Whispers from the Wild

C. Davidar E. R.

Description

Some people talk about nature, others listen to it. Listening can reveal wondes like how to befriend an elephant, how to talk to a tiger and how to live in the jungle. Many such amazing experiences crowd this volume containing the unpublished writings from the early and last years of the well-known naturalist, the late E.R.C. Davidar, besides his acclaimed book Cheetal Walk. a lawyer by profession and a shikari-turned-photographer, he established maybe the first ever private elephant corridor in India, near his jungle-cottage, and undertook the first census of the Nilgiri tahr along the entire range. Charmingly told, funny and brimming with insights, the book, enriched with photographs from the family album, not only enlightens us about wildlife and conservation in the Nilgiris but becomes a memoir of a jungle lover and his family.

Sujets

• Sciences et techniques
• Humanities

Informations

• Publié par: Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd
• Date de parution: 01 novembre 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9788184757071
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Whispers from the Wild
Writings by E.R.C. Davidar Edited by Priya Davidar

PENGUIN BOOKS
PENGUIN BOOKS
WHISPERS FROM THE WILD
E.R.C. DAVIDAR (1922-2010) was a well-known wildlife conservationist from southern India. He has published several articles on wildlife, a novel based on the life of the brigand Veerappan, and stories for children.
PRIYA DAVIDAR is a professor at Pondicherry University and conducts ecological research in different regions of India. She is actively involved with the conservation of forests and wildlife.
Contents
About the Author
Dedication
Introduction by Priya Davidar
PART I
Of Cats
And of Dogs
Zoo in the Backyard
Hoots and Screams
Carts and Coaches
As Good As You
The Christmas Turkey
The Bounty
Sandy
Choonus, the Siamese Cat
Rainbows
PART II
Preface
A Home in the Jungle
Setting Up Cheetal Walk
Of Two Elephants
Tusker Valley
A Friend in Need
Bamboo in Flower
Kumariah
Corridors for Elephants
Night of the Tuskers
Tuning in to Nature
Cavalier in Grey
Wild Boar
Machans and Hides
Tale of a River
Moyar Gorge
Talking to a Tiger
The Spotted Predator
Whistling Hunters
Adam the Bear
On the Hyena Trail
A Denful of Hyenas
Cliff Goats
Bison Encounter
The Fall of the Tribal
Danky
Kindred Spirits
Whither Wilderness?
PART III
Tina and Chiang
Sally
Snakes Galore
Tikki
Palli Sastram , or Gecko Sastram
The Brainfever Bird
Scientific Names
Acknowledgements
Copyright Page
To the memory of Margaret who made Cheetal Walk possible
My Father: A Jungle Lawyer
Our house had a name board that read: E.R.C. Davidar BA BL, Advocate . It would have been difficult to find anything more deceptive than that. Even though my father, Reggie to his friends, was a lawyer and a fairly successful one at that, the only law he really loved was the law of the jungle. Why some individuals are attracted by adventure, discovery, remote and wild places of the earth and its beauty instead of the comfortable, anaesthetizing routines of our society is a mystery. Most of us do not question our culture. We need to conform, study, find a job and complete the cycle of life. My father, born in Trichy, had everything it took to follow the beaten track. But he did not. He suffered from a huge shortcoming by any standards-he was eccentric.
His childhood did not help in making him a conformist. He grew up in Trichy with his grandparents. His maternal grandfather was Dr A. Mathuram, a physician who combined allopathic and ayurveda systems of medicine to produce novel treatments that were extremely popular. The Mathuram family lived in a large rambling house and the grandfather loved animals. He kept a mini zoo of abandoned, young wild animals like leopard, spotted deer, sambar and wild boar. Apart from this was the domestic menagerie: dogs, including thoroughbred Indian hounds such as the Kombai, Rajapalayam and Chippiparai, cows, horses and the feathered species. Such diversity in a bustling household of extended kin can t really contribute to a boring childhood. As my father put it later: I have had a host of relatives and between us a circus of animals.
Trichy was also the home of his paternal grandparents and extended family who lived together in Arcot House , a family mansion. Reggie was the eldest son of Ambrose Davidar, who was also the eldest of nine children. Ambrose became a judge in the erstwhile Madras Presidency in the 1940s. During his tenure as a district judge, he was posted to different district headquarters, one among which was the Nilgiris. My father and his four younger brothers accompanied their parents to these mofussil postings. This again was a wonderful opportunity to explore the jungles.
With such an active and interesting life of exploration, discussion with elders and demanding family activities, education was provided on the go. School and academic performances had never been my father s priorities; life was too interesting for this kind of indulgence. He studied in Tamil- and English-medium schools till college and always read voraciously. Through books, he understood that writing was a very important skill to develop. This may have been the only activity he ever considered worthy of painful and repetitive efforts.
He grew up in an age-the last decades of the British Raj-when the relationship of people with nature was different. Hunting, which was regarded as a skill and allegorically signified a conquest of nature, was a very popular sport among the British and sections of Indians. Tigers, lions, leopards and cheetahs were considered worthy adversaries to pit one s hunting skills against. Understanding these animals, the complexity of their life and behaviour, came later. It was only in the 1960s, with the advent of books such as Born Free: A Lioness of Two Worlds by Joy Adamson, which described the story of the lioness Elsa, that people s attitude towards wildlife changed. Elsa was adopted as a young cub after her mother was shot by George Adamson. With the protection of a powerful rifle, hunters felt safe in the wild and did not take the necessary precautions with dangerous wild animals. People, as it happened with George Adamson, used to bump into animals and consequently had to kill them out of self-defence . Animals had to make way, and those that did not were shot. Such an attitude is no longer acceptable because, in particular, the large predators are threatened with extinction.
In my father s early childhood, the heroes were still the great white hunters among whom were Jim Corbett, Ernest Hemingway and others. Their exploits still resonated enough in the jungle to fire a young imagination. Trichy was not really a jungle but was still surrounded by paddy fields and shrubbery that provided ample opportunities to explore and hunt. One birthday, my father was presented with a Daisy airgun. Most of the men in the family owned guns and on this day, my father became a man. Following family tradition, he took up shooting with enthusiasm. He later graduated to the shotgun and rifles, and hunted big game. His skills as a hunter-stalking animals on foot, sitting over kills on machans-honed his abilities as an observer of nature and, no doubt, helped him during his years as a photographer and conservationist.
Ambrose Davidar realized that his constant professional moves dislocated his sons education, so the five brothers were installed in a flat in Trichy. As he was the eldest, my father was given charge of the household. He took on the role of leader and ended up running a household and shopping for the kitchen. This burden strangely became his pleasure, and later in life, we would all have to wait in the car till he satisfied his passion for picking nice fruits, vegetables and items we all appreciated afterwards. Running a house, buying things and deciding what to cook is usually regarded as a painful chore reserved for housewives. But as it turns out, these are excellent skills to have for field biologists, who need to organize expeditions. You can t have a starving team of porters, colleagues and, sometimes, children, around you for days. Given the effort involved in long walks, and the long spells spent in the wild, food provides a minimum amount of comfort. Good logistic organization is a basic condition for the success of an expedition. Let me put it this way: in the field, food was never a problem for my father and for the people who accompanied him.
Upon his retirement in the 1950s, Ambrose Davidar, along with his siblings, decided to set down roots in Padappai to build a model farm. Padappai is thirty-six kilometres from Chennai on the Kancheepuram road. This settlement was called David Nagar and was inaugurated by Earl Clement Attlee, who had been the prime minister of Britain. This was when my father had finished his law degree. He joined King and Partridge, a legal firm with headquarters in Chennai. While working there, he met Margaret Moses, a young and beautiful medical doctor, and proposed to her. His parents opposed the marriage. Already too far gone on the path to his own independence, he did not care for approval. He married Margaret, my mother, in 1952. Margaret was frightened of bugs, loved small pets, western classical music and enjoyed being in a city. She did not understand that her young husband had fixed his eyes on the horizon and would answer the call of the wild. She was on the doorstep of a big adventure where bugs were dangerous, pets the size of tigers, classical music the sound of rivers, and no one in sight for kilometres. She had never met this kind of lawyer before and more than once she wished she never had.
Good luck (from Reggie s perspective) or bad luck (from Margaret s perspective) struck early. Soon after the marriage, my father was posted as the head of the Ooty branch office. Ooty was a small, beautiful and congenial town at that time. The people were friendly and outgoing. My parents, being extroverted and gregarious, had plenty of friends. They joined the local clubs and loved playing bridge in the evenings.
During the 1950s, my mother worked for the government hospital at Ootacamund (the Toda name for Ooty). She was assigned to the Mobile Medical Unit which conveyed medical care to the large and scattered tribal settlements in the district: from the Todas in the highlands, to the Kotas in Kotagiri and the Irulas and the Kurumbas in the lower plateau. My family often followed the medical van in our car, a Morris Minor. After my mother completed her work, we stayed on and camped. My father disappeared into the jungles and fished. Due to these trips, my parents got to know the Nilgiris like the back of their hand. This gave my father the experience and insight into the natural history of this region, and understanding and empathy with the tribal communities, many of whom became good friends of his. My mother s health, however, got progressively worse o