Among Otters

 It’s an overcast Sunday afternoon and I wonder if the kids – after a heavy lunch on the third day of their summer camp at KK and Arthi’s lovely village home – will be sluggish and sleepy; not a good time to make a presentation on otters, even a light one.
But how wrong one can be!

We begin by playing a fun game and before I get down to the title slide, there is a barrage of questions: Have you rescued otters? (Answer: No, thank goodness.)  Do they bite? (Yes! Remember they chomp fish for a living. And that’s why I said, thank goodness.). Why are they not amphibians? (Great question!  Can someone answer that please?)  Do they like people? (No, most definitely not, and  with good reason.  But do you like them?)

  
There is a roar of ‘Yes!’, two dozen voices in symphony.   They had seen Wild Karnataka the previous day and cannot quite get over the clip of a romp of otters chasing a tiger out of the water.  

This bunch of twenty-five is not sleepy by half. 
I am mesmerized by them, by their questions and curiosity.  We talk of paw prints and wildlife trade, of mustelids and dens, of crocs and dolphins and Darwin, of crabs and crabby people, of pesticides and bio-magnification.  The older ones – in high school – are remarkably well informed, the younger ones are diligently curious and happily exuberant.  

An hour flies by unnoticed – time and land forgotten - and Arthi signals with a smile that I must wind up now.  The kids aren’t half as disappointed as I am, but there are more questions outside the room too: Can we come with you to see otters? is the common one (When you grow up a bit more, definitely Yes!).
But then, do you wonder, as I often do, what happens when we all grow up? 

A few copies of Walk Through – my first book of stories – that I had found at Random Rubble are passed around.  Cheerful byes and high-fives, and it’s time to head home.   

A day later, I get a message with a photo from Madhuri, a volunteer whose daughter is at the camp: Tanmaye asked me to send this to you as a gift for your talk yesterday.  

Isn’t this just brilliant?  I think of the time and effort this twelve-year old who loves zoology has put in to draw this gorgeous sketch.  Can there ever be a better gift?

The More The Merrier

When I first read about India’s momentous achievement in becoming the country with most humans in it – Population Amrit kaal - I thought immediately, of course, of Balappa.

Since it’s unlikely that you know him – we all have our weaknesses, so don’t blame yourself – he is a farm hand around our area and works a couple of days every month at Random Rubble.  Balappa belongs to an itinerant tribe called the Pujarees, about one of whom Kenneth Anderson, of tiger-hunting fame, has written an entire chapter in encomium (which is about the only non-fiction that he wrote in his life).  He’s in his mid-thirties (Balappa, not Kenneth, who lived in the mid-thirties.  There’s a subtle difference and looks like you haven’t had your morning coffee).  Balappa is slim and wiry as most tribal folk tend to be, and a strong, silent soul with a gentle, but otherwise nondescript, face. 

 
I like the guy because he actually works unlike most other mid-thirties fellows in our area who are philosophers and economists and have a Grand Theory for Everything.  So, when I read this Population Amrit Kaal bit, I congratulated him heartily because he has done more than his bit: he has, hold your length and breath, thirteen kids (when reports last came in).  

His elder brother, Chandrappa, has, in contrast, a meagre eight, after which he threw in the towel and– in the immortal words of Seenappa – ‘got himself stopped’ at the local hospital (damn these doctors for spoiling the show).  Of his other brothers, I sadly know little, but if he ever consults me on a possible location for a family reunion, I will recommend Eden Gardens in Calcutta as the only option that comes to mind (the Grand Colosseum too, but I am a Make-in-India guy.  So is Balappa, by the way.)

The story - and the kids - does not stop here.  His elder son, who is now a sprightly twenty, has two kids as well (also when reports last came in.  A lot can happen in forty-eight hours).  You and I now know from this family history (and histogram plus trend line) that the son has a fair chance of beating his parents’ (otherwise) enviable record (I am taking bets, drop me your odds).   Ananda, in whose farm, Balappa and his Indian Premier League live, is convinced that he knows the root cause.  “Sir, you and I, we talk so much.  We both have two kids each.  He hardly talks!” he says, rolling on the floor laughing at what he is convinced is ultimate dodgy risqué humour. 

 
Now, as a hobby economist, I know that giving girls a sound education is the only long-run solution (assuming Balappa thinks there is a problem, that is), so I have long tried to get him to put his kids in school.  In the past, I have sold private equity to unsuspecting victims, so I can sell pink ice to Eskimos and bisibele bath to MTR, trust me.  I can even sell Amrit kaal to you.  

Balappa will always listen to me with a smile of deference and nod his head in complete agreement with everything I say.  But when Balappa meets me the next time, it is with the news of a new addition to his IPL.    

To Grovel.....

One afternoon a month ago, I fetched up at an old haunt in search of a gorgeous flower. I was in the splendid company of the indefatigable Green Saviour team of Sameer Majli and Datta, whose mission to green the landscape around Belgaum is inspirational, no less.

The Western Ghats around Sindhudurg is at its finest at this time of March - though the weather can be warm at mid-day – with a rich canopy of flowering trees, a hint of summer fragrance and the extraordinary warmth of its people. We soaked all of that in, of course, and the fetching hospitality of my old friend, the knowledgeable Praveen Desai who, along with his charming friendly family, runs Vanoshi Forest Home Stay. In the evening and next morning, he escorted us to the numerous ‘Devarai’s or sacred groves in the region, each belonging to a village and its temple. The Western Ghats have a rich, tradition of sacred forests: revered tiny patches with beautiful large trees, many of them belonging to species that are now rare and endangered. 

We went grove-hopping (now, there’s one new term in English I can get credit for) with curiosity and awe and stared at the giants in front of us: Holigarna arnottiana, Hydnocarpus pentandra, Syzigium stocksii. 

As you can see, the folks who named these trees liked everything big. It’s genetic.

And, on the evening of the second day after Sameer and Datta had left, Praveen and I set out on my search: to Perme village to see a magnificent grove of Saraca indica or Ashoka, The One Without Sorrow, under the shade of one of which, it is said, Lord Buddha was born. 

A single creeper as thick as a tree and possibly two hundred
years old or more covered much of the grove, snaking its way up and over the giants and the Ashoka was in modest flower, each floret an evolutionary marvel. A few Hydnocarpus trees stood together, their bloom resembling golf balls dropped into a muddy pond by an amateur golfer (the resemblance, of course, ends there). 

Silence reigned. In the warmth of an evening sun, as we strolled on a rich carpet of fallen leaves, it seemed that the grove was testimony to what these forests must once have been.
…and to what they could be if we restored our habitat. 
Protect our forests.
Nothing else really matters.

 

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