurs 2400 metres and descends lower in winter. It is seen in pairs or parties of four to six in the Himalaya between c. 1500 and 3500 metres from the Afghan frontier right or even twenty, affecting evergreen biotope: secondary growth, overgrown clearings across to Arunachal and Manipur, the other species L. archipelagius being confined and tea plantations. Its food consists of insects, berries and seeds. Its harsh hissing

99 100 notes and loud cheerful bulbul-like warbling are diagnostic. naturalists, mostly army officers posted in the strategic north-west frontier areas in the early part of the nineteenth century, had suggested the broad pattern of the Red-billed blue magpie (Cissa erythrorhyncha)—A showy Himalayan bird found seasonal migratory movements, particularly of sporting birds like ducks and cranes, between c. 1000 and 2000 metres is the red-billed blue magpie. It can be seen from and established the Indus Valley as the putative principal flyway of Siberian and c.770 E in Himachal Pradesh (Kangra district) eastward through Garhwal and central Asian birds into peninsular India. Less substantial but similar evidence from Kumaon to c 870 E in the eastern Himalaya. Its reported occurrence in western the north-eastern end of the Himalaya suggested that the main route on that side Sikkim needs verification. It is very similar to and confusable with the yellow-billed was along the valley of the Tsangpo or Brahmaputrariver, and its affluents. The two blue magpie, but it usually occupies a lower altitudinal zone and is oftener met with migrational streams entered from either end of the Himalayan mountain chain in a at Himalayan hill stations. In Mussoorie, UP, it is known as nilkanthand in Simla, sort of pincer movement, weakening in their advance as more species dropped out, digdal. It is a spectacular, purplish-blue bird with a long graduated tail. The central before reaching the tip of the peninsula or trickling into Sri Lanka, which is the feathers are elongated into gracefully arching streamers. The head, neck and breast virtual terminus for our land birds. are velvety-black with a large white patch on the nape. The underparts below the breast are grayish white. Both sexes are alike. Until recently, it was commonly assumed that the Himalayan range presented an insuperable barrier to migrating birds from northern lands, and that the only way they The Himalaya and Bird Migration were enabled to cross it was by following river valleys. It used to be argued that the freezing cold and rarefied atmosphere at the formidable heights which the birds would The importance of the Himalaya in the context of Indian bird migration is only just need to negotiate would overpower them. Thus, western students of bird migration beginning to be properly appreciated. Of the 2,100-odd species and subspecies of had believed that migration flight normally took place under about 500 metres, rarely birds that comprise the avifauna of the subcontinent together with Sri Lanka, nearly as high as 1500 and only exceptionally around 3000 metres while crossing lofty 300 are winter visitors from the Palaearctic region north of the Himalayan barrier mountain ranges. Sophisticated devices and vastly improved technology between (Eurasia to north-east Siberia and central Asia). This excludes the purely pelagic the two World Wars, and especially the invention of radar and refining of relevant forms such as petrels, shear-waters and boobies which sometimes get accidentally scientific techniques have, however, radically altered the older notions. It isnow blown in on the seaboard by monsoon gales. Many of these migrants are actually well established that a considerable amount of bird migration everywhere does Himalayan species that breed up to altitudes of 5500 metres or more in summer, occur beyond the range of human vision, and that even small birds, of starling size, e.g. redstarts (Phoenicurus), and move down to lower levels in the foothills or to when migrating, may fly at previously unsuspected heights of 6000 to 7000 metres, the north Indian plains in winter, some continuing southward to spread through the braving the intense cold, even when there is no obvious compulsion for them to peninsula and even spill over into Sri Lanka. Among our most regular and abundant do so. The growing popularity of Himalayan mountaineering since the First World winter visitors, the ‘classic’ long-distance extra-limital migrants, are the hordes of War, and the virtual rash of climbing expeditions since the Second World War, have ducks and geese (Anatidae) cranes (Gruidae) and the vast assortment of wading or adduced convincing evidence that a very considerable - maybe even overwhelming - shore-birds (Charadriidae) which become conspicuous enough on every jheel and proportion of the migration to and from the Indian subcontinent occurs directly over wetland to obtrude their presence on the least observant. But the smaller birds, in the main Himalayan axis, thereby appreciably shortening the birds’ journeys. Autumn spite of their overwhelming numbers and far greater variety, are not usually noticed migration in particular, by direct over flight, would appear to involve little difficulty unless specially looked for. The families such as Muscicapidae (flycatchers, since the birds would merely need to coast down, as it were, from the elevated tableland warblers, thrushes, robins), Motacillidae (wagtails and pipits), Fringillidae (finches), of central Asia to the Indian plains, with a maximum saving of time and energy. Hirundinidae (swallows) and some others are amongst our most abundant winter For the upward return journey in spring, perhaps the river-valley route could have visitors. Visual observations recorded over a series of years by British sportsmen- more validity in certain sections. That this is a hazardous undertaking, nevertheless,

101 102 exposing birds to the unpredictable vagaries of the notorious Himalayan weather the intense cold and low atmospheric pressure, is suggested by one of the Everest such as sudden storms and blizzards, sometimes resulting in mass annihilation, is expeditions encountering crows and mountain finches around their high-level camp evident from the reports of explorers and mountaineers from time to time. The famous at 7000 metres, and Himalayan griffon vulture and lammergeier between 6000 explorer Sven Hedin observed large numbers of migrating ducks in autumn at great and 7000 metres, while alpine chough (Pyrrhocorax graculus) even followed the heights at the source of the Indus river in Tibet. The first Mount Everest expedition climbers up to 8200 metres, where the atmosphere is reduced to only one-third of its (Younghusband’s) came across several birds on southward migration in September at supporting power. Sir Edmund Hillary has reported a chough following him at 8500 c. 5200 metres, among them Temminck’s stint (Calidris temminckii), ‘painted snipe’ metres - presumably one of the several individuals that scavenged daily around their (Rostratulabenghalensis), pintail snipe (Gallinago stenura), house martin (Delichon camp at 7900 metres. At Dehra Dun geese have been observed through a telescope, urbica), and several pipits (Anthus spp.). More than once, migrating waders were flying northward in spring across the face of the moon at a calculated height of 8830 heard passing overhead at night at this altitude, among which the curlew (Numenius metres. Arquata) was unmistakable. Others have recorded, visually during the day and by ear at night, migrating geese, cranes and waders passing over their high-altitude Altitudinal Migration camps. Dr Biswamoy Biswas of the Zoological Survey of India noted a stray hoopoe (Upupa epops) on Pumori Glacier (5790 metres) in May, which had no business to Apart from the host of long-distance trans-Himalayan migrants there is a large be there unless on migration. Black-tailed godwits (Limosa limosa) and pintail duck number of species that breed at high altitudes and descends to lower levels or into the (Anas acuta) have been observed on Khumbu Glacier (c. 4875 metres) at the foot northern plains in winter, some indeed extending well into peninsular India and even of Mt Everest. Colonel R. Meinertzhagen came across various species of duck in Sri Lanka. Of those that stay permanently in the mountains and merely move from a Ladakh on passage to India over the highest parts of the Himalaya. Eric Shipton on higher to a lower elevation, a typical example is the grandala (Grandala coelicolor). his 1937 expedition to the Karakorams found a large number of dead, frozen ducks The male is a gorgeous purple-blue myna-like bird, while the female is chiefly brown, and possibly a crane strewn over the face of the Crevasse Glacier between c. 4500 streaked with white. The grandala lives in large flocks and breeds between 4300 and and 4900 metres and in the upper basins of most of the big glaciers he visited C.H. 5500 metres in summer, seldom descending lower than 3000 metres in winter. In Donald, a competent Dharamsala-based west-Himalayan naturalist in the twenties, particularly severe weather, however, it is sometimes forced down as low as 2200 frequently recorded large numbers of migrating geese and cranes, in one case both metres, the lowest limit recorded. A better-known though not too common example common and Siberian, flying regularly in spring and autumn over the passes from is the brilliantly crimson-winged wall creeper (Tichodroma muraria), an ashy-grey Ladakh, over Chamba and the Lahul ranges, at between c. 4500 and 6000 metres; sparrow-sized bird with slender longish bill and butterfly-like flight, which lives on and more recently in Nepal R.L. Fleming observed bar-headed geese (Anser indicus) high cliff-faces around altitudes ranging from 4300 to 5500 metres, and breeds within flying north in spring over the eastern spur of Dhaulagiri at c. 7625 metres. rock fissures. In winter the wall creeper descends to the base of the mountains and is often seen in quarries and rock cuttings in adjoining plains. This bird has even In May 1960 Brigadier Gyan Singh, the leader of the first Indian Mt Everest expedition, been observed as far south as New Delhi, clambering on the walls of the Central found three eastern Steppe eagles (Aquila nipalenis nipalensis) lying dead on the Government Secretariat, no doubt having mistaken that august edifice for Mount South Col - ‘One of the most difficult areas to cross’ - at a height of nearly 7925 Olympus! metres, which had obviously perished while on migration. Since the Everest climber Tenzing also mentions in his autobiography that he saw a dead eagle on the South There are certain Himalayan endemics that evidently fly non-stop on their annual Col in autumn 1952 when with a Swiss expedition, it would appear that the South migrations to the hills of the southern Western Ghats or Sahyadri complex. Col is on the regular flyway of these eagles between India and central Asia. That birds Prominent among this group are the woodcock (Scolopax rusticola), pied ground can exist and fly at immense heights, seemingly with little physical discomfort from thrush (Zoothera wardii), blue (Erithacus brunneus), brown-breasted flycatcher

103 104 (Muscicapa muttui), blue-throated flycatcher Muscicapa( rubeculoides) and several from an altitude of about 1000 metres upward, an elevation at which, significantly, other flycatchers. All of them seem to be species of low tolerance and findthe Garrulax also appears on the scene. Other examples of this sort of symbiosis are not requisite ecological conditions only in the damp well-wooded southern hills which, uncommon. The disjunct occurrence of so many Himalayan animals and plants in the as mentioned earlier, already support several relict forms of Himalayan flora and south Indian hills presents some intriguing problems of logistics. The late Dr Sunder fauna. These species, whose migration routes evidently lie along the Eastern and Lal Hora, a distinguished Indian ichthyologist, found several genera of specialized Western Ghats, are fairly common in the south Indian hills during winter but are torrential freshwater fishes in Kerala which were identical with those in the eastern very seldom met with on passage in the intervening country. It is thus evident that Himalaya and the Malay peninsula. Since the geographical distribution of fish is they must perform their migration to and fro in a single hop, involving a minimum inescapably dependent on a direct connection at one time or another (river capture) of distance of may be 1500 to 2000 kilometres each way. Among the more typical of the streams and rivers they inhabit, and they can spread in no other way, Dr Hora after such single-hop migrants is reckoned the woodcock (Scolopax rusticola). This is a careful research propounded a rational explanation in his ‘Satpura Hypothesis for coveted game bird - a dumpy overgrown snipe - much sought after by sportsmen in the Distribution of Malayan Fauna and Flora to Peninsular India’. While this related its Himalayan homeland as well as in its southern winter quarters - the hills of the primarily to Malayan–east Himalayan highly adapted torrential freshwater fishes, Western Ghats complex, traditionally the Nilgiris. it seems to answer satisfactorily for other organisms as well. The hypothesis has received varying support from several different disciplines and investigators, but still Himalayan Relicts in South India remains equivocal and calls for further intensive in-depth studies. It seems relevant here to highlight some of its salient points. The Satpura Hypothesis postulates that An intriguing aspect of Himalayan flora and fauna is the disjunct occurrence of so the Satpura-Vindhya trend of mountains stretching across India was at one time more many typical genera and closely related species as endemics in the hills of south elevated and more humid than now. It was continuous with the Assam hills in the India. Among mammals two outstanding examples are the Nilgiri tahr (Hemitragus east and with the northern end of the Western Ghats (in Gujarat) in the west, and thus hylocrius)and the Nilgiri pine marten (Martes gwatkinsi), but birds provide many served as a causeway for the spread of specialised Himalayan flora and fauna into the more examples. The laughing thrush genus Garrulax (family Muscicapidae, south Indian hills and Sri Lanka. The link of the Assam Himalaya with the Satpura- subfamily Timaliinae) whose centre of distribution is the Indochinese sub-region of Vindhya trend lay across the Garo-Rajmahal gap on the Chota Nagpur plateau, which the oriental, is strongly represented in the eastern Himalaya, and found throughout the was postulated to have been more raised and humid than now, providing a continuous mountain range westward to Kashmir and Afghanistan in something like 27 species. stretch of ecologically suitable hilly country as a bridge for the dispersal of plants After a total absence of over 2000 kilometres in continental and peninsular India, and animals. Geotectonic processes such as erosion or subsidence of the connecting the genus reappears in the south with two endemic species, cachinnans and jerdoni, highland and consequent changes in the physiography may be responsible for cutting the former confined to the Nilgiris, the latter in three well-differentiated subspecies, off the continuity in the distribution of the ecologically adapted organisms now met to the Palnis and Kerala hills. There is, additionally, a third member of the genus with as ‘marooned’ relict populations of Himalayan animals and plants in the southern found in Kerala, namely the Wynaad laughing thrush which is an obvious subspecies hills. Geological evidence on the whole is not in favour of this easy explanation and of the east Himalayan Garrulax delesserti. A point of special interest in the case of alternative possibilities need to be investigated. Nevertheless, the Satpura Hypothesis these far-flung laughing thrushes is that their presence in the southern hills is closely offers an attractive interpretation which on, biogeographical evidence alone, seems associated with the occurrence of the plant genus Rubus (raspberry, blackberry, etc.) unexceptional. which itself is a common Himalayan taxon with an identical disjunct distribution in the hills of the southern peninsula. The close ecological association between Garrulax Among the more prominent Himalayan relicts in the avifauna of the Western Ghats and Rubus in the Himalaya is faithfully reproduced in their common southern complex in southern India, besides the laughing thrushes (Garrulax), are the great refugium. Thickets of Rubus first make their appearance in the south Indian hills pied hornbill (Buceros bicornis), frogmouths (Batrachostomus), fairy bluebird

105 106 (Irena), lizard hawks or bazas (Aviceda) and rufous-bellied hawk-eagle (Hieraaetus ______, 1962; The Birds of Sikkim. Madras. Oxford university press. kienerii). Several others also show the same widely disjunct distribution and are ______, 1977; A Field Guide to the Birds of the Eastern Himalaya.New palpably relict Himalayan forms. Delhi. Oxford University Press. Champion, Harry G. and S.K. Seth, 1968; A Revised Survey of the Forest Types of Pioneers of Himalayan Ornithology India.Nasik. Government of India Press. Cronin, Edward (Jr) and Paul Sherman, 1976; Living Bird.Cornell University. Most of our early knowledge of Himalayan avifauna comes from Brian Houghton Fleming, R.L. Jr, 1971; ‘Avian Zoogeography of Nepal’.The Himalayan Review Hodgson (1800–94), the undisputed ‘father’ of Himalayan ornithology. Hodgson first 4:23–33. went to Nepal at the age of twenty and was British resident in that then difficult Fleming, R.L. Sr and Jr and Lain Singh Bangdel, 1976; Birds of Nepal country from 1833 to 1843. During a period of about twenty years, in spite of the Hodgson, B.H., 1833; Asiatic Researches. constraints on free movement for foreigners, he managed to collect over 20,000 skins Hooker, J.D., 1905; Himalayan Journals.London. Ward, Lock & Co. of birds and mammals which he later presented to the British Museum. He published Hora, S.L., 1937; ‘Distribution of Himalayan Fishes and its Bearing on Certain numerous scientific papers which form the hard core of our knowledge of Himalayan Palaeo-geographical Problems’.Rec. ind. Mus. 39:251–9 birds. After retirement from Nepal he lived and continued his natural history work ______, 1949; Symposium on ‘Satpura Hypothesis of the Distribution of Malayan from Darjeeling between 1845 and 1858 when he finally left India. Hodgson (1833) Fauna and Flora to Peninsular India’.Proc. Nat.Iinst. Sci. India 15(8): 307–422. was the first to write on bird migration in India, of ducks, etc., as observed by him ______‘Hora’s Satpura Hypothesis: An Aspect of Indian Biogeography’. Current at Kathmandu, and also the first to draw attention to the altitudinal distribution of Science 19: 364–70 species in the Himalaya (‘Physical Geography of the Himalaya’, 1840). Secretary of State for India, 1908; Imperial Gazetteer of India. Oxford. Clarendon Press. Of the many other naturalists who have contributed to Himalayan ornithology before Mani, M.S., 1956; ‘Insect Fauna of the High Himalaya’.Nature 177:124. and since Hodgson, perhaps the one deserving special mention is John Gould. Gould Medlicott, H.B. and W.T. Blanford, 1879; ‘A Manual of Geology of India’, 2 vols was the taxidermist in charge of the Zoological Society’s museum in London, and LXX. 374. Calcutta. later superintendent of its ornithological collection. He was a gifted bird painter Meinertzhagen, R., 1928; ‘Some Biological Problems Connected with the Himalaya’. and, in collaboration with his artist wife, published in instalments, commencing in Ibis.480–533. 1831 - 2 - partly on the basis of Hodgson’s material - a splendid folio of coloured Ripley, S.D., 1961;ASynopsis of the Birds of India and Pakistan. Bombay. Bombay lithographs entitled A Century of Birds of the Himalayan Mountains. The scientific Natural History Society. text for this was written by Nicholas Vigors, the secretary of the then newly founded Stephenson, J.S.; ‘The Geographical Distribution of Indian Earthworms’. Proc. Zoological Society of London, who was responsible also for the description of many Asiat. Soc. Bengal (N.S.) 12; cxvii. of Hodgson’s newly discovered species from Nepal. Wadia, D.N., 1939; The Geology of India.London. Macmillan.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Ali, Salim, 1949; Indian Hill Birds. Bombay.Oxford University Press. ______, 1949; ‘The Satpura Trend as an Orinithogeographical Highway’.Proc. Nat. Inst. Sci. India.Nov–Dec.

107 108 ESTABLISHING THE SANCTUARY: THE BIRTH OF DUDHWA ekeing out a precarious existence in diminishing numbers. Both in the forest and NATIONAL PARK outside it the animals were retreating before the tractors, domestic cattle and guns of the human invader. Billy Arjan Singh For those which lived outside the forest no single development was more harmful From Watching India’s Wildlife, Oxford University Press, 2003. than the remorseless spread of cultivation. Up to the end of the Second World War the area to the north of the Sarda river and up to the reserved forests along the Nepal border formed a buffer region which was almost completely wild. It had been a natural game reserve, but now civilization was gradually encroaching and depriving the animals of their living space. An ever-increasing population required more food to sustain it and therefore more land to grow the food. Soon after Independence and Partition this land-hunger assumed mammoth proportions, and in the Trans-Sarda belt the dacoit-infested, malaria-ridden tracts were heavily colonised by farmers from the Punjab. Every inch of available soil was reclaimed to the very edge of the forest - Tiger Haven had been one of the few places to remain untouched - and the grassland buffer which had prevented a clash of interest between the wildlife and the settlers disappeared. With it went the great herds of deer which used to roam across the plains, the crocodiles in the rivers and any living thing which was unable to adapt to the new order. A few swamp deer did manage to colonise some patches of open grassland within the forest, but in such radically different surroundings they were unlikely to survive for long. These islands of space in the forest were invariably too small to support many animals, and continual forestry operations threatened their existence.

Here, too, the deer encountered herds of domestic cattle in whose company no wild animal can survive for long. In India the cow is sacred; it is never killed and, therefore, Less than a hundred years ago, India was one of the great reservoirs of wildlife in multiplies in thousands. Crowded out like the deer from their traditional grazing the world. From the Himalayas to the Indian Ocean vast numbers of animals, and a grounds by the advance of cultivation and by their own increasing numbers, the cattle remarkable variety, populated the plains and mountains of the subcontinent. Over the gravitate to the forest where they are allowed to move about without restriction. Food last century, man has almost totally destroyed this natural reserve; slowly at first, and becomes scarce and disease breaks out and is then transmitted to the local wildlife; without much conspicuous effect because of the quantity of wildlife, and then, after in such conditions it is always the deer which yield to the cattle and slowly lose the Independence, more rapidly, in a wanton display of thoughtlessness and intolerance. will to survive.

In my own district of Kheri the process of destruction has been as effective as The democratic processes of the Government also hastened their decline. On the basis anywhere else in India. When I first arrived at Tiger Haven the local supply of wildlife of one man, one vote, gun licences for crop protection were issued on a massive scale was already thin on the ground. Some species had virtually disappeared; others were as political patronage by the party in power. It was not only bona-fide farmers who

109 110 benefitted from this situation; anybody who went to prison during India’s freedom Simultaneously, there emerged a new policy of exploiting the forests to their struggle, even if his offence was somewhat less respectable than political resistance, maximum potential which was as harmful to wildlife as the wholesale destruction could count on getting a licence; common criminals and jailbirds were also able of their living space. Among the many good things left to us by our erstwhile British to cash in on the windfall. There was no law to control shooting outside the forest masters was the legacy of sound forestry principles whereby we both had our cake at the time, and guns which had been issued for crop protection soon provided the and ate it. Under the British, the annual felling of trees was a planned operation necessary arms for an ever increasing band of poachers who slaughtered the deer designed to improve the quality of the timbre; considerable care was taken to see indiscriminately and then sold the meat. that the trees did not become overcrowded, thus encouraging the greatest possible growth; regeneration was mainly natural, but wherever necessary the existing forests Legitimate shooting was less damaging but, combined with the spread of cultivation, were perpetuated by controlled programmes of replanting. poaching and the presence of the ubiquitous cattle, it helped to accelerate the destruction of the wildlife. Hunting was once governed by carefully devised rules With Independence came a more commercial approach which led to the systematic and a strict code of behaviour; with Independence a new type of sportsman, less felling of slow-maturing trees and their replacement by exotic and faster-growing scrupulous than his predecessors, appeared on the scene. He shot anything at any varieties. The chief timbre of the forests of north India is the sal (Shorea robusta),a time of the year and often used a machine gun mounted on a jeep in a purely military- magnificent tree which reaches a height of between 100 and 150 feet and a girth of style operation. India, sadly, has always suffered from debasing the art of hunting 8 to 12 feet. The sal has narrower leaves than the teak (Tectona grandis),and thus until a sport becomes a slaughter. allows a certain amount of light to penetrate the forest. This encourages the growth underneath of a whole range of smaller trees, shrubs and bushes which provide Inside the forest the assault of the human invader was scarcely less thorough and excellent shelter for every kind of wildlife. However, the sal takes 150 years to attain certainly no less violent. The drive to exploit more land in the interests of solving maturity, a span of time not in keeping with the Forest Department’s plans for a the nation’s chronic food problems inevitably marked out forest areas as future sites quick commercial turnover; and so began the process of replacing it with trees like of cultivation. Thus, in the early 1950s, began the process which has reduced the the eucalyptus which has the advantage of reaching maturity in twenty years or less. forests of north India to 13 per cent of the land - considerably less than the 33 per cent Unfortunately, the eucalyptus provides little shade to protect the ground from the sun recommended by a recent commission. First to suffer were the Terai forests of Naini and almost no leaf deposit to fertilize the soil; nor does it offer effective shelter for Tal in the west where giant tractors and bulldozers moved in, uprooting and levelling, wildlife. None of these disadvantages, of course, deflected the forestry authorities ploughing and harrowing. Importers and traders converged to cash in on vast orders from their aim of increasing revenue, and each year saw larger and larger tracts given for machinery, much of which was ruined from both disuse and misuse. A small over to the new plantations. fortune’s worth of equipment, for instance, rusted for want of minor expenditure on sheds and tarpaulins. Inevitably, the momentum was too great and vast areas were The trees were not the only thing to be affected. No leaf in the forest was left deforested, wildlife fell prey to this systematic destruction and the battered remnants unturned in the frantic search for a quick profit and soon almost everything, however which managed to escape to the fringes of the forest survived for a short while only as insignificant, acquired a monetary value. Fish from the rivers and driftwood from the hostages to the massed barrels of crop-protection guns. A little later, the same process streams, grass for thatching and grass roots for scent-making, honey, manure, small was repeated in my own district, this time as part of a programme which provided plants and dead wood—nothing was left untouched. The proceeds from this exotic each landless labourer from eastern Uttar Pradesh with 10 acres of ground carved out harvest were considerable; in my forest division the auction of all forest rights over an of the forest; the educated did rather better; they received 20 acres, a brick hutment area covering 300 square miles produced over 25 million rupees a year. Naturally the and a pair of bullocks. one aim of every official was to surpass the total of his predecessor, and thus a vicious circle was created which caused the forest to be more thoroughly exploited every year.

111 112 Wildlife also had its value in this market through hunting fees and royalties on Sometimes I used to put in four or five applications in different names, and with animals killed, but the comparative insignificance of these earnings was reflected in the help of this device I was generally able to lease the block two or three times a the denial to the animals of the age-old principle that what comes out of the forest year. Then, of course, there was no shooting. But it was an expensive and haphazard belongs to the forest: if a man was caught with timbre outside the forest the onus was business which only gave the tigers a brief respite. Occasionally, I made life difficult on him to prove that he had acquired it legally; but if a dead animal was discovered for others who rented the block, particularly one individual from Calcutta who used in the same place, two independent witnesses were needed to prove that the animals to tie up buffalo as bait for the tiger immediately opposite my farm. As soon as it had indeed been killed in the forest. Such unlikely conditions were never satisfied and became dark, my brother (who used to visit me occasionally) and I went out and cut no prosecutions resulted. the buffalo loose. The man eventually discovered what was going on, and since then we have never been very friendly. Finally a special mention should be made here of tiger shooting, the time-honoured sport of the ruling classes, both British and Indian. Legitimate shooting for sport, I also tried to stop some of the professional shikaris from ignoring the state rules for as I have already indicated, has never on its own exterminated a species. But for tiger shooting by reporting them to the authorities. On one occasion I received first- various reasons, which I will examine in a later chapter, the tiger has been hunted hand evidence from a party of American hunters who came to visit me and spoke more consistently than any other animal, and this has undoubtedly made a large freely after they had drunk a couple of tots of Old Crow bourbon. They mentioned contribution to the decline in its numbers. By the early 1960s few people had realized that they had waited up for a tiger after dark and had used a light, both of which were that the symbol of India’s wildlife was nearing extinction; each year fresh expeditions offences. Another time I heard that a tiger cub had been shot. I reported all this to the were mounted to the forest, and though it became increasingly difficult to bring home forest department, but as usual it was a complete waste of time and nothing was done. a trophy the sport continued to attract local and foreign hunters. It was the swamp deer and not the tiger, however, which finally engaged all my Thus, by the time I arrived at Tiger Haven the local wildlife was under attack from energy in the cause of conservation. With the possible exception of the black buck, no all sides. During my first few years there I was too preoccupied in building my farm other species of Indian wildlife had been subjected to such a catastrophic reduction either to appreciate what was happening to the animals or to do anything about it. in numbers in the post-war years. The swamp deer is found nowhere in the world I still occasionally went hunting, though not for tigers, and the possibility that the but India and Nepal and at one time existed in great numbers all over the north animals might vanish altogether was only a vague and not altogether convincing idea and central parts of the country. In my own region the banks and reaches of the at the back of my mind. Still, the signs were there, and each shooting season turned river Sarda afforded an ideal natural reserve for the species up to the end of the me a little more into a conservationist. Second World War. Between the river and the forest, 15 miles to the north, there was plenty of marshland, interspersed with creeks and patches of sand and silt where the The immediate area of forest surrounding my farm formed part of one of the 40 unstable Sarda overflowed its banks each year. This was the selected home of the shooting blocks in the state of Uttar Pradesh, and for a long time the only effective deer, shared by robber gangs and malarial mosquitoes, and it was probably one of protection I gave the animals was when I managed to lease it from the forestry the most spectacular wildlife sights in the world to see a herd of nearly a thousand department. Each year I, along with 20 to 30 other people including local residents animals galloping across a freshly-burnt plain or splashing through an expanse of and sportsmen from Bombay and Delhi, would apply for the block three months water in what seemed like an endless surge of antlers, magnified by the stag’s habit before the shooting season opened. By then the professional shikaris had already had of segregating and by the many tines the swamp deer head possesses. their pick on the basis of their claim that they had booked important American clients who could not be put off. The rest of us had our names put in a hat, and those who During this period there were a great many elaborately organized local shoots emerged successful acquired the block for a month’s shooting. sponsored by the raja of Singahi, one of the minor luminaries of princely India. The

113 114 shoots took place in the jheel, or marshy lake of Mirchia, once famous as the home took possession of Ghola and with plough and gun once again routed the unhappy of countless thousands of swamp deer and now desolate of wildlife except for the and persecuted swamp deer from their last retreat. That the provincial constabulary occasional migrant flock of mallard which might fly in, only to rise again to the boom had later to eject these would-be landowners is another story; the fact remains that the of a musket, sometimes leaving behind a few of their number. A line of 20 elephants Government had failed to protect a species threatened with extinction. or more used to drive the swamp deer past butts strategically situated on higher land, and the massacre would begin. As many as fifty head a day were reported to have One morning soon after this debacle I was sitting on a platform high up in a silk been gunned down in these orgies and only the antlers removed. Nevertheless, this cotton tree (Bombax malabaricum) on the edge of the forest near my farm. Below me excessive harvest did serve a useful purpose, as it prevented over crowding among lay a burnt-out meadow where the new shoots of grass were just beginning to sprout the males; it also probably improved the stock by encouraging breeding from the through the charred ground. Gazing towards Ghola I wondered about the fate of the younger stags, since it was usually the older ones which were selected as trophies. swamp deer I had been trying to protect; step by step they were being eliminated from the marshes and swamps of their birthright through no fault of their own. Their only After the war it was still possible to see herds of over 500 deer in the region, but mistake had been to clash with human interests. They had no vote and nobody cared. with the systematic clearing of the land their numbers were quickly and drastically Was this the end? reduced, until only a few groups survived in open grassland areas within the forest. Much the same thing was happening to the swamp deer in the rest of India, so that by From where I was sitting, I could see large numbers of cattle grazing and shimmering the early 1960s, one of the last refuges of any size in the whole subcontinent was at in the heat haze in the middle and far distance. Huddled in one corner was a pitiful Ghola, an area of about 3000 acres, eight miles to the west of Tiger Haven. Shaped herd of about 40 swamp deer slowly being squeezed out of their territory by the like a cup, it consisted of marshes and swamps in the middle, surrounded by fields on domestic animals. It was then that the idea came to me for the first time of trying to every side. The land was leased to large-scale farmers but had not been cultivated for set up a sanctuary for wildlife around my farm. If I could only attract the swamp deer some time because of the Government’s policy of imposing a ceiling on the size of of Ghola to join the small herd below me, and at the same time exclude the cattle holdings and distributing the surplus land to landless labour. from the area, something might still be saved from the holocaust. It was an ambitious scheme, which might easily fail, but at the time it seemed better than giving up. In 1964, when the State Wildlife Board was created in Uttar Pradesh and I became a member, I strongly recommended to the board that Ghola presented a wonderful I realized from the beginning that it would be useless to approach the state Government opportunity to save the swamp deer for posterity; instead of distributing the land in for help, so I immediately set about preparing the ground myself. The first step was to small parcels the Government should hand it all over to the Forest Department, who plough up five-acre strips of open land in the reserved forest and sow them with the could combine the 3000 acres with the adjoining forest to create a permanent reserve. appropriate grasses for the deer to graze on. Next, I constructed salt licks in the shape My proposal became all the more urgent, at least in my mind, when the American of cones on the edge of the fields; these would provide the deer with the minerals scientist George Schaller visited me in1965, and together we went to Ghola and they needed. My aim was to attract wildlife, and this I soon succeeded in doing carried out a survey of the local swamp deer population. Instead of the 1,500 animals in the shape of a forest ranger, whose brother I had recently reported for illegally that had been reported in the area, we found only 600. shooting a young chital. He demanded to know why I should not be prosecuted for ploughing up Government land. Technically, of course, he had a point. But by then I As usual, however, the state Government vacillated, and it was not until 1966 that had learnt that if you want to get something done it is fatal to wait for permission, so they accepted my idea. By then it was too late. Before anything could be done, land intricate and slow-moving are the wheels of bureaucracy. The best and only course grabbers in the guise of Naxalities, an extreme political group who operate under the of action is to go right ahead with whatever you are doing. As it happened, the forest age-old principle of taking away from those who work and giving to those who talk, ranger’s superior officer had a sense of proportion; wisely he realized that inthe

115 116 serious business of forestry there was no harm in getting someone else to deal with poachers sneaked in to kill the animals and large numbers of cattle remained on the the minor subject of wildlife, which by now held some academic interest even for the range. I was the only person who tried to protect the swamp deer from these hazards, less exalted ranks of the administration. and though I did what I could, patrolling the forest at odd hours of the day and night, it was a hopeless task. Unless the Government declared the place a sanctuary and My next visitors were the cattle, which grazed on the new shoots of barley which I prohibited cattle grazing in the forest, all my efforts would be wasted. had sowed for the deer, and knocked over and trampled on the salt licks. Attempts to persuade the graziers of the value of a wildlife sanctuary were futile, and my This was a dismal prospect, so, using my influence as a member of the State Wildlife appeals to them to keep their herds away served no purpose, as the area was a normal Board, I started working on the authorities, pointing out that as the deer were already forest block where cattle were allowed to graze on payment of a royalty. The only within the orbit of the forest it would be a simple matter to declare a sanctuary effective course of action, it seemed, was to adopt strong-arm tactics. After waiting and order the cattle out. To back up my case I took pictures of the swamp deer and for a suitable opportunity, I caught a grazier (who was also illegally gathering submitted several papers to the board. But everyone seemed to have some objection dropped swamp deer horns) and tethered him to the towing hook of my jeep, this to the scheme. The politicians maintained that there was nowhere else for the cattle being the only way in which I could persuade him to accompany me to where two to graze and the down-wind forest officials were inclined to agree with them. The more graziers were awaiting collection. Then, with my two dogs looking out as vested interests of the professional shikari hunters also opposed my plan, since the interested spectators from each side of the vehicle, I drove slowly down the forest sanctuary would protect the tiger as well as the swamp deer. They still clung to the road, pursued by a strange assortment of sounds coming from the rear. Thereafter I tattered memories of the past when shoots invariably produced mammoth bags, and had little trouble, at least for a while, and was able to rebuild the salt lick in peace. the fact that the supply had now dwindled to single figures did nothing to dispel their The matter was taken up by local politicians but nothing could be proved and the law ambitions. of the jungle prevailed. For over a year the discussion continued with constant lobbying by the interested I was now ready to receive the swamp deer of Ghola but the problem remained of parties. I used to make the tiring eight-hour journey from my farm up to Lucknow persuading them to come. Ghola was eight miles away and separated from us by a where the meetings of the wildlife board usually took place, but more often than not thin belt of forest; clearly they would not move on their own. The answer seemed to I would return with the feeling that we were no farther advanced at the end than we be to drive them out, and so one early morning while the dew was still lying on the had been at the beginning. After a time I began to despair of the whole project until, grass I set off to Ghola on Bhagwan Piari with five other elephants borrowed from a quite suddenly, help appeared in the shape of Charan Singh, a state forest minister nearby farm. At the far end of the marshes the elephants fanned out, and we started who showed great interest in the preservation of wildlife. Finally persuaded by my moving slowly through the long grasses towards Tiger Haven, shouting and letting arguments, he announced one day that an area of 82.2 square miles surrounding Tiger off blank cartridges as we went. The deer leapt away in front of us, and though some Haven would be declared a sanctuary, and that the cattle would be excluded ‘as far wheeled back into the marshes as we approached the forest, quite a few disappeared as possible’. into the trees. How many had gone through we did not know at the time, but a few days later I discovered that a herd of 250 swamp deer had arrived at the salt licks on That last clause was the catchphrase, of course, as it allowed a wide degree of the other side. interpretation to individual officials, but I was too pleased at the time to pay much attention to it. I had originally asked for only 40 square miles to be turned into a Here at last, they found some protection, since the area I had prepared was inside the reserve; now, on the recommendation of the local wildlife officer, more than twice reserved forest where shooting rules prevailed, whereas at Ghola they had been freely that amount was to be protected. shot by anyone with a gun. But it was still a long way from being a safe reserve. Local

117 118 The proposed sanctuary, which was to be called Dudhwa, was about 25 miles long, TREES stretching 12 miles each side of Tiger Haven and three miles deep into the forest towards the Nepal border. Of the total area about 20 square miles was open land Ruskin Bond where the swamp deer could graze, and the rest forest consisting of two halves of different shooting blocks. Thus something had been done to protect the tiger as well From Ruskin Bond’s Book of Nature, Penguin Books (India), 2008. as the deer.

It had been a long struggle but I was naturally delighted with the results which, among other things, would give me the opportunity of studying many animals in comparatively protected conditions.

Trees have always played an important part in my life. The litchi, guava, mango, jackfruit and lemon trees of my childhood.Later, the grandeur of the banyan, the sacred peepal, the sal and the shisham.And here, in the hills, the stately deodars and fragrant pines. Long ago, I made some notes, short essays, on some favourite trees, and now I share these with my readers.

The Guardians of My Conscience

The trees stand watch over my day-to-day life. They are the guardians of my conscience. I have no one else to answer to, so I live and work under the generous

119 120 but highly principled supervision of the trees - especially the deodars, who stand on behind thick green leaves, and spy on the world below. I could read in it too, propped guard, unbending, on the slope above the cottage. The oak and maples are a little more up against the bole of the tree with my favourite books. tolerant, they have had to put up with a great deal, their branches continually lopped for fuel and fodder. ‘What would they think?’ I ask myself on many an occasion. The banyan tree was a world in itself, populated with small beasts and large insects. ‘What would they like me to do?’ and I do what I think they would approve of most! While the leaves were still pink and tender, they would be visited by the delicate map butterfly, who committed her eggs to their care. The ‘honey’ on the leaves - an edible Well, it’s nice to have someone to turn to . . . smear—also attracted the little striped squirrels, who soon grew used to my presence in the tree and became quite bold, accepting peanuts from my hand. Red-headed The leaves are a fresh pale green in the spring rain. I can look at the trees from my parakeets swarmed about early in the mornings. window - look down on them almost, because the window is on the first floor of the cottage, and the hillside runs at a sharp angle into the ravine. I do nearly all my At the height of the monsoon, the banyan was like an orchestra pit with the musicians writing at this window seat. Whenever I look up, the trees remind me that they are constantly tuning up. Birds, insects and squirrels expressed their joy at the termination there. They are my best critics. As long as I am aware of their presence, I can try to of the hot weather and the cool quenching relief of the monsoon. A toy flute in my avoid the trivial and the banal. hands, I would try adding my shrill piping to theirs. But they thought poorly of my musical ability, for, whenever I piped, the birds and the insects maintained a pained Notes on My Favourite Trees and puzzled silence.

Dehra was a good place for trees, and Grandfather’s house was surrounded by several The branches were thick with scarlet figs. These berries were not fit for human kinds - peepal, neem mango, jackfruit, papaya and the ancient banyan. Some of them consumption, but the many birds that gathered in the tree - gossipy rosy pastors, were planted by Grandfather and grew up with me. quarrelsome mynas, cheerful bulbuls and coppersmiths, and sometimes a raucous, bullying crow—feasted on them. And when night fell, and the birds rested, the dark There were two kinds of trees that were of special interest to me - trees that were good flying foxes flapped heavily about the tree, chewing and munching as they clambered for climbing, and trees that provided fruit. over the branches.

The jackfruit tree had both these qualities. The fruit itself - the largest in the world One of my favourite trees in Dehra was the jamun, also known as the Java plum. Its - grew only on the trunk and main branches. It was not my favourite fruit, and I purple astringent fruit ripened during the rains, and then I would join the gardener’s preferred it cooked as a vegetable. But the tree was large and leafy and easy to climb. young son in its branches, and we would feast like birds on the smooth succulent fruit The peepal was a good tree to sit beneath on hot days. Its heart-shaped leaves, until our lips and cheeks were stained a bright purple. sensitive to the slightest breeze, would flip gently when the clouds stood still and not another tree witnessed the least movement in the air. There is a peepal tree in every After I moved to Mussoorie in my thirties, I lived for many years in a cottage at 7000 Indian village, and it is common to see a farmer, tired at the end of an afternoon’s toil feet in the Garhwal Himalayas. I was fortunate in having a big window that opened in the fields, being lulled to sleep by the rustling of its leaves. out on the forest, so that the trees were almost within my reach. Had I jumped, I should have landed safely in the arms of an oak or chestnut. A banyan tree, as old as the town of Dehra itself, grew behind our house. Its spreading branches, which hung to the ground and took root again, formed a number of twisting The incline of the hill was such that my first floor window opened on what must, I passageways which gave me endless pleasure. I could hide myself in its branches, suppose, have been the second floor. I never made the jump, but the big silver-haired

121 122 langurs, with long swishing tails, often leapt from the trees on to the corrugated tin Some sounds I could not recognize at the time. They were strange night sounds that roof and made enough noise to disturb the bats sleeping in the space between the roof I now know as the sounds of the trees themselves, scratching their limbs in the dark, and ceiling. shifting a little, flexing their fingers. Great trees of the mountains, they know me well. They know my face in the window, they see me watching them, watching them grow, Standing on its own was a walnut tree, and truly, this was a tree for all seasons. In listening to their secrets, bowing my head before their outstretched arms and seeking winter its branches were bare, and smooth and straight and round like the arms of a their benediction. woman in a painting by Jamini Roy. In spring each branch produced a hard bright spear of new leaves. By mid-summer the entire tree was in leaf, and towards the end Sometimes, there would be a strange silence, and I would see the moon coming up, of the monsoon the walnuts, encased in their green jackets, had reached maturity. and two distant deodars in perfect silhouette. Then the jackets began to split, revealing the hard black shell of the walnuts. Inside the shell was the nut itself, shaped rather like the human brain. (No wonder the No tree lover, even if he or she is a city dweller, can ignore the sal and the mahua, two ancients prescribed walnuts for headaches!) of the most splendid and most valuable of our trees.

I went among the trees on my hillside often, acknowledging their presence with a The sal can be grown in a city, but it does not like being alone; it is much happier touch of my hand against their trunks - the walnut’s smooth and polished; the pine’s amongst its own kind in the forests that cover the moist foothills and plateau lands patterned and whorled; the oak’s rough and gnarled, full of experience. The oak had of northern and central India. It is a valuable timbre tree, and in northern India most been there the longest, and the wind had bent its upper branches and twisted a few, so of the wood used in buildings comes from the sal. But it is not only the wood that is that it looked shaggy and undistinguished. It was a good tree for the privacy of birds, useful. When tapped, the sal yields a large quantity of resin, which is burnt as incense its crooked branches spreading out with no particular effect; and sometimes the tree in Hindu religious ceremonies. The resin is also used to caulk boats and ships. The seemed uninhabited until there was a whirring sound, as of a helicopter approaching, large, shiny leaf is sometimes put to good use too. The Santals of gather fresh and a party of long tailed blue magpies shot out of the tree and streamed across the sal leaves daily, and use them as plates or as drinking cups. When fitted cleverly into forest glade. one another, the leaves make excellent plates for holding dal and rice, while one large sal leaf, twisted round to form a hollow, will hold water quite effectively. After the monsoon, when the dark red berries had ripened on the hawthorn, this pretty tree was visited by green pigeons, the kokla birds of Garhwal, who clambered The leaf is used for building too: not by men, but by ants! The nest of the red ant upside-down among the fruit-laden twigs. And during winter, a white-capped redstart consists of a mass of green or dead sal leaves struck together with a sort of gum which perched on the bare branches of the wild pear tree and whistled cheerfully. He had the adult ant extracts from the young ant grubs. If you examine one of these nests come to winter in the garden. (do not disturb it!) you will find it humming with ant life. But do not try making pets of these ants; they are as aggressive as the big bees, and bite quite fiercely, as many The pines grew on the next hill - the chir, the Himalayan blue pine, and the long- a shikari has known to his discomfort when he has brushed against a nest when out leaved pine - but there was a small blue one a little way below my cottage, and hunting on an elephant. sometimes I sat beneath it to listen to the wind playing softly in its branches. Opening the window at night, I usually had something to listen to, the mellow whistle Another insect inhabiting the sal tree is the cicada. You may have heard it singing of the pygmy owlet, or the cry of a barking deer which had scented the proximity of away through the long hot weather and the rains. One cicada is shrill enough; a forest a panther. full of singing cicadas is like an orchestra tuning up, each musician trying out a different tune. Even the birds are shocked into silence.

123 124 The sal takes the place of the peepal among the tribes of central India, and when the changing from white to brown. The mahua is often eaten by itself, but sometimes sal tree blossoms in March a festival called the Bahbonga is held. During marriages, two seeds and rice are mixed with it to improve the flavour. The mahua is first boiled; the poles, one of bamboo, the other of sal wood, are set up in the marriage shed and these sal seeds, which have already been dried in the sun and roasted, are then added with are anointed with oil and turmeric. If one of the couple is unwilling to go through a small quantity of rice. with the marriage, he or she may take a leaf of the sal and tear it in two. Wild animals, particularly bears, are fond of the flowers of the mahua, but no one, There is a tradition that at the time of the Buddha’s birth, his mother stretched out her human or animal, has to climb the tree to gather them. The tree blooms at night, and hand to hold a branch of a sal tree, and was delivered of her child. Sal trees are also the flowers fall to the ground at dawn. said to have rendered homage to the Buddha at his death by letting their flowers fall on him out of season, and bending their branches to shade him. The Gentle Banyan

The beautiful mahua is another forest tree that plays an important part in the lives of Just as tall men are often the most gentle, so are big trees the most friendly. The the tribal people. The flowers of the mahua can be eaten, raw or cooked, and are an banyan is probably the biggest and friendliest of all our trees. important item of the food of the Gonds and other tribes in central and western India, particularly in time of drought when rice is scarce. In fact, the poorer people depend We don’t see many banyan trees in our cities nowadays. These trees like to have almost entirely upon the mahua crop. plenty of space in which to spread themselves out, but in our overcrowded cities, where there is barely enough living space for people, banyan trees don’t have much From the seeds of the mahua, an oil is extracted which can be used for lighting as of a chance. After all, a full-grown banyan takes up as large an area as a three-storeyed well as for cooking (as a substitute for ghee). Oil from the seeds is also used in the apartment building! Of course, many parks have banyan trees. And every village has manufacture of soap. at least one.

The mahua tree bursts into full bloom at the very beginning of the hot weather, The banyan has, what are called, ‘aerial roots’, that is its branches drop to the ground, when the fortunes of the tribal people are usually rather low. As it is the slack season take root again, and send out more twisting, trailing branches, so that after some among cultivators, the gathering of the mahua blossoms is a welcome task, the whole years the tree forms a forest glade of its own. No wonder, the banyan was chosen to village often turning out to bring in the crop. Sometimes the grass under the mahua represent the matted hair of Shiva! tree is burnt so that the blossoms may be gathered more easily. The women equip themselves with baskets, piling them one on top of the other on their heads, and the The aerial roots of the banyan are like pillars supporting a great palace. If you destroy children carry brooms so that after all the blossoms have been gathered the ground the pillars, the palace will fall, and so will the banyan, because its main trunk isn’t can be cleared in readiness for the next fall. very deeply rooted. So naturally it needs plenty of space in which to put out its supporting roots. Tiny gardens and busy roadsides won’t do. Nor should the tree be During the short period - only about fifteen days - that the mahua blossoms fall, the planted too close to your house: you might find it growing through your bedroom villagers practically live in the jungle, the men carrying away the crop as fast as the wall! women and children can collect it. It is always cool, dark and shady beneath the banyan. And it is a good tree for Laid out to dry on a smooth bare patch of ground that has been especially cleared climbing. You can get up amongst its branches without much difficulty, and there is and prepared, the blossoms become quite dry and shrink to half their normal size, no danger of falling off. It is also one of the most comfortable trees to sit in. You can

125 126 lean against its broad trunk and read a book, without any fear of being disturbed, for These lines by George Morris could well be applied to the friendly banyan: you will be completely hidden by the broad, glossy leaves. Woodman, spare that tree! The banyan is also very hospitable. Apart from boys and girls, it attracts a large Touch not a single bough! number of visitors - birds, squirrels, insects, flying foxes - and many of these In youth it sheltered me, interesting creatures actually live in the tree which is full of dark, private corners And I’ll protect it now. suitable for a variety of tenants. The banyan is rather like a hotel or boarding house in which a number of different families live next door to each other without interfering The Tree of Wisdom very much in each other’s business. In some ways peepal trees are great show-offs. Even when there is no breeze, their The banyan belongs to the fig family, and, in India all the figs - the best known of beautiful leaves spin like tops, determined to attract your attention and invite you which is the peepal - are held sacred. The Akshaya Vata, the ‘undying’ banyan tree at into their shade. And not only do they send down currents of cool air, but their long the sacred confluence of the rivers at Allahabad, is the subject of many legends, and slender tips are also constantly striking together to make a sound like the pattering still attracts millions of pilgrims. It was first described by Huen Tsang, the Chinese of raindrops. pilgrim, who visited India over a thousand years ago. No wonder the rishis of old chose to sit and meditate under these trees. And it was A group of three sacred trees known as tentar, ‘triad’ - a banyan, a peepal and a paakar beneath a peepal that Gautama Buddha gained enlightenment. This tree came to be planted together - is especially sacred, and is known as Harsankari, ‘the chair of Hari called the Bodhi, the ‘tree of wisdom’. (Shiva)’. To the Hindus, the peepal is especially sacred. Its roots, it is believed, represent In the banyan is known as the ‘bar’, in Tamil, the ‘ala’. But how did it get its , its bark , its branches Shiva. ‘As the wide-spreading peepal tree is English name? Well, it seems that the first Europeans who came to India noticed contained in a small seed,’ says the Vishnu Purana, ‘so is the whole universe contained that the tree was a favourite with the banias, the Hindu merchant class, who used to in Brahma.’ gather beneath it for worship or business. So they gave it the name ‘banian’, which later became banyan. In rural areas, when the new moon falls on a Monday, the peepal is still worshipped by women, who pour water on its trunk, and lay at its roots a copper coin and Lest you should feel that the banyan is a magnificent giant of little or no value to man, sweetmeats. it should be remembered that its wood, which is tough and elastic, has for centuries been used for making tent poles and yokes for bullock-carts, while its leaves and It is said to be dangerous to lie or cheat beneath a peepal tree, and sometimes to tease twigs have always been a favourite snack with the elephants. shopkeepers they are told that they ought not to plant one in a bazaar. All the same, there are plenty of peepal trees in our bazaars. It is a tree that grows wherever its seed Avenues of banyan trees are not as common as they used to be, and roadside banyans falls; it will take root in a wall or on a rooftop - or even in the fork of another tree if can often be seen with their beautiful supporting roots cut off - a sad spectacle. No given the chance. As its roots are quite capable of pushing through bricks and mortar, other tree provides so much cool, refreshing shade on a hot summer’s day, and for it is best to plant it some distance away from buildings. this reason, if for no other, this noble tree deserves our love and care. No other tree has a leaf which tapers to such a perfect point as the peepal. When it

127 128 rains, you can see the water drip from the points. Water runs off more easily from Garden of a Thousand Trees a point than from a blunt end, and the sooner a leaf dries the better it is for the tree. No one in his right mind would want to chop down a mango tree. Every mango tree, The leaf is beautiful, and has been likened to the perfect male physique. From the even if it grows wild, is generous with its juicy fruit, known sometimes as ‘the nectar stalk (the human neck) the edges of the leaf run squarely out on either side (the of the gods’, and sometimes as the ‘king of fruits’. You can eat ripe mangoes fresh shoulders) and then curve round inwards to end in a finely pointed tail (the waist), so from the tree; you can eat them in pickles or chutneys or jams; you can eat them that the suggestion is of a square, broad torso upon a narrow waist - a body such as flattened out and dried, as in aam papad; you can drink the juice with milk as in we see in pictures of . ‘mango fool’; you can even pound the kernel into flour and use it as a substitute for wheat. And there are over a hundred different varieties of the mango, each with its While the chief occupants of the banyan are various birds and insects, the peepal is own distinctive flavour. said to be the residence of a wide variety of ghosts and mischievous spirits. The most mischievous of these is the Munjia. He lives in lonely peepal trees, and rushes out at But in praising the fruit, let us not forget the tree, for it is one of the stateliest trees tongas, bullock carts and buses, trying his best to upset them! Our grandmothers still in India, its tall, spreading branches a familiar sight throughout the country, from the advise us not to yawn when passing under a peepal tree. Should you yawn, it is best lower slopes of the Himalayas to Cape Comorin. to cover your mouth with your hand, or snap your fingers in front of it. ‘Otherwise,’ says Grandmother, ‘the Munjia will rush down your throat and completely ruin your In Gujarat, on the night of the seventh of the month of Savan (July–August), a young digestion!’ mango tree is planted near the house and worshipped by the womenfolk to protect their children from disease. Sometimes a post of mango wood is set up when Ganesh Peepal trees have very long lives. There are some ancient peepals in Hardwar is worshipped. which are even older than the present town probably as old as the eleventh-century Mayadevi temple. A peepal tree taken from India to Sri Lanka in 288 BC is still alive If you live anywhere in the plains of northern India, you will often have seen a grove and flourishing. Records of its growth were carefully preserved over the centuries, of giant mango trees, sometimes appearing like an oasis in the midst of the vast, flat and it must now be over 2,000 years old. countryside. Beneath the trees you may find a well and a small temple. It is here that the tired, dusty farmer sits down to rest and eat his midday chapatti, following it with To fell a peepal tree was once looked upon as a great sin. On the other hand, anyone a draught of cold water from the well. If you join him and ask him who planted the who planted a peepal was said to receive the blessings of generations to come. mango grove, he will not be able to tell you; it was there when he was a boy, and probably when his father was a boy too. Some mango groves are very, very old. Let us also earn the blessings of future generations by planting not only more peepal trees - which are quite capable of looking after themselves - but all kinds of trees for Have you heard of the Garden of a Thousand Trees? Probably not. But you must shade and shelter, fruit and flower, beauty and utility. have heard of the town of Hazaribagh in Bihar. Well, a huge mango grove containing over 1,000 trees—some of which are still there—was known as ‘hazari’, and around Can you imagine a country without any trees, a country that has become one vast these trees a village grew, spreading in time into the modern town of Hazaribagh, ‘ desert? Well, that is what could easily happen here if we keep cutting our trees and Garden of a Thousand Trees’. Anyway, that’s the story you will hear from the oldest forests without bothering to grow others in their place. inhabitants of the town. And even today, the town is almost hidden in a garden of trees: mango and neem, sal and tamarind.

129 130 All are welcome in a mango grove. But during the mango season, when the trees are DISCUSSION POINTS, EXERCISES AND ESSAY TOPICS in fruit, you enter the grove at your own peril! At this time of the year it is watched over by a fierce chowkidar, whose business is to drive away any mischievous children who creep into the grove in the hope of catching him asleep and making off with a few juicy mangoes. The chowkidar is a busy man. Even before the mangoes ripen, he has to battle not only with the village urchins, but also with raiding parties of emerald-green parrots, who swarm all over the trees, biting deep into the green fruit. Sometimes he sits under a tree in the middle of the grove, pulling a rope which makes a large kerosene tin rattle in the branches. He can try shouting too, but his voice can’t compete with the screams of the parrots. They wheel in circles round the grove and, spreading their tails, settle on the topmost branches.

Even when there are no mangoes, you will find parrots in the grove, because during their breeding season, their favourite nesting places are the holes in the gnarled trunks of old mango trees. DESCRIPTION Other birds, including the blue jay and the little green coppersmith, favour the mango grove for the same reason. And sometimes you may spot a small owl peering at you from its hole halfway up the trunk of an old tree. Discussion Points

1.What are the images that you recall most vividly from the essays in this Reader? Why do you think the author succeeded in making you visualise that image?

2.Do you think a nature writer should carry a camera, or does it interfere with observation?

3.If you were to describe a tree, where would you begin - with the leaves, the trunk or the roots?

4.In what ways is a nature writer different from a landscape painter, and how are they similar?

5.In Jungle Lore, Jim Corbett literally takes you, his reader, on a walk through the forests of the Terai. Is this an effective method of describing the forest? Why or why not?

131 132 Writing Exercises DEFINITION

1.Find a simple, natural object, like a leaf or a stone, and list as many physical characteristics (colour, shape, size, etc.) as you can observe about that object. When you have listed 10 different characteristics, exchange your object and list with Discussion Points someone else in the class and try to observe 10 more characteristics about each 1.How do you define the word ‘nature’? Can there be more than one definition? other’s object, which haven’t been listed already. Compare your lists after you finish. Remember, you can pick the object up and turn it over. 2.How does a dictionary definition of the word ‘tiger’ differ from the way in which K. Ullas Karanth defines a tiger in his essay ‘Why Save Tigers?’? 2.Write a short paragraph of about 100 words describing the view from your bedroom window. Do not use any adjectives or adverbs but try to make the description as 3.In what ways do common and scientific names define a species? visual as possible through your choice of nouns and verbs, as well as similes and metaphors. 4.Why is it important for a nature writer to clearly and precisely define what he or she describes? (For example: In ‘The Whistling Hunter’ why is it necessary for A.J.T. 3.Think of an imaginary bird or animal, like a dragon or a phoenix, then list 10 Johnsingh to tell us that wild dogs have 40 teeth while domesticated dogs have 42?) questions you would ask to help identify this species.

5.What are some common misinterpretations or misconceptions about nature that can Essay Topics be corrected through a clear definition of facts?

1.Go on a walk for 20 minutes, through a park or a forest, and explain the route you followed by describing the different trees, plants, flowers and other natural objects Writing Exercises you observed. Your reader should be able to follow the same route by recognising 1.Pick five different species of insects and define them each as a verb. Thenuse these natural landmarks. each verb in a sentence. (For example, a ‘mosquito’. Definition: to move about in an agitated manner while making an annoying buzzing noise. Sentence: My little 2.Describe a specific kind of tree (neem, oak, peepal) from the perspective of a bird. brother mosquitos around the house when he comes home from school.) 3.Describe a wild animal that you have observed in its natural habitat (it could be 2.Define an environmental problem, beginning with a general subject and moving a rhinoceros, a pangolin or a mongoose) and explain how it has adapted to this to more specific consequences. (For example: Pollution - Industrial Effluents and environment both in terms of its physical characteristics and behavior. Sewage - Toxic Chemicals in the Ganga - Endangered Status of the Ganges River Dolphin.)

3.Choose a familiar word related to nature (for example: evolution, conservation or drought) and define it in a paragraph of about 100 words, using specific examples from your knowledge, to help illustrate the word.

133 134 Essay Topics CLASSIFICATION

1.Define an ocean, beginning with the general and moving to the specific. Discussion Points 2.Chose a reptile or amphibian and then describe or define it by telling your reader what it isn’t rather than what it is. (For example, a cobra does not have wings or feet 1.What is the difference between the classification of species and the classification of and isn’t found above an altitude of 2,000 metres.) music videos from Bollywood films? 3.Explain which phrase is a better definition - ‘Climate Change’ or ‘Global Warming’? 2.What categories does Salim Ali use to classify Himalayan birds? Would these be similar to classifications for birds in the Alps or the Rocky Mountains?

3.If you were to classify the essays and extracts in this Reader, how would you organise them into separate categories?

4.Classification is the direct result of observation. If you were to take field notes on different species of butterflies, what characteristics would you focus on in order to classify them?

5.Imagine that you have just discovered a new species of fish. How would you go about classifying it and giving it a name?

Writing Exercises

1.During a half hour walk, list as many different natural objects or species that you encounter. If you know the name write it down, or simply describe it in a few words (for example: brown snail shell, or compound leaf with serrated edges). After you finish your walk, sit down and reorganise your list into categories. Do some species or objects fit in more than one category?

2.On a piece of notepaper, create three columns, each with a heading that denotes a particular order of nature (i.e., mammals, birds, trees). Then list 10 species under each heading. After completing your lists, number each of them according to which are the most common species in India ( 1 = most common, 10 = rarest).

135 136 3.Using the categories of ‘Endangered,’ ‘Vulnerable,’ and ‘Least Threatened’ make COMPARISION AND CONTRAST a list of birds and animals that you can identify, placing them under the appropriate categories.

Discussion Points Essay Topics 1.Is it easier to compare two animals that are virtually identical, such as a wild 1.The expression ‘Eco-Friendly’ has become a catchword for many different projects, buffalo and a domesticated buffalo, or to compare two very different animals, such institutions and businesses, not all of which live up to the name. Write an essay as a mouse and an elephant? that evaluates the different ways in which ‘Eco-Friendly’ has been interpreted or misinterpreted, giving specific examples. 2.Choose five different species of reptiles and create metaphors for these by comparing them to modern forms of transport or technology. 2.If you knew that a catastrophe was about to occur on earth that would wipe out all living creatures, and you had an opportunity to protect twelve different species to 3.Over the past century, most of the forest cover in India has disappeared. How would repopulate our planet, which would you choose and why? you compare the physical features (forests, rivers, mountains, etc.) on the map of India from a hundred years ago to the same map today? 3.Recalling a journey you have taken, by bus, car or train, describe how the landscape, including plants, trees, animals, birds, etc., changed as you travelled from one place 4.What are the similarities and differences between a park in a city and a natural to another. forest?

5.Ruskin Bond describes a number of different trees in his essay. How does he compare and contrast these various species? Does he make his comparisons directly or indirectly?

Writing Exercises

1.Take three different leaves and trace each of their outlines on a blank sheet of paper. Then compare the different shapes, listing the characteristics that are similar and those that are different.

2.Divide a sheet of paper into two columns. Then choose two seasons (winter, spring, summer, monsoon or autumn) and write these at the top of each column. List the differences that occur in your immediate environment, between these seasons. (For example: if you chose winter and summer, you might write ‘short days’ for one and ‘long days’ for the other.)

137 138 3.Imagine what the Yeti or Abominable Snowman must be like and list all of the NARRATION differences and similarities between this unknown species and yourself.

Essay Topics Discussion Points 1.Compare and contrast a live tiger in the forest to the skin, bones and teeth that are recovered from poachers and smugglers. 1.What are the elements in a good story that make it interesting and compelling? What are the aspects of nature that make it an interesting and compelling subject? 2.Choose two of the essays in this reader and compare the subject, style and approach that each author has taken. (The essays can be either similar or different but you 2.If you were to write a film script based on a specific species or event in nature, what should describe what they have in common, as well as the differences between them.) story would you choose and why? What would make it visually exciting for your viewers? How would you create suspense in your film? What would be the first and 3.Choose three different species of animals, birds or insects and compare their life last scenes in your film? cycles to the life cycle of human beings. Which of them lives the longest? How are they born? How do they mature? 3.There are many nature shows on television. Do they tell true stories or are these narratives adapted and changed to catch the interest of an audience? Are some nature programs more realistic than others? Are viewers sometimes given the wrong impressions about nature?

4.Billy Arjan Singh narrates the process by which he founded Dudhwa Sanctuary. Why do you think he chose to tell us this story?

5.Which story would you rather tell, one about evolution, or one about extinction? Why?

Writing Exercises

1.Verbally describe an event in your life, which could be titled ‘Me vs Nature’. Take no more than five minutes to tell this story. Then ask your audience: Did they believe you? What was missing? Are you the hero in the story or the villain? How different would it be if you had written it down instead of telling the story?

2.Most stories have a beginning, a middle and an end? If you were to pick an environmental problem or crisis (i.e., the presence of domesticated cows and buffaloes in wildlife sanctuaries or illegal quarries in the Aravalli Range), what would be the

139 140 beginning, middle and end of your story? PERSUASION

3.Describe a fictional character who interacts with nature (for example: a woodcutter, an ornithologist, a scuba diver). List everything you can about this person - appearance, motives, emotions, relationships, education, morals, etc. Then decide which aspect Discussion Points of this character would be revealed at the beginning of a story, and what would you save until the end. 1.When presenting issues about conserving nature, which is a better medium for debate: public speaking or writing? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the spoken and written word, when it comes to presenting an argument? Essay Topics 2.When you are writing a persuasive essay about a topic like the construction of 1.Write a hunting story from the perspective of an animal that is being pursued by a large dams, how do include facts that might contradict your argument? (For example: poacher? A dam may have displaced 25,000 people who were living in the forest without electricity or running water, but it now provides electricity and regular water supply 2.Write a story about water. You can choose whatever types of water it might contain for 500,000 people, including those who were displaced.) - glacial melt, salt water in the Bay of Bengal, rain, floods, etc. Remember, the challenge will be to hold your readers’ attention and make them want to keep reading 3.What are the kinds of visual images that convince or persuade you on a controversial until the end. subject? (For example: Does a photograph of baby elephant make you want to protect that species, or a photograph of an adult elephant that has been electrocuted by 3.Write a science-fiction story in which human beings face extinction, while other villagers protecting their fields?) species on earth survive. 4.Madhusudan Katti’s essay ‘Are Warblers Less Important than Tigers?’ argues in favor of studying and protecting even the least flamboyant species. Do you think the question posed in the title is effective? Would it have been more convincing if the author had chosen to compare peacocks to tigers, rather than warblers?

5.Would the world be a better place if certain species were exterminated? Head Lice? Sharks?

Writing Exercises

1.Pick five controversial topics related to nature and express each problem in the form of a question, which can either be supported or refuted. Which side of the issue would you want to argue? Which would be easier or more difficult to defend?

141 142 2.Choose three different kinds of readers (for example: a 10 year old student, a AUTHORS Supreme Court justice, a field biologist). Then decide on a subject that you will debate (for example: banning petrol and diesel in favour of CNG, for all transport vehicles in India). Create three separate columns for each potential reader, then list the elements of your argument that would be most convincing for each.

3.Natural disasters, like tsunamis or earthquakes, cannot be blamed on man. However, list 10 precautions that human beings can take to reduce the consequences of these events.

Essay Topics

1.Agree or disagree with this statement: Zoos are essential for the survival of wild animals.

2.Forest dwellers, who have lived in the jungles of India for generations, often have traditional knowledge about medicinal plants. Should they be allowed to collect and market these plants from inside the boundaries of a protected forest? Bill Aitken is Scottish by birth, a naturalized Indian by choice. He studied 3.Write a satirical story about how you would track down the worst environmental comparative religion at Leeds University and then hitch-hiked to India in 1959. He offenders by following their carbon footprints? has lived in Himalayan ashrams, worked as secretary to a Maharani, freelanced under his middle name (Liam McKay) and undertaken miscellaneous excurisions – from Nanda Devi to Sabarimala. Aitken has written on travel and tourism for newspapers and magazines in India and abroad. His books include The Nanda Devi Affair, Seven Sacred Rivers and Travels by a Lesser Line.

Salim Ali (1896 – 1987) was India’s preeminent ornithologist and naturalist. Known as the “birdman of India”, Salim Ali was among the first Indians to conduct systematic bird surveys across India and his bird books helped motivate a scientific approach to natural history and conservation. He became the key figure behind the Bombay Natural History Society after 1947 and used his personal influence to garner government support for the organization, create the Bharatpur bird sanctuary (Keoladeo National Park) and prevent the destruction of what is now the Silent Valley National Park. He was awarded India’s second highest civilian honour, the Padma Vibhushan in 1976.

143 144 Prerna Singh Bindra is one of India’s leading environmental journalists and travel in many reputed scientific journals in India and abroad. His books include The Way of writers. She has worked for various newspapers and magazines such as The Pioneer and the Tiger and A View From The Machan. He was awarded the prestigious J. Paul Getty Darpan, where she has documented the ongoing crisis of India’s wildlife. Her books Award for Conservation Leadership in 2007. include The King and I: Travels in Tigerland. Madhusudan Katti is an evolutionary ecologist who discovered birds as an Ruskin Bond was born in Kasauli and grew up in Dehradun and Shimla. His first undergraduate after growing up a nature-oblivious urban kid near Bombay. As a novel Room on the Roof received the John Llewellyn Rhys Memorial Prize in 1957. graduate student at the Wildlife Institute of India and the University of California, Sand Since then he has written over thirty books for children, as well as a hundred short Diego, he went chasing after vanishing wildernesses and returned to the city grown up stories, essays and novellas including Vagrants in the Valley and Flight of Pigeons. In as a reconciliation ecologist! He studies ecological and evolutionary processes in more 1992 he received the Sahitya Akademi Award for English writing in India. Ruskin Bond or less human dominated ecosystems with the goal of applying our understanding of lives with his adopted family in Mussoorie. these processes towards reconciling biodiversity conservation with human development. He holds a position as an Associate Professor of Vertebrate Ecology in California State Jim Corbett (1875-1955) was born in Nainital and lived and worked in India until University, Fresno. 1947. For twenty years he was employed as a contractor with the Indian railways and served in both World Wars, training soldiers in jungle warfare and survival. His first M. Krishnan (1913-1996) was an environmentalist, photographer, artist, literary passion was the forests of India and he became a celebrated hunter and naturalist, best scholar and essayist. Through carefully crafted images and words, he explored wildlife known for killing man-eating tigers and leopards but also recognized as one of the and ecology with precision, insight and humour. Most of his photographs and writing foremost authorities on Indian wildlife. Corbett began writing late in life and published appeared in popular magazines and newspapers such as The Statesman and The Illustrated a number of books describing his experiences in the jungle, including Man-Eaters of Weekly of India. He published two books Jungles and Backyard and Nights and Days. Kumaon, Jungle Lore and My India. Some of M. Krishnan’s most memorable writings were collected posthumously in Nature’s Spokesman: M. Krishnan and Indian Wildlife edited by Ramachandra Guha. Anita Desai was born and educated in India. She now lives in the United States where she is professor emeritus at MIT. She has received numerous awards for her fiction, Dhriti K. Lahiri-Choudhury was Professor and Head, Department of English, which includes the novels Baumgartner’s Bombay, Clear Light of Day, Fasting,Feasting, Rabindra Bharati University, Calcutta. In his parallel life as an elephant specialist, and The Zig ZagWay. Her most recent book is a collection of three novellas, The Artist he is a member of the Asian Elephant Specialist Group of the International Union for of Disappearance. Conservation of Nature (IUCN). He was a member of the task force outlining India’s ‘Project Elephant,’ and, later, its coordinator for eastern and north-eastern India. His A.J.T. Johnsingh retired as Dean, Faculty of Wildlife Sciences, Wildlife Institute of published work on elephants includes The Great Indian Elephant Book and Hathi O India. He has written widely on wildlife, including the book On Jim Corbett’s Trail. He Banjangaler Katha. has been given the 2004 Distinguished Service Award for Government by the Society for Conservation Biology, which publishes the prestigious journal Conservation Biology. Anuradha Roy was educated in Calcutta and Cambridge. She has worked as a publisher and a journalist and is now an editor at Permanent Black. She was the K. Ullas Karanth is a Senior Conservation Scientist with the New York-based winner of the Picador-Outlook Non-fiction Prize in 2004 and her first novel, An Atlas Wildlife Conservation Society and the Director of its Indian Programme. He is a of Impossible Longing, was shortlisted for the Crossword Prize. Her second novel, The Scientific Fellow of the Zoological Society of London and serves on the boards of WWF- Folded Earth, was published in 2011. India and the Ranthambhore Foundations. His research findings have been published

145 146 Billy Arjan Singh (1917 – 2010) was a hunter turned conservationist and an ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS author of books on wildlife. After serving in the Indian army, he acquired forested tracts of land in the Terai region bordering Nepal and settled down to a life of farming and wildlife preservation. At Tiger Haven, his estate bordering , Billy Arjan Singh experimented with reintroducing captive tigers and leopards into the wild. In 1976, he was awarded the World Wildlife Fund’s Gold Medal, for Special thanks to Maninder Kohli of the Himalayan Environment Trust for his his conservation work, which included the creation of Dudhwa National Park. enthusiastic assistance and support for this publication.

Stephen Alter is the author of fifteen books of fiction and non-fiction. His nature The editor wishes to thank Ravi Singh, Secretary General and CEO of WWF-India writing includes Sacred Waters: A Pilgrimage to the Many Sources of the Ganga and and Mita Nangia Goswami, Director of Environment Education at WWF-India, Dr. Elephas Maximus: A Portrait of the Indian Elephant. As a writer-in-residence, he Jonathan Long, Principal of Woodstock School, K.Krishnan Kutty, Director, Hanifl has taught creative writing for more than eighteen years, at the East West Center in Centre for Outdoor and Environmental Study, and Winterline Foundation for their Honololu, Hawaii, the American University in Cairo, Egypt and at MIT in Cambridge, support of this and related projects. Massachusetts. He has received Guggenheim and Fulbright fellowships. Founding director of Mussoorie Writers, Stephen Alter was born in Mussoorie, India, where he Permission to reprint the following essays and extracts is gratefully acknowledged. now lives and writes. For further details see www.mussooriewriters.com “Outdoors” by Anita Desai from The Artist of Disappearance pp. 101-103. (Sources for Authors Notes include publisher’s biographies and Wikipedia entries) Reproduced by permission of the author.

“Five Encounters” by M. Krishnan from Nature’s Spokesman. pp. 73-81. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press, New Delhi.

“Are Warblers Less Important Than Tigers?” by Madhusudan Katti. Reproduced by permission of the author.

“The Whistling Hunter” by A.J.T. Johnsingh from On Jim Corbett’s Trail pp. 30-49. Reproduced by permission of Permanent Black, New Delhi.

“From The Folded Earth” by Anuradha Roy from The Folded Earth pp. 16-17. Reproduced by permission of Hachette India, New Delhi.

“Why Save Tigers?” by K. Ullas Karanth from The Way Of The Tiger pp. 1-7. Reproduced by permission of Universities Presses, .

“Escape From The Sanctuary” by Bill Aitken from The Nanda Devi Affair pp. 50- 58. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books India, New Delhi.

147 148 “The Saga of Harjit” by Dhriti K. Lahiri-Choudhury from A Trunk Full of Tales NOTES pp. 46-50. Reproduced by permission of Permanent Black, New Delhi.

“The Enchanted Forest” by Prerna Singh Bindra from The King and I pp. 80-87. Reproduced by permission of Rupa Books, New Delhi.

“Jungle Lore” by Jim Corbett from The Second Jim Corbett Omnibus, pp.137- 162. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press India, New Delhi.

“The Himalaya in Indian Ornithology” by Salim Ali from A Bird’s Eye View pp. 156-176. Reproduced by permission of Permanent Black, New Delhi.

“Establishing the Sanctuary” by Billy Arjan Singh from Watching India’s Wildlife, pp. 23- 32. Reproduced by permission of Oxford University Press India, New Delhi.

“Trees” by Ruskin Bond from Ruskin Bond’s Book of Nature pp.120-138. Reproduced by permission of Penguin Books, India, New Delhi.

The illustrations were reproduced from the publications below:

Sterndale, Robert A. A Natural History of the Mammals of India and Ceylon. London: W. Thacker & Co. 1884 (Reproduced for Project Guttenberg by Ron Swanson): Front cover, pp. 1, 13, 23, 28, 43, 50, 61, 73, 109, 132 and 144.

Whistler, H.Popular Handbook of Indian Birds. London: Gurney and Jackson, 1935: Title page, pp. 11, 40, 66, 90, 120 and Back cover.

149 150 NOTES

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