Ammalu's Ghost - of an incident in the 1930s, by K. Vasudevan

(written in 1978)

From Maymo in Burma, where I was born, to a sleepy village in British Malabar, ten miles from the nearest railway station and without a post office, it was a long march albeit down a slope.  It was a contrasting experience: in culture, socio-religious customs and, in general, civilisation itself.  A typical village life which revolved around the weather, the position of the planets, the astrologer and the temple priest.  The latter had a say in every happening in the village to the point of striking terror in the youngsters.  After all, was he not the one nearest and closest to Lord Siva, the temple deity?  Every major or minor event required an astrologer to select an auspicious day and the precise moment to perform.  Before stepping out of the house, you watched out for the 'shakunam', which made the elders decide if you would venture out, even if it was the act of going to school.  One gradually accepts these regulations, sanctified by submission, and in course of time, falls in line with customs which are absurd to the core. 

The family in later years....

The ritual of visiting relatives, dear and forgotten, near and far, followed our arrival in quick succession.  We were the proud exhibits, two brothers and a sister, wherever we were taken and paraded - the Malayalees of Burmese origin.   

One such visit stands out vividly in my memory.

A gaily decorated double-yoked bullock cart took all of us, one fine auspicious morning - the number of persons that were squeezed inside that contraption would make a Calcutta Sardarjee bus driver green with envy - to a village eight miles away.  It took just three hours of vibrant oscillations and bone-shaking jerks over dusty countryside roads to reach our destination.  Since the index of family bonds is directly related to the number of days stayed with the host, we often parked ourselves wherever we went for at least five to six days.  

This particular visit was to my great grandfather's tharavad - a family conclave under the matriarchal system - consisting of over one hundred and fifty members.  The huge mansion had countless perennially dark rooms and a number of verandahs.  My brother and I had a room for ourselves, but being strangers to the place, I insisted that grannie sleep in the same room.  

Sometime in the stillness of the night I woke up.  I heard soft footsteps and the sobbing of a woman.  Grannie woke up too and, covering my face, told me to go back to sleep.  I closed my eyes, but not my ears!  A few seconds later I distinctly heard a scream followed by a thud and a splash.  When I partially opened my eyes, I saw the Tharavattillamma - the old lady of the house - following the same trail with a nilvilakku - a lighted brass lamp - and muttering something incomprehensible to my ears, more like the prayers of a Burmese monk.  I asked Grannie what it was all about to which she whispered, "It's that mad beggar woman.  Now you go back to sleep."  A mad beggar woman at midnight indeed!

The next day after dusk, a pooja was performed in the Bhagavathi temple - it was a status symbol in those days to have small shrines in the compound for various Gods and Goddesses.  I felt sorry for the handsome fowl that was sacrificed for the Goddess.

The sobs continued to haunt me though I didn't have the courage to tell my elders about it.  Weeks later, I caught dear nanny in one of her reminiscing moods - she is still going strong at 96 - and, in the pretext of trying to understand her parental household - asked about the midnight incident.  At first reluctant, but after much cajoling and a promise to not spread the story around she told me that what I heard was the ghost of Ammalukutty, on her last journey.  

Ammalukutty was around eighteen and in the seventh month of pregnancy when she became the victim of the Odiyan cult.  

Inter-family or succession-to-property rivalry invariably ended in someone resorting to witchcraft, invoking the devils or going to a tribe that specialised in the Odiyan cult.  This cult, I gathered from several sources, is a form of sorcery somewhat similar to the tantric cult and was prevalent in Kerala even during the early part of this century. To settle old scores, men of a particular tribe are hired who, after assuming various animal forms, waylay their victims.  It was believed that the potion which helped them assume the forms they wanted was made out of herbs mixed with the foetus of a first pregnancy. The young mother-to-be was killed, the foetus removed and her womb stuffed with hay and then the body thrown into a well.  That they could attract their victim from a tharavad teeming with inhabitants showed their tremendous ability to cast a spell with their witchcraft and sorcery.  

Every year on that very day, Ammalukutty (or her spirit) repeated the sadistic scenario of her last journey.  Visitors used to be warned of this and the path cleared, but in course of time it ceased to be news.  The old tharavad house was demolished just a decade ago and with that the ghost vanished too.  The remote possibility that I could have come face to face with the sobbing apparition makes me, even now after four decades, shudder involuntarily.  

Footnotes by a diligent son 😇  
Vasu (daddy, uncle or appuppa, depending on who is reading this) wrote this in 1978 shortly after his retirement.  He had begun travelling often to his ancestral home in the villages of Ethanur and Kakkayur to reconnect with folks he had met on rare occasion over the earlier two decades; this story must have been rekindled in one of those conversations.  Though he mentions being born in Maymo in Burma, that seems to be an error; he was born in the beautiful little home of Kootalai in Kakkayur and was taken to Burma as a toddler.  But then, these details hardly matter! 

And a final point: he loved his 'grannie', and she was a remarkable woman with assertion, dignity, a fetching (toothless) smile and a never-say-die spirit (more about that later).  She must have been just about in her early thirties when he was born (that's something to think about; his mother was around fifteen years older than him), so she treated him like her son.  

I remember my great-grandmother or Mutashi (his grannie) with deep fondness.  She passed away in 1980 at the age of 98, leaving an indelible memory of a thin person with bent back and a large vent where the earlobe had once been, and a smile that lit up the lamp of familial bond.  

And, yes, she's the only person I have known (and shared a Britta biscuit with) who lived in the nineteenth century.  

Oodles of Noodles

I am now fully convinced that the most philosophical experience in the greater game of Life is to call Customer Care of anyplace for anything.  When compared to this, spending a month in a cave in the Himalayas is nitrogen-depleted chicken pooh (no, not Winnie.  He was a different kind of Pooh.  Capital P.).

The philosophical experience begins always with: This call may be recorded for quality purposes and for posterity because we get so many jokers with submarine IQ and when Mad magazine is reborn and restores its award-winning section on Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions, we will have a business model wrapped up in bone china (actually, they only say the first part till ‘quality purposes’ and the rest of it is under Conditions Apply). 

Then some auto voice on the phone tells you to wait and begin watching Sholay because all the customer service reps are busy laughing at other customers.  When any customer asks for a refund, you have to wait longer because the whole call centre starts laughing and throwing paper balls and whole-wheat vitamin-enriched Maggi at each other (both of which taste identical without the masala added). 

By the time they take your call, you are at the part where Gabbar is asking for Sanjeev Kumar’s hand (no, not in marriage, you dumbo – watch the movie). Then they say No to you and ask you with fond hope in their voice if there is anything else they can help you with, which gives them a second opportunity to say No and throw paper balls and whole-wheat vitamin enriched Maggi (with real pepper) at each other.

The call always ends with the person telling you that you would soon get a message asking for a rating of their service and that message always reaches you when you are in such a bad mood that the resident cockroach in your kitchen has willingly swallowed boric acid and written out a Will.  

That rating message has got 5 stars and if you know what’s good for you, mark 5 out of 5.  If you are in a Really Rotten Mood, ok, give it a 4.  But anything less and you are in deep trouble.  For example, if you choose a rating of 2 - despite the sagely advice of the worldly wise - three calls will follow to

1 1. Find out what went wrong
2. Find out some more on what went wrong
3. Find out even more on what went wrong

The fourth call is generally because all the three people who called you yesterday have quit Customer Care to join a fintech startup which does Jack pooh but is valued at 300 million (dollars, not cockroaches.  You are not paying attention).

Calls 4 to 6 will follow with these deeply compassionate objectives:

4. Find out what went wrong
5. Find out some more on what went wrong
6. Find out even more on what went wrong

I guess you get the picture (even if you are the kind who asked for a refund).

Of Twins in the Spring

March-April 2023

This is the season of bloom.  Bangalore city has its share of flowers this season – my favourites the Beech Tree (Honge) and large-leaved Mahogany both bearing their own mild, yet distinct fragrance.  In our village though, it’s just the Honge,  taking over from where the Palash (Flame of the Forest) left off.  In a few sunny days, the Laburnum will follow, the profusion of bunches of delicate yellow flowers altering the landscape in a stunning explosion of contrast and colour.   But, for now, Honge rules.

These are the warm days to stroll around and do nothing in particular.  Six years ago, in 2017, at this time of year,  I stood outside the gates of the farm, admiring the carpet of flowers under the two beautiful Honge trees that stood on either side of the narrow path leading to Rama Reddy’s farm,  both heavy with fresh green leaves and a million light-purple flowers.  

And there were a thousand bees as well, buzzing over the gorgeous  flower-carpet and the fragrance was heady yet light; what a moment to be alive! These trees always looked like they were twins, about the same age and girth as each other.  I must have stood there for quite a while, for the sun dropped over the lake and, at length, I turned back and went home. That season, I did this as often as I could and was a better person for it. 

A few months later, one a fine morning in January 2018, I heard a drone, but ignored it for a while, being my usual absent-minded self.  Yet the sound of a crash got me moving – I ran up to the gate just in time to see the last chunk of the trunk of one of the twins being chopped up.  The area around was littered with leaves, broken branches and pieces of the trunk in what can only be described as a cacophony of destruction.  The  stump, jagged and white, stared up at the sky.

Rama Reddy stood there supervising the operation and, seeing the anger on my face, appeared sheepish, making no effort to look up, even as the men with the power-saw went about their job.  “But, why?” I asked him in exasperation, for this tree was outside the entrance to his farm and on a public path.  “I am getting Rs 2000,” he replied truthfully.  There was little one could do, but lament and curse, and make him promise that he’d leave the other twin alone.

So now there was one.

I remember that spring, five years ago, that season of the bloom.  On my visits, I often walked up to the lone twin and looked at the floor beneath the tree in dismay.  For it was bare with a few scattered buds, shorn of the carpet of flowers that I had watched entranced once. The fragrance and the bees were missing.  The tree, I could have sworn, was in mourning.  Or was it revenge as well?  

A few flowers adorned the low canopy, along with young, light-green leaves, and a vigorous breeze made them come alive, yet, like the loner by the path, I missed the twin deeply.  And I wondered if the bees had joined in the mourning by staying away.  I missed them too.

Since then, that tree has been a friend.  Perhaps I am good at commiseration or it just could be that I have a proclivity to vote for the underdog. Or it could be just that I park the car under it and am thankful for the shade.   The tree has been resolute and Rama Reddy - who, I must emphasise, is a nice person - has stuck to his promise, so one makes peace with the Real. 

There is additional consolation too, for the honge trees at Random Rubble have grown to adulthood and are rocking (no credit my way, rest assured), and I would like to think of that - many, near where one had been - as Revenge.  

Random Rubble Revenge sounds good, right?

And the happy end: this year, I am delighted to report, the standing Twin has outdone itself, flowering with the profusion of old, calling in bees of at least three species (and a solitary human).   The fragrance and soft earth, the buzz and bustle of bees and profusion of colour elicit Nostalgia and I sat under the shower of falling flowers, cradling them in my palms and hoping a bee or two would drop in.  

Nostalgia, you conclude, is exactly what it used to bee.

 

Real Heroes Do Not.....

It’s the morning after World Wildlife Day – a happy coincidence – and Hanumanth and I are on a long walk in a gorgeous forest, accompanying two sprightly, agile and knowledgeable forest guards. 

We stop frequently, for there is so much to see and heaps to learn.  A swishing sound to our left?  “That’s the wreathed hornbill,” Lakkiram and Gumbo say in a matter-of-fact way, even as I can hardly curb the urge to go Whoop! (and do a jig maybe).  Moments later, they identify a call as coming from the white throated bulbul, another endemic bird in these parts of the North-east, and one more from the grey peacock pheasant, which, from its photo, must rank among the most exquisite in the rarified world of  avian beauty.  

...and you think you look good in a mirror? 
(Online image)

Raptors, elephants, leopards, tigers, clouded leopards, gaur, barking deer, sambar, marbled cats, serow…this is an enchanted forest. 

The guards are in their elements and identify mushrooms, orchids, shrubs and trees with ease – the Nahor with its fresh red leaves, giant trees of elephant apple (its seed, they say, makes for a super anti-dandruff shampoo), duabanga grandiflora, with its gorgeous flower and a dozen others. 

Duabanga grandiflora
A name richly deserved

Their knowledge combines learning with intuitive understanding and, in a substantial yet understated way, they belong here.  Three days earlier, we had watched in admiration as four forest guards in Manas National Park undertook a controlled burn of a grassland patch to enable fresh growth; they were thirty feet away from a herd of - hold your breath – fifty-four elephants and one busy no-nonsense rhino.    

And forest guards across India do this every day.  They fight fires that, at this moment of summer, could be raging in dry forests of tinder, patrol beats on foot in particularly hazardous territory – one of them was trampled on by an elephant in Bandipur Tiger Reserve a few weeks ago - keep poachers of wildlife and timber at bay with antiquated weapons and raw courage, dissuade noisy, brain-dead tourists from being, well, noisy and brain-dead and monitor the general health of the forest.  As teams they are under-staffed across India, under-equipped, under-paid and, often, under-nourished and they live in the most basic – we should emphasise that: the most basic – conditions, yet they are there, doing their job.   

Real heroes do not wear capes.  

We cross a dried river bed with just a trickle of water flowing through it, and reach our destination: an anti-poaching camp with four guards.  Tang Rooh is the most seasoned one among them and he grins when I ask him to hold my neck for a photo as though I was a poacher he had caught stealing his glass of tea.  His knowledge is immense and we listen with admiration to this reticent, humble man:  when it rains, he says, that trickle turns into a raging torrent and these men are marooned for weeks.  On one such occasion, he laughs, they had the occasional unsettling company of a wild elephant. 

Three heroes, two fawns

Time to show off.....

Half an hour later, the tea has been sipped, a few photographs taken, the small talk done and it’s time for us to leave.  We tell them that we cannot imagine how they are able to do what you do.  And that, to us, each of them is a hero, no less.

Their smiles make our day. 

World Forestry Day March 21^st

 

 

 

Creme de la creme

 
If you ask me (which I know you never will)
What did humans (that’s us) invent best?
I will pretend to think and make up a drill
And then answer the test.
 
“Not planes, not cones, not humour (though witty)
Not phones, not cars (now, don’t be absurd)
Not shaving brushes nor ChatGPT
The answer – yes, you guessed it – is good old curd.”
(ps: the only worthwhile invention after this boon
Was the teaspoon)
 
 
Then I see your look, where you roll up your eyes
There are two reasons why you do
a)    There is incredulous surprise; or
b)   You are like me too!
 
When you have a World-this-day or that
Why not National Lactobacilli Day
It’s fermentation’s superstar brat
DiCaprio, horn ok please.  Now, make way.
 
Vegans – good humans - avoid this delicious stuff
Their lips will never mention the word
They make almond milk into a cream-ish bluff
And label that as Honorary Curd
 
(And I always ask a vegan,
“When you started off, how did you ever beegan?”)
 
Now, this ode to curd will end here
The reason isn’t that I am short of time
The only issue with curd (unlike beer)
Is that it’s a bloody hard word to rhyme.
 
Ps: note that this ditty had not a single blood-curdling pun.

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Breathe the colour

March 10th

4 pm

The early weeks of March are the finest for a walk in the forest; the landscape is dry but not stifling, leaves of trees have been shed and, while some species are re-greening and getting their canopy back, brown is the colour.
Ananda, Vishnu, my son, and I are the only ones walking through the forest now, along thin paths covered with dried leaves that crackle and crunch under our feet. There is little doubt that we were preceded some hours ago by one or more elephants, but, for now, the air is still and silent.
….with a difference.

For, this silent forest speaks through a rich tapestry of colours and fragrance that you will never see or breathe later in the year.  The Flame of the Forest, Butea Monosperma, lights up a striking red patch amidst the brown, the young green and the dense bamboo.  The Taare tree - Terminalia bellerica - a handsome tall arboreal wonder, has a startling, light canopy of young wine-red leaves, matched in lustre by the flowers of the occasional Malabar Silk Cotton in the distant village in the valley.  Pongamias are all around, the forest floor carpeted with chlorophyll-rich, light-mauve fragrant flowers and a million bees working an ecological miracle in buzzing cacophony.  

Then we reach our destination, a rich outcrop of rock surrounded by dense forest of bright green and white, an oasis of noise in that otherwise somnolent silence. It is a sight I have seen every year, yet can never ever tire of, for it is, in a word, breath-taking (and I mean that in every way).

This is a forest of Shorea Roxburghii or Jalaari, and, boy, is that a pathetic, weak introduction! For about fifty weeks in a year, this is a non-descript tall tree, making no official statement whatsoever. After Shivaratri, it begins to bloom and then compensates for its prolonged reticence with a million tiny flowers in dense bunches, each a light cream and exuding the most heavenly, delicate fragrance ever. 

This is spectacular abundance, a cornucopia of sensory delight and the landscape ahead is clothed with it. We sit on a rock, under a mid-sized Jalaari tree – the rich, bright green leaves provide fitting shade – and the flowers drizzle down, falling on our shoulders, lap and all around. It is time to do nothing and Vish has this faraway look in his eyes and we lounge around. 

If you have to be, be a bee.

Eventually, we must leave these old friends behind (a parting is necessary before you can meet again, Richard Bach once said), so we saunter down the kaal-daari or footpath. 

A cactus in bloom greets us with its stunning (yet odd-smelling) flower-of-geometry. 

And nearby, next to a nulla that hosts a seasonal stream, is another treat - Firmiana Colorata or Kombare, a tall, spare tree with a rich, orange cast of flowers. Just flowers. Each is a stunner to see, touch, feel. There are but three of these trees in this forest, so they are hardly profuse, but, if you are a first-timer, it is a jaw-dropping sight of evolutionary adaptation to prevent self-pollination. 

Ananda picks a small branch for us and the bees are hovering around. To remind us that nothing in this orchestrated performance is for the gate-crasher, the traveller. 

Take nothing. Leave nothing behind. 

That is when you know that, in a forest, you are never alone.

The Last Stand

On the fringes of Manas Tiger Reserve
Feb 28th

A lovely clear morning underway as we tread on the soft soil of the paddy field, stopping frequently to scan the flat paddies around us through our binocs.  It’s been a couple of months since the harvest, and the stubble, a brittle brown, is interspersed with patches of fresh grass for which the cows will arrive later in the day.
For the moment, there is no one else.  Just us.

And, somewhere in this vast stretch – over a thousand acres of open paddy - is a bird of a species that is teetering on the brink of extinction.  

There is no place to hide as we walk, our banter is muted and we tread with care. Suddenly, Edison, the young naturalist with us, points excitedly and we hunker down and peer.  It’s hard to control my emotion – excitement dominates for the moment, but I know that there’s much more – and I must focus (and not blink).  There in the far corner of this large open country, amidst the stubble, we see a beautiful head on a slender neck of navy blue and a large brown-and-white body.  The Bengal Florican walks with cautious avuncular dignity, a dainty exquisite bird of immense splendour and bearing.  It moves between the stubble, now lost to sight, now back in focus, a single bird of a population that numbers worldwide in the low hundreds.  It is spectacularly beautiful and we watch enthralled.  
And then it vanishes into the stubble as easily as it had appeared.  

Photo: IUCN

We wait patiently for an hour to see if the same bird or others in its precious depleted flock would show up, but we see none.  It’s getting warm now and cattle – dozens of them – fan out across the paddies; the Florican, if it hadn’t earlier, has now moved away.  

It is a silent exit, in more ways than one.  The story of the bird’s decline is familiar and painfully repetitive: hunting and loss of its grassland habitat being principal causes. 

I think of the extinction of the passenger pigeon, once the most abundant bird on earth, darkening skies as millions flocked across North America.  And of what that extraordinary conservationist and philosopher, Aldo Leopold said:
“There will always be passenger pigeons in books and in museums, but these are effigies and images, dead to all hardships and to all delights…..They know no urge of seasons; they feel no kiss of sun, no lash of wind and weather.  They live forever by not living at all.”

Those emotions return.  Thrill, yes.  A chill too. Anger that our species could do this. 

And, as with all those moments of great alloyed happiness, there is a surge of ineffable sadness within.  It is the sadness that precedes a requiem, one that, I hope, hand on heart, will never have to be written. 

 
Back in the Maozegendri Eco Camp, Rustom chats with us for an hour exploring conservation options, but he is both wary and weary.  Many like him – the younger gen – have done the rounds, going from home to home in the area speaking of the plight of the Florican and requesting a cessation of hunting and the good news is that those conversations have had some effect.  In one such home, a farmer went in and brought out a Florican egg and handed it over to a bemused Rustom who then placed it under a hen that was roosting.  A Florican chick was the delightful result and he brought it up with care, hoping to reintroduce it into the wild, but one day the door of the cage in which it lived was left open and the bird disappeared.  

You could say with justification and a touch of irony that the stars are yet to align in favour of the Bengal Florican.
…and therein lies a tale of woe.

a time lapse image of the mating ritual of the male Bengal Florican,
taken by the inimitable Ramki Sreenivasan, captures its dance in flight