Roseringed Parakeets Psitticula krameri
Rose Ringed Parakeets (Psittacula krameri)
Category Archives: My Beloved Wilderness
Red Shift In Memory of Cleo, the Muse (9th November 2011)
Cleopatra
For some things we have channels of pure silence:
Here word and image pass side by side
Sometimes submerged
In memory
Like long leaves of thin grass stems in rain
Like huge trees that blend into the quiet of night
Like slow lightning that freezes the monsoon skies
Like the flight of green pigeons against a blue sky
Like the flattened mount of clay and sand
What is else to remember but the sadness that darkens all?
Cleopatra. Cleo, our muse.
Each time the heart recalls your name, your eyes
We look this way and that
Forgetting the distance between a million stars.
Everything is an after thought
Filled with pain and distraught.
Your last wave of that flowy tail.
Your valediction and the tale trailing our deep silence afterward.
All pain is forgotten in time, I know.
All memory will suffer the touch of forgetfulness.
This is life’s simple truth. The plainness of reality for us humans.
Each of us know this, but we carry our precious pain
In an eternal present. You have eased into memory.
I saw the light go out in those pearly eyes.
You taught me to love and to treasure each moment.
The spectrum of silence that now veers between red and blue
Is hastening toward red; all things move from all others.
And it is the light that has gone out of our eyes.
GANGA
GANGA[1]
1
Ganga,
frivolous, as yet the girl
you flirt with countless millions everyday;
silver trinklets tinkling over the smooth round stones,
whispering ecstatic love songs;
but waken anew into the awareness of aeons
as softly the evening sky buries his flushed face
in your cloudy tresses;
with a singular valediction you move on.
Far in the tamarind boughs
crows assemble. Their cawings add another leaf
to the chronicle of your loneliness.
2
The wheat fields turn yellow, then brown.
Sometimes a lone night bird cries on the wing.
The moon throws silver behind the mountains.
Fragrance flows downwind.
Ganga,
Flow to me.
Fondle me with your thousand little fingertips,
nibble me with your thousand little silver lips,
curl around me, sweep me into your lap.
Ganga,
Ganga, my love,
how you tremble, marble-cold.
Hold me closer to you.
Snake-like I slip and slither
on the soft swell of your breasts
on the languid slip of your thighs,
only to deliver myself on to the misty grounds
of your remoteness.
Each intake of my breath
tears us farther and farther apart
drifting into the vast regions of the formless
till you are all but lost to me.
Ganga, I can hardly feel you.
Like death you remain unseen, yet too near.
But sever not these chains of sensation
that still bind us together;
my heart needs them all.
3
I dearly love the wind in the trees.
It reminds me of your floating hair
which streams like a burning banner of love in the moon.
Tonight the wind storms into my room,
wild, hectic, unappeased.
I look on helpless and disarmed.
It bloats out my letters as they are formed
and breathes into my lines and swells them.
High in the mountains they are caught
in the lofty trees, your tresses and my love.
Ganga,
my deliverance,
what it had take for me to build in devotion
I have ravaged in violent emotion.
4
Night feels its way into me. Gently
unfolding me layer after layer.
Like the desolate cry of the lone lapwing
my mind soars in empty space.
A mute yellow landscape spreads its nonchalance
below me. The stench of burning sand invades me.
And souls devoid of gravity and reality fly up to me.
What each has gained in faith
the other has lost in despair.
Staring vacant eyes bespeak of a bland fortitude
conceived in helplessness.
Somewhere in the reaches of my corroding memory
I hear you lapping; or are you chanting
the vedic hymns garbed in the saffron folds of a sannyasin?
The dead have found salvation in you.
The living with garlands adorn you.
Prayers dissolve in you, to vanish in dark circles.
Then I find you—
a silver trickle in the bosom of Himavant.[2]
Perhaps this is the place where you descended
with the might of a million Akshouhinis
to be caught in the tousled locks of a Savage God.
5
The mountains know the hand of God.
They are so mute, so huge, invincible.
I have lost my bearings confronted with such vastness.
One moment I am the Brahmin pundit
performing the funeral rites,
absolving the sins of the past;
another moment I am the corpse, soul-flown, half-cremated[3] ,
tossing amidst your immortal caresses,
in a crystal present; a pariah kite dips
and takes off, and I with him fishing
for still-smoking remnants
on your sun-stretched shore-lines;
the I am the derelict seeking the hermitage
lined with sensual feathers; a breath, a pale whisper,
a flutter of wings, and as a dove I descend
into your silvery depths.
6
As when the mist lifts its veil for a moment,
and blue mountain glimmers into view
for a moment only, to eclipse into eternal quiet,
regions of the soul hitherto unvisited
heights I never knew existed
manifest through my naked self.
People, places, things and sensations
harmonize in a new rhapsody of timelessness.
7
Dark nomadic patterns of grim silence
mingled with the subdued crying of a child;
flash of a low-flying bird in the night sky
across the flares of a few dying stars;
the eternal wakefulness of tiny relentless waves,
and the footfalls of everyday death.
Often, now, I would weave on the same relief
gospels of assurances, surmises, and faith
in a prolegomena to sleep.
8
Ganga,
Ganga, O Ganga,
let me, love, with an ear to my heart,
withdraw in selfless meditation
into the deeps of my mindscape,
and find you, flowing gently
over the smooth stones of my unknowing,
unpossessed, eternal, unceasing.
[1] Ganges the sacred river of India is known as Ganga in most Indian languages. The river is symbolic of the unified Indian imagination, for it remains sacred in the minds of all Indians, through out the land from the southernmost tip of Kanya Kumari to Kashmir in the Himalayas, from the north east wet-evergreen forests to the western deserts, irrespective of cast, creed, community, and it has been so over a long time in India’s history. It is the archetypal Indian River. The poem explores the terrain of the river from its source in the snow clad Himalayas through the great Indian plains where the river merges with the life of the common folk. Even today dying beside the Ganges is held as most holy and so death and cremation are quite a common sight on the banks of the river in Banaras, the holy city. The poem visualizes the river in its various images and avatars.
[2] Himavant is another name for the Himalayas. Legend says that King Bhaghiratha, of yore, underwent severe tapas (askesis) and brought down Ganga from the heavens. To break her mighty fall, Siva caught her in his matted hair and allowed her gently to sprout forth ( Siva referred to here as the Savage God, and the force of her descent equated to that of a tremendous force of arms: akshouhinis—a very large number of armed soldiers [An Akshauhini was an ancient battle formation that consisted of 21,870 chariots, 21,870 elephants, 65,610 horse-mounted warriors and 109,350 infantry, as per the Mahabharata ( Adi Parva 2.15-23)] . The original source of the river is shaped like the face of a cow and is called Gaumukh.
[3] Bodies are burnt on the banks of the Ganga, and the Pandas or Brahmin pundits who help to perform the long-drawn religious last rites for the dead are ever so hasty to get more money in the bargain that they rush through their work and many a time the half-cremated bodies are pushed into the river to accommodate another body in the same pyre.
(Adi Parva 2.15-23).
NOTE
This poem was first published in the Chandrabhaga edited by Jayanta Mahapatra, in the early eighties, and later appeared in Night Heron : Poems and Sketches(Calcutta: Writers Workshop, 1998.
A Wild Thorn
A Report of the National Conference on New Bearings in Ecocriticism, 20th and 21st October 2011
The National Conference on New Bearings in Ecocriticism organized by the Department of English, Pondicherry University, at Pondicherry, from the 20th to the 21st October 2011, drew considerable response from scholars, teachers, students and activists all over the Indian subcontinent. The various sessions focused on issues relating to the theory of ecocriticism, the psychological aspects, ideas and issues in ecofeminism(s), the eco in economics, fiction, poetry and drama, resistance and reciprocity, the self, subjectivity and nature. In all, the invited scholars and academics from outside the state and also from within, proffered a cross-section of Indian Ecocritics currently engaged in this direction.
The conference was inaugurated by Prof. B.P. Sanjay, Vice Chancellor of the Central University, Tamil Nadu, a scholar of international repute in the field of media policy, who in his inaugural address drew attention to the significance of media in our times and how it engages with humans and nature alike. 
Professor Murali Sivaramakrsishnan, Professor and Head of the Department and also the President of ASLE India, gave the key-note address–an overview of a new direction in critical thinking that explored the historical and theoretical contexts of human-nature nexus while attempting to invoke certain conceptual issues and the cultural and aesthetic dimensions of the environment. The ground beneath our feet is shrinking, he said, and the earth as we have understood it thus far is showing signs of decay. We are faced with crises in a hitherto unimagined scale—what are the literary and aesthetic connotations of this?
The coordinators of the Conference Dr.T.Marx and Dr.Clement Lourdes spoke on the occasion welcoming the gathering and presenting the relevance, scope and overview of the Conference.
In the following various academic sessions of the conference, teachers and research students from across the country and also from Sri Lanka (Indrajee De Zoysa) and North America (Mark A. Shryock, a research scholar currently working for his PhD with Professor Murali 
Sivaramakrishnan, in the Department of English, Pondicherry University) presented papers and deliberated across various forums. All the faculty and students of the Department of English were also active participants—the debates and extramural discussions with delegates and scholars were quite animated and enthusiastic.
The findings of the conference could be summed up thus: Ecocriticism in its modes and modalities of theory and praxis has certainly come of age in the Indian subcontinent as revealed by the intimate preoccupations in this direction by a large number of Indian academics. The scholar from Sri Lanka who focused attention on the indigenous nature of the theory called forth for a new native orientation for a closer analysis of the human nature nexus. There was considerable anxiety that as different from a host of other theories that were developed over the last century—like postmodernism, poststructuralism, deconstruction, new historicism etc—which have easily visible, accessible key-texts and key-thinkers who have helped to originate critical thinking and concepts in those directions, ecological criticism cannot yet be identified with any such. We need to recognize that this aspect of ecocriticism perhaps only points toward, and accounts for its multiplicity and hybridity in diverse cultural contexts and locales.
This Conference New Bearings had been a search for alter/native critical thinking from/for the current times. And as such has been quite successful—the history and archeology of the human-nature nexus and divide were inquired into, the theoretical concepts and tools were close-examined, and finally seminal texts were interrogated and their contexts analyzed.
The abstracts are available in the ASLE India website.
In the Annual general body meeting of ASLE India held alongside, four Regional Zonal Joint-Secretaries were also elected to continue the work of ASLE India from different parts of the country.
Rishikesh Kumar Singh (New Delhi)
Poonam Dwivedi (New Delhi)
Mir Nurul Islam (Hyderabad)
Tanveer Hasan (Mysore) (also a Member of the Executive Council)
The Two-Day National Conference came to a close at 6.30 p.m. on the 21st after a Valedictory Session where all participants were awarded Certificates of Merit.
The Two-Day National Conference came to a close at 6.30 p.m. on the 21st after a Valedictory Session where all participants were awarded Certificates of Merit. 
ASLE India- National Conference on New Bearings in Ecocriticism, 2011.Some scenes from sessions.
smurali1234@yahoomail.com
Orangeheaded Thrush in rain
Zoothera citrina
From the Notebooks of a Bird Watcher
Even in a bustling city like Chennai one can come across small pockets of greenery. Among the less noted ones is the Madras Christian College Campus in East Tambaram. I recall with a tremendous sense of nostalgia the days and nights I used to wander along the many footpaths that criss-cross this amazing piece of green land in the late seventies and early eighties. I am also now amazed at the amount of bird and insect life I have recorded in the small pocket diaries I used to carry during those days. I have among my old papers a short write-up – among the many such–of those days that I presented as a record of natural history activities at one of our monthly get-togethers in Trivandrum. We had a small group of enthusiastic naturalists and amateur birdwatchers and our society was registered as the Kerala Natural History Society, presided over by none other than the pioneer of bird study in our part of the world—Prof K.K. Neelakantan (@ Induchoodan). Among the many field activities of our society was this monthly meeting at every last Saturdays of each month when we shared notes and reports. As a youngster I used to look forward eagerly to these evenings. I have now before me one of my early papers where in I had waxed eloquent about the Madras Christain College Campus. These days when we celebrate Wild Life Week and World Bird Watch Day, it is in the scheme of things that we also cast a backward glance at our past.
This beautiful campus situated about 15 kilometers south ofMadrasis an interesting place for the bird watcher. Indeed he can spend days on end wandering through the many forest footpaths or tracks that run through the 300 acre scrub and thorny jungle. Continuous with the Vandalur reserve forest, this wonderful piece of wilderness was once mostly undisturbed except for occasional clearings for the college buildings, hostels, playground etc. In fact it is in and around the clearings that the amateur bird watcher spots his heart’s desire.
Large flocks of white browed Bulbul (Pycnonotus luteolus) occur near the footpaths or among adjacent bushes searching for food, frequently bursting forth into loud rattling calls. The Indian Robin (Saxicoloides fulicata) with its conspicuous wing-patch and rusty red under-tail coverts frequents the fringe of the jungle and open grassy patches. It is a more quiet bird. By far the most widely distributed and fairly commonly seen bird of the campus is the Indian Spotted Dove. Apart from these the more vociferous and vocal birds of the early dawns and late evenings are the Ioras, the Coppersmith Barbets, the Red Vented and Red Whiskered Bulbuls, and the White headed Babblers.
Hoopoe and the Black Drongos are found around the tennis courts and the cricket grounds. I have come across many a cup-shaped nest on a forking branch often about 20 feet off the ground, with the Drongo parent bird sitting on its eggs, tail hanging limply over the edge!
I did frequently meet with the shy and silent Green Billed Malkoha (Rhopodytes viridirostris) in the thick scrub bordering the cricket grounds. It was seldom seen in the open, always skulking in the bushes, much a Crow Pheasant, but never once descending to the ground. One hot summer midday, seeing a long, graduated, white tail disappearing into a bush, I moved closer quietly to investigate. And the bird froze. The heavy bright and green bill and the sky blue eye patch confirmed its identity. The bird is really good and adept at disappearing rapidly through the bushes.
Another bird of the thorny bush was the Common Hawk Cuckoo (Cuculus varius). One day hearing its loud screams rising in crescendo I hastened to the spot. The bird the size of a pigeon, but more slender and with broadly barred tail was perching on an exposed branch. Its cry rose: brainfever…brainfever…brainfever….Suddenly on catching sight of me the scream stopped halfway. The bird watched me for some time and then with heavy wing beats flew off in to the next bush.
The pied crested Cuckoo (Clamator jacobinus) is a local migrant in these parts. I usually met with this beautiful black and white bird that haunted the open thorny patch on the western edge of the campus. It is not normally a shy bird and is really quite a handsome sight with its black crest. I have often listened to its metallic call peepipiu…ringing across the fields. Once or twice I have recorded the Grey Patridge and Blackbreasted Rain Quail.
Further west in the campus there was a great Baya Colony on palm trees. This was a centre of great activity. The entire palm was covered with quaint hanging nests—a remarkable sign of instinct and craftsmanship. Unfortunately I was never able to record a whole day’s activity under the bustling colony. However I could observe some interesting factors in their community life. I remember having collected a number of half completed and discarded nests. In those days I did not understand the significance of these thrown away nests. Much later I came to understand how the males first began the nest-building activity; when it was half completed the female would join him and together they would complete it. However, if by any chance there were no female takers the male abandoned the half done nest and moves on to the next.
There are no records of the Common or Jungle Crows or the otherwise ubiquitous Small Green Barbet anywhere in my notes of those days. They are conspicuous by their absence. Perhaps that would go a long way to establish the pristine quality of the campus of those day—with little debris or garbage! Among the other birds I have recorded are the following–
Small Minivet
Pariah kite
Blackwinged kite
Koel
Magpie robin
Golden backed woodpecker
Tailor bird
Rose ringed parakeet
Wren warbler
Black headed Oriole
Shikra hawk
Brahminy or Black headed myna
I have recorded that on 14th June 1979 early dawn while I was just entering the campus from its eastern gate I heard a harsh croak of a Night Heron to my right. The bird was apparently sitting on a low branch of a thorny tree spreading over the path from the left and disturbed by my sudden appearance had taken off to my right where there was a big patch of thick undergrowth and thorn. (Much later when I published my first volume of poetry I titled it Night Heron) Cautious, watching my steps, I tried to follow the bird, but then found it wasn’t necessary. Even from where I stood I could spy the swaying tops of the trees that were virtually covered with roosting birds. There were Pond Herons (Ardeola grayii) Little Egrets(Egretta garzetta) Night Herons(Nycticorax nycticorax) and to my pleasant surprise the Indian Reef Herons(Egretta gularis). I cannot find any records of having sighted any Bitterns among them. However I recall that the entire place was reeking of the heavy stench from their smelly white droppings!
On the 29th of June 79 evening at around6 pm I saw a large flock of Night Herons flying over Tambaram in the direction of Chengalpet lake. So it appeared that as the diurnal birds like the Pond herons and egrets return by evening to roost the Night Herons take off from their roosting place inside the campus, and they settle down for their rest only during the day.
These notes bespeak of those wonderful days of bird-watching I did in what appeared to be an unending campus of delight for me then. Even in the midst of a fast developing city and an equally fast depleting wilderness one could find solace at the thought of such small green pockets. They survive as memory. But just imagine the plight of its feathered denizens. Perhaps they are forced to seek out other dwellings or quietly succumb to the pressures of urbanization and perish. When we celebrate these wildlife weeks and bird-watch days it is time for us to remember what we did, have done, and are doing. As the Upanishad says: krato smara, krtam smara—remember what has been done. And finally perhaps, what we can do is to take measures to protect and preserve what we are left with— and to give it a personal responsibility let’s call it my beloved wilderness!
smurali1234@yahoo.com
A Wild Thorn: Silent Valley
I have passed nights with ascetics in the monastery,
I have slept with infidels before the idols of the pagoda.
I am the pangs of the jealous, I am the pain of the sick.
I am both cloud and rain: I have rained on the meadow
[Jalaluddin Rumi, ‘Soul of the World,’ Mathnawi, Trans. R A Nicholson]
There is a certain quiet that falls in the mind when one enters any forest. Of course, even the most troubled and the tortured souls have found silence and calm in the solitude of the deep jungle. The Silent Valley reserve forests of Kerala, in south India, are no different. The last of the remaining tropical wet-evergreen rain forests, this 200 odd square miles of almost virgin forest had created such a profound social unrest in the lives of many people living in the far southern coast of India in the mid seventies and early eighties almost to the dimension of being raised to the iconic level of signifying the struggles of environmental protection and preservation. The forests are so named because of the huge silence that descends amidst the rocky cliffs and giant trees and the near-total absence of the otherwise persistent cicada. Through the valley snakes the river Kunthi ( recalling the epical presence of the Pandava lineage) and the jungle goes by the name of Sairandhri (Panchali renamed herself as Sairandhri, the queen Sudeshna’s aid, while the Pandavas were in exile)
I first heard about Silent Valley in the summer of 1976, while I was registered as a Graduate student in Trivandrum. My college was a premier institution in the state and the country considering its stupendous history and the large number of scholars and intellectuals who had sauntered across its portals in the years of yore. The University College had celebrated its centenary and more by then. As they used to say in the small laid back city this was the college to grow up in! Those years were also years of tremendous change and political upheaval. Every second student I met there had an ideological point to debate and prove. The teachers who came to the classes were also equally intelligent and committed (or perhaps gave such an impression, or even appeared thus to my youthful imagination.) It did not appear strange to me that our professor of English turned out to be an accomplished ornithologist and I recall the many hours we chatted about pelicans and pigeons and edible-nest swiftlets, while he did have some spare time away from the classes and other work. The red brick-walls of the old British style building were built to last any amount of student unrests and rebellions apparently because I had witnessed quite a number of those during the years I spent there. The bird-watcher professor was always quite nonchalant and unmoved by those million mutinies and kept on lighting up his non-filtered cigarettes one after another. He was a confirmed skeptic and was quite derisive about student agitations. The song of a bulbul or the call of the White-breasted Kingfisher was no doubt more capable of creating ripples in his sardonically cynical mind than any number of political happenings. He was the President of our Kerala Natural History Society organized in the lines of the Bombay version of the same. We used to get together during the last Saturday of every month in the Museum campus under the trees or when it rained during the persistent monsoon days in the damp up-stairs rooms of the silent citadels of a colonial era. Nature was our concern and ecology and conservation our subject. It was then that I came across the Silent Valley debate and the time and age were so volatile that soon I was sucked into the maelstrom of one of the first ever people’s movement for environment in India. Silent Valley was a passion, it became the icon and symbol of what we humans were about to lose forever on account of the wayward march of uncaring science and technology. The whole project of development was something I came to detest and deride. The very idea of the city and its ambience was what I came to identify with the inhuman policies and projects of the imperial west! When one is young one’s thoughts are pretty fast and the youthful brain adapts easily to the ideas of resistance to authority and power. One arrays oneself always with the underdogs and identifies everything else as potential threats. For my enthusiastic mind urbanization appeared as some kind of Americanisation, and technology that ushered in the terrible change figured as the juggernaut of maldevelopment and calamity. The very name Silent Valley was enough to evoke the idea of greenness and solitude, tranquility and serenity. Over and above it when I came to know more about the policy of the State Government to build a dam across the placid water of the deep jungle stream—the Kunthi river—I was determined to throw in my might to save all that I stood for at any cost. I trekked the hills and mountains of the western ghats sometimes with friends and fellow naturalists but mostly alone. Many of those few close friends I had in the literary artistic circles thought I was a freak and started keeping safe distances from me. And yet there were a handful who sympathized with my view and I soon found myself drawn into a larger circle of committed young people like me.
Then came the wild-life week celebrations. The State Department of forests also came to our aid and sometimes provided some sort of help. During one of the ubiquitous poster exhibitions of those days I was awarded a bird-book (The Book of Indian Birds) by our President in the presence of a few committed naturalists and wild-life enthusiasts—and as he proclaimed it, it was in return for the single-handed service I had rendered for the social awareness raising campaign ( A few months later the great legendary Salim Ali himself autographed it for me! And imagine my delight when I had the occasion to do birding with the great man in the Ponmudi hills near Trivandrum afew days afterwards!) Life was so much in the fast lane those days (at least for some like me) and much was happening beside the valley issue. The political emergency clamped on the country by the then prime minister Mrs Indira Gandhi was crucial and critical in the way of our growing up. No one was allowed to protest and there was little one could do by way of resistance. Mrs Gandhi herself was a sensitive soul when it came to issues of conservation and preservation, as I came to realize, but the political climate of those days inspired innumerable young people to take to the streets and be tortured and martyred—apparently for no significant purpose. This might appear no big deal to the youth of today so very used to terrorism and needless political massacres. But then protest and resistance were the order of our youthful days! And Kerala was a hotbed of soico-political and cultural action. However, there were many so called pretentious intellectuals who hid themselves away from the prying eyes of the Gestapo-like police force of the ruling powers that be. Strangely enough many of them made it big in some way or other in later days, conveniently forgetting those times of struggle in the darkness. I can recall a couple of instances when as a student I had occasions to witness the dastardly and cowardly actions of some so-called intellectuals who later paraded themselves as big shots and culture-vultures! Julien Benda had rightly dubbed such situations as the betrayal of the intellectuals. And then there were other mean minds that played havoc with several innocent younghearts who were absolutely unaware of the profound political intrigues of the times and their deeper significance. They would organize some action rally or other forms of activities like street plays etc and parade the unknowing innocent victims in the forefront while hiding behind their shadows lurking and ducking the vigilant police and political spies. How many times did I fall prey to these dirty games that these political big-wigs played! How many dark nights and sleepless dawns did I tread the erroneous by lanes running reckless errands for these uncaring scoundrels! The worst thing was that I had carried out all these under the pretence that I was doing something heroic! And growing up in those dragon-ridden days and nights I had played out my active part in the dram of the silent valley too. We got ourselves organized as a society calling It the Save Silent Valley Society. There was an equally involved student of Engineering with whom I struck up a good working friendship. The two of us were the conveners of this society. We sent out a call for a public seminar and proclaimed our intentions to create an open forum to bring the great intrigues into the clear light of day. There was also a specially mounted exhibition that displayed posters and photographs depicting the facts and figures of the silent valley issue. On the date of the rally and march the court issued an injunction order and it was announced that anyone found defying the court order would be punished—the rally was called off. But a few enthusiastic friends had decide to take out a march to the government secretariat silently holding forth placards and their mouths covered with handkerchiefs symbolizing the imposed silence. Many were arrested and the march disbanded cruelly. Some of my friends forcibly locked me up in the exhibition hall to keep me safe from being arrested. I don’t actually know what happened except through the newspapers that carried detailed reports daily. There were of course no television or cell phone in those days—and anyway we were too poor to afford to buy even a book or a journal: the ubiquitous newspapers came and went. And days moved onto nights and darkness made way for the next dawns. The people’s movement had caught on and there were many hands to carry the placards and prepare the posters and many mouths to spread the message. The Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad the people’s science movement in the state had taken up the issue and another organization came to be founded: the Prakriti Samrakshana Samithi (the people’s association for the protection of nature) Leading poets, intellectuals and cultural acitivists came to take up the flag from our tired hands and the burden of saving the valley came to be the problem of a larger community of sensitive people. The silent valley was silent no more. It was a burning issue and vociferous political problem debated and discussed by thousands and millions not only in Kerala but all the way from Gujarat to the far eastern states and from Kanyakumari to Kashmir. The desecration of the valley symbolized the perilous avarice of the human beings and its deprivation signaled the disappearance of an all-time green soul from the human body. The silent valley was a passion in my youthful mind and its memories are even now ever-green, and will be like that forever, even after I pass. Three decades after that when I visited the place, I lugged with me the dead weight of a long lost past. I walked down the much trodden path into the green jungle and trampled carelessly over brown and yellow leaves and rounded boulders. The rush of the forest stream had not lost its power and passion. The wild breeze taunted me with the touch of evergreen green deeps. Occasional bits of blue sky showed through the rich verdance of the west coast tropical wet evergreen rain forests. I had forgotten even to wet my feet in the swirling waters of the Kunthi river. Did I hear the whistling thrush mock me for attempting to stop the building of a dam across these waters? Who can resist the juggernaut of change? When I left the forest I fumbled in my pockets for the change I had brought along. I pulled out a clutch of currency notes but no change! I realized I had lost the coins in the jungle. The deep-chested whoop of the Nilgiri Langur floated down wind and a Sambhar stag bellowed. An old friend who had spent long years in Russia had told me that whenever the Russians leave a place where they want to return later they fling a coin behind their backs. The magic of the lost coins would take me again and again to Silent Valley! Who knows! At least, there is still a valley one could think of going back to. 
For me, the Silent Valley, is a wild thorn—a painful memory of a lifetime. I have kept it buried deep within my secret memories with the sacredness and rectitude of a serene religious experience, nursing and preserving the bitter-sweetness of an unhealing wound, not relishing or caressing it even in my dreams for fear of losing it forever! smurals@gmail.com
NOT SO un-COMMON BIRDS OF PONDICHERRY UNIVERSITY CAMPUS
The Pondicherry University campus is coterminous with the boundaries of Auroville, and the land, soil and vegetation certainly is not much different. There are not much variety in terms of trees and bushes. Cassia, Acacia and Cashew Nut trees along with variety of palms comprise the major flora. An occasional Neem or a Tamarind would add spice to the air. Many new species are also being planted and cared for. But then for the most the campus is dry and does not harbor many fruiting or flowering tree, except of course for the ubiquitous cashew—and when in season it is rife with birdlife. Coppersmith Barbets and the other kinds of frugivorous birds usually live off the nuts and berries. Tamarind, Mango and Lime are also not too hard to come by. Insects and reptiles abound. And so do a variety of amphibians. An occasional visit from a Peafowl from beyond the walls of the University Campus would add a tinge of colour to the red sand dunes.
The heartline of the campus is of course the deep gorge or the Ravine that runs toward the sea on the east coast. A walk down or even along these red slopes in the early dawn or late evening is bound to yield interesting results for the avid bird watcher. Resident owls and nightjars have been reported by enthusiastic students. During the rains this ravine empties the excess water down to the sea and all along the dry summer days the ravine affords some sort of cool shade and respite for the ground dwellers, lizards, scorpions, snakes and chameleons as well.
For the most the sprawling eight-hundred acre campus is a quiet haven for a large number of bird species. And overhead at almost any time of the day depending on the season one can find large flocks of estuary and coastal birds, egrets, and herons slow winging toward the marshes and salt water ranges on the east coast road. The crackling racket of Roseringed parakeets is a fairly common greeting for the naturalist who steps into the campus during the day.
These are among some of the birds most commonly met with by anyone who has been fortunate enough to have fairly good eyesight and equally good hearing.
- Common Myna
- House Crow
- Jungle Crow
- Tree Pie
- Magpie Robin
- Oriole
- Golden backed Woodpecker
- Drongo
- Sunbird(s)
- Rose ringed Parakeet
- Brainfever Bird or Indian Cuckoo
- White Browed Bulbul
- Red Whiskered Bulbul
- Red Vented Bulbul
- Partridge
- Spotted Dove
- Small Green Bee-eater
- Brahminy Myna
- Coppersmith Barbet
- Crow Pheasant
- Hoopoe
- Indian Koel
- Pariah Kite or the Black kite
- Swifts
- Blackheaded Munia
- Shikra Hawk
- Iora
This list of course is not exhaustive—I have haphazardly noted from what comes to my mind at the moment. If I were to verify my bird notes and field guides I am sure I could bring half a dozen more common birds to light! However, among the more exotic are the following:
- Orange Breasted Green Pigeon
- Indian Pitta
- Sand Lark
- Crested Serpent Eagle
- Green Billed Malkoha
- White Throated Ground Thrush
- Paradise Flycatcher
Over the years I have been fortunate enough to capture some good and some not so good images of these amazing forms of life. When I reflect on these images I am transported to those moments of ecstasy and intense happiness that I shared with them. Birds no doubt form the most endearing and colourful forms of life that we humans are fortunate to share our living spaces with. Dr Salim Ali the doyen of Indian ornithologists has recorded that there is perhaps no place on the globe that has not been darkened by the shadow of a bird—this goes to prove the extreme adaptability of this life form. Almost anywhere in the world one is sure to come across bird life—provided of course one keeps one’s eyes and ears open!
When I reflect on the years of bird watching that I have gone through the most exciting thing that comes to my mind is sharing notes with the legendary Salim Ali. It was in the late seventies that I had the good fortune to meet this great man. We were instrumental in setting up what was then known as the Kerala Natural History Society—KNHS for short—and our president was none other than the pioneer of Kerala’s bird studies, Dr K K Neelakantan. I was then an undergraduate student under him involved in trekking and natural history alongside my literary studies. As part of the natural history work I organized a wild life exhibition and I was awarded a prize for my involvement. The prize was none other than a copy of the famed Book of Indian Birds. I had also the good fortune to be introduced to Dr Salim Ali who was then engaged in field work in the Western Ghats. He was delighted in signing the book for me! This priceless possession is now adorning my book shelf. And every time I take it down I am whisked back to those days! How decades ago I was walking down the Ponmudi hills with Dr Salim Ali with his dangling his field glasses, listing the hill birds. The high pitched rackets of Grackle and Racket tailed drongo even now float down the byways of my imagination. The sounds and songs of birds no doubt serve to make our otherwise dreary life meaningful and joyous.
Magpie Robin
Ask anyone to name a singing bird and you will be fairly surprised by the quizzical looks that might appear on their surprised faces—well, they might murmur, how about the Koel? That’s a singing bird, right? Some who are blessed with wild imagination and with a bit of general knowledge trivia might come out with astounding names like the Nightingale, or the Skylark! True, they are all birds that sing—but the most commonly available sweet-singing thrush of our own lawns and backyards as yet remains seldom noticed or recognised! Most people would have some rehashed knowledge of birds through their brush with romantic poetry—either in English or in their own native tongues. Hence their idea of the Cuckoo! But then come March, and this sprite black and white bird bursts into such sweet melody perched on the top of some tree or bush and will keep on for months together till it raises its chicks. The Magpie Robin certainly has a special place in every bird-watcher’s heart; there is little doubt about it. You can meet with this bird usually in the mornings or evenings almost anywhere in our campus. Its favourite nesting spots are on dead trees or among electric-wiring boxes!
Oriole
Orioles are certainly among the most beautiful birds anywhere in the world. They catch our attention as they dazzle their way through the sunlight. Many a time you would see only a flash of golden yellow. These are Golden Orioles. They are more or less residents in our campus. The Black Naped Oriole is conspicuously absent in these parts. And so is the Black Headed. After the rains you can usually hear the fluting cry of the orioles among the trees. They are not very shy birds and one can easily watch their flying antics.
Common Myna
This bird is quite common in our campus and its sprightly gait and variety of calls is bound to attract the attention of even the most uncaring student in the campus! One could see them hitch hiking on cattle many a time, helping the cattle get rid of marauding insects. They are omnivorous birds and the young ones as a rule appear to have a ravenous appetite. The poor parents are kept on their toes diving for insects and feeding the little ones. Many a lamp post in and around the campus is the nesting place for these sleek black and brown birds. Their yellow eye patch gives them a dignity no doubt. Perhaps they are postgraduates here and elsewhere!
The one I have here was being attacked by an oriole!
Small Green Bee-eater
Bee eaters are definitely eye catching. They swoop down on their prey in flight and deftly gathering it up return to the very same perch. The common one in our campus is the Small Green. I have also come across the Blue Bearded Bee eater perched on high tension wire near the building sites.
The small blue nests in holes in the ground. And you might be surprised to come across their nest in such obvious places that you wonder how the birds survive from their natural predators. But that they do is a sign of their success. They plan their breeding season in early summer when there is a plenitude of insect life. And the little ones are quite deft and spritely as they flirt around lamp posts and telephone lines.
Brahminy Myna
Dr Salim Ali, the doyen of Indian ornithology, lists so many varieties of mynas in the Indian subcontinent—they are almost fairly commonly distributed too. Apart from the common myna, there is the Jungle Myna, Blyth’s Myna, Grey Headed Myna, Pied Myna, Grackle or Hill Myna, and Brahminy Myna. In our sprawling campus you could easily come across the Brahminy—so called on account of its white tuft no doubt. They are usually found in pairs. The best time to spot them is immediately after the rains.
Hoopoe
The hoopoe is certainly a majestic bird with its outstanding crest and royal gait. Its hooping call most often echoes round the campus and floats down the corridors and through the open windows. Your first sight of the bird would be surely on the ground as it walks by kingly in its grace. It would take off flapping its barred wings at your approach. Insects are its food and you can meet with them singly or in pairs, almost anywhere in the campus.
White Browed Bulbul
There are many birds that one usually hears but seldom sees. This is one such bird. The bubbling calls echo and reecho among the bushes morning and evening, and the birds dash about usually in pairs. The white brow is distinct, provided you have enough patience to wait for the bird to show itself. Other than this brow the bird is drab and not at all noticeable. It usually merges with the dry foliage.
Red Whiskered Bulbul
As the name implies this bird sports red whiskers and is adorned with a black crest. Most often you might mistake its crest for its beak and the bird appears to have two heads—so a Janus-faced bird! It is not uncommon in our campus and you are bound to come across fairly large hunting parties in and amidst bushes, crackling away. They are usually early risers and quite active throughout the day. These bulbuls— so named on account of the musical instrument of that name—are among the lovable birds which keep our campus alive.
Red vented Bulbul
It would be good for the beginner to keep some standard sizes of birds in mind for further reference when you come across newer birds. Sparrow, Bulbul or Myna are usual reference sizes. Red vented bulbul is usually found alongside mixed hunting parties of red whiskered and white browed. As the name implies it is identifiable on account of the red patch below its tail. The head dress is something that resembles a crew-cut! It nests on small patchy bowls of twigs and dry leaves amidst bushes.
Iora
This beautiful resident bird in the campus is a famed singer—but seldom do people see it! Obviously the usual pair loves to hide amidst the thick leafy braches and tease the searcher! Anyone who takes a stroll down the green part of the campus is certain to hear unusual whistles and chirpings from among the foliage. If one were to take the pains to wait it out patiently one is sure to spot the couple darting between the branches. The male is yellow and black and the female dullish green. One is left wondering how such a small dumpy bird could hold with in itself such lovely repertoire of notes and songs! The life of the campus would be drained if these lovely birds were to desert us! A couple of years ago I was taking an overseas professor for a morning walk round the campus and hearing an Iora pair among the trees we both stood amazed and silent – so religiously like in a church or a temple!
Green Pigeon
One evening in mid-February I was most excited on sighting a whole family of Green Pigeons right across a small clearing beside my quarters. They were perched high up on a cassia tree eating the berries on the lantana or some sort of parasitical growth on the trees, and the late evening glow of the sky was reflected in the bosom of the male. I am not quite sure whether these Orange breasted Green Pigeons were just visiting the campus for a breather in the midst of a long distance flight or even local migrants. Either way the campus is a bustle of bird life between October and March. However, as each year passes the numbers of our feathered friends are certainly dropping. Massive tree-clearings, no doubt, here and elsewhere are regularly destroying their green cover. Just imagine what a dreary place our earth would be without these beautiful creatures!
Birds against the blue skies
One morning in November last year I was gazing up into the deep blue sky when I spotted these long distance fliers. Their flight formation is amazing. Just as a taut bow, they were a gaggle of Geese. Large groups of ducks and geese assemble during winter alongside pelicans, storks, herons and egrets in the water bodies in and around Chennai—the best time to watch them is between October and late March. Ducks and geese like flamingoes are among the high flying birds—ducks have been reported flying as high in the air as even five miles!
White Throated Ground Thrush
A long time ago while bird watching in the western ghats I had many an occasion to come across this short stumpy ground thrush—and I recall making a even a presentation for my naturalist friends including images of this beautiful bird that I had sketched in my notebooks of those days. But then imagine my surprise when I came across this bird here in our campus one morning sitting and meditating all alone among the leaves! The short stretch of tree cover amidst the bamboos near to the Centre for Pollution control was the haunt of this silent one. I have never heard its whistling songs here in Pondicherry.
When one starts writing about birds there is no end to what one could put in. Birds are such delightful creatures that once you have started noticing them you will find yourself drawn to their calls, their songs, their movements and their habitats more often. The study of birds has developed so much these days that from being a mere amateur birdwatcher one could progress to a full-fledged ornithologist in no time provided one takes the pains for it. However, as an aesthete and a committed bird photographer I have discovered another dimension to the whole thing: waiting for the right moment for the right kind of light and aperture, I have found, is a process of silent meditation. It bestows you with a patience and quiet –a calm that passeth all understanding!
Anguish and After
When I was thirty I wrote a poem and called it Autumnal. I thought that was the end of the world. I was facing the worst critical intellectual dilemma in my life so far and didn’t know where to go, which way to turn. I even considered terminating my life in a philosophical manner. My greatest passion then was the works of Fyodor Dostoevsky. And Kirilov who appears in The Possessed was one character whom I totally identified myself with. At one stage in his life he states categorically that life offers barely two options: either to kill oneself or the next immediately obvious one – to kill the other. Suicide or homicide would lead to some definitive action and thus provide meaning to one’s life. This was indeed crazy and the more I reflected upon this logic the more crazy I felt within. There was no essential morality no essential ethics. In fact, faced with a philosophical existentialism I realized there was no valuable essence as well. Existence precedes essence—that was Sartre’s dictum. And I then wholeheartedly believed it too. However, there was action, the possibilities of commitment to life in the real world, some ideological yearnings that my thirsting mind was egging me on to. What about the world out there that held me and everything else? What about my fellow creatures? What about earth and nature and all that beautiful world of sun rises and dawns long bright afternoons and awesome evenings leading on to silent star-studded night skies? How could I terminate my life? Shouldn’t I seek out the answers to those million questions of existence and being that my thinking brain churned out second by second? What am I? The passionate nature of my quest led me on from question to question. And no answer came up. It was interminable anguish.
Readingwas one way. Meditating, another. I would spend long silent hours lying under the shade of my favourite tree on a hill slope overlooking the border of our city. Many of my friends thought I was foolish and was simply wasting my time avoiding work and entrepreneurship. Of course I had also indulged a great deal in my other passion of sketching, painting and writing poetry. And then there were the innumerable birds. I had taken ornithology quite seriously and kept a small bird note book. Wherever I went I had it in my sling bag along with a copy of the Bhagavat Gita and my other favourite books by Jean Paul Sartre and Albert Camus and Nikos Kazantzakis. The world held the answers to all my questions, some how I was sure of all that. But then how does one go about getting the world to spill them all out? On the one hand there was this nagging anguish that was like a deep unquenchable thirst that left the throat parched and dry always—existential questions that loomed large like some lilac mountain, solid, unrelenting, mysterious, and yet tempting, tantalizing…on the other hand there was this tremendous feeling of an oceanic nature, beautiful, bounteous, wholesome, that was on an aesthetic and spiritual dimension—this was never fulfilling though; however, it is the experiences of this second kind that held greater promises of a holistic kind that was as yet probable and possible. There is bound to be some order, some harmonious rhythm that would set the heart and soul at ease and satisfy the deep yearnings of the inquisitive intellect. Poetry and art gave some hints of such possibilities. The natural world of beautiful creatures and exquisite experiences delighted the sensuous aesthete in me and prodded me on like a passionate pilgrim in an eternal search of stars and sonnets. There was Rilke, there was Yeats, there was Herman Hesse, and above all there was KCS Paniker and Pablo Picasso, Ravi Varma and a multitude of like minded souls who appeared and disappeared perpetually taunting the mind as though they were equals and kindred spirits who also underwent such distressing moods of depression and loneliness and who also somehow survived to set everything right. However, there never was anyone who in my view succeeded in finding some permanent solace to the yearnings of the heart. Each encounter only served to deepen my troubled mind and dampen my creative self. Not in poetry not in art, not in nature, then where in the world was I to seek recompense for my self-quest? Nikos Kazantzakis and Freidrich Nietzsche and Herman Hesse spoke about the torments of the self and soul—while on one side the flesh with its pounding heart and sensuous skin held multitudinous desires of the self that throbbed for unending gratification, the soul that gleamed like a distant star uncontaminated and untainted by any of this tumult and turmoil, held the profound promise of a spiritual fulfillment. The split with in was so deep and I could feel this eternal battle raging in the apparent silence of the dark night of the soul! I empathized with Zorba, the Greek; Narcissus and Goldmund; Zarathustra and a dozen other great existential heroes of the world literature. This, I realized, was not the sheer romantic tensions of an immature soul, they were abiding passions of the human mind. W.B Yeats has immortalized this in one of great poems: The Dialogue of Self and Soul.
When such as I cast out remorse
So great a sweetness flows into the breast
We must laugh and we must sing ,
We are blest by everything:
Everything we look upon is blest.
However, I believe he has given a more touching poetic expression in his Wild Swans at Coole. This could work like the Arnoldian touchstone:
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
This not withstanding, my greatest humbling fear was that what if all these torments were merely another aspect of the human mind, the trickster? Then this great human tragedy would become nothing but the human comedy of errors. I was hooked on to The Tragic Sense of Life by Miguel de Unamuno. I identified with that great pessimistic philosopher and the prophet of the will: Schopenhauer who also remarked that “life is essentially tragic and I am willing to make it more tragic by reflecting upon it!”
On my book shelf I found Schopenhauer and Nietzsche and Immanuel Kant resting side by side with the Gita and the Koran and Khalil Jibran and Gurudev Tagore. I rode with angels and demons. Recited the Lalitha Sahasranamam, chanted the Gita and relished the immortal lines of Omar Khayyam in Fitzgerald’s classic translation. The Buddha spoke to me and so did Christ. Lenin and Mao and Che Guevera found equal place in my inside. I was like Hesse’s Siddhartha meditating on the moving river all day and night. Sri Aurobindo and Ramana spoke to me. I lived through the struggles of these great minds. While Ramana sounded simple at the outset he made me pause and think. Sri Aurobindo was tough. But then I was fortunate enough to read through all that he wrote, not missing out any single line. His complexity I found was only at the outside, while deep within he was like I was, confused and bewildered, confronted with a million existential questions, relishing the great aesthetic experience of being and becoming, at one with the universe. Of course it took me only a little while to recognize his great and steadfast will that gave him the continued impetus to forge ahead in the supreme quest of the spirit. I felt I understood the reason for his overt withdrawal from the world of politics into the silence and solitude of the ashram. It was not a withdrawal at all but an all inclusive immersion into the larger being of the cosmic spirit. What delighted me most about this amazing intellectual yogi was his continued openness to the questions of the body and the intellect. Someone had called him a radical mystic. Yes, Sri Aurobindo gave clear cut answers to many of my questions. However the greatest challenge was in unlocking these observations in the laboratory of ones own mind. Behind every Jelkill there is this Hyde. It might be one thing to follow these teachings of these noble masters as teachings but another to experientially encounter them. My questing mind was always alert and devious, mischievous. I wanted the cake and to eat it too. Yoga and spirituality demanded great disciplining of the senses and the mind. I was worried whether these might lead to an incarceration of the sensuous self. I wanted the passions of the body and the soul to be equally well balanced. It was a virtual impossibility.
There are among the many possibilities of life two major options: having or being. The desires of the physical self are only gratified by the possession of material objects and other things relishable through the physical senses. The hungers of the higher self are not easily satisfied: the entire being has to be transformed. Now, the most wonderful aspect of existence as I came to understand aesthetically is the inexhaustibility of life. There is no end to what you can, have or be. The craving of the self can never be abated; the desires of the soul are equally well unsatisfiable. One can go on possessing the endless riches of this world and still feel the emptiness that only becomes vaster by the second. The physical being is like a hole in the ground the larger it becomes the more emptier it becomes. The soul on the other hand desires completion of being, as Sri Aurobindo has rightly pointed out in his The Life Divine. Aspiration rises up and grace comes down– the final union results in a transformation of the being. The physical ceases to be itself and the encounter enhances the human being. The process, as I understand it, is never complete in a stasis, but results in a dynamis—a constant process of becoming. Being is becoming. The passions of the mind are not mere freaks of the imagination but they are the beacons of the divine becoming.
This is the point where the Nietzschean superman recognizes that morality and ethics are for the commoners. This is devious turn of events; leading only to fascism and eternal perdition. This is anti humanism. But reading Nietzsche closely revealed to me that he was not so naïve as to lead humanity into eternal damnation. If I were to state that he was a self-realised soul it might raise many an eye brow and even raise the hornet’s nest against me. But then the man who debated music with Wagner and pried open the philosophical positions of the western rational enlightenment grounded on binary opposites only to reveal that there are no contradictions but only complementarities, could be no simple intellectual philosopher but only one with a profound insight gained out of rigorous self analysis very much in the lines of the Upanishadic Rishis. Blake had claimed : without contraries there is no progress. Nietzsche propounds: there are no contraries but only complementarities. Not in complete possession but in complete surrender lies the ultimate becoming of the cosmic spirit.
I have come to understand that the intellect never gives up. It always craves for more. The mind never is satisfied. It is always questing. The passions of the self are uncontrollable. Well, why should one try to do the impossible? Living is its own becoming. Love and compassion, understanding and tolerance swell forth from a completeness of being, that is forever becoming. Not in having, that is for sure, but in becoming is the greatest satisfaction of having lived! A life that is free from regrets and misgivings, free from intentional acts of evil that bestow pain for the other, relishing in the completeness of being, is spiritual indeed.
To believe the poet: after such knowledge what forgiveness? Once you have looked into the heart of anguish there is no escape. Knowledge is pain. The more one comes to know the more one feels burdened, until one learns to empty one’s intellect like unwinding a taut spring. My passion for the unknown that used to torment me then is with me still; however, I have learned to look upon those tensions with more controlled ease. The Upanishad speaks of two birds sitting on a tree. One calmly looks on while the other eats the fruit. I am sure this is to be seen in the symbology of the Upanishads as the self-aware soul reflecting on the self. There is a certain calm that befalls one as one enters a huge cathedral or a temple or any religious site, and provided one is able to maintain the same calm one can come away with it. Just like the sannyasin who returns to the human habitation after sojourning the jungles as a vanaprasta, with a calm that passes all understanding, the tormented intellect is smoothened after it allows itself to be percolated by the spiritual. Perhaps this is the self same condition in which Dostoevsky’s Kirilov comes to decide that he is ready to quit the world. It does no more matter whether he exits this way or that; no more is he a vassal to the flesh, nor bound by the lesser moral laws of the mortals.
