Sahyadrica

“Remember what the dormouse said…” Waking up to the loud call of the chicken ( Gallus domesticus ) is so common for us that even clocks come with prerecorded calls as alarm. The call belongs to the male fowl, the cock – it is the quintessential bird and the omnipresent sound of the Indian countryside. It is only when you have lived long enough in the countryside that you realise this call is not typical of mornings. It is driven more by the presence of the hens around, and if there is a brood around, a cock might sing all night. Today, the koo-kuduk-koo of the chicken is recognized more by a watch’s alarm and the chicken itself for what it is – food – than for its historic association with humans. This history is quite interesting, an important chapter in the book of mankind, no less: How the hunter-gatherers observed wild fowl life history to not only hunt – they are still hunted – but to capture them live and breed and tame them and keep them around settlements which are found t...

Thoreau’s writings, especially Walking and Walden, have been crucial parts of my young adult life; I longed to be in the woods, alone, left to my own thoughts amidst nature – well, doing exactly as Thoreau now comes at a ginormous financial investment, so I did what I could and continue to do. Over the last ten years since I first read Walden, I have had plenty of such opportunities – I would add the timeless lock-up of eight months of 2020 which I thankfully spent reading and rereading Vonnegut’s Slaughterhouse-Five. It’s a long stretch between the two, but for me, Walden’s cabin or Vonnegut’s slaughterhouse are linked in more ways than one. Left: Walden; or, life in the woods by Henry D. Thoreau; available here , Right: Slaughterhouse-Five OR The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.; available here ; these are the early (first ed) covers. Lately, I am lost on titles, I cannot stick to one; if that is how Thoreau and Vonnegut decided upon theirs, alt...

A hint of light first dapples my window Then slowly a golden streak creeps in From a gap in the door Spilling light on the floor I remain unperturbed for as long as I can Before a persistent Coppersmith Barbet From a giant Fig in the distance Begins to recite his concordance A warm breeze careens across the yard Not the most pleasant of its kind, but more earthy Making Saja and Lendia wean Draping Kosum and Sal in crimson and green Then suddenly a symphony picks pace A Brown-headed Barbet contests with a Coppersmith The latter ringing a copper bell The former beating a talking drum As if on cue the Common Hawk Cuckoo begins his concert For whom only three syllables make do A wayward country singer at a fair Singing pa-pi-ha in the summer air And as the shadows shrink in the hard of the heat A Crested Serpent Eagle whistles at another in the sky Standing in the blazing grassland I happen to overhear This most melodious of eagles, saying hey-come-here There...

Every day around noon, he perches on his favourite, fifteen-year-old neem tree, tugging at a branchlet fallen over his usual seat, but never really trying to get rid of it. This neem tree grows in a pot in the window, three feet from where I sit separated by a reflective glass. He is the calmest of his kind I’ve ever met. He does not call in response to every conversation he overhears, only some. Mostly, though, he is quiet in spite of the constant ruckus all around, and there are a lot of his kind. I didn’t know they could be so – if I may use the word – disciplined, or appreciate solitude. He certainly appears to enjoy it. How do I tell he is calm and relaxed? He hunches down on his toes, sinks his shoulders, and ruffles his crest and neck feathers – looking snug. Sometimes he scratches, shuffles his feathers, stretches his wings one by one, fans his tail and shakes his head – and finally gives a long sigh of satisfaction and relief, I’m willing to believe. Like every ...

by Robin Churchill When I first held Sugar in hand, I was surprised by how heavy she felt – heavy for a bird of that size (think of Shikra found in the Indian subcontinent). She was a Gyr – Saker falcon hybrid, being trained by Robin. That was six years ago. Since then, I’ve been infatuated with falconry, an ancient form of art where man and bird become one. I don’t call it domestication – the bird that sits on the hand of his or her trainer is not domesticated – it is a rare form of art where a wild bird bonds with a human but remains wild in its heart. As a modern-day falconer, Robin helps chase bird populations which are a menace and a hazard in industrial environs, and falcons are the ultimate weapons – far more efficient than using guns – to keep them away. I’ve had very limited experience with falcons – wild as well as trained – and reading Helen Macdonald’s H is for Hawk , and J. A. Baker’s The Peregrine has made me realize a big gap in my own experiences of the wild...

by Adithi Muralidhar Mumbai is a city I look up to when I think of a forest in a city. I fancy its long but recent natural history, of tigers roaming the islands, sloth bears digging into termite mounds, and leopards that once lived in harmony with humans. Most, if not all, is now lost. As I read Dr Salim Ali’s autobiography The Fall of a Sparrow (ch. Special Providence, pp. 4–5) , I came to realise that Mumbai did not lose its charm until recently. What caught my attention was his recount of Chembur, a part of Mumbai Metropolis, and probably one of the busiest corners of the city today. In his own words, “[…] Chembur – now a noisy part of the metropolitan Bombay but in those days a delightfully quiet sylvan haven of secondary moist-deciduous jungle set among outlying hillocks of the Western Ghats [...] It was thickly wooded in parts till uniformly denuded into a veritable Rock of Gibraltar by the relentless fuel-hunters.” My association with Mumbai is mostly intact because of it...