K A L E I D O S C O P E

This Above All
A loving letter from Pakistan
KHUSHWANT SINGH
Mahboob Ali, whose present name is Preetam Giani, has sent me his latest batch of Reflections from Abbottabad. I reproduce some good piece from the last one. It makes for good reading.

good news
Standing as tall as the great stork
Despite challenges, Purnima Devi Barman has succeeded in her efforts to conserve the endangered Greater Adjutant Stork in the Brahmaputra valley.
By Bijay Sankar Bora
An MSc in zoology from Gauhati University in Assam, Purnima Devi Barman has made long strides in the domain of wildlife conservation, considered a male bastion. As a biologist of Aaranyak, a premier conservation organisation and a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in the Northeast, Purnima has become a global figure in respect of conservation of the rare Greater Adjutant Stork species.

• Off the cuff

This Above All
A loving letter from Pakistan
KHUSHWANT SINGH

Nothing quite compares to a mother’s love.

Mahboob Ali, whose present name is Preetam Giani, has sent me his latest batch of Reflections from Abbottabad. I reproduce some good piece from the last one. It makes for good reading.

“Yesterday afternoon returning home on foot from Abbottabad’s main bazaar, through a mainly working-class neighbourhood called Kareempura, I came across a boy of about 10 using his bicycle to bother an obviously homeless puppy-dog. The urchin repeatedly pushed or rode his bike at the puppy, making it scamper. I told the boy to stop and asked him how he would feel if somebody bothered him in the same way. From the boy’s sullen amazement at my words, and actually even irrespective of it (knowing Pakistan culture inside out), I’m convinced that no other adult before me could have considered the boy’s behaviour worth reproving. The puppy had a fancy blue cord tied like a noose round its neck, with the other end of the cord trailing on the ground. I was walking away after rebuking the boy, but then stopped to untie the blue cord from the puppy’s neck and pat its head, while the little fellow, in a spontaneous show of canine affection and gratitude, licked my hands with its warm wet tongue. Of course I could not bring the puppy home, having three pet cats here already, but the incident has reinforced my intention to help set up here a properly functional society for the prevention of cruelty to animals. If the Brits could do so in ‘British India’ about 100 to 150 years ago, possibly even before the advent of the telegraph, I should also be able to do it here in the Internet Age.

Author Vikram Seth with his mother Leila.

“What ails Pakistan’s culture that people here exhibit such negligence, callousness and cruelty towards animals, particularly dogs? Well, up to a point, I think this characteristic is common to all primitive cultures — people belonging to these cultures have just never known any better. It’s an ignoble stand in the general ignobility of savages and semi-savages. The particular phenomenon of Muslims, prejudice against and mistreatment of dogs, however, has an additional unsavory source. It turns out that there are a number of ‘ahadees’ — (generally unreliable) records of Muhummad’s sayings and doings — to the following effect: “Once there was an unusually long interval between the revelations from Ullah (God) that Muhummad is supposed to have received continually via the angel Jibraeel (Gabriel). When subsequently Jibraeel arrived with another revelation, Muhummad enquired about the reason for the long gap, and was told by Jibraeel: ‘Well, you know you have been staying lately with some people who have a pet dog. Now, we angels never enter a house in which there is a dog.’ So this hadees is apparently the basis for the widespread Muslim antipathy to dogs. On account of this hocus-pocus, an entire animal species has been unfairly stigmatised for and by a sizeable proportion of making (who protects you from thieves, for goodness’ sake, dogs or angels?), for about 1,400 years already. I find that outrageous and unforgivable.”

“On October 26, 2013, was my mother’s 10th death anniversary. As I went for a day-trip to Islamabad to fetch a whole lot of cat food, a copy of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”, and some other small items difficult or impossible to obtain in Abbottabad, I did not visit my mother’s grave, but thought of her intermittently during the day. Inclining to the view that the disembodied spirits of the deceased (humans and animals) can `hear’ the speech (including unvoiced) and read the writing of the living, there follows my message for my mother: ‘A decade after your death, I still miss you quite keenly at times. But a decade of human time (or a century or a trillion years) couldn’t make much difference to you, since you’re not time-bound (or space-bound) any more. Well, whatever your state of existence, I hope it’s comfortable’. It can’t be so very long now before I too kick the bucket and in some ineffable sense ‘join you’. In the meantime, I might as well put in writing here (for my undeceased reader) my daily, silently repeated invocation to you:

‘If you can, please help me ward off discouragement, defeatism and self-pity. Thank you.’”

Every flower that blooms — even the tiny mauvish pink zinnia, barely an inch across, the very last of the season from our garden, that I picked yesterday and plonked by itself in a small decorative porcelain vase and am looking at right now (and have taken a digital photo of, passed below) — is a clear affirmation of life and of reality. Which must be something like what Wordsworth had in mind when he wrote:

Thanks to the human heart by which we live,/ Thanks to its tenderness, its joys and fears,/ To me the meanest flower that blows can give/ Thoughts that do often lie too deep for tears.

Mother and son

On Christmas Eve Leila Seth and her son Vikram Seth visited me for drinks. Leila had the distinction of being the topper in the Bar examinations in England and on her return to India became the Chief Justice of the Himachal High Court. Her son is the acclaimed author of “The Golden Gate” and “A Suitable Boy”. He is a renowned calligrapher. He has a fine collection of poetry and an opera libretto. He has made his home in England and visits Delhi every year to see his parents. He also calls on me. I cherish his visits because he is full of warmth. A month ago he gave me his latest publication “The Revered Earth”. I read it from cover to cover in one sitting. His writings have the supreme quality of unputdownability. I give a few examples:

Scene in time of war

The State lies ruined; hills and streams survive,/ Spring in the city; grass and leaves now thrive./ Moved by the time the flowers shed their dew./ The birds seem startled; they hate parting too./ The steady beacon fires are three months old/ A world from home is worth a ton of gold./ I scratch my white hair, which has grown so thin/ It soon won’t let me stick my hairpin in.

Youth

There is no fire like passion/ No grip like hate,/ No snare like delusion,/ No river like craving.

Old: Six Ages

My eyes look back at me and say/ Where were these wrinkles yesterday?/ Where are the friends you used to know?/ Where are the oats you used to sow?/ Who is this stranger —foolish, wise — Who stares at you with your own eyes?

Dead: Six Ages

No breath to give or take/ No love to feel or make,/ No thought or speech or dead,/ No fear, no grief, no need,/ No memory, no view,/ No four, no three, no two,/ No one, no entity/ To be or cease to be.

Fire

Mother give me the moon/ I want it as my toy./ Mother I want it soon/ Or I’ll be Papa’s boy/ No, I won’t plait my hair./ I won’t go out to play/ I will sulk on the ground all day./ I won’t come to your lap — so there!/ Nor will I drink this milk from Surabhi, our cow./ Mother, I want the moon — and I want it now./ Here in this bucket filled with water it scatters./ But that one there never shatters,/ Cold in its silver fire,/ Climbing higher and higher/ I now know, Mother/ You only love Balram, my brother,/ Who loves to drive me wild./ He says you bought me, that I’m not your child/ No, don’t sing me a tune./ Mother, give me the moon/ The moon, the moon.

Vikram Seth might well be the second Indian after Tagore to win the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Rise of the Aam Aadmi

Hail the steely man of the moment/ Hail this timely ray of light/ Hail the tide of the people’s aspirations/ Hail the horizon suddenly bright./ Hail the confidence of the common man/ Hail the end of cynicism deep and wide/ Hail the corrupt scurrying for cover/ Hail Delhiites on a righteous ride./ Hail the restlessness in the rival camp/ Hail the conspiracies big and small/ Hail the lies, fears and frothing/ Hail their hope that the government will fall./ Hail the hope that the promise is kept/ Hail the glee that it will break/ Hail the Aam Aadmi of this great country/ Who’ll rise hopefully for its sake.

Contributed by Kuldip Salil, New Delhi

good news
Standing as tall as the great stork
Despite challenges, Purnima Devi Barman has succeeded in her efforts to conserve the endangered Greater Adjutant Stork in the Brahmaputra valley.
By Bijay Sankar Bora

Purnima Devi Barman out in the field.

An MSc in zoology from Gauhati University in Assam, Purnima Devi Barman has made long strides in the domain of wildlife conservation, considered a male bastion. As a biologist of Aaranyak, a premier conservation organisation and a member of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) in the Northeast, Purnima has become a global figure in respect of conservation of the rare Greater Adjutant Stork species. Her innovative way of facilitating conservation of the bird involving village residents of Dadara and Pacharia in Kamrup district of Assam has earned her tremendous support. The village residents are impressed with her commitment and dedication.

A Greater Adjutant Stork with its chick at the Dadara nesting colony in Assam.

Thirty-something, Purnima is a mother to two daughters who constantly need her attention as her conservationist-husband mostly remains out of town. But it doesn't come in the way of her determination to work for the protection of the endangered stork in the Brahmaputra valley of Assam, especially in a nesting colony of the bird at Dadara village in Kamrup district of Assam.

The global distribution of adjutant stork, the rarest of the 20 species of storks, is confined to a few isolated pockets in the Brahmaputra valley of Assam, Bihar and Cambodia. In Assam, the bird mainly nests in private areas and conservation is mainly dependent on the efforts of the community. The global population of the species is only about 1,000, out of which about 80 per cent have been recorded in Assam.

Rising numbers

For the last several years, Purnima has been working extensively to protect the bird that is mentioned on the IUCN red list. Around 750-800 storks have been recorded in Assam - the highest concentration in the world.

Purnima received the Future Conservationist Award 2009 from the Conservation Leadership Programme, UK, for working extensively in Dadara and Pacharia vil lages, 12 km from Guwahati, where the stork breeds in treetop colonies located on private land. About 148 nests were recorded this year in the area in a survey led by her.

The villages now take pride in the presence of the bird in their backyard. The villagers are so attached to the bird that they have built a statue of the stork on the campus of Sankardev Sisu Niketan at Dadara and regularly perform prayers for the conservation of the bird.

Cambodia model

Purnima recently completed international field training in a remote forest area in Cambodia on nesting monitoring and biology of the stork. The Conservation Leadership Programme offered her the training and also provided a scholarship for it.

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS), Cambodia, hosted the training programme. During this period, she worked in forest with forest rangers and the WCS team. She worked at the Prek Toal Bird Sanctuary, situated on Tonle Sap Lake, the largest freshwater lake in Southeast Asia.

"The major difference in the conservation story of the Greater Adjutant Stork in Cambodia and Assam is that in Cambodia the bird breeds and roosts in deep forest and not in private lands, as in Assam. Habitat destruction, felling of trees, hunting, etc. are major problems in Assam whereas poaching for meat and egg collection by fringe villagers are the problems in Cambodia," Purnima says.

"Prek Toal is a flooded forest on the Tonle Sap Lake and villagers live 28 km from this forest in three floating villages. Villagers are dependent on the lake and the forest for livelihood. The ministry of environment and forest in Cambodia has declared this area as a biosphere reserve to help the communities and reduce the pressure on forest resources. The ministry in collaboration with the WCS selected some egg collectors from the village and transformed them into rangers by providing continuous education and training to them. They are now dedicated conservationists," she says.

There are 28 bird monitoring platforms in the forest area of Prek Toal and she visited many of them for monitoring purpose. These platforms are located on treetops at a height of about 30-40 ft height and look like 'machan'. The experience in Cambodia has inspired Purnima to construct a 70-ft 'machan' in her key project site at Dadara village to facilitate better conservation efforts.

Change of heart

The going was not easy as she faced resistance. "I started conservation work in the thickly populated village of Dadara, where over 80 nests were recorded in 2009. During a survey in 2009, I found that some locals did not hesitate to disturb the bird at its nesting site. A few locals even cut nesting trees to get rid of 'this dirty bird' from their campus. But today, the same people have successfully protected the nesting site, gathered scientific data and rescued chicks that fall from nests. They now celebrate when rescued chicks are successfully rehabilitated," she says.

The community in Dadara is now a role model for community conservation. It could be achieved through sustained awareness and motivation campaigns.

Off the cuff

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