The Sanctuary

 

I think I read the map wrong.

I thought that Verdengtal was a town.

So it seemed logical that in order to visit the Verdengtal Bird Sanctuary, to catch the bus to Verdengtal, find a hotel there, and then go out to see the birds. 

When the bus reached the end stop, I was in for a surprise.

There was no town to be seen anywhere.  

There was a road head next to the bird sanctuary and there besides a line of stalls selling coconuts, cool drinks, biscuits and plastic souvenirs. Behind the stalls was an expanse of rich green rice paddies partially flooded by water: the classic rural landscape of Southern India. 

I had a problem. I was at the bird sanctuary but I had nowhere to stay.

It was early in the afternoon but the best times to watch birds was at dawn and dusk……..  

At the ticket office at the entrance to the sanctuary, I had a stroke of luck. There was an elderly man who spoke good English. We went into an adjoining room where I eased off my rucksack and he handed me a glass of milky tea; we got talking and I soon discovered that he was a remarkable man who not only spoke good English but was also a walking encyclopaedia about birds. 

We talked for a some time. 

He lived in a small town about 10 kilometres away from the sanctuary. He rode his bike there and back every day. He had worked at the bird sanctuary for 30 years and met many avid bird watchers from all over India and, the world.

When I raised the subject of my miscalculation with respect to ‘Verdengtal’ and asked him if he knew anywhere nearby where I could stay, he told me about a state government rest house about two kilometres back down the road. I knew from experience that the two kilometres might be a good deal longer.  

I left the ticket office and entered the sanctuary with the intention of first ascertaining whether it was worth going to the effort of venturing down the road in the heat and humidity to find the rest house.

Was it?! 

The sanctuary was a series of overgrown green islands set in a shallow lake. On one side of the lake was a short dyke and on top of the dyke, a paved walkway. Between the walkway and the first of the islands was about twenty metres of water. Every one of the islands was covered in birds. On some of the islands, one species of birds predominated, on others, there was a mix.

It was claimed that during breeding season – November to March – up to 30,000 migratory birds appeared there. I wasn’t quite sure how anyone could measure the number of birds in an 85-acre bird sanctuary, but one thing was for sure: there were an awful lot of birds there, certainly running into the thousands.

It was really quite incredible.

Bird sanctuaries often have a particular species which is their ‘crown jewel’, a type of bird which is unique to that sanctuary. Take for example the Bharatpur Bird Sanctuary (it’s not far from the Taj Mahal in Agra). For many years its crown jewel was the Siberian Crane. There were many other species of birds but it was the Siberian Crane which on its own brought bird watchers from all over the world. In 1983 and ’85, I was lucky enough to have visited Bharatpur and seen the Siberian Crane; it was a magnificent bird of pure white plumage with an enormous orange beak and haunting call. Every year it migrated from the far north of Siberia to one place and only one place in the world: the Bharatpur sanctuary. The last Siberian cranes were seen in 2002. It is now believed to be extinct: Bharatpur lost its star attraction.

The crown jewel of the Verdengtal sanctuary was the painted stork and it was this bird – and in prolific numbers – which was most visible from the walkway, along with many other water birds. The painted stork looked indeed as if someone might have painted it on a canvas – albeit running the risk of being accused of exaggeration. It had a long slender orange bill and snow-white plumage. The underside of its wings and the tips of its wings, however, were jet black. Its tail feathers were bright red. Its long legs were orange. Like the Siberian Crane, the painted stork was a glider, its wide wings allowing it to float on upper air currents with little expenditure of energy – and to carry it every winter from Tibet to the south of India – where it nested, mated, raised the chicks – before embarking on the long flight back to Tibet.

Much of the walkway was lined with trees growing out of the water which obstructed one’s view. There were three good areas which were clear of trees and provided good views of the birds. I ensconced myself in one of these areas and got out my binoculars.

It was sheer pleasure to watch the painted storks.

The species was a miracle!

 

Walking down the road in the mid-afternoon heat and humidity, rucksack on my back, I passed small, thatched roofed houses, tall trees, rice paddies, a temple and a school; women filling up pots of water at a hand pump and a small boy herding water buffalo and cows.

The rest house was, in comparison with the local dwellings, a grandiose two-story structure set back from the road and surrounded by a high wall. There was a big painted wrought iron gate and a drive. Opening the gate, I was greeted by the sight of a neat and very English looking garden; there were paths and beds of flowers.

I was met by the surprised caretaker (or ‘chowkidar’ as they often known in India). He had a plum job, which was to maintain the rest house and provide meals when Indian bureaucrats or bird watchers booked the place. With sign language and a few words of English, he gave me to understand that he would Phone his boss in Chennai to see if I could stay the night. It was Thursday; he had no bookings for that night but on the Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights it was fully booked.

After a lot of discussion on the phone, I was given permission to stay.

On the lower floor, there was a hallway opening onto a large room with tables and chairs and view of the garden. On the walls, were large paintings of birds in polished wooden frames.

On the top floor were large, spacious and clean rooms. I chose a room and dumped my rucksack in a corner.

The caretaker indicated he could make me an evening meal; we arranged a price.

Later in the afternoon, I returned to the sanctuary with the intention of being there at sunset  – always a good time for bird watching – and ensconced myself at one of the areas with a clear view of the birds.

Shortly afterwards a large party of Indians appeared. The noise they made could be heard long before they approached the waters. It was not a group of tourists and certainly not bird watchers; as they drew near I did a double take. There was an important politician clad in a loose white cotton shirt and a longyi extending down to his sandaled feet. Around his neck was an orange scarf, the ends of which hung either side of his sizeable paunch. He was an elderly, jowly man, partly bald, wearing thick black rimmed glasses. He was accompanied by quite an entourage: five or six younger men wearing safari suits and their wives, dressed in saris and wearing jewellery; three police, all of them armed with automatic rifles, and a photographer carrying his camera and a tripod: the group had come to the sanctuary for a photo shoot with the painted storks as a background.

And wouldn’t you know it?

The spot that I had chosen as the best place to watch the birds was the same spot that the photographer had decided was the best place to do his shoot. 

Initially I was far from pleased about the situation.

All I wanted was a bit of peace and quiet and the chance to watch the painted storks at one of the most beautiful times of the day in the tropics.

I moved to another spot but the noise was inescapable.

So I stood in the shadows and watched the proceedings. A few things I’d seen over the preceding days fell into place.

There was a local or regional election in the offing and the politicians were gearing up for the business of eliciting votes. In a country where so many people were illiterate or semi-literate, symbols played a crucial part in political campaigning. Every party had a symbol and these could be seen painted on the walls of buildings and houses and bus stations, along with written exhortations to vote for the relevant party or politician. Symbols included cows (of course) or anything suggesting light – e.g. a candle, a light bulb, a sun rising, a flame.

During the bus trip out to Verdengtal I noticed that there were political symbols everywhere. Some of them were painted on to bus stops and shops, others on people’s huts and houses. On the walk to the rest house I’d even seen them painted on the road. The predominant symbols I saw were: bucket, padlock, a palm tree and plane.

The photo session seemed to last forever.

Various combinations of people were assembled for each photograph. Some of the groups were of only the men, others of the wives; still others were a mix of men and women. The only person who consistently starred in every photo was the politician. The others who weren’t in the photo stood aside and spoke volubly and laughed. 

As darkness descended, like a curtain falling on a stage, they left and so did I. 

They piled into two SUV’s and roared off, blowing their horns.

I walked. My steps echoed in the silence. 

By the time I neared the rest house, there was only starlight to illuminate my way. The world of rice paddies, palm trees and village houses, a blaze of colour during the day, was now an eeerie collage of shadows, of outlines.  

The rest house looked different, ghostly. 

There was another journey before me and where I had least expected it: a journey into the past, when India was a very different country….

I’d arranged to stay a night at a Resthouse – as it was called – so that I could get up early the next morning and walk to the Verdengtal Bird Sanctuary.

Earlier in the day, when I had walked to the Resthouse in the bright tropical sun to find out whether it was possible to stay there, I hadn’t noticed the incongruity of a classic two story English house – hailing from the colonial era  – set amidst of a rice paddy landscape of water, palm trees and village huts. But walking back to the Resthouse after sunset, the landscape consumed by shadows, I did notice it – it was a relic from a long forgotten empire when a small number of British people ruled a huge nation.

That night I was the only person staying at the Resthouse. The caretaker had left two bowls of curry, some rice and chappatis as agreed and gone home. I ate the rice and one bowl of curry and left the rest for breakfast on the following morning. After a shower, I made my way upstairs to my room and lay in bed. There wasn’t much else to do in that remote place and I was too tired to read. In the darkness of that deserted house I felt as if I was in a museum. Other people might have felt spooked.

I fell into a deep sleep and then woke several hours later, my thoughts dwelling on the story the man working at the ticket counter had told me about how the sanctuary was first established ……..

Built in the early 19^th century no doubt by local workmen commanded by colonial overseers, the Resthouse – and others like it – provided temporary accommodation for a British district officer, who travelled from one place to the next to review tax collection and administer justice. The latter meant listening to local complaints and grievances, often extremely tedious and demanding great forbearance.

In the darkness of my room, I visualised an Oxbridge man with a lofty, aristocratic accent.  

How simple I mused, politics was in those days!

 The Englishman appeared, listened to local complaints, and felled judgements which could not be questioned or challenged.  

In the eyes of Indian nationalists in those days, these district officers were a part of an oppressive and racist regime. Understandable of course. Yet none of the nationalists seemed to realise just how corrupt India was – corruption was caused by the colonialism they told themselves – and would remain so well after independence.

 A man like the politician I had seen in the bird sanctuary that afternoon was typical of the malaise of modern India. He could have been a character straight out of Aravand Adigá’s Booker Prize winning ‘The White Tiger’. He knew how to exploit local grievances both real and imagined. He had a symbol which meant ‘vote for me’. At the same time, he was a man for sale, like so many other politicians in India (as well as the judges, bureaucrats, lecturers and doctors) In India, like so many nations, everyone is for sale and everyone has their price.

The British district commissioners were not corrupt.

They did their duty.

Nelson’s column in London: ‘England expects that every man will do his duty’

They tried to be fair. Sometimes they were and sometimes they weren’t.

But they couldn’t be bought.

The basis for the Verdengtal bird sanctuary was established when local villagers protested to the district officer about the English ‘sportsmen’ who were appearing in the area in ever larger numbers and shooting out the birds.

The same kind of ‘sportsmen’ who had shot out most of India’s wildlife: its tigers and elephants, its native deer and ibex as well as its birds. Anything that moved they loved to shoot. One of their favourite pastimes was to shoot animals and birds from moving trains, sticking their rifles out of open windows.

For the villagers, the birds were an essential part of their economic survival. The birds ate the insects and pests and their droppings fertilised the paddies. The British ‘sportsmen’ threatened the lives and livehoods of the villagers.

The district officer, who hailed from the same nation and same class as the so-called ‘sportsmen’ – decided in favour of the villagers. The birds including the Painted Stork survived. Furthermore, he declared an area of swamp which was not being farmed as a sanctuary for the birds. In 1936, the Verdengtal Bird Sanctuary was born – now home to thousands of birds.  

A good man working for an evil system made the right decision.

 

I woke up early, around 5am.

The evening before I’d been denied the opportunity to see the Painted Stors retire in the last light of day thanks to arrival of the local politician and his entourage. I was anticipating that at first light, I’d be able to get a bit of peace and quiet – me, alone with thousands of birds.  

I ate a few cold chappaties and a glass of black coffee and got going, binoculars in one hand.  

Then it started.  

On my way to the rest house that afternoon, I had noted that in amongst the technicolour figures in a local village temple was a pair of loud speakers. I thought nothing of it until, shortly after departing the Resthouse at 5.30 am – and an hour before sunrise – blaring devotional music started pumping from those speakers.

And not just them.

Dotted around the nearby countryside – apparently – were many other such temples and all of them also began cranking out music. It seemed as if one temple was trying to outdo the other, leastways in terms of volume if not in quality (none of the speaker systems was designed to handle mega decibels).

In the soft darkness of a tropical morning I walked passed the eerie forms of palm trees and the watery surfaces of the rice paddies whilst out there somewhere came the thumping sound of drums, the whine of over pitched violins, the howl of flutes, and the screaming of high pitched female voices.

At the roadhead, some of the stall owners were awake and had decided to add to the din by playing loud Bollywood music (Why? They had no customers).

On a wall near the entrance to the sanctuary was a board on which a number of ‘rules for bird watchers’ were transcribed in Tamil and English.  

Rule no 1 stated that bird watchers should have a ‘Determination to Maintain Silence’

Oh really?

In the normally tranquil moments before sunrise, now invaded from every angle by a terrible and ungodly din, it occurred to me that in India, only a Saddu meditating in a cave deep in the Himalaya was capable of understanding the concept of silence. For the rest of the mortals living on the subcontinent, noise seemed to be a natural part of the cycle of being born and dying.  

To my surprise, the birds weren’t bothered at all by the noise.

It was a problem for me, not them.  

The painted storks were fast asleep. It was quite a sight to see large birds balancing on thin branches, fast asleep, whilst the air was rent by so much noise.

The open billed storks, two-tone grey birds, were awake, but then again, they had already hatched their young and vigilance was called for.

Shortly after sunrise, the temples stopped. So did the Bollywood from the stalls.

Silence, that precious rarity against which all of India conspired, descended suddenly and unexpectedly, like a blessing from a Great Deity.  

The painted storks woke up.

The air was filled with the sounds of birds calling and their wings flapping.

Yes, that was why I had come here….what a sound!

Eyes wide open, all my senses alive and perfectly pitched, I watched thousands of birds in the silence of a beautiful tropical morning.

Jatayu