A Buddhist monk in his exclusive aviary

One bright morning in March 1981, my journey to Gangtok was interrupted by a sizeable landslide, about 20 km short of the destination. A functionary of the PWD estimated three hours for the resumption of traffic. Noticing my camera and binoculars, he stated pointing to the ridgetop, “Uper wahan Karmapa Sahib kay pinjre mein bahut sundar parinday hain...” (Up there in Karmapa Sahib’s cage are very beautiful birds).

Twenty minutes later, huffing and puffing, I stood transfixed by the ‘pinjra’, which was a spacious, state-of-the-art aviary-cum-hermitage of the venerable Karmapa. Tall and handsome, he was a high priest of Buddhism ordained by His Holiness, the Dalai Lama, at the Potala, in the 1940s. After brief pleasantries, as he led me inside, the birds, at once, scuttled around or perched on his shoulders as he casually informed that they were 108 in number. Noticing my puzzled look, he then put me wise about the sacredness of the figure, both to the Hindus and Buddhists — 108 Upanishads as also 108 beads in a monk’s rosary.

At this stage, the Karmapa discreetly moved away, stipulating that he and his hermitage must not figure in any photo frame. My challenge, however, lay in picking the seven birds corresponding to the unexposed film. The dilemma resolved itself as the first to make ‘parikramas’ around me was a female green peafowl, the most coquette photo-model as she mischievously moved the moment I zeroed out the camera! Unlike our National Bird, which has a pan-India presence, their green cousin was essentially confined to Manipur, Mizoram and a few in Jalpaiguri, from where this interloper had seduced the Karmapa. After all, who could resist their blue and yellow facial skins, heads adorned by an erect bluish-green plume, necks and breasts a glistening bronze-green and the tail of males tinged copper bronze turning violet under certain light!

Unknown to me at that moment, I became, perhaps, the last person to photograph possibly the last surviving green peafowl of India. Tragic, but that is God’s truth.

Riding on luck’s high tide inside the Karmapa’s hermitage, my lifetime’s next encounter was with a male grey peacock pheasant. As pheasants go, his silver-brown plumage was sombre, but the purple-green eyespots over the crown and tail were simply mesmerising but regrettably so spooky that the photograph is worthless. Let’s hope that because of the species’ retiring nature, they may survive farther into the future than was the case with our green peafowl.

My choice for the next photo frames fell on two ‘ornamental’ birds — a golden pheasant from China and a ring-neck pheasant from Russia. The golden vied most aggressively for notice, possibly conscious of his apt moniker, ‘Rainbow Pheasant’. Who could fault him, with polished gold from the crown down the neck, eyes a bright yellow with a tiny black pupil, rust-coloured face and throat, wattles pinkish-yellow, upper body jade green, underparts bright red, tail barred pale brown and legs and feet, yellow. Phew!

The male ring-neck’s plumage was yet another colour extravaganza; bottle green head offset by red wattles, upper parts barred bright gold tinged with copper and purple, small of back royal blue and tail light brown barred black! But, sadly, they are destiny’s discarded creatures, having become the favoured ‘game bird’ of Europe and Americas.

My cup of luck brimmed over on two more counts, firstly lifetime’s yet another first sighting, the emerald dove, and secondly, that I had one vacant photo frame to freeze her likeness! True to her name, the dazzling emerald green on her back, wings offset by mellow pinkish-grey underparts and the bright red bill made for a euphoric memory.

There was one other-worldly aspect to this entire episode. I was the only “outsider” ushered in by the Karmapa inside his hermitage, and I shall never know why. When I revisited some six months later, armed with several rolls of film, gone was the 16th Karmapa and his aviary. He had been claimed by cancer and the birds had been freed in the Pharaohic belief that they would accompany the Karmapa’s soul to heaven! My wife and I sat for long, facing the Rumtek monastery, in silent homage to a great Buddhist.

Green peafowl