Monday 22 June 2015

THE BEAR NECESSITIES!

 The bear necessity!
The train was moving at blistering speed. In it my best friend Surya and I bunkered one below the other. His countenance was painted with euphoria as he was on the cusp of experiencing his first ever wildlife journey. A sign of despondency reflected as I looked into the mirror. Being a wildlife aficionado has got me fame for having been able to photograph Tigers, Lions and Snow Leopards but then I had no pressure to see any of these creatures. My arcane peregrinations into the forests had enabled me to respect it without having to make any demands. I was satisfied even if I didn’t see any creature. Just breathing the fresh air surrounded by thick umbrageous vegetation was all my mental cognition required for some much required R&R. But this time it wasn’t going to be that simple. I had to show my crony something by which he could cherish his virgin trip into the wild.
We reached Satpura Tiger Reserve at a time when the sun was directly over our heads. This meant that we had time for some lunch and a short nap before our evening safari could begin. It was titillating at first, when the gates to the park were opened. Normally I would have enjoyed such a drive but I was exasperated when the gates were finally closed as we saw nothing and heard nothing!
Three days into our trip and we had nothing substantial to take back. I was beginning to think that my vile of liquid luck had finally run its course. It was our last drive into the forest. My heart began to throb violently. I felt as if the forest has ostracized me for veering away from my probity of not having expectations on the forest. My reputation of being the luckiest wildlife aficionado was pendulously resting on an early 5 ‘o’ clock start. And thus our story begins.

     Bear approaching the termite mound.
Three and a half hours into the drive had me trounced to the nadir of hopelessness. It’s hard to be chipper when you’re down and out. With a maelstrom brewing inside me and a conniption over the horizon I was able to maintain my equanimity by sticking to my Buddhist disposition of relishing the moment without having any sort of desires. As soon as such cauldrons of turpitude were voyaged, beyond the thin vale of fog stood a creature suited in its armor of hirsuteness. Like a tippler daggering his line of vision my eyes were transfixed to a point that I couldn’t even afford a blink. Such was my eagerness to provide my friend with a meritorious event of remembrance. We bounced right out of our seats and ran amok in the jeep with our heads careering to all corners; trying our best to consolidate our glimpse into an eidetic coherence.  As we slewed around in the vehicle, little did I realize that we made a shambolic mess which greatly incinerated the driver. All that was soon to be forgotten as the events that panned out were nothing short of a prismatic experience.

         The bear uses a branch to pry open the mound with perfunctory ease.
An adult bear trundled through the everglade and beleaguered a termite mound. With the help of a fallen branch the bear prised open the mound with perfunctory ease. The dexterity with which such a tool was used obfuscated all of us. A thunder like crack ripped through the serenity of the forest and our overawed expressions would complete an almost perfect picturesque moment in time. Rummaging through the mound the bear dug its dagger like claws to the bottom of the mound. Termites poured out of the hill like water being disgorged from a glass. Thousands of termites ran for cower while the bear feasted on them. As I leered into my camera to trigger some pictures something seemed to move in the foreground. I rubbed my eyes and peered through the thicket and to our incredulous luck we saw two bear cubs frolicking in a pool of water. The cubs were impervious to our presence and continued with their rambunctious play. Such overt displays confounded us to an unimaginable degree.

Bear cub on the tree.
We stumbled into a tizzy as our discombobulated minds were beginning to fathom the dose of reality. Steepling my fingers in nervous excitement the felicity on my face was ever glowing. Furtively I sunk into my camera and filmed the behavior of the cubs. While I was drawn between filming and taking pictures, the cubs began to climb a tree. A rare sight indeed; I was glad to be filming at that time as footage like this is hard to come by.

        A bear cub hitches a ride while the other saunters closely behind.
After a while the inquisitive bear cubs made their way down the tree and sauntered towards their mum. They rote their chores by looking at the mum tear down the ant hill and emulated the digging of the mound. With great difficulty the cubs were able to feed on the fleeting termites. The stolid mother watched as I photographed her cubs and by the end of which the mother signaled for the cubs to move on. As we observed the symbiotic bonhomie and romp between the cubs their highlighted enamor seemed palpable to us gazers.

    Bear cubs' version of a piggy-back ride.
One cub followed the mother while the other jumped on her back to hitch a piggy-back ride. We watched as the bears made their way in front of our jeep and into the forest. Our rapturous smiles said it all. What we experienced was nothing short of a hair rising exhilaration where the slightest attempt to describe our feelings would be traduced in a void. My sedulous work with the camera paid rich dividends as I’ve been able to capture videos and photographs that are priceless. The bears made their way for a well earned siesta. It was a fantabulous sighting indeed more so because I was no longer a harbinger of a fruitless trip. It soon dawned on me that what we had witnessed was the bear necessity of life!

Tuesday 30 December 2014

Blacky: The Miracle Baby ^_^.

Blacky: The Miracle Baby.
Hope is a powerful feeling which works like a double edged sword. It lets you hold on to the last strands of sanity during perilous times by placing you on the road to a miracle and when things don’t work out as planned, it makes you feel as if you’ve taken a fall off a cliff and plunged into the abyss. In this article; I’m going to take the reader to the heart of a miracle by narrating the story of my eight month old kitten that took a fall from the terrace of an eight story apartment building onto concrete ground with nothing in between to break her fall and yet through an incredible stroke of miraculous luck; she survived the ordeal! 

                                                    Kiara.                                                                             
Serendipity is central to my story underlying a train of disasters that was soon to ensue the calamitous state of affairs I was to find myself in. It all started one evening when I found a cadaverous little kitten, all dressed in black with fiery iridescent eyes on the staircase of my fire exit. The kitten looked scraggy, emaciated and famished and so out of the goodness of my heart I took her in and nourished her back to health. It was not long before my entire family fell in love with her and decided to raise her as our own and with matrilineal superiority raining down our throats decided to name her ‘Blacky’. At this juncture it is imperative that I mention that I have another cat called Kiara; which is a cross betwixt a Turkish-van cat and a Burmese cat. Kiara is gargantuan when compared to other cats and at first she didn’t take too well to Blacky as she would at the slightest provocation hiss and smite at her. Impish Blacky, the boisterous of the two would never shy away from a confrontation and would do her best to curdle Kiara’s blood by pouncing on her from every nook and corner of the house. It was incidents like this that caused Kiara to become more prudent with her perambulations around the house and such playful banter broke Kiara’s self-effacing bulwark and pretty soon every morning the two would engage themselves in wrestling matches with the intent to out maneuver the other to the ground. After an interlude of two months the two seemed inseparable; as their lives became so entwined that they would eat, stare out the window, play and sleep together.
                                                             
Blacky & Kiara sleeping together.
 I’m sure one has heard of taking a dog for a walk but it would seem ludicrous when I tell people that I take my cats out for a walk. Every morning at the crack of dawn I would take Kiara and Blacky up to my terrace and let them play for about an hour when everyone was asleep. Kiara would spend time wallowing in the dust and Blacky would give wings to her wildest desires of chasing down pigeons. This became the order of the day and at times when I was lazy to wake up; the two girls would pester my mother to open the door and her acquiescent nature would always cater to the need of the girls.

 Kiara & Blacky: Two sides of the same coin.
On the 23rd of November which happened to fall on Diwali I was a bit perturbed about sending the girls to the terrace and after a horrifying spasm of meowing I decided to let them go. I played with them on the terrace for about half an hour after which I decided to retire to my room and spend my time more judiciously by firing up my laptop and ironing out a wrinkle on the internet. After an intervening period of twenty minutes Kiara came back from the terrace and by the look on her face I knew she was trying to tell me something. She looked agitated and going by the tenor of her purr I knew she was telling me that something on the terrace had gone horribly wrong. I immediately ran up the stairs…

It took me ten minutes to search every nook and corner of the terrace and I found no trace of Blacky. I knew she had a thing for pigeons as she caught one couple of days ago on the staircase. I decided to reconnaissance the terrace including the staircases that led to other buildings and she was nowhere to be found. There was one last location to look and that was down a vent which was open from the top with a semi broken wooden plank and from there on it was a free-fall down eight stories with nothing to break ones fall. My heart was pounding when I approached the vent. It was blacky’s favorite location from which she observed the pigeons. I approached the vent with a throbbing heartbeat and looked all the way down. One cannot stem the flood of emotions that ran through my spine and brought me to my knees when I saw blacky lying down in a state of stupor. My worst trepidations have finally come true. 

The nine story high vent through which Blacky fell.
Blacky had fallen from the 9th floor onto solid concrete with nothing in the middle to break her fall. I was aghast as words seemed to echo in a void and I was trying to get myself to call out to her. Ten seconds later I managed to utter the words ‘Blacky’ and in an instant she called back. I was unsure if I actually heard her reply or it was just my mind playing tricks on an emotionally over-whelmed soul and so I called out to her yet again and instantly came the lightning fast reply. I knew she was alive and barely holding onto life by a miraculous shoestring of a chance. She had severe internal bleeding which I could make out with every call. I knew it was only a matter of time before she drowned in her own blood and this is where my emotions got the best of me and I was on a collision course with a train of disasters. I was unable to maintain my equanimity in such a situation and my inability to temper patience almost cost Blacky her life. Firstly I knew not the location to which the vent opened up to and secondly I had to find the liftman to pinpoint Blacky’s location. I ran down the stairs and brought the liftman up to show me the location. Then after a brief stint at guessing her location the two of us ran down to get Blacky. I knew I was losing out on crucial time. I found Blacky on the ground and she recognized me instantly. I picked her up with my hands and ran home to a surprised mother who began to breakdown as soon as she saw Blacky.  Without taking our phones and wallets, my mother and I sat in the car and drove to a nearby veterinary hospital. My father told us that he will finish locking up the house and will meet us at the hospital. The situation was deteriorating as Blacky was now sprouting blood from both her orifices (mouth and anus). The white shirt that I was wearing at that time was drenched in blood and that only added to the chaos and bedlam within the car. Upon reaching the hospital the security guard came up to us and told us that the hospital was closed on account of Diwali celebrations and that the doctor had just left the premises a few minutes prior to our arrival. And so we went back home to see if father was still there; all the time losing out on precious time to save her life.

                                                        Blacky: First day after the fall.                                                                          
When we reached home we found it locked. We had no phone and money and so my mother went to our neighbors’ house and requested them for the use of their phone. She spent ten minutes trying to get my father on the line and to no avail as the call wasn’t getting through. With every passing second I knew Blacky’s chances of surviving was slipping away. There was another veterinary clinic about twenty minutes from our house and none of us knew the way. With no phones and wallets in hand we knew it was going to be a stab in the dark as we had to take the gamble with directions to give Blacky a fighting chance and so we plunged heedlessly into the twenty minute drive and all this while Blacky was throwing up blood. She was on the verge of dying and now she began to slip in and out of consciousness. 

Our frustration peaked with every misguided direction and with Blacky struggling to hold onto life I allowed frustration to slip sense from tongue and began to hurl tirades of abuses at every wrong turn. I then looked up at the firmament with hopes of receiving some sort of recourse and my prayers were soon answered when we reached the hospital. I passed my father by the waiting room as I rushed Blacky into the emergency ward. Blacky was immediately put on IV drips and the doctors injected her with several coagulants. I don’t know how long Blacky was lying on the concrete floor after her fall and the amount of time that we lost in getting her to the hospital; but the momentousness of the occasion was lost in the welter of a thousand mistakes and just as Blacky slipped in and out of life, a variety of anxious thoughts ran through my head. Way to follow a train of thoughts I said to myself. The situation abounds in ironies as every decision of mine was wrong right from the start. Firstly I should have gone with my gut instincts and not have allowed Blacky to go to the terrace. Secondly while rushing her to the hospital I should have taken twenty seconds out to grab my phone, had I done that I could have called various hospitals to see which one was open and rushed Blacky to one well within 10 minutes but instead I chose to let her languish on the verge of death by gambling between two hospitals and my house for a good part of an entire hour before getting her to the vet. I was now in the emergency room holding Blacky down while the doc made a careful vet of her situation. My mind was now a devil’s playground.

I was trying to figure out how Blacky managed to fall from such a height and yet survive for so long? For over a month Blacky was prancing on the terrace without ever so much as taking a minor fall and today she plummeted down nine stories? She must have been instinctively observing the pigeons as some acts cannot be avoided when stripped of choice and with the help of some divine interpolation it hit me. It was Diwali! While she must have been sitting comfortably on the edge of the vent; a cracker must have startled her off the ledge and onto concrete ground. The screams within me rose to earsplitting intensity as I had to watch the life drain out of this eight month old kitten. It was by no stretch of imagination that an innocent creature should deserve such a comeuppance. By now Blacky started convulsing violently and I told myself it was only a matter of time before the inevitable end would claim her life.
The doctor’s tone invited no discussion and I couldn’t get myself to look at Blacky in such a dismal state. Equally disheartening was looking out the emergency door at my parents who were worried out of their wits. I looked at the doctor and his orderlies that were holding onto Blacky’s convulsing body as despair was painted on everyone’s countenance and the doctor sketched a melancholy picture with his carefully chosen words. “Chances are feeble”! It was gut-wrenching to hear those words fall from his mouth but I knew he was talking out of experience. In ghostly outline, I saw the beginnings of the end.
                                                 
Blacky’s story is a tale of caution. In the kaleidoscope of shifting conditions what dose of a dangerous environment can be safe except one where people go out of the way to ensure that all construction work is complete and out of bounds to passersby. What if Blacky’s fall was replaced by a Child who fell while playing on the terrace? Such vents should be sealed off with perforated lids but as the saying goes, it is human to err! Humans with all their supposed superior ingenuity cannot foresee and forestall. They can only swing into action after a tragedy has ensued!

After about an hour there was a tantalizing glimpse as life began to seep into Blacky as she lifted her head to look at me. In the lightning flashes that followed the thunder of discontent I was amazed at Blacky’s resoluteness to live. She now began to shudder and kick about violently as it took two orderlies and the doctor to hold her down. She was soon dowsed with a muscle relaxant. The amount of strength she could muster immediately after such a fall was baffling! The doctor seemed bamboozled by her resilient nature and asked me if she really fell from the terrace. Such a fall would have instantly killed a human but here was an eight month old kitten that managed to pep death by the smallest of margins and pull off a miraculous escape. Eight hundred rupees read the bill of fare presented to us by the doctor. Emotions ran high when I looked at the figure. At present times what goods of value can one really purchase with eight hundred rupees? To us; the amount did no justice to what we were about to get in return. We bought Blacky extra time to live out and no amount in the world could match her price. The doctor later disclosed to us that the clinic was actually closed for the day and that he had arrived just to perform a prayer on this auspicious day and was planning to leave in the next fifteen minutes had we not arrived. We thanked him profusely for his services.

We took Blacky home after her IV drip came to an end. The doctor warned us that she has suffered extensive internal bleeding and the extent of her internal injuries is yet unknown and that her condition was extremely critical and we should not have our hopes set on her recovery. I knew in my heart that Blacky was a fighter and if there was ever a chance for a kitten to survive a fall from the terrace of an eight story building onto concrete ground, then it was Blacky who could make that happen. That evening we placed Blacky on a mattress on the floor and kept checking on her. We kept an eye on her breathing pattern which was oscillating between a slow and quick rhythm. After an hour she disappeared under the bed and crawled all over the room, unable to restrict her movement we let her be and locked the door. When I was on my jog that evening my mother called me and asked if I placed Blacky on the bed before I went for my run. I would never have done that for fear of her falling off it and injuring herself even more. But there she was on the bed, fast asleep. We were all astonished as to how she got herself up there. We knew the fall definitely broke many bones in her body but were unsure of the number as we had no x-ray to confirm it. Breathing that evening was difficult for all of us as the air was polluted by smoke from the Diwali celebrations. Blacky thus contracted respiratory infection which developed into cold, cough and fever. Animals including humans with internal injuries perish due to infections they contract after surviving such an ordeal. Blacky was still bleeding internally and blood now began to enter her lungs. She was coughing relentlessly and the blocked nose from the cold didn’t make it any easier on her. We gave her a little bit of honey that stopped her cough and soon she was asleep. That evening my mother and I took shifts at sleeping as one of us had to constantly keep an eye on her. Because Blacky was kept in a room at the far corner of our house I kept her door ajar which enabled us to peek into the room without disturbing her sleep. By morning I was extremely fatigued and I inadvertently slipped into a deep sleep.

My mother was reduced to tears when she opened the door next morning as she found Blacky out of bed and right by the side of the door crying for one of us to come over and talk to her. So that day we decided to buy an open bed for her to lie in and placed it on my bed. That way she can be a part of our lives while we go about our daily activities. Love, care and attention were exigencies of the day and vital for her recovery. Taking care of Blacky was by no means a cinch as one of the family members had to stay by her side at all times; fastidiously serving her every need such as spoon feeding her, cleaning her, giving her medicine and carrying her to her toilet bowl. She is as much a family member as my mom, dad or Kiara and in my heart I knew for certain that Blacky will make a full recovery as long as she doesn’t slip into depression, hence we did all can to stay by her side and pamper her to the zenith!
                                                                    
Blacky's new open bed. 
There she was lying on a baby’s nappy pad comfortably ensconced in her new bed, looking out the window at the birds that flew by. In the midst of it all Kiara was feeling a bit left out and she began to dabble in what I like to call ‘ADS’ (attention drawing syndromes). Kiara would run all over the house, call out persistently in a fit of jealous rage to draw our attention away from Blacky. Kiara right from the start was recluse by nature and now started developing an affinity to spending time with my parents.

My parents and I scoured the internet, sifting through articles and blog posts hoping to find answers to ameliorate Blacky’s situation. While we found quite a bit of paraphernalia on how to handle the situation and what drugs to administer we never came across a case study to which we could relate Blacky’s situation. For four days Blacky refused to eat cat food and drink water and hence we were forced to take her to the vet to administer IV drips and various coagulant drugs as her bleeding was a recurring issue. She was inoculated with a high dosage of antibiotics to battle the infection and the doctor told us that the fever was not a good sign and portended the oncoming invasion of infections. That day we got her blood work done and the report showed a little bit of liver damage but imperatively showed that her vitals were fine. Since the liver is the only organ capable of regeneration, the doctor said that it wasn’t something that would neither give us sleepless nights nor cause her great distress. We were then asked to take her to a Pet Lab; the only one on this side of Delhi to get her X-ray done.

The people at the lab were cavalier to say the least and were going about their duty in an extremely nonchalant fashion. It just shows that only a bare beginning has been made in the way our society treats our animals. To quote Gandhi ji ''The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated"And judging by the way the lab conducts its business; there are several miles to go before we can consider ourselves a sanctimonious nation.

                                    Blacky's X-ray showing her broken pelvis and femur.                                                   
The X-rays were out and going by the horrified expression on the physicians face I knew there were somber times ahead. I looked at the X-ray, it showed multiple fractures on the Pelvis and her Femur. The Lab physician told me that her entire left femur was broken including her pelvis at multiple locations and that my doctor would advise the next course of action. So I took The X-rays back to the doc and the doc told us that there was nothing more he could do and if Blacky recovers from her infection, the bones will have to heal naturally. Looking at the X-ray I knew that natural healing without surgically reparation of the femur would maim her for the rest of her life and when I brought this to the doctor’s notice he told me that a surgery would be detrimental to her and we have to leave it to her ability to heal naturally. I knew I had to find another doctor as I had overstayed my welcome with the current one. And so the next day we took her to the hospital which was actually closed on the day Blacky had suffered the fall. The doctor looked at the reports and told us that the chances of Blacky surviving are very slim and to add to that she is not eating on her own. I was caught between a rock and a hard place when we began contemplating about taking the road to euthanasia. I felt a conflict between my blood and my brain as Blacky was too dear to lose and at the same time I didn’t want her to suffer. We spoke to many experts over the phone and everyone told us that her recovery is most likely out of the picture and we had to deal with the hard truth. We had to let her go!

It was a sobering fact to see Blacky eat on her own and pass her stools the next day. By some divine touch she seemed to have been invigorated and was now brimming with life. We immediately got down to pampering her and feeding her with her favorite food, freshly chopped blood soaked mutton liver. She gorged on fifteen pieces and went back to sleep. We took her to the hospital again and another doctor examined her x-rays and recommended that we speak to the surgeon and request him to perform a surgery on her femur at the earliest. We met the Surgeon and got his approval for the surgery scheduled for the very next day. He gave us a piece of iron rod and asked us to buy one with a similar dimension. I looked everywhere and found that only one lady within my locality was selling it for Rs. 1500 apiece. She had not the rod on her but promised to arrange it by the evening. While buying medicines for Blacky I asked the owner of the pharmacy if I could get a piece of rod elsewhere and he duly gave me the address of the shop and the rod of the same shape, size and material was priced at only Rs. 100. It just goes to show the lengths people are willing to go without qualms of moral conscience to make extra money. Now I had the rod with me and while showing it to the doc, an orderly barged into the room and informed the doctor that the next day was declared a holiday by the government and that Blacky’s surgery was postponed by a day.

On closer examination of the X-ray and my diligent observation of Blacky’s sitting posture revealed contrasting results. Blacky was Lying comfortably on her left femur and pelvis while the X-ray showed that those were the bones that were completely broken. Either the X-ray was wrong or Blacky was going against the laws of pain. Even while standing Blacky pivoted on her left leg instead of the right one. I was skeptical of the X-ray and two days later just before the surgery was to take place I asked the doc to carefully examine the leg that was broken. After a thorough examination of both her hind legs, my hunch was proved right. Her right pelvis and femur were broken contrary to the criminally inaccurate X-ray which revealed the opposite.

                                                   Blacky's X-ray after the surgery.                                                                 
A new and different hand was on the tiller as the doctor successfully operated on Blacky. The X-ray machine at the hospital was not in a functioning state and we rushed Blacky immediately after the surgery in her anesthetized state back to the pet lab that made the horrendous error with her earlier X-ray, to take yet another X-ray to ensure if the rod had been inserted properly. Standing by the reception counter was an infuriated version of myself because of their prior error with her X-ray but I was compelled to perform a delicate balancing act by both condemning and condoling their procedures as I knew I had no other option but return to them for yet another X-ray after a months’ time before getting her rod removed.

                           Blacky's new cage to restrict her movement after the surgery.                                    
A new complication arose when Blacky started passing blood along with her urine. We were alarmed and we immediately took a sample of her urine back to the pet lab to have it examined. When the reports came in, we were thrilled to know that she hadn’t contracted any infection and that her kidneys were functioning rather remarkably well. On the question of blood in her urine, we were yet dumbfounded. We later attributed the blood flow to the trauma that she suffered from her fall.

Cats are extremely clean creatures. Despite her broken bones Blacky refuses to come out of her toilet bowl without covering her stools with mud.
There are tantalizing glimpses on the 8th of November that suggested that Blacky was on the course to a full recovery as she ate and drank on her own. I would like to share a small message from my family to all those who have pets and are in the midst of experiencing a similar situation as we have: We would request you to turn thoughts from unfortunate past as we must look towards better days to come. Such memories will fade with time as do all that are born out of misfortune. During the vortex of such struggles, especially when one is reacting to constantly changing circumstances, we must remember that one rarely is in the right frame of mind to consider carefully all the ramifications of one’s decisions and we are here to do the best we can with what little we know. The key to saving your loved one from the clutches of death is love, comfort and constant attention. These along with medical treatment can help lift your loved one from a dismal state to one filled with exuberance and elan.
                                             
          The Xray was taken a week before the rod was surgically removed.                           
Blacky underwent a minor surgery to have the rod that was lodged within her femur and pelvis removed on the 28th of November. Since then she has recovered remarkably well as she is running on all fours without ever so much as a minor limp.

 It was not long before the naughty devil got back to her normal life filled with shenanigans and attempts at pestering Kiara to her wits end!
The story has finally run the course of its life and we are more than pleased to see it culminate with a happy ending. Blacky, the lucky baby that found herself a home within our family and dodged the clutches of death to become one among the elite group of immortals to have survived a fall from grace and into our hands as a reincarnated miracle baby that survived the odds!







Tuesday 13 May 2014

CALL OF A WILDLING!


I’m going to tread down memory lane to pen down an experience and who ever reads it with any degree of sober judgment would think that this was taken straight out of a fairy tale. The New Motibagh residential colony is probably one of the most beautiful places one can hope to reside in Delhi. Apart from all the luxuries provided to the urban resident, the colony seems to serve the aesthetic needs of a nature lover too. When a person enters the gated colony and careens himself along the periphery, life takes an unexpected turn. Gone are the notions that one lives in the heart of Delhi, the people, the traffic and all the sounds that are affiliated with a crowded metropolitan city, and in comes the sweet, melodious, cacophonous, chirps and song notes covering a wide range of genres that would instantly make one feel that he was teleported from Earth, across the galaxy and specks of cosmic dusts and into another planet bustling with avian life. This is what anyone will experience and fortunately I was one of the lucky few to do so. I was not surprised when my inquisitive chord was struck by a burgeoning urge to explore the wild within my colony and this germinated into a two year effort of observation and documentation and ultimately culminated with the birth of the Green Brigade.

During my escapades into the wild, I was able to identify more than 51 species of birds within New Motibagh. A paradise for birds or so it would seem. Over the past two years I was able to form a close relationship with the birds and spend close to ten hours at a stretch, watching them feed, build nests, frolic in puddles of water and be the sole spectator to their flamboyant and grandiloquent displays with their colorful wedding suits and their wildly amusing courtship rituals. I’m going to arrow a stab and partly blame myself for keeping the avian paradise a secret from everyone though my intentions were to provide the birds with an undisturbed habitat. But a series of unfortunate events have spun a web of destruction around the birds with several trees and shrubs being cleared off and many people illegally capturing and caging them. As a source of recourse for the birds and their habitat, a phalanx called the Green Brigade was put together constituting like minded residents with the sole intent of protecting the delicate Eco-system within our colony and ultimately providing a safe abode for the birds.

The Green Brigade soon realized that the Parakeets, the once gregarious birds were fast disappearing from our colony. The dreaded eerie silence which replaced their unmistakable squalling calls was our first clue while the several undisturbed fruits, berries, nuts, blossoms and seeds were our second. Finally working on a tip off and with the aid of the police and an avian NGO the Green Brigade was able to rescue three Parakeet hatchlings and this is where our story begins.

By now I was a nature aficionado within my neighborhood and was in the process of filming my first documentary about these birds. I knew the exact location of birds, their nests and the number of hatchlings within each nest for a good part of my colony. A sawed off branch seemed to make a good nesting site for two parakeets and because of its steep inclination I was unable to film it. Nonetheless I would spend the better part of my day observing their mating patterns, guardianship of their nest, incubation of their eggs and finally upbringing of the hatchlings that were tucked away deep within the hollow burrow. I was besotted with an unexplainable feeling every time a hatchling stuck its head out and asked for food. The Parakeets took turns feeding while one perched on a tree overlooking the burrow, the other would venture on a food gathering expedition. The Parakeets are rapacious defenders of their nests, always keeping an eye out for predators such as eagles, kites, crows and cats and to add to that they had me to fend off humans.

I soon realized that my worst fears were about to come true. One morning I made my way to the nest site and waited for over an hour and couldn’t locate either of the parent Parakeets. This was odd as the Parakeets usually fed their hatchlings in intervals of ten minutes. Something seemed wrong right from the start. After having fought a long bone-jarring battle with my mind I was able to muster up the courage to climb the tree and peak into the dark hollow burrow to see how the hatchlings were doing. These near hair breath escapes of adventure fuel my life and these are words to live by. I didn't as much as take off three feet from the ground before I nose dived into the ground and my short run at climbing the tree seems to have run headlong into one of those unexpected prolonged downpours and by now I was covered in slush. Not to be outdone by a little rain and slush, I was back up on my feet and this time managed to make it to the nest site and to my utter dismay I found no hatchlings inside the nest. The answer was never the hard part as the lack of blood stains suggested that the four parakeet babies were hatchling-napped and not eaten by any predator. They couldn't have fallen off either as the burrow was steep and deep and they were too young to wriggle out of their deep rooted nest. Three hours into the tribulation and I still have no clue about the parents. We’re they captured too?

It was teeth gnashingly frustrating as ten days passed and I had no clue about the hatchlings and their parents. Then just when I was about to give up on them, I caught a faint ray of luck when I inadvertently stumbled upon a couple of kids burying a dead love-bird in the sand. I struck a conversation with them and evoked the poignant truth about the Parakeet hatchlings. They had been captured by a couple of kids living in the colony. The kids that took them were acquaintances of mine, despite knowing my love for birds, they crowed happily with me during these ten days without ever so much as sparring a thought for my feelings. I now paddled into deep waters about the truth of bird disappearances within my colony.

With the help of an avian NGO and a police force within my colony, the Green Brigade was able to save three Parakeet hatchlings. These hatchlings were confined to a small box with hardly any amount of breathing space. Once confiscated the hatchlings were nestled in an open basket in the house of a senior resident of the colony, Mrs. Poppy Kumar, who also happens to be one of the founding members of the Green Brigade club. Mrs Poppy Kumar went through a lot of trouble caring for these little ones as she had to hand feed them every two hours throughout the course of the day. While questioning the boys who captured the hatchlings, we were subjected to a kind of word salad of criminally inaccurate excuses and because they were unaware that it was illegal to keep parakeet hatchlings in cages, we let them go with a stern warning. The boys have now turned their deviant ways around and are now the watchers and protectors of birds within our colony.

Three days of tending to every need of the hatchlings took its toll on ma'am and I. During one of the feeding sessions, we heard a parakeet call out from the wild and the hatchlings (now sub-adults) seemed to respond to the call. The little ones would screech, spread their wings and make futile efforts to reach out to the source of the call. Parakeets are sociable birds and they are often found hanging on cages of captive birds and hence we were skeptical about their parents ever finding their babies. If the parents themselves were not captured, we assumed that by now they might have nested elsewhere, far away from the current nesting site. But we were not going to stand in the way of a miracle and so we put the birds out in a cage for some time. Two Parakeets stood on a tree facing the cage. One flew away while the other stayed back. Within fifteen minutes, the other parakeet returned and this time, made a bee line for the cage. She perched on it for ten minutes keeping a lookout for danger. After which she began feeding the hatchlings through the cage.

I could hardly believe my eyes! Was all this real or a delusional mind playing tricks? A quick pinch confirmed the former and I began observing the thaumaturgy that was being conjured up right before my very eyes. The Parakeets took turns feeding the hatchlings just like their parents once did and the feedings took place at ten minute intervals. This confirmed that by an incredulous stroke of good luck the parents have found their hatchlings. I was amazed to see such displays of parental love and commitment. For ten days, the parakeet parents flew the length and breadth of the colony hoping to find their lost hatchlings, instead of choosing the easier option of nesting elsewhere. Spare a thought for these wonderful parents that never gave up on their babies. The hatchlings were calling out to them as if they knew for sure their parents would recognize their calls and find them. The parent would fly away and feed on leaves, fruits and seeds and regurgitate the semi digested food into the mouth of the hatchlings. During the day the hatchlings would be kept out in the open on a chair under the shade with a constant human eye on their safety and after 7pm when the parents would terminate the feeding sessions for the day, the baby parakeets would be taken into the house. For three days the hatchlings were constantly fed by their parents, and by now they had a glow on their faces and were expressing their dismay at being caged up by biting and pulling against it with their beaks. We realized that it was time for them to return to the wild.

The next day two Parakeets were placed in an open pot and one in a cage as there was no place for it in the pot. Wasting no time the mother swooped down and positioned herself on the pot. She fed one chick and got her up onto the rim of the pot. The chick flew into a Neem tree nearby where the other parent was waiting. One was free and two to go. Looking at the first chick fly away, the one in the cage began flapping its wings in an agitated state and on opening the cage took off within a flash and made a dash for the Neem tree, where one parent and one of his siblings were waiting for him. The third hatchling seemed to be the runt of the clutch and was afraid of flying. The mother sat on the pot and fed him a little. The hatchling now inside the pot, reassured by the presence of his mother jumped onto the top of the pot. The mother jumped onto the ground and opened her beak to feed the hatchling. Soon the hatchling jumped onto the ground and made his way to the mother. The mother kept feeding him and made her way towards the Neem tree. Upon reaching it, she took flight and by a natural urge fueled by instinct the hatchling flapped his wings and followed his mother into the tree. One final look at the house and the wings of freedom took off into the wild, never to be seen again and hopefully never to be caught again.


Tuesday 1 April 2014

YIN (NATURE) VS YANG (HUMANS)!



I found myself sleep walking, my mind drowned in an oasis of serenity, my eyes blinded by phantasmagorical images, my ears deafened by the sound of silence, my sense of smell beclouded by the break of spring and my touch gently caressed by leaves as time began to draw out like a blade and my circadian clock frozen while I dawdled through the evergreen. Where was I and what was I doing here were questions that did not matter as I was too engrossed in learning about the alien world I found myself in. For once I thought I had escaped the clutches of humanity and somehow zapped myself into a nonhuman world. The sound of silence was at its zenith just before the break of dawn when the world melodramatically congealed into an overture of bird chirps at ear-splitting intensity that resonated beyond the horizon, the salubrious weather complimented by trees embellished with colourful flowers and fruits, where creatures of nature played themselves out with alacrity and my pliable stripes allowed me to blend in with the convivial environment.
                                   

                                                     A male Taylor Bird looks for nest building material.
As I strolled through this mystical world an entire ecosystem unfolded before my very eyes. At the top of the food chain were four packs of very aggressive territorial dogs that preyed on anything that moved. Several stray Machiavellian cats lay in wait to hoodwink the dogs and prey on the jocose birds that seem to relish in their morning activities of honey and worm gathering, oblivious to the feral nature of cats that lie in wait close by. A male tailor bird was engrossed in patching together every bit of fibrous material he could lay eyes upon to construct a long extravagant looking nest in a furtive attempt to entice his female compatriot to choose him to start a family with. A pair of Grey Hornbills drew my attention from the tailor birds as they made their way over to fruit bearing trees and began feeding. Soon a group of ten Jungle babblers dived into a patch of muddy water and began frolicking right under the tailor bird’s nest. A melodious faint distant murmur exploded into several humming notes as a clique of Robins (Oriental Magpie Robins and Indian Robins) burst into the scene in search of worms and other insects. Not to be outdone, a coterie of Parakeets (Alaxender Parakeets and Rose-ringed Parakeets) made their way over and kicked off a game that I liked to call ‘The show of Strength’.  By now some 40 species of birds were out, with the sole intent of collecting material for constructing their nests. Some birds were building their nests on low lying shrubs, some on dry trees and some on evergreen trees. I was flummoxed at the carefree attitude of the birds but on closer inspection, the reason behind their nescient attitude became all too clear. The birds seem to have a watch dog in their midst that does the scouting while they go about their daily chores. A quid proquo relationship seems to be at work between the squirrels and birds while the one watches out for danger, perched high on a tree and sprouts out an alarm call upon finding a threat, the other seems to incognisantly scrounge for food and nesting material. The alarm call was sounded and the birds disappeared as quickly as they appeared. A lone cat on the ground and an Eagle from the sky were attracted by the sounds made the birds. My attention was suddenly diverted to a spider that meticulously spun a web between adjacent plants, a bulwark that came to her defence against creatures bigger than her and a trap for creatures’ smaller than her. . I was bamboozled at having been stuck in a world that was so alien to me, unable to fathom the gamut of what I was seeing and mosaic together a complex puzzle that was being screened before my eyes. A cacophony of loud blood curdling war shrieks seemed to make its way towards me, and for the life of me I had no idea then what the source of it was, decided to make a run for cover before being caught in the midst of it all. I made a beeline for the bushes and after about half an hour I was able to see a troop of 20 monkeys led by a dominant male, perambulate along the trees in a brave attempt to assert his dominance over the dogs and mark their territory. The fight left one monkey badly injured and a trail of blood that led to the dogs. Several dogs with deep canine gashes were huddled together in a recuperative symposium that provided solace to all members of the pack. The adult males were gearing up for another fight by grunting at each other while the docile females escorted the pups to a sequestered bush far away from the battle zone. A battalion of ants, like war soldiers marched along the muddy ground, over every fallen twig and under every dry leaf in search of food, to take back to their hive, a complex hierarchical society nestled deep within the comforts of the underground, away from the disturbances of the outside world. I was soon greeted by the presence of the busiest creature on the planet, the Honey Bee, a creature that is responsible for pollination of over 90% of our plants and the sole reason for the continuation of life on this planet. The end of the honey bee synchronously marks the end of life on earth.
                                              
The Sparrow Hawk scouting for prey.
I was soon hit by an insinuation that this was not a dream and that I was within the walls of my colony. For a moment I had transcended into a world within our world and I, a human was the only incongruous element amidst their world and yet none of the creatures seemed to feel the need to repatriate me back into my narrow-minded human world. The prodigious magnanimity of Mother Nature towards human kind is beyond my fabric of understanding. 

A White Wagtail hunting for ants.
New Motibagh, a gated colony built on reserved forest land plays host to more than 51 species of birds, probably one of the most diverse ecosystems found within any residential colony. As the days flew by, I found myself shutting the doors to my human world and spending more of my time within the ‘Real’ world. I was awestruck at the amiable nature of every single creature towards me and within a matter of days I became a free-living member of their world. Every day I would walk into their world with my camera and observe their activities. Soon creatures of all kinds right from birds to garden lizards, accepted me as one of their own, and never hesitated to be their jocund selves. I would especially hunker down in front of a puddle of water and to my surprise I would see close to three hundred fractious birds come over and play themselves out, either by bathing, drinking, chasing or fighting amongst themselves. When the alarm calls begin to sound, the small birds would disappear and I would be treated to cats, dogs, monkeys and birds of prey such as kites and eagles. Almost a year passed by and my animal friends just grew in number, though I can’t say the same for my gregarious human counterparts nonetheless I had nothing to complain about. I was exactly where I wanted to be and doing exactly what I wanted to do.
                                 
Alexandrine Parakeet defending her nesting site.
My bird friends taught me a lot about the real world and the true meaning of life and its hardships. The Parakeets for example take hold of a hollow burrow in the tree and defend it for four hard long months. They expend their valuable energy in gathering nesting materials, food supplies and fending off predators’ right from the month of October to February after which they choose partners and lay their eggs. The horn bills, one of the few birds that mate for life, spend a lot of their time in selecting a tree site for nesting. The female makes a hole within the main bark of the tree and enters it. The male from the outside seals the hole with a residue like paste that is created from mashed leaves, fruit seeds and excreta. The hole is just big enough for the female to stick her beak out while the male feeds her from the outside. There in the tree the female sheds her wing feathers and doesn't come out until the hatchlings are big enough to fly. The ever reticent and sedentary Owls, find it very difficult to locate their prey such as rats whose numbers are depleted to alarming lows due to incessant efforts by humans to eradicate them. Birds love to feed on mosquito larvae that thrive in stagnant water and so help keep a check on the robust mosquito population, similarly birds such as the woodpecker and barbets, feed on termites which if not kept under control tend to feed on various wooden materials such as chairs, doors and tables. 

                          A pair of Spotted Owlets that allowed me to film them for over a year. 

The more I saw, the more I felt the burgeoning need to combine both worlds. Humans, ever since breaking out of the ‘circle of life’ are doing all they can to control every aspect of the planet. The inexorable thirst for destruction is embedded deep within our DNA which automatically triggers the need to manipulate and beat everything around us into submission. The human world is a world that is primarily concerned with the interests of its own species, the ever shrinking forests, uncontrolled consumption of finite earthly resources and the folly importance given to the human life over every other creature on this planet along with a host of other man-made reasons has signed a post-dated death warrant to every living species on this planet. Take the mosquito menace for instance. If humans were to live on friendly terms alongside nature by planting trees without over cutting, trimming and pruning, we would have an abundance of birds living amidst us along with a host of other creatures such as frogs, toads, their young tadpoles, bats and dragonflies that would ensure that the mosquito and other bug populations are under control. It’s a service provided to us free of cost, in exchange for a home in our environment. Take away the plants, birds and the ecosystem that were to follow and we have an arid land to live on, coupled with mosquito, termite and mice infestations. We would then spend lakhs of rupees each year on ‘manmade’ hazardous chemicals that would be sprayed unceremoniously around the land. These chemicals are extremely dangerous as many of them are fatal cancer causing sprays. Their modus operandi on the human body is yet unknown, the medical bills on each person would run into the lakhs of rupees and their cumulative cost almost incalculable. These chemicals would seep into the ground and poison underground drinking water thus entering our food cycle. Studies are currently being carried on how the human tissues and organs store these chemicals and their side effects that they pose several decades later. Birds and other animals drink from these chemical infested waters and are poisoned by the thousands each year. People use various chemicals to eliminate various pests and these chemicals conglomerate at various water bodies such as ponds, streams, rivers, lakes and seas thus creating a cocktail of toxins that no scientist would even dare create under extremely safe laboratory conditions. So my question is, without going into various other manmade tragedies in the making, just sticking with mosquitoes and termites for now, all worth it?

                                                                   Words begin to fail me. 

One fine day to my shock and horror, I was treated to a sordid sighting where words even to this day fail me. Trees that took several decades to grow have been pulled down without qualms of conscience, shrubs that supported over a thousand birds cleared in one go and patches of forest land that lie in the periphery were stripped bare naked under the pretext of a security threat. Security threat? From whom I asked, from humans I was told. But what about my friends I asked, I got no reply.

                        The Common Myna with her hatchlings Just before losing their home. 

       Trees that took several decades to grow have been pulled down without qualms of conscience!

Birds that defended their homes and raised their brood for over three years lost their once untrammelled homes. Nests, eggs and hatchlings all destroyed with the swing of an axe while tractors in their vast numbers leave with freshly cut lush green vegetation. Urbanization spells the proliferation of the human world and the destruction of the real world that has been in existence for over 4.5 billion years. Many of my friends are now dead, some of them lucky to survive but for how long? Where do they go and can they live amidst this concrete jungle?  Within a span of two months, 30 out of the 51 species of birds have been driven out of my colony; the friendly ecosystem that once existed now lies in turmoil, the exemplum of a peaceful world overrun by the brutality of the human race. I was overwhelmed by an apoplectic attack and my mind was barraged with several emotions but such ad nauseam actions were rampant everywhere. Humans are a species that are above all and every living thing on this planet is theirs to control. 

                                                The Green Brigade is fighting for them. 

But I was not going to stand by and watch the humans massacre thousands of innocent lives even though they do not belong to the same species. Their inane actions will cost them dearly with time but as an ad hoc measure, a group of likeminded residents have come together and formed a phalanx known as the ‘Green Brigade’, a nature loves club that will work tirelessly to bring back nature into our lives through the power of education and spreading awareness amongst the residents. The sacrosanct fetishisms that were once embedded in our beliefs have now been discarded which is where the danger lies.  Conservation through education seems like the only way ahead. The Green brigade would serve as a recourse for nature and her creatures during this time of peril. All one can do is fight for her and hope that her resiliency brings back all the creatures that were wrongfully harmed and one day by an incredible stroke of good luck humans and nature can once again live alongside in harmony .