Nature's Spokesman

by M Krishnan

  That is why I say that, provided it has a wide range in our country, and is familiar and representative, and well known to the legend and culture of the country, the bird chosen need not be exclusively Indian. Having the power of flight, it is only natural that many birds should enjoy a wider distribution than beasts, and therefore insistence on exclusive restriction to a country as a condition precedent to choice as national emblem would be unrealistic.

  There are two other important criteria that have nothing to do with natural history. First, any bird chosen as a national emblem should lend itself to formal depiction, and when I say formal, I use the word not to connote orthodox conformity to some accepted standard, but as something concerning physical form—an emblematic bird’s contours should lend themselves to abstracted or stylized depiction, its shape should convey its entity unmistakably, even in formalized representation. It follows that a bird whose identity is dependent mainly on the patterns of its plumage would not suit, unless its plumage can be simply and effectively stylized. All that sounds like a lot of words, but here is an acid test. If a bird can be depicted in a spontaneous oneline drawing (in a quick drawing where the pen never leaves the paper) it passes the test.

  Second, the chosen bird must not be susceptible of confusion with the bird emblem of some other country.

  Judged by these considerations the Great Indian Bustard is eliminated straightaway. It is not a familiar fowl, and is not distributed sufficiently widely, and today it is rarer than ever before, having been snared and shot almost to the point of extinction. Remember the story of the Baboo examinee who, asked to annotate the lines from Keats’s ode,

  Thou were not born for death, immortal bird,

  No hungry generations tread thee down

  answered, succinctly, that the poet felt assured of its survival because ‘the nightingale is not an edible bird’? Well, the bustard, in addition to being one of our largest birds (the heaviest, anyway), is also highly edible, and is much sought after by our epicures. It is practically on its last legs today. And I defy even Picasso (a master of the complicated one-line drawing) to draw a recognizable Great Indian Bustard without lifting nib from paper. Altogether an unhappy choice it would be as the bird emblem of our country.

  The Sarus Crane, too, is not a bird familiar all over India, having a decidedly northern and localized distribution. True that where it occurs it is a well-known bird, and that its looks are distinctive and capable of being stylized, but still it is not a good choice. Once I wrote a note in these columns proving, or attempting to prove, that the ‘Crowncha Pakshi’ of our Puranas was none other than the Sarus, but though it is no stranger to our legends (as the bustard is) it is a bird which the majority of Indians do not know, either in the field or in legend, and I think that disposes of the Sarus’s claims.

  The swan is quickly disposed of. It is not an Indian bird—it is simply not to be found breeding anywhere in India (the test of a bird’s indigene), and even as a straggler is not known in 90 per cent of India. Surely we cannot have a bird that does not belong to the country as a national emblem even if it is known to our art and poetry.

  The Brahminy Kite (the ‘garuda’—though ‘garuda’ applies to other birds in places, it is the Brahminy Kite that is generally meant by the term) is, I think, eliminated on a criterion so far not invoked. Yes, it is Indian—familiar, widely distributed and easily formalized, but though in the flesh the two birds are so dissimilar in size and looks, in an emblem the Brahminy Kite is bound to look remarkably like the emblematic Bald Eagle of America, in spite of the latter’s white tail.

  The peacock remains among the birds listed, and it is difficult to think of a bird that more admirably satisfies all the tests. Everyone knows it and has seen it, it is to be found all over India, and it is intimately and anciently associated with our religious and countryside legends and culture. And it is so distinctive in its arresting beauty that it lends itself to unmistakable formalized depiction—in fact it has been so depicted both in our folk and classical art. I shall be greatly surprised, why, I shall be astonished if any other bird is ultimately preferred for the honour.

  However, if for some reason that I can’t think of now another bird is preferred, I would press the claims of the Common Mynah. Though sacred to no god, it is well known to our legends and folk songs, and is one of the most familiar birds in the country, being specially common in and around human settlements, both in the plains and lower hills. And in spite of being so common few birds have a richer plumage as Eha pointed out long ago. The contrast of the cadmium yellow of its legs and beak and facial patches with the Vandyke brown of its plumage and the black of its head and the blaze of white on each wing that lends its flight such vividness, are not only distinguished but also contrasts that can be most effectively formalized in an emblem. It has an additional claim. It is frequently caged and trained to talk and in our folk songs it is often entrusted with the delivery of messages to loved ones far away, a kind of ambassadorial responsibility that is surely an asset in any National Bird.

  1961

  E

  Eland: Large heavily built ox-like African antelope, … with spirally twisted horns.

  —The Reader’s Digest Great Encyclopaedic Dictionary.

  (Actually, the largest of all antelopes: the second largest being our own Nilgai.)

  ELAND

  The eland is an antelope

  though looking like a cow,

  its horns are twisted like a rope

  and serve, beyond all doubt, to show

  it is an antelope, with not

  of bovine blood a jot.

  If trekking through the veldt you see

  an eland browsing at a bough,

  subject its horns to scrutiny

  lest it turn out a cow.

  For eland-hunters have been known

  After a long and patient stalk,

  long hours spent half-erect, half-prone,

  in creeping through the predawn dark

  through bush and grass and thorny bough

  to shoot—the common cow!

  Nature’s Marvels

  8

  Tiger Talk

  Tigers roar. They also moan, and both sounds have been much described in Indian shikar literature. The short, coughing roar of a charging tiger, the terrifying accompaniment to an all-out attack, and the growls, snarls, hissing and spitting indulged in during intraspecific communications of threat or hostile intent, have all been carefully observed and recorded: these sounds may also be used to express anger and hostile intent towards other animals and men intruding on a tiger, or encountered accidentally by a tiger. The ‘whoof!’ of surprise has been mentioned by a few, but not in specific detail.

  The rarely sounded ‘pook’, closely resembling the bell of a sambar, has provoked much inconclusive speculation and argument, and tigrine yowls and miaows have also been reported. The most complete collation of the voice of the tiger that I know of along with closely studied personal descriptions of tiger vocalizations heard at Kanha and elsewhere, is to be found in G.B. Schaller’s The Deer and the Tiger. In this he also writes of an aspirated and somewhat equine sound used by tigers approaching one another in a friendly way.

  Other tigrine sounds are only variations of these calls. It is not settled whether or not tigers, at some stage of their life or other, can purr—I have no personal knowledge of this question.

  But in May last I realized that tigers or at least some of them, are also given to other and stranger sounds. I was staying at the Anantpura rest house of the Ranthambhor Tiger Reserve, and tired with the day’s work and with the need to conserve the kerosene lanterns, went to bed early, about 9 o’clock. My cot was in an open verandah, and by 7 p.m. the afterglow would turn to an inky blackness and suddenly it was no longer scorching—the nights were delightfully cool. I would be wide awake by half past three in the morning, and sit listening to the dark forest till dawn, when my pot of tea was due.

  One morning, as I sat
in the dark, I heard a distant musical sound, a vibrant and somewhat nasal long-drawn twang, like a taut length of steel wire sharply plucked. It was repeated several times, and then followed by the unmistakable ‘aaoonh!’ of a tiger. Evidently the tiger was in a gorge half a kilometre away, and both the moan and the plucked-wire call were repeated several times: they grew faint as the tiger moved off, and then there were no further sounds till the dawn chorus of the birds.

  With the first light, I was at the gorge. There, in the moist earth around a tiny pool were the fresh pug marks of an adult male tiger—there were less clear but still fresh prints in the dry soil around, and with the help of a local tracker I followed them till they finally petered out in an ascending, stony nullah up which he had gone. For days in succession, this experience was repeated.

  The nullah, I found the hard way, went right up the hill and intersected a hilltop road at a point 11 km from our rest house. I decided to take that road home in the evenings, and to stop at the point where the road crossed the nullah—the nullah went on down the other side of the hill.

  Nothing happened for a few days, and then, one evening when we had been delayed and reached the junction of the nullah and the road only after sunset, we saw the tiger on the road right ahead of the jeep. He heard us, and without turning his head accelerated his pace to a trot, and then disappeared into a patch of dry tall grass flanking the road. We too halted, and moved on only when the crunch-crunch of grass being trodden down told us of the tiger’s exit from that patch, and there, right out in the open, was the tiger—dark, indistinct and magnificent in the failing light. Then somehow our jeep slid into a ditch and came to a crashing halt, with the front wheels in the ditch and the rear wheels on the road, at a cant of 30 degrees. The tiger gave a bound forward, and vanished into the nullah down the hill.

  There was another rest house about 4 km away, and I sent the man with us to it to get help, while the driver and I stayed perched uncomfortably on our seats. In a few minutes it was pitch dark and the shrill alarms of chital and the explosive ‘dhank!’ of sambar proclaimed the passage of the great cat down the nullah. Then all at once there was total silence, unrelieved even by the rustling of grass or insect sounds, and it was cold.

  We speculated on the chances of our getting a rescue jeep, and then slumped into silence. After a while, I heard some animal breathing softly as it moved around, and a low moan informed us of its identity. ‘Tiger,’ whispered the driver to me, and jerked himself bold upright on his slanting seat. For fully half an hour that tiger circled us, never approaching close but never too far away either, coming out with musical, vibrant twangings and low moans, obviously intrigued by our presence there. I noticed that his twangings were now pitched much lower than when I heard him from far away.

  Suddenly, there was silence again. Risking my reputation as a naturalist, I informed the apprehensive driver that the rescue jeep was on its way, and that was why the tiger, with his infinitely sharper hearing, had moved off. In another minute we too could hear the purr of the approaching jeep, and then see the road behind us being lit up by its headlights.

  1980

  9

  When Elephants Die

  Last week, I had a letter from an Argentinian palaeontologist. Professor Ruben Martinez of the National University of Patagonia, heading a research team, had unearthed the fossilized remains of a new kind of dinosaur, and it was computed that millions of years ago, when it was alive, it must have stood three metres tall and seven metres long, larger than an elephant. What intrigued the professor and made him write to me was this: it was usual for dinosaurs to die, and their remains to be found, lying on a side, whereas this specimen was found lying flat on its belly, ‘in the prone decubitus position’ as he put it. He had heard of me as a naturalist specializing in the larger mammals of India, in particular elephants, and wanted to know if I could give him instances from personal knowledge of heavy animals like rhinos and elephants that had died in the prone decubitus position.

  I wrote back promptly and at length to Professor Martinez, but could not be of much use to him. I have never seen the carcass of a rhinoceros that had died a natural death. One that had been shot by poachers in the Kaziranga area, had been subject to some handling in the course of the removal of its tusk, but had fallen flat on its stomach. I have no hearsay knowledge even of the natural death of rhinos, but have heard romantic legends about the way elephants die, of illness or old age. It is about this that I am writing.

  In 1960, in a narrow, tortuous limb of the many-armed Periyar lake of Kerala, I came upon the remains of a big tusker that had died a natural death. But it had died almost a year previously, and all that remained was its disjointed skeleton scattered by scavenging animals. However, the skull lying on a bank still had the tusks, though these were mere stumps, much gnawed by porcupines and other bone eaters. Obviously, this tusker had not been shot by poachers.

  Twice I have seen carcasses of bull elephants shot by men. The first was in the Nagarhole preserve of Karnataka, days after the animal had been killed, when its carcass was in an advanced stage of putrefaction, and could hardly be approached because of the stench. But it was necessary to take the officer in charge of the sanctuary close to the remains, to prove to him that it was a bull whose tusks had been extracted, and not a cow as he said it was. I proved my point all right, though both of us were violently sick in the course of the proof. That elephant had collapsed on its belly.

  In 1980, it was unfortunately necessary to shoot a big, massive, light-coloured tusker in the Corbett Tiger Reserve, because it had taken to killing men, and I witnessed its execution. In fact, I identified the animal to the execution squad. It fell to a regular salvo of rifle bullets, and fell flat on its stomach, with its limbs folded beneath it.

  To return to beliefs about the natural death of elephants, readers may have heard the legend of their graveyard. Dying elephants, it is said, take themselves to a particular remote location and expire there. The remains of many are to be found in such graveyards. Over decades of diligent inquiry, I have not been able to find anyone who has actually seen such a cemetery, and the legend has no basis in elephantine behaviour. Elephants range far in their feeding, trekking along routes well known to them from one forest to another, covering several hundred kilometres in the course of a year. How then would different members of different herds, when dying at long intervals in the course of their peregrinations, go to the same spot to die in? Even if someone claims that he has actually found the remains of several elephants in one place, that only goes to show that a herd, killed by some natural catastrophe (what the impious term an Act of God) must have perished there. Further, hypothetically conceding that several such graveyards may be there along the immemorial trek routes of elephants, in the course of the past four decades of the ramified and intensive penetration of all elephant forests by human enterprise, all or most of these graveyards must have been exposed—as not one has been.

  But if the specification of a particular location for death is given up, and it is said that, when they feel their vitality ebbing, the great beasts betake themselves not to any one spot but to a particular kind of place and die there, the theory is acceptable, even likely, though still to be established by actual observation. Tribals in elephant forests far apart and belonging to different tribes share the belief that, when its end is near, an elephant is liable to go quietly away by itself to some secluded pool or creek, to enter the water and die. This seems not unlikely to me. An elephant’s limbs have to support the great mass of its body, three or four tons, and enfeebled by its failing vital resources it may be hard put to carry this weight. Being much given to baths in forest pools and to swimming across rivers and lakes, it knows by experience (and not by intelligence) that water will instantly lift the weight of its body off its limbs.

  My illustration* shows a truly magnificent old tusker of the authentic ‘koomeriah’ type, deep in the barrel and stout in the limb, with its back sloping in a stra
ight line from its proudly carried head down to its tail, that I saw half a dozen years ago in the Bandipur Tiger Reserve. An old Kuruba tracker of the reserve, recently retired from service, was with me and, if he is still there, Mara can bear me out over this. We were on foot and right across an expansive lake we saw this tusker, and watched him. His behaviour puzzled me. He was walking deliberately along the farther bank, making steadily for some destination but at a slow pace, halting every now and again but not to feed or drink, only to stand at ease, not even flapping his ears.

  Mara said he was going to some pool he knew, maybe far away, to die in. Asked how he could be sure of this, he replied that he could not tell me how, logically, but knew it was true all right. When he was a boy, his uncle (who had a great store of knowledge and who had taught him all he knew about wild animals) had once pointed out just such a bull to him and told him it was seeking a quiet piece of water to die in. Well, they had followed that old tusker the entire day, keeping their distance, and in the evening he had found the pool he had been headed for, entered it, and with obvious relief closed his eyes and died in it. Mara and I could not follow the tusker we saw for long, we gave it up after an hour, because both of us had urgent business at the camps, but certainly the way that great bull behaved was strange and totally unlike normal behaviour.