Le Question: What colour is the eye of the Sarus?

Seeing eye to eye with the Sarus Crane evokes a host of questions and the answers aren't exactly simple

Shashwat and I were driving along a small arterial road in Rae Bareli, checking out the pairs of Sarus Crane (Grus antigone) among the paddy fields on either side. It was the end of a relatively warm November day, and dusk was imminent. We came across a beautiful female near a clump of reeds by the roadside -- though sexes are almost alike, I could tell since it was smaller than the male, which was foraging a few metres away.

Me: What colour is the Sarus?

Shashwat: Grey, White.

Me: What is the colour of its face?

Shashwat: Red

Me: And the color of its beak?

Shashwat: White, Grey

Me: And the eye?

Shashwat: The Sarus has no eye!

The Sarus hadn’t lost an eye but we were looking into the setting sun with the clump of reeds and the bird in the foreground. Its bright red eye was hidden in the glowing red skin of its head -- you actually could not see it. I knew the eye existed and that he was only telling me what he saw. We were both right, as a Zen master might say, but he was in the "moment"; the unconditioned observer.

Le Question: Did Indians do nothing but celebrate festivals?

A tree may be our  primary connection with the universe -- but it will take us all our lives to acknowledge it

The Ficus virens that outgrew the shrine

Shashwat: Haven’t the Americans built big cities, warships, fighter jets and so on? 

Me:  I guess so.

Shashwat And the Germans have made very fine automobiles and autobahns?

Me: Yes, they have.

Shashwat: The French have the TGV!

Me: Yes, so?

Shashwat: So, in India, did we spend all our time celebrating festivals and meditating?

Me: Silence

The canopy, loved by both peacocks and Hanuman langurs

Five minutes later the hush still rules as fervent devotees accompany the lord through the city, drumbeats announcing the procession a kilometre away from where a Sunday morning chat is languishing for lack of words. Blame it on Discovery Channel.

The best I could do was distract him with a tale.

Once I saw a cobra make its way through the network of aerial roots

Back in my great-great-grandmother’s time, a young boy had the duty of striking the hour. One fateful day he may have dawdled after his morning smoke or perhaps gazed at a damsel too long - and missed striking an hour. This is where things get curious, for while he missed it, the hour was still struck. His inquiries failed to find the person who had struck the hour in his absence. The lad, true to instinct, concluded that it was none other than Lord Hanuman, whom he worshipped, who had done it on his behalf. Grateful to the Lord but mindful of the fact that he had inconvenienced Him, he gave up the job. He built a shrine, planted a Ficus sapling (Ficus virens) in front of it, and announced to all and sundry that from that day on, he will perform only the Lord’s duty. He had enough of l’affaires du monde.

Almost 150 years on my father has inherited the piece of land on which the tree stands. I discovered its charms early in life and, when I learned that my favorite pickle was made from its spring leaf-buds, our bond deepened considerably. Summer yielded an enchanting and often forbidden lesson of natural history. Lifting up the platform bricks revealed small snakes curled up below, making me wonder if they had grew up in that position. Young Hanuman langurs (Semnopithecus entellus) socialized under the watchful eyes of the matriarch. The monsoon invigorated grass, which on closer inspection revealed clutches of peacock eggs which I dutifully counted. I apprehensively spied a cobra make its way along the sinewy branches possibly preying on treepie nests. I watched squirrels chase each other in hormone-fuelled sprints, while my dog could only gaze longingly and salivate. Inconvenienced by the water I poured, mad-with-rage scorpions emerged from their narrow slit burrows straight to my waiting collection jar. Their rage, I imagined briefly, turned into puzzlement and then helplessness. The scorpions I was forced to part with -- my grandma would have none of my entreaties to their being a part of my collection for the purpose of scientific research into scorpion sting antidote. I am sure her hand in their release was not due to any sympathy she may have felt at their cruel confinement.

Peacocks lay their eggs in the wild growth beneath the tree after the first monsoon showers

The platform around the tree cracked and fissured with every monsoon and life permeated through it till it became a semi-organic being, one with the tree itself, its living extension.

The tree's local name is Pakadiya or Pakad. It is also known as Pilkhan in the north

The monitor lizards (Varanus bengalensis) were the ones that really troubled me. One year, while I was away at school between vacations, a couple of monitor lizards supposedly set up residence on the tree. This was fine, I had no issues sharing the tree. But a local friend who informed me about this latest addition to the tree’s denizens slipped in a cautionary note on their natural history. If I ever got bitten by one, my survival depended on peeing immediately and drinking it up before the lizard did it. Too terrified to even think of why the creature would indulge in such a horrifying practice, I spent many a sleepless summer night replaying the scenarios with only a mocking Great Bear for company. Even if I did manage a pee on demand, and that too after sustaining an excruciating bite from the reptile, I wasn’t exactly sure if I'd be able to slurp it up before the lizard did so. I made grudging peace with my unseen tormentor: I gave up climbing the tree. My world was diminished. It remains that way. Now, as I confess this, I have this nagging doubt that I was perhaps set up. 

Grandmothers are deceptively clever.

The tormentor I never saw -- this one was photographed at Parambikulam

A feather, a question

As my patchwork memory metamorphoses into nostalgia, the next generation has befriended the tree. Shashwat and I visit it every day during our vacations and there is always something -  a feather, a scorpion scurrying for cover, a bird-call hitherto unheard.

The "wooden monkey" is a gift from two years ago and the Kukri snake (Oligodon arnensis), having been mistaken for a juvenile Russell’s Viper, was killed last year - I was too late to save it.

A dying Kukri snake, a victim of mistaken identity

The best lessons will be the ones he will learn on his own. I suspect he is already on the job. As for the question regarding the object of Indians’ passion for festivals through history, he will answer it for himself. Like every other race, we have a view regarding what drives the universe, but we have survived and that proves a lot.

The "Wooden Monkey"

Weaver ants have established a huge colony on the tree

The tree is nearly 150 years old and for me it's been there for ever

By the way, Lord Hanuman, who never had the benefit of a proper prana-pratishtha, remains un-worshipped. He has managed keep the attention off Himself. I admire Him for that.

Text and photographs by Sahastrarashmi
Read more posts in our Le Question series

Le Question: Will you get me a new globe?

For his seventh birthday I gifted Shashwat a globe. It met a long-standing demand and soon enough he had charted the oceans, seas, continents, polar ice caps (the great melt, breaking ice shelf), the Pacific Ring of Fire (volcanoes), Polynesia (extinct flightless birds), Madagascar (the island and the movie), the Sahara (the Sidewinder’s abode), the Himalayas, France (local colonizer), England (the bigger colonizer), India, a few countries, major cities and Semri (our village in Uttar Pradesh – the approximate location in this case). 

All was well in our miniature heaven, now home to a miniature Earth. Until Le Question was popped. 

Thus it went:

Shashwat: So in a few years' time will you get me a new globe? 

Me: Why? Nothing will change, except maybe a few new countries (I am still in shock after the breakup of the USSR and the resultant mass-production of countries -- and careful never to rule out another such event). 

S: No, not countries. The shorelines may change, islands will disappear, and ice caps may not be there either. 

Me: Why? 

S: If global warming continues... 

Our heaven had been invaded by a dark malevolent religion practiced by the Eco-Warriors, and one of its trusted followers was now a full convert. It was like finding a pagan in the midst of priests. Not only did he profess a different faith, he was asking questions, extremely uncomfortable ones at that.

I wonder how he would have imagined the islands drowning. Waters slowly rise, everything gets cramped in smaller and smaller spaces, earth is washed away in chunks. Desperate to reach higher ground, predator and the prey are confined in ever-closer proximity. Short-term survival is pitted against eventual and certain doom. 

For a child it’s the stuff of nightmares -- and children have vivid imaginations.

Jane Resture, a poet from the Pacific Oceanic Islands, has felt sea levels rise slowly and surely in her time. She writes:

But as years go by we wonder why the shoreline is not the same
The things we knew as always true somehow do not remain
The breakers break on higher ground - the outer palms are falling down

The taro pits begin to die and the village elders wonder why.

I will read it out to him when I have the courage to do so.

I suspect -- actually, I am quite convinced -- that children, unlike us, lack the subconscious filing system that we employ so effectively when faced with inconvenient truths. Unlike adults they cannot tuck them away in the netherworld of conscious memory and then force them to stay put with firm ignorance, deliberate forgetfulness or simple rationalization until they cease to matter. Unlike us, each child who is aware of the state of the planet carries a heavy burden with which he or she tries to grapple, often with no help. Our every action is scrutinized and their minds are busy answering self-posed questions. It’s a continuous process into which grownups are not co-opted, especially since around them, they see scant evidence of any action even when global warming is now a part of our lexicon and every TV channel worth its airtime is blaring out the message 24x7. 

Maybe they prefer to preserve our respectability and hence keep the questioning on a tight leash, preferring internal dialogue instead. Shashwat thinks that the water used (or rather wasted) while shooting the “Jab life ho out of control” song in the Aamir Khan-starrer 3 Idiots must be special effects. Why would responsible grown-ups waste so much water when they know that producing clean water requires energy, and hence carries a price tag in terms of greenhouse emissions? 

The question has been posed and answered; our dignity is preserved, or is it? Mine is not, and I have the answer from him. 

Recently, faced with the prospect of riding pillion with our family of four, my wife asked me to carry on with the kids while she walked back home (I suspect it also had something to do with my riding skills). I rode on, circled the next block and crept up behind her. Uncomfortable questioning ensued immediately. 

S: Why did you do that? 

Me: I wanted to surprise your mom by coming up from behind her. 

Pause

S: And produce more global warming? 

My crime? I had driven the two-wheeler for an extra 500 meters than the absolute minimum needed to get home. Talk of marriage ending the romance, kids absolutely annihilate it! And ecologically-minded ones are out with the probing knives. It’s time for us to feel the pain.

Text and Photographs by Sahastrarashmi

Le Question: What happened to the Sidewinder?

The Sidewinder is a rattlesnake that has adapted to life in the desert with unique sinusoidal-diagonal locomotion that enables it to negotiate smooth sand dunes with ease

This post concerns a certain question asked after a storytelling session at my son’s school, though this could be any child’s question to his or her teacher. 

The story concerned God and his miracles (which, incidentally, are almost always performed for the benefit of Homo sapiens). Here goes: A group of people who lived in a desert were starved of water (for obvious reasons). So they prayed to the rain god and encouraged piety and truthful living among their kin (I am not sure of the details: My son can be notoriously sketchy on the details but jumps onto the core of the matter like a pouncing tomcat). Anyway, the rain god smiled. There were copious rains for many years and eventually the desert was transformed into a lush tropical forest teeming with life. Rivers began to flow again and there were huge harvests. The tribe lived happily ever after. The story would have ended there except for one small question from the back of the class.

"Qu'est-il arrivé à la SideWinder?" (What happened to the Sidewinder?)

Shashwat was not just trying to show off his newfound knowledge of the desert and its denizens (picked up courtesy Sir David Attenborough’s BBC documentary series Planet Earth), the sidewinder being one of the most striking. Its sinusoidal-diagonal traverses across the dunes must have been etched in my son’s memory. But he had a genuine concern: What happens when one species benefits due to an unplanned intervention and others lose out. Or rather, why should this happen at all?

The question was not answered, but therein hangs an ethical dilemma with the anthropomorphic god and biased ethical systems. While we may confuse deserts with desertification, a child’s mind, yet to be clogged with concepts and cares, is perceptive enough to instinctively separate the two. Deserts are ecosystems that have evolved over millennia and their conversion to fertile farmland is akin to chopping down rainforests. It’s our instinctive (or indoctrinated?) association of environment with “green” that tips the odds against the protection of desert eco-systems. Desertification is the result of unsustainable living and often leads to loss of tree cover and arable land.

Demoiselle Cranes in the desert at Kichan, Rajasthan

The sidewinder in question would have endured a slow and agonizing death, its wonderful winding glides across the scorching sands slowly turning into painfully awkward slides on wet sands. A twisted and macabre version of Woman in Dunes played out in water.

Text by Sahastrarashmi

Photo of Sidewinder courtesy DK Clipart

Photo of Demoiselle Cranes at Kichan, Rajasthan by Sahastrarashmi