People like us

On an average day I see, hear, and experience birds and animals more than I do human beings.

This is not surprising when you live in a village with no immediate neighbours, when your front vista is a mango tree the size of a large building, and your back overlooks an untidy coconut and cashew grove. In all four directions can be seen the tops of endless coconut palms as well as other trees that stand alone: teak, acacia, silk cotton, and some old jungle trees whose names I don’t even know. In the distance is visible the wide canopy of a leafless champa tree filled with white flowers. My own tiny garden offers its own modest vista of plants and flowers: bougainvillea, white, yellow and red hibiscus, the fragrant, flowering pink creeper that Bengalis call the madhavi-lata, other odd shrubs and small trees.

These days the first sound I hear around dawn is the loud call of an unknown bird in the mango tree. Vow-vow-vow it goes, and again more insistently: vow-vow-vow-vow, falling silent only when an answering call is heard from another tree in the distance. The sound wakes a rooster somewhere. Loudly and rather peevishly, as if annoyed at being upstaged by a mere song bird, it crows with all its might. Sleepily I think how odd it is that Indian roosters cry ku-ku-ru-ku rather than cock-a-doodle-doo. Or is it just the way we hear it?

Thereafter, there is no stopping the birds, so many these days that it’s a pure delight. I’m still learning their names and sounds, but from my meager knowledge I have been able identify the oriole, a strange flycatcher with a long brown tail, the drongo, the hoopoe, the bee eater. There’s a kingfisher that regularly sits on the branch of a cashew tree. When it flies off it’s in a flash of brilliant blue. A greater coucal, those heavy, silent and rather furtive birds that normally hop about in the undergrowth, quietly creeps up the breadfruit tree as I lie in bed and watch. The koel is rarely seen, but always heard, a sound that fills me with nostalgia. There are woodpeckers who sound exactly like Woody Woodpecker. This year I haven’t spotted any magpie robins yet. These are amazing little black birds streaked with white who actually sing entire tunes.

A kind of bulbul with a cocky little crest has taken to hanging around and singing loudly on the madhavi-lata. It’s so beautiful, the sound it makes, that I’m sure it will find a mate soon and together they will build a nest, perhaps in the hibiscus. In the past, such a coupling had ended in tragedy when a black-faced monkey ripped out the nest, possibly to eat the eggs or baby birds. This time they might be luckier. There has been a lull with the monkeys. Maybe some large creature has devoured the lot of them, but I’m sure that’s wishful thinking. They’ll be back, as thieves and vandals and villains always are.

Through the morning the cicadas can be heard in the trees, buzzing insistently and loudly. And always, like some perpetual background music, there are the crows.

I regard the birds as delightful neighbours who don’t bother you.

The animals are another story, usually offering tales of horror, gore and suspense. Like the little frog who every evening materializes from behind the bookshelf. Last evening it hopped onto my little book of poems, then took a flying leap onto the spine of a fat Bertrand Russell. A gentle prod with a stick saw it landing on a P D James Omnibus and jumping down onto the dhurrie where it quickly peed before it was picked up and thrown out.

Cows appear in the evening, nosing around among the weeds and bushes outside. If I’m buying some poli (a flattish Goan bread) from the paowallah, one of them invariably walks slowly and rather threateningly towards me. And then I have to dodge this way and that with the cow determinedly after me, trying to grab the pao. The dogs are no better. A mangy black and white dog some months ago produced a litter of pups. And now there’s a fresh lot of tiny pups, red from rolling around in the dust. All of them want what I have, making me feel foolishly guilty for having the ability to buy food while they are starving, though flourishing nevertheless. The cat is cleverer. I once left a fresh, hot loaf of whole wheat bread to cool on the table, only to find a cat hungrily devouring it.

On bad days rats will appear, or snakes. Tree ants – big and red – come into the house in summer and get into everything. On really bad days, hordes of black-faced monkeys will turn up, breaking the tiles on the roof, shitting all over the place and creating havoc.

Animals are everywhere. If you go for a walk in the village you sometimes pass a row of marching ducks or some strange speckled birds that look like turkeys. Gobbling and gabbling, quacking and waddling, they are a sight. Pigs, many very dirty little pigs, are always seen near the beach. On the beach, of course, there are yet more creatures: from crabs and shell fish to some strange black otter-like animals I once saw swimming in the sea.

And living among all these ‘good creatures’ (as my friend Jayram calls them), I have for the first time grown conscious of the fact that we share this planet with a million other beings. They are often strange and baffling in their ways, yet it seems they share with us many of our emotions. Like us they feel hunger and thirst, fear and anger, joy and sorrow. They go to war sometimes. They love, hate and procreate. Birds are masters at courtship. Like some of us, frogs are timid and solitary creatures. Others, like owls and bats, can be likened to party animals who emerge at night to eat and be merry. Monkeys are the outlaws. Cicadas resemble noisy children. And so it continues.

In the end, love them or hate them, they’re very much like us.