Old Man and Me

Jerdon’s Courser, Admiral… Jerdon’s Courser, it is! The name of the bird you were trying to recall. That was my last message to him which he did not see.

I was at INHS Asvini visiting Vice Admiral Manohar Awati (retd) VrC PVSM who was admitted there for a cardio check-up. I had the good fortune, unfortunately, of meeting him whenever he came down to the naval hospital in my neighbourhood. I had just returned from a holiday in Coonoor-Wellington-Ooty and had come to meet him as promised. He had desired that I return with news of Nilgiris, a destination steeped in nostalgia for him.  “I used to go on field trips in the hills with the Old Man,” he told me. ‘Old Man’ was the great ornithologist Dr. Salim Ali with whom he went on numerous nature jaunts and explored India’s flora and fauna. 

Our association went back several years, to the days when I was a Journalist in Mumbai covering defence and environment beat; I used to bump into him at events such as commissioning of naval ships or the Golden Jubilee of National Defence Academy. Though we did not meet often, we corresponded via emails, oftener. Ours was a relationship based on our mutual love and respect for nature and wildlife.

Not many may know that the veteran naval officer was an avowed naturalist and conservationist. He was an honorary member of Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) who campaigned for the cause of nature conservation at the drop of a hat. He even penned few books such as, “The Vanishing Indian Tiger” and “Homo Sapien and Panthera Leo”, the latter on the Gir lion. After retirement, he had settled in the back of beyond Vinchurni, “nice countryside blooming with ripening jowar and maize”, a perfect habitat for him. One November (2013), he wrote in response to my blog on birding: “A pair of Great Indian Horned Owl came my way as I almost walked past them in the shadow of a spreading Pimpran (Ficus reticula) late one evening here in Vinchurni. I was snapped out of my reverie as their eyes followed my movement, past them. I thought the horns quivered a bit testifying to they being two large erect feathers atop their heads imitating horns (hence the name). Now that our tank is full after a lively Monsoon, there are a huge number and varieties of water birds upon it. The last time in a similar situation seven years back there was a small flock of flamingos here. They were obviously reconnoitring. I did not see them again. This year there will be a goodly number of ducks from the north come to winter on my tank. I look forward to a busy cool season.”

On another occasion, in the peak of summer, he wrote: “I am back in good old, drought-stricken Vinchurni where there is a brown, dusty desert with nary a sign of even a blade of green. It is very upsetting, but who can fight Mother Nature, certainly not those who have despoiled her so heartily.” Even in his 80s, the Admiral was on the move attending conferences, talks and events where he was invited to speak. On return to Vinchurni he would catch up with communication unfailingly.

I would keep him posted of my sojourns in Kenya/Africa through my blogs and he would respond promptly. He told me once that he was offered the post of Wildlife Warden of Serengeti in Tanzania which he had to, obviously, decline. I could well imagine this tall personage with flowing white beard at home in a safari jeep as in a sailboat! On my verse on Olduvai Gorge, the cradle of civilisation in the heart of Serengeti, he commented: “Evocative, endearing and effervescent!”. He said that it was the nicest poem he had read on Africa. “Keep writing. You may yet write a new chapter in the relations between India and Africa, the oldest continuous civilisation on earth and the progenitor place of Homo Sapien Sapien,” he prodded me on in his inimitable way. When I shared my ‘Mombasa Msafari’ (Safari in Swahili) with him that was published in National Geographic Traveller, he took me back to Mombasa of 1950’s that he visited.

“I first went there in June 1950 in the (destroyer) old RANJIT (emphasis his). The new Indian Navy having just dropped her Royal patronage, was showing the new flag around the Ocean! The Mombasa Club would not have us. So, our very British Rear Admiral Geoffrey Barnard, RACINS, as he was identified and addressed in naval parlance and signals, quarantined it. They relented and let the brown Englishmen in (!) in an imposed, post-colonial egalitarianism. The wardroom returned the compliment. The old harbour then known as the Dhow Port was crammed with Indian and Arab Dhows much as the northern Bunders of Bombay used to be, the Lakdi, Koyala, Hay and numerous other Bunders of old Bombay Harbour. I witnessed a busy scene in Mombasa Dhow Port, shiny black, sweating muscular bodies clambering up the main sail yards to make or furl those massive cotton sails. It must have been hard work entrusted only to the most able-bodied. I last visited Mombasa in TIR, in command in 1965. It had not changed much in the interim fifteen years.”

Back in India, at the Naval War College in INS Mandovi, I wrote to him about the riches of the naval base, an ecological niche that was million years old. In that April of 2013, he urged me to explore Goa further. “By now you would have done the Mandovi-Kumbharjua-Zuari cruise and would therefore be aware of the beautiful marshes around Kumbharjua and their inhabitants, both avian and reptilian. If you have not done that trip please do it now during the dry season because once the rains set in the whole region is flooded, the birds have flown and the reptiles washed away, probably. Nature, as always, will recover fast. The point is will we? We must, to prove an important point that we belong to this earth.” Love and concern for nature poured through his writings thus; his sense of seasons and places was spot-on.

When I was stationed in Visakhapatnam, the Admiral, who was visiting for the International Fleet Review, had set out to meet me at my residence, unbeknown to me. Unfortunately, he couldn’t reach me as he had my old phone number. I was deeply touched and honoured to know that he had come all the way up the Dolphin Hill hoping that he could track me! By now, our interactions were getting stronger and I could see I had a well-wisher in him. So when I wrote about Dolphin Hill – about the Cyclone that hammered us into submission and nature’s regeneration, a year later, in “Daydreaming and the Art of Living”, I was delighted by his spontaneity.

“What does Paddy do, what has she been up to? She does a lot and has been up to a good deal during a day on Dolphin's Nose. The devastation wrought by Cyclone Hoodoo or whatever it was tabbed, has passed and the earth and Nature are restoring themselves, as they always do, bringing happiness, even gaiety to her humans wherever we are. Paddy has that rare quality and power to observe this gentle restoration through her fellow beings all about her. A rare advantage, used so beautifully to acquaint us ordinaries with Nature's pervasive beauty, kind and gentle ways. Paddy is Her messenger to us, unnatural Hedons. Sit up and take note of Paddy's doings if you wish to be Natural, get a little out of this, otherwise, meaningless existence”! He made everyone feel special endearing him to all who were awed by him. 

He did not stop at encouraging words, but urged me to send my articles/blogs for publishing. The one on Dolphin Hill’s Purple fountain grass had him raving. By now I was knee-deep into photography, apart from writing, and ‘50 shades of Red’ was a perfect marriage of both. “A poetic essay about seemingly insignificant weed. You have given it a romantic palaver (is that an apposite word?). Should go to BNHS for Hornbill for the amusement and appreciation of a wider readership. You will miss this in Bombay, in the concrete jungle of NOFRA. Borivali National Park is not far; maybe it awaits your magical camera,” he wrote when I was all set to come to Mumbai on transfer.

It was here in Mumbai that I got to meet him face-to-face again, on his medical sojourns to the naval hospital. The last time I saw him before he moved on, like I mentioned earlier, was on my return from the Coonoor-Ooty-Wellington. I had taken my camera to show him birds of Nilgiris on the LCD as I narrated my experiences. That is when he was trying to recall the nearly threatened bird endemic to Nilgiris. Awati had a photographic memory that stowed away all manner of information in neatly stacked compartments to be recalled at will, irrepressible raconteur that he was. This was just one of those stray occasions when he couldn’t summon the name of the bird that he and the legendary Salim Ali had tracked in the Blue Hills. Jerdon’s Courser was the bird he was trying to recollect, I realised later.

Soon he was discharged and I shared the edited pictures via email. On 10 October, he wrote back to say: “You really are a wonder, a gift of Nature to the Navy. The latter has yet to appreciate that. It will, one day”!

On 3 November, 2018 he breathed his last passing away in sleep in his beloved Vinchurni. He was 91.




 

NOTE 1: Since I had the camera handy, I shot this portrait as he was being discharged from the hospital on 1^st October.  This may, possibly, be his last portrait. 

NOTE 2: His emails are quoted verbatim and are italicised.

NatGeo is NextDoor

Every time I step out in the morning on a nature walk in my neighbourhood of Dolphin Hill with my camera there is a sense of heightened anticipation.  I have butterflies in my heart, fluttering in excitement.  What will the day put on display today, will I stumble upon a new species? I have to still my mind and tell myself: “do not look for something; just see, observe, be”. But the mind races ahead when I see the roadside lantana brimming with swallowtails and skippers. Though the patch seems abundantly endowed, yeh dil maange more… Greedily, I seek to see what lies just ahead, at the turn. Like the proverbial green grass on the other side, I feel something more exciting is lurking round the corner. Often it does; then again, nothing that this patch would not reveal, if only I stayed on!

 “The butterfly counts not months, but moments and has time enough.”

- Rabindranath Tagore

'HEART, DO NOT FLUTTER'

'The birds, butterflies and bees are going nowhere; they are here and now,' I try telling myself. Though the butterflies are constantly on the wing, they are in no hurry to get anywhere.  Hurry is the antithesis of their existence. Mindfulness is their nature. If I were to take a leaf from their book, I would learn to stay centered and focused.

And when I calm down thus, Nature reveals its secrets as a reward.

Like it happened when instead of one individual of a species I saw a pair of Pierrots pirouetting through the bushes. Or the time when I was witness to a social ritual of mud-paddling of Common Crows (a butterfly species).  One day, I stumble upon a Pale Palm Dart, stark orange against tender greens; on another, it may be an Awlet, its eyes popping out, literally.

A movement in the grass beneath the feet could be a Garden Gecko, a baby, with its eyes still lidded over. A ghost-white Chameleon could be an albino or just a juvenile; I am yet to learn the finer nuances of identification. When I am snooping around the bushes chasing dragonflies, a Grey Francolin may step into the periphery of vision, tantalizingly.  On my way home at the end of a nature–trek, a small mongoose (Asian) may just stray out of its comfort zone catching us both unawares.

There are days when ‘new’ species elude me; instead I am rewarded with a great spot of sunlight that imbues the regular daily scenes with a different hue. I get to see weeds and grasses in all their glory. I discover then that weeds are indeed photogenic and make great portraits or fine art prints. There is something to be said about poking one’s head into bushes, smelling the greens, and watching little life flit about.

OMG MOMENTS

Sometimes, Nature listens to your heart. Like the day when I was praying silently for a vision of a snake. A couple of days before, I had seen a green keelback slink into a clearing of woods on my favourite trail. So here I was, heading to the same spot making a wish. There was no sign of any snake on the ground and just as I was about to leave I saw a golden ‘hawser’ coiled on a stump of tree, a metre above the ground. A ten-foot long rat snake lay there basking in the early morning sun, a picture of nonchalance.

Sometimes, Nature makes your heart listen. Like this day when I was working on a wildflower that was the muse of the moment, with a macro lens. I heard a rustle in the bush behind.  I thought it must be the pesky squirrels going about their game of tag, but something made me look nevertheless. A skink was jumping about excitedly, and only as an after-sight I saw a green triangular jaw strangling the poor dear in a vice-like grip. A green vine snake had it for a meal. It was a “Kodak moment”, indeed, as a friend put it later, only when your macro prime-lens is primed for a wildflower in manual focus at short distance, you need to get your wits about to take in action, further away.

CAMOUFLAGE ARTISTS

On a nature trail or on a wildlife chase, not only does one have to keep one’s senses alert for a movement or flight, rustle or whistle, but also keep one’s eyes peeled for hidden treasures. Stick insects, mantids, grasshoppers (I grew up thinking that grasshoppers were green until I learnt as an adult that they can be brown, grey or even multi-coloured) can suddenly cleave off self-same-shade vegetation. Foliage—fresh or dry—may just come alive suddenly developing eyes, betraying head, legs, wings and a camouflage artist may come into existence.

Like the bug that I saw and nearly missed. At first sight, it looked like a cottony, clump of fabric and I wouldn't have given it a second glance if I didn't think it moved. I wondered if it was an insect. As I tried to pry, the clump rolled down, and it seemed like the wind did the trick. It lay there motionless, lifeless, for a while and I chided myself for my over-imagination, until days later I found the critter in cyberspace as masked hunter bug! In retrospect, I recall it rolled over and acted dead as I investigated! Under my very nose it had me in doubt. Go to Pinterest to see these con-artists and you’ll be floored.

Wildlife is replete with con artists and mimics. You’ll think it is some kind of chimera, a joke. That someone is pulling a fast one on you. It is almost as though life-forms are formed that minute in front of your eyes in an ultimate illusion.  To think that there was a time when I thought I would never be interested in insects because they are yucky!

Nature is an endless treasure hunt.

The excitement of discovering species (rajah, silverline, monkey-puzzle butterflies) for the first time or seeing a 'lifer' (such as a pale-capped pigeon or rock-thrush) not endemic to one's neighbourhood can only be shared and understood by fellow birders and wildlife enthusiasts.  A quote by Ornithologist, Noah Strycker, who recently stumbled upon a new species of Himalayan Forest Thrush, would be apt here. 

 “I once worried that I’d get burned out on birds this year, but the opposite has happened—it’s easy to imagine what it would be like to just keep going forever… If birding is an addiction, then feeding it definitely doesn't kick the habit.” 

Pale Palm Dart

Common Pierrot

Common Crow mud-paddling

Grey francolin

Asian Small Mongoose

Rat snake

Green vine snake and skink

Silverline 

Common Baron 

ALL PHOTOGRAPHS IN THIS BLOG AND WEBSITE ARE THE AUTHOR'S ORIGINAL WORK/COPYRIGHT.

Out of Africa in Mandovi

Mandovi Hill resembling the savannah as the monsoon retreats

Since the last shower a fortnight ago, the weather has turned. And so has the season. The land is already looking parched and the days are shortening.  The lush plateau vegetation of Mandovi Hill has started resembling the African savannah. The tall wild grass is no red oat grass - the savannah mainstay - certainly. It is not the superfood that sustains wildebeests. But the overall aura that the lateritic landscape exudes is such. I round a bend on the deserted periphery path and enter the honey-gold landscape of Mara. The same expectation springs in my heart as when I was on an African safari. Maybe, a wildebeest herd – along with zebras – may appear on the horizon. Or perhaps, a lion has stolen himself into the grass-folds, the self-same shade of his skin. In the savannah, often it is the expectation or the wild imagination that is more permanent than the real presence. I admit, my mind is going wild here. Visual is only on the surface, reality is nature-deep.

The barren landscape, now, means more visibility. It means lesser hiding places for the birds. The bee-eaters, rollers and drongos – the Indian species - sally and somersault and pirouette in the full glare of gazers (read me). The dragonflies keep them on their wings. They are out in the open playing to the gallery just like their African counterpart. Like the lilac-breasted roller or the blue-cheeked bee-eater might do in Tsavo Park or in Nairobi National Park. Or in the capital city of Nairobi, for that matter.  The flock of mynahs (grey-headed), swallows (red-rumped) and munias (black-headed) are perched on the telegraph pole. They are fraternizing noisily with their respective flocks. And I hear echoes of starlings and mannikins of my Africa yesteryears. The exotic bauhinia with its purple flowers and spathodia with its vermilion canopy carry the whiff of Out of Africa and The Flame trees of Thika of the Kenyan lore.

On the evening trail, I come upon the vista of Coco Beach. Swaying coconut palms reach out to the Arabian Sea. The sea, itself, reaches out to the River Mandovi. I see a modest stretch of sandy shores. It is the front yard of the fisher folks of Nerul.  They are the rightful denizens of the coast. As the sun sets, local boys are seen playing football on the wet sand as the waves gush in and out. The pastiche blurs the boundaries of memory. I recall a scene from Stonetown, Zanzibar. In the glow of the setting sun, even as the fiery ball dips into the ocean, youngsters are thrashing a ball around. I recall a similar scene back in Kenya’s Mombasa. This time, rival groups of Old Town, Mombasa, are competing with each other. The venue is the ramparts of the historic Fort Jesus built by the Portuguese.

Next door to Coco Beach stands Reis Magos. This is a Portuguese era battlement predating Fort Jesus. It is a symbol, in a sense, that establishes the historic link between Goa – the headquarters of erstwhile Estado da India, and the East African coast. That thread of Portuguese history is inextricably linked to my own personal journey – from Kenya to Goa. But that is another story, for another day.

Sundowner soccer by Old Towners at Fort Jesus, Mombasa

Mount Kenya - Part II

Rendezvous at the Equator

Yet another year gone by, yet another ‘birthday’…this day we decided to spend ‘family time’ tucked away  in the foothills of Mount Kenya far from civilization. The journey, itself, was a fantastic curtain-raiser to the weekend ahead…

Lush leafy abundance of coffee plantations punctuated by silver oak, eucalyptus and orchards of mangoes and bananas lining the snaking deserted roads rushed past in a mosaic that might have been from another lifetime. I forgot that I was heading out of Nairobi and felt that I was traveling the Coonoor-Ooty hill-road back in the Nilgiris. Few vignettes like the famed flame trees (African tulip with its red tubular flowers) of Thika (immortalized by Elspeth Huxley in an eponymous book ) nudged me to my true bearings. School children in red, the colour of the peoples of Kenya, would suddenly burst on the scene, waving and chattering, enlivening the still landscape. The drizzle, the nip and the light mist hovering around made me feel that we were leaving the earth and flying, rising to meet the clouds.

Like the Pippa’s Song, I couldn’t but feel that ‘all was well with the world’ and this feeling persisted even as we passed somnolent Karatina, a Mungiki (a criminal sect that terrorizes and holds citizens ransom from time to time) hotbed. Two and a half hours later with Kenny Rogers, “Coward of the county’ ringing in our ears, we crossed the equator line at Nanyuki and turned the bend to meet the mountains. Signposts with the map of Africa showing the equator line bisecting the continent, and even the country, reminded us that we were indeed at the centre of the earth. The sparse population there with children playing around the shanties seemed, to me, privileged for having their home at this enviable address, though nothing about them seemed even remotely to evoke envy!

As we gradually climbed up, the air became cooler, fresher, greener! At the gates of Mount Kenya National Park, the sky opened and poured its heart out. The forest looked dark and dank and with the already existing saturated tropical vegetation I wondered how we could venture out. The Mountain Lodge at the foothills of Mount Kenya was more like an extended tree house that proffered an indulgent view of the watering hole bordering a tropical jungle, discouraging any outings in the first place. Our room, as also the lobby balcony was to be the viewing gallery, a modern-day machaan from where we would unobtrusively spy on the shenanigans of the forest denizens.

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The Buffalo in Me

It was a day to laze around, of simply sitting by the gallery overlooking the watering hole - watching and waiting, waiting and watching. Before long, a herd of buffaloes trooped out of the thicket, one by one, with a sense of urgency and made towards the water. There were all kinds -  thickset with tough thickened horns, indicating they were older males, brownish juveniles and of course, the matriarchs. As few males fanned out in different directions, keeping watch, the rest of the herd settled down contentedly chewing cud. In the case of buffaloes, with little action on the part of the players, languor seeps into the atmosphere and the scene becomes static save the hypnotic motion of the jaws, a sole reminder to the observer, of passage of time.

Like the buffaloes, I gave in completely to ruminating, doing nothing. I was just happy to be alive. Gazing at the grazing buffaloes, after a while, I became one among them, letting my mind roam free. I let it glide over the forests and wander among the trees. I listened to murmuring leaves and perked my ears at creaking twigs in anticipation and thrill. Languidly, I watched the interplay between the female and male bushbucks and the waterbucks that came to drink at the hole. I heard the Egyptian goose croak and followed it as it took wing, circling the skies, meeting with its mate before flying off to an unknown destination. I listened to the silence of the forest air and let myself slip into oblivion. The action of the buffaloes’ chewing cud became the breath of my body. The morning segued into somnolent afternoon and eventually, dusk, and all that happened in that space of time was the slow march of the sun and in the play of light and shade, a change in the tableau of trees.

Common waterbuck

Dangerously close... the African Cape Buffalo!

Also read Mount Kenya - Part I
http://padmaja-earthletters.blogspot.com/2010/11/mount-kenya-part-i.html