Wednesday, November 18, 2015

More of Tadoba



November 19, 2015.

Rama said from the kitchen: 'Three days of forests, animals, silences. Else blanked out.' Yes, it did not strike me; twice or thrice Shreya and Chiyu floated in, otherwise easy blanks. For Ganesh, forest is a meditation; Vidya agrees; she did not think and talk of Chennai and office. We have yet to break the dream. Tadoba was there before us; will probably be after us. Tadoba and denizens took us in; not sure we did and do the same. Perhaps, Tadoba magic can never get read. Have jeeped Tadoba many times to be stranded at the gates. Silence is a confession of what me does not know. We may have created a power bureaucracy in the forests: Tigers at the top, rest below. That may not be so for forest Tadoba. It is for us. Jungle quails, three of them, edging their way along the mud track like pilgrims on pilgrimage; a barking deer; and undistinguished sat bhais (jungle babblers), twice; till date not know why sat bhais, when there are more in a crowd; what about the females and kids in the crowd. When for the first time, Paul and me stepped into Melghat Tiger Reserve with Sanjay Rithe, we came across sat bhais and a gaur; that was all. Since then they amuse me. They, the aam admis, are not matters serious for camera tourists; with all the high speed shuttering, do they relish the moments with bare eyes, wonder. But they are for Douglas Dewar, Edward Hamilton Aitken (EHA) and M. Krishnan, wildlife Marxists. Perhaps Douglas Dewar might have bumped into EHA; M. Krishnan belongs to the 20th century. They have mostly written on commoners, not princes.Writing more than 100 years ago, Douglas Dewar in Jungle Folk, Indian Natural History Sketches: 'I commend the common peafowl (Pavo cristatus) to the Indian patriot, for it is a true Swadeshi bird. It is made in India and nowhere else.' Spotted peafowl often at Tadoba, drove by. Dewar muses: 'India is peculiarly rich in birds of character. It is the happy hunting-ground of that unique fowl, Corvus splendens -- the splendid crow -- splendid in sagacity, resource, adaptiveness, boldness, cunning, and depravity; a Machiavelli, a Shakespeare among birds, a super-bird....Finally, Indian birds generally are characterised by their fearlessness of man. It is therefore comparatively easy to study their habits. I can count no fewer than twenty different species which, during past nesting seasons, have elected to share with me the bungalow that I happened to occupy. Is it then surprising that an unbounded enthusiasm should pervade the writings of all Indian naturalists, that these should constantly bubble over with humour? ...Our writings must, therefore, other things being equal, excel theirs.'  In me pocket garden in Borivili, sometimes sights crows, sparrows, squirrels; rarely Alexandrine parakeets, drongos ....our birds are scared of us ..our writers have little of birds in 2015... Tadoba save us. 

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