Hullabaloos all around

Dear Akshay,

At the end of our master's course together, you handed me a book by Kiran Desai called 'Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard' with a characteristically-you, succinct, "Here's some sunshine for your life" note inside it. The cover intrigued me - a cartoon-y tree with the dangling legs of a person dropping into the frame from above. I didn't give it much thought when I started reading.

I began with no real expectations in mind - just the blind trust that you know me well enough to gift me a book I'd like regardless of its contents or genre. But then again, everything you do seems to stem from either purpose or reason, and I was secretly searching for either/or at the back of my mind as I progressed through the pages.

Kiran Desai's writing painted pictures of the mundane. She described sarees, food and the idle thoughts of a government employee with just the right number of adjectives and similes. She described each character in such delicious interwoven detail, that I was five chapters in with no clue about where the story was headed.

I took a break from the book for a while, shortly after Sampath, the head-in-the-clouds protagonist, let the characters of his reality into his mind for a quick peak, swiftly resulting in his routine life falling apart. This was also around the time I got sidetracked with work, travels and The Talking Ape. When I finished with that book, I got back to Sampath. Before I knew it, he was running further away from the life he had been thrown out of. He was literally running, with his dysfunctional family in close pursuit, up into a guava tree. The book's title began falling into place. While I was still skeptical about whether the bizarre events unfolding were happening in his head or in the book's real world of small-town Shahkot, I began relishing it.

I'm usually cynical when a book takes off on multiple tangential narratives as fillers for space and time, but this book did it brilliantly. It was so stuffed with characters and tales and little off-road, supporting stories, that I found it hard to stop reading once Sampath (and his paraphernalic-family) had set up shop in the guava orchard. I found it even harder to stop reading when the pages parted to make way for a notorious troop of monkeys, and irrevocably glued when the primates developed a taste for alcohol (there, I found my reasons*).

The book and its people danced in my head. You're teaching me to fall in love with good Indian writing - stories embedded deeply in intrinsically desi themes and characters. Having that added layer of relatability is exciting, and in a way, allows my imagination to create visuals with a lot more accuracy than if I were painting into place the extravagant lawns of Blandings Castle from a Wodehouse novel.

Never stop giving me your tried-and-tested book titles to read. So far, so very good.

Love always,
Ishika


*People I interviewed for my research work told me that monkeys would occasionally polish-off the left over bits of whiskey and rum in bottles from wine shops around Great Nicobar. The macaques would then either raid homes with a markedly lower sense of risk, or simply fall asleep. Upon hearing this, a certain Forest Department employee (only half jokingly) suggested we use alcohol as a mitigation measure against human-macaque conflict. Ah the colourful aspects of working with primates. 

Field-time Companionship/How I Learned To Read Again

After nearly three years of (a) taking inordinate amounts of time to finish small-ish books, (b) starting books and not finishing them, and (c) hoarding up on newer, more interesting books nonetheless, I optimistically packed four books into my rucksack. I was headed out for about seven months of seclusion on the island of Great Nicobar, and four seemed overly-ambitions with my proximate track record. Boy, was I wrong.

I ended up reading around fifteen books, not including a couple of poetry compilations that kept me going on most days (living alone allowed me to strut about reciting loudly from Sarah Kay or Walt Whitman's collections. My heart was alive, as I professed poetically while cooking every night). It turns out, long ship rides aboard the M.V. Campbell Bay, sea breeze, complete solitude at my field base and the lack of internet facilitated my every loner hobby, reading included. 

Here are some of the books that stood out the most - they're now my trusty friends who have taken ship rides and tasted sea salt with me during my islandic isolation. 

The Hungry Tide
By Amitav Ghosh

This was my reintroduction into the world of fiction after a two-year sabbatical from it, and I couldn't have asked for a better one. I spent most of my first ship ride to the island sitting in the blistering sun on deck, reading my hardbound copy of The Hungry Tide. I mention hardbound, since it proved to hold up well against the fairly-frequent sea sprays that reached it. 

This book charts the story of an NRI cetologist, Piyali, who returns to eastern India to study the Irrawaddy and Ganges river dolphins around a tiger-inhabited island of the Sundarbans. Enroute, she encounters a similarly-aged translator from New Delhi, Kanai, who's visiting his aunt - a long-time settler of the island. Their paths entwine superficially, as she finds a field assistant, Fokir, who helps her navigate the seemingly unpredictable waters nestled in the estuaries of the Bay of Bengal. Amitav Ghosh has described, in painstaking and commendable intricacy, how Piyali and Fokir face challenges from society, the Forest Department and the raging waters themselves as a consequence of their field work. Apart from a parallel narrative through the book based on Kanai's family history, I occasionally forgot that it wasn't an account of true events, a testament to how well-researched the premise was. 

I have mixed feelings about how much I liked this book. I appreciated his attention to detail and the manner in which he interwove the histories of all his characters, but could sense it falling short in terms of where it went and how it ended. It was balanced precariously on the verge of cliche, rescued and held aloft by its eloquence. Nonetheless, I'm glad I read it, perhaps exacerbated by the open ocean, my own tussles with the Forest Department and my association with Juglu - my field assistant who seemed to embody Ghosh's description of Fokir. I wonder now about the manner in which someone outside of the marine/wildlife sphere would receive this book.

Academia Obscura
By Glen Wright

I read this book off of my Kindle app, which made it the perfect bathroom read - given the fact that I had an Indian toilet that needed squatting over. It's a satirical, cynical take on the world of academics - perfect for an idealistic researcher embarking upon her scientific career. I kid.

This book has been written by someone who was so fed up with the stagnation of his own PhD research, that he began collecting and compiling the works of academicians who chose to take themselves lightly. It's replete with Ignobel prize winners, offbeat publications, unusual grant applications and caricatures of the bizarre system that is our world of research. While certain parts of the book felt like a glorified version of Glen Wright's Twitter feed, with lists of academia's most unconventional components, it also hits upon some serious notes. Through examples of those who have tried to trick or fool the system, he has highlighted how ridiculous and anal journal publishers, postgraduate programs and PhD advisors can be. I would recommend this book to someone within academia who is either frustrated with the system or loves it intimately. It will either feed their annoyance or cheese them off - both of which would be fantastic.

84 Charring Cross Road
By Helene Hanff

Since 2012, this book has been in the 'Always Reading' segment of this blog, and rightfully so. Helene Hanff is a kindred spirit. Her words jump at me from the pages of this book, grab me by the collar and shake their fist at me, angrily questioning why I wasn't alive when she was holed up in her tiny apartment, hunched over her typewriter, littering her beautiful words with cigarette ashes and lint from worn sweaters. In 84 Charring Cross Road, Helene (look at me calling her by her first name) has arranged the letters of her correspondence with the Marks and Co. antiquarian bookshop in London, situated on 84 Charring Cross. Her unfiltered American sarcasm bounced off of the polished British courtesies of her correspondents, largely a Mr. Frank Doel, makes for a page-turner. You can see their friendship blossoming into familial ties, despite never having met over decades of exchanges. This book, single-handed, reaffirms my faith in people every time it begins to wobble.


The Dutchess of Bloomsbury Street 
By Helene Hanff

In this book, Helene visits London at last. After years of wishing she could, this book is the diary she kept on the trip she finally managed to salvage. After she published 84 Charring, her publishers packed her off on a book tour to the land of her dreams, feeding all her irrational anxieties of travel. She starts writing on the flight to London and doesn't stop. She calls herself the Dutchess of Bloomsbury Street, which is the street on which her hotel was, and lets you revel in her love for (and occasional frustrations with) this place that birthed and housed her every literary God. She describes each person she meets (including Joyce Grenfell!) and you find yourself intrigued by every interaction she has. It's also rather tickling to read about a single woman traveling alone in the 1960's, especially one of independent mind and intellectual (and eccentric) tastes. If you've read her letters, this book just confirms all you thought of her (good or bad) and lets you dive deep into her curious brain and sit there, smiling like an absolute fool.

Last Chance To See
By Douglas Adams (and Mark Carwardine)

Reading a book like this one on field, after three semesters' worth of courses about wildlife conservation, can be very existential. Douglas Adams, who doesn't usually write about wildlife, tailed Mark Carwardine on his journey to seven rather remote locations, chasing the few individuals of some endangered species across the world. Quite literally, the duo undertook this series of adventures to areas like Madagascar, New Zealand and Zaire to look for species that were considered so very endangered, that it may have been their last chance to see them. Mark was an ecologist with the World Wildlife Fund, and Adams, a writer with a flair for humour, was assigned to accompany him by the BBC to help document his travels and raise awareness for these vanishing species.

Adams, being new to the trials of traveling to inaccessible regions for field work, found comedy in the logistical nightmares they faced. His narratives of the contrast between Mark's cool acceptance of the challenges of working with wild spaces, officials and scientists, and his own naivete towards them all, make for a fantastic read. Apart from the travelogue nature of this book, each chapter hits upon the ecology of each species, descriptions of the habitats they are found in and the threats they face. It's a wonderful mixture of the the seriousness of extinction, the vulnerability of certain ecosystems and the lighter side of the trials of conservation efforts. The BBC and WWF came together to choose the perfect man for the job, who could pinch your conscience and heart even through the smile he so firmly puts on your face.

Go Set A Watchman
By Harper Lee

I wrote about Lee's To Kill A Mockingbird in a post from 2014 just after having let its long-overdue read seep into my melting brain. There was something incredible about how that book wove through my neurons and sat there, staring at me from axonal corners, smiling in glee knowing that it had given me food for thought for a long time. After her book had affected me so deeply during my college days, I had kept away from this sequel of hers when it came out. I was afraid of disappointment. Then, my advisor visited me on field at a time when I was running out of books to read and left behind his copy of Go Set A Watchman with me, and it sat there taunting me for two weeks before I finally decided to read her. 

The book was not what I was expecting. Perhaps I didn't know what to expect. The book opens up to Jean Louise Finch returning to Maycomb for her annual visit from New York, where she now works and feels at home. She's grown into an intelligent, headstrong woman, firm in her ideals of the world - a contrast from the tomboyish personality of her childhood that Lee made you fall for in Mockingbird. The book winds through her current adulthood, throwing in pieces of the puzzle that comprises how her family and the people of Maycomb had transitioned between books. It made me squirm, since it shook the foundation of the characters I had laid in my mind. But as I progressed through the book, I found how it wasn't a discomfort that came from sub-standard writing, but from Lee's caution thrown to the wind. She found ways to build upon characters that were already well-established and make her readers question what they thought was morally right. You tend to misunderstand Scout (J. L. Finch) at times, because her moral dilemmas upon discovering new truths (with the reader) make her react to everyday matters drastically. Perhaps her own acceptance or understanding of the true nature of society in her home town helped me reconcile with it all. Did I like this book? I still don't know. But I certainly cannot directly compare it to Harper Lee's first.

Homo Deus
By Yuval Noah Harari

Yuval Noah Harari is the kind of historian who churns out compilations of humanity that make you reel backwards and realise you've always wondered about what's wrong with people. His first book, Sapiens, was fascinating in the history of our species that it laid out and thought-provoking in how it challenged certain ideas of religion and culture. This book, on the other hand, wasn't merely stating facts. He used our expansive anthropological journey to try and predict what our futures look like. Chapter by chapter, he discussed the various paths we may take as multiple races of the same species progressing into the rapidly-transforming unknown.

In each chapter, he is unapologetic in his commitment to the possibility of our shared future turning out a certain way. I found myself constantly being caught up in philosophical viewpoints that opposed my own and I began disliking Harari for taking that contrasting stance. But then I'd be reminded that he was simply laying out multiple well-thought out hypothetical scenarios, and that he did not advocate any of them in particular. It makes me wonder what he actually thinks will happen. It's a good book to read as long as you aren't someone who worries needlessly anyway, because if you are, this could land many sleepless nights or sudden frozen moments where you stare into space (or the sea) and simply want to mutter, "but why?".

Ghachar Ghochar
By Vivek Shanbhag

A dear friend of mine who was also working in the islands at the time came across this book (and its author) while on field, read it cover to cover, and had it couriered to me in Nicobar the moment he finished. Originally written in Kannada, it's been translated into English superbly. I was out on field looking for my monkey troop unsuccessfully, when a postwoman from a nearby village informed me that I had a parcel waiting for me at the post office. An hour later, I abandoned my search for the elusive troop and picked up the parcel, which produced this glorious book when unwrapped. I scootered home, thinking of taking an hour's break before heading out to resume field work, and took a crack at the book. It had me hooked so strongly in the first 15 pages, that I ended up sitting on my floor for four hours straight reading the entire thing.

The story is so very Indian that I related to it even though nothing like it has ever happened to me. It's a tale of a lower-middle-class family that comes into a lot of wealth due to the enterprising decisions of an uncle. Beginning with the modest life they once led, sharing tiny rooms, old furniture and floor space with persistent ants, the family moved into a larger home with disposable income and, somehow, an altered sense of purpose and entitlement. A new bride joins this family in its post-wealth period, and becomes a moral compass and reference point that unravels the many layers of every character that Shanbhag has created. The ending of the book is chilling, and I found that to be the case because I saw a little bit of my own family in his characters. Without driving a literal point home, this book had my gut by the fist.

Flight

What I love about birds is their undeniable grace. There's something beautiful about flight. I admire how they surrender their bodies to the wind and float weightlessly. It must be liberating to throw themselves into zero substratum and find that an invisible cloud of nothing catches them mid-suspension, only to carry them closer to their destination. I wonder what it feels like to be propelled by something you cannot see, or to flap in unmoving air and not plummet. I wonder what it feels like to be affected by gravity only when chosen to be.

I want to spread my arms along a sea shore and be lifted by the breeze, being thrown in every direction but my own. But I wonder if I'd handle that kind of total surrender with ease. After all these years of treading my own path and falling (mostly) consciously, I wonder if I could truly let my body go. I wonder if a hatchling that jumps to its first ever flight feels the same way a bungee jumper does before taking off. I imagine a young being, barely feathered, throwing itself into adulthood, and I'm baffled by the strength of instinct that makes them embody courage. And, after those first few awkward flaps, when the young bird takes to the sky for the first time, grace seeps into its feathers and stays there. When something as fluid and seamless as air supports them, how can their bodies be any different?


~ These are some scribbles from my bird-book, last maintained three years ago. I miss the pure, unfettered joy of birding ardently, and rediscovering these notes made me crave it again all the more. I leave these here as a thank you to Tarun, who's steadily bringing the birdsong back into my life.

Mansi - The Chirput.

Field work was full of surprises, as often happens when your subjects of interest are two incredibly intelligent primate species. Of all, the best one was discovering that I would help take care of an abandoned infant macaque - affectionately named Mansi by the local Forest Department.

I was working on field one annoyingly sunny afternoon, when my troop decided to scale two cliffs and make me work up an even heavier sweat. They were just settling down into a clump of Pandanus trees for an afternoon snack and siesta, when a family I had come to know ambled along. They were there to lop some wood in that secluded forest patch, and they brought their bumbling, black-and-white dog along to keep watch. The dog, however, promptly hurtled towards the snoozing macaques, wagging his tail eagerly in hope to play. The macaques found in him a play thing rather than a playmate, slapping his snout and then jumping just out of his reach.

While the husband and son dodged the monkeys and got down to their business, the wife hid behind me, worried that the large male near my feet would jump up and swipe her. While she hid, she asked me if I had seen the Forest Department's "new baby monkey". She wasn't the first one to mention its existence, and I was beginning to take this rumour seriously. There was an air of secret celebration, as though the fertile Department had borne an infant to the island.

Before I knew it, I was brought face-to-face with this fragile, wrinkled, scrawny thing. She looked alone and crinkled in her makeshift cage. While I held onto the still-solid portions of my melting heart, I scooter-ed off to the marketplace where I found some milk powder, overripe bananas and a mother-macaque-sized soft toy. I whizzed back to the piddly one with these items to find her clutching the cane that formed the mesh of her cage. Her wet, brown eyes looked up at me with piercing longing, melting all that was left of my cardiac muscles.

I opened the door and offered her my arm, which she took with all four of hers and held onto with resolve. I could feel the thirst for contact in her grip, which seemed only to tighten with time and trust. She swung from my clothes, body and hair - never losing hold of me. I was starting to understand directly how these infants cling onto their mothers as they leap between trees and rooftops. With fingers and wrinkles which provide arboreal certainty across media, any movement was possible, no matter how petite. I remembered the way my sister wrapped her hand around my finger as a baby, and couldn't help wonder about how unimpressive human babies are when compared to our evolutionary sisters.

She clung for three hours - initially playing and eventually falling asleep. She climbed her way up into the inside of my shirt collar and slept in the warmth of my neck. I cupped her thin body with my palm, enveloping her entirely, as I felt her chest heave against me. She hugged my neck with her delicate, long, pink fingers. Her skin felt as soft as a newborn's, but had the texture of someone much older.

I felt a fierce protectiveness towards Mansi instantly. Spending that time with her felt more profound than I thought it would be. This young macaque had lost her mother, and somehow found her way into the human realm. Not so different, albeit larger, I found how I was a plushy candidate for the role of 'mom', and wanted nothing but to give her the best care within my control. If I was there only for another few months, I was going to try to do what was best by her.

When I peeled Mansi away and returned her to the enclosure, I felt cold and bare where she had been resting. I left her that night hoping ardently that she survives to an age where a troop would accept her. In the following days, we grew increasingly fond of each other, and I watched with hope and pride as she grew more dexterous and agile. I selfishly rejoiced on the inside when she preferred my arms to others, but always felt the bitterness of having to leave her island home soon.

Now, nearly 2000 kilometers away from her, with only sporadic updates about her health, I miss her ardently. Regardless of whether I see her again, the intensity in her eyes, the softness of her fur and the smell of her pee will forever remain etched in my mind.

Mansi, you lanky bit of jet-black hair, I hope you keep hanging on.

Ek chai toh peekar jao

The island of Great Nicobar is speckled with modest settlements. People from Bengali, Tamilian, Telegu, Ranchi, Punjabi and Maharashtrian communities left their homes in Peninsular India from 1969 onwards to colonize and gradually develop the island, originally occupied by Nicobarese and Shompen societies alone. Ever since then, they’ve cut down slivers of forest along the eastern coast to build homes alongside their allotted land, surrounded by paddy fields and coconut plantations. Within 30 years of their arrival, they collectively started schools and medical centres, set up a Forest Department, an Agricultural Department and several police stations – all distributed across a long road that ran along the coast, originating at Campbell Bay and ending at Indira Point, the southernmost tip of India.

Then, in 2004, a tsunami hit, washing out decades of hard work and development, not to mention hundreds of lives and homes. Ever since, the survivors have crawled back to a semblance of what once was, aided by Government subsidies and rations. Today, the previously spread-out habitation has shifted to a clumped distribution of nine villages along a new road – running along the coast and through forested hills for 35 kilometres.

When I came to the island to study human-macaque interactions, I had planned to divide my work into behavioural observations of the monkeys, and one-on-one interviews with the local communities to better understand their take on the issue, their experiences and collective histories. For the past six months, I’ve been regaled with tales of the monkeys I’ve grown so fond of. Simultaneously, though, I’ve been caught in an endlessly looped battle of wits – that of the peoples’ plight and the macaques’ actions. Picking a side can never be part of a scenario like the one present here – my heart wishes to be parted like my methodology, lending complete sympathy to both the people and the macaques.

Despite this, a new itch has been occupying my mind off-late, one of metropolitan disgust and guilt.

Having grown up in a place like Mumbai, where trust is scarce and home exists behind two closed doors bolted tight, places like the Andaman and Nicobar Islands seem like a confusing paradox of society at first glance. Here people enjoy company, the notion of having visitors arriving unannounced, making tea for a crowd, sharing meals and lives. Here, time is a gift that’s meant to be shared, not a constraint within which life seems fleeting. People from the metros shy away from interaction; we shield ourselves behind the illusion that sparing a moment to hear someone out will eat into our minimal allotment of cosmic time. Where did this manic selfishness arise? Or rather, when? Perhaps our fear of the unknown is further exacerbated by our unwillingness to learn more about the people around us. In a society where people are more numerous than our cranial capacity to retain, and where everyone is a stranger living by an unwritten code of order amuck observable chaos, could one open their arms wide and share tea, food and time? Even the eternal optimist within me leans towards a resounding, ‘‘no’’.

I’ve been to nearly 200 homes here in Great Nicobar. Most of these homes are left ajar, often with a flimsy curtain hanging by the doorframe. The shuffle of my feet and some stirring barks from nearby dogs attract the residents’ attention. Immediately a chair is produced, chai is placed over the stove and conversation is struck – all before knowing who I am or where I’ve come from. I was worried about being an intruder, an inconvenient blotch on their routine days. This anxiety didn’t last long, though. I soon found that wondering if a family would rather I didn’t visit is an insult to their culture of hospitality. Rejecting an invite to come in, have some nimbu paani or chai, or to stay for lunch is an offence akin to outright rudeness. I began to relax, welcome the hospitality, home-cooked meals and willing company with open arms, and it transformed the way in which the locals perceived me too. I became one of them, one who held onto no pretence or inhibition, and who partook of their characteristic islandic gossip. I have the families here to thank for my own personal growth – these lessons and realizations can’t be shaken irrespective of where I go from here.

When people who have so little, who’ve lost so much, can give so voluntarily without batting an eyelid, what is it if not arrogance that makes the privileged so stingy with their time, courtesy, respect and love? Sure, I may not welcome strangers into my home without a care in the world from here on out. But I know my conscience will sting deep if I fail to extend at least a shred of the decency that has been showered upon me through my travels. 

Trust

It’s been five months since I arrived on the island of Great Nicobar. I’m here to collect data for my Master’s thesis, which is focused around the Nicobar long-tailed macaque and its interactions with people. Much like the macaques in Southeast Asia, these guys have been creating steady havoc by raiding coconut plantations and vegetable gardens all over the island, and I decided to study their behaviour and the locals’ perceptions of the issue at hand. This is one of the three Nicobar Islands housing the rotund, grey, furry monkeys that have created a reputation for being intelligent, sneaky, dangerous and annoyingly prolific. Most people still stare at me in disbelief when they learn that I travelled ‘all the way from Bangalore’ to study what seem like every day, common pests.

These monkeys have faces that seem astonishingly readable at first glance. Unlike some of the other macaque species, they have long hair on their faces, but none around their eyes. Their eyelids are several shades lighter than the rest of their skin and body, and they stand out distinctly under their thick, bushy eyebrows. Their eyes tend to be a caramel brown – piercing when directed at you. When I first began following them, I was the one being observed. It took a month of respectful distance and nonchalance on my part for the troop to relax in my presence. During this period of habituation, I began to notice personalities and tendencies of several individuals and discover their responses to my body language. I took notice of them taking notice of other passers-by, but not of me. I realized at this point that they either trusted or tolerated me, and I was keen to know which one it was.

Initially, I found that I couldn’t sit down during the day. Every time I did, I suddenly became accessible; a curio that the larger males and enthusiastic sub-adults would make a beeline for, probably hoping to raid me for some food. They’d be abruptly aware of me, as though I appeared out of nowhere, and this bothered some of the more timid and cautious individuals in the group. Just as you’d find in a social gathering of people, within the troop, some monkeys take longer to warm up to you than the others, some are ever-suspicious, some are eager and inquisitive, and some simply don’t care. Soon, I found that majority of the troop fell into the last category. Having moved from an unwanted intruder that prompted an angry chorus of alarm calls through the forest patches to one of unexciting, repetitive and uninteresting demeanour, it felt like an achievement. Never before had I been as happy to be the one not worth noticing.

This being said, I’ve come to share some tickling moments in close proximity with those whose lack of concern for me led them to attempt interaction. On one such day, I sat down in the grass, tired from having walked after them for nearly eight hours. I put my clipboard in my bag and watched the monkeys groom themselves lazily in the cloudy afternoon haze. I suddenly felt one of the monkeys grip my shoulder. It was Tripod, one of the more dominant males of the group. Having made contact with me uneventfully, three other sub-adult males, a female and another adult male made their way up to me. From their casual strides and relaxed eyebrows, I felt rather confident that they meant no harm. They seated themselves around me; a couple leaned against me and began to doze off. My heart was thumping against my chest and I could feel the pulse in my neck – I was elated. Just then, their little hands began touching my arms and legs. They lifted my shirt sleeves to inspect underneath. They began to pick ants off of my pants and pop them into their mouth. Tara, another male, used his teeth ever so gently to pull off some scabs on my arm. I was being groomed. This lasted no longer than five minutes, before a female some feet away seemed to disapprove of the gathering. She raised her eyebrows rapidly, sounding low alarm calls while shooting glances at several individuals around me. I rose and stood back slowly, and the female went back to grooming her infant, as though the whole thing never happened.

On another day, I was standing fairly close to the troop while noting down some data, when a huge fight broke out among the monkeys. Nearly every adult ran frantically to the centre of conflict and the air filled with their calls of skirmish. I was left standing amidst those who opted out, now some distance away from most of the troop. As the ruckus died down, the adults slowly sauntered back to where I was. There was palpable tension in the air that I couldn’t shake; it seemed like they couldn’t either. Several monkeys searched me with their eyes as they passed by, something that was rather unusual. A couple of them sent rapid signals to the others, and several began grunting at me. The males pulled themselves up to their full, impressive height and advanced towards me in an unamicable fashion. A couple yanked at my pants and bared their teeth. Once more, I silently backed away, and they settled down almost instantly.

I realize now that even if what they have toward me is tolerance, they trust me to understand their signals. In both the occasions I related (and some more which I didn’t), the monkeys could have easily torn me to shreds with their remarkable canines and hardy nails; they have with others in the past. They could have chased me far away from where they rested; again, they have with others in the past. Instead, they chose to provide me with a minimalistic warning and let me off easy. Maybe they were okay with having a human amidst them who hadn’t tried to harm them thus far, unlike nearly every other person they encounter each day. Whatever the reason, these events help me stay grounded and remember never to take their acceptance for granted. I have utmost awe and respect for these animals, no matter how amusing, strange and quirky they can be at times.

These fantastic, wild creatures are complicated. They have moods, personalities and emotions; and I don’t feel presumptuous for saying it anymore. Watching them day in and day out for these past few months only convinces me of this further. Perhaps the data I collect will fail to portray this, with only numbers telling tales of their behaviour, but the experiences I’ve had with them will remain more fascinating and dear to me than can be statistically discernible.

Anthropo-why?

Over the past couple of years, I've stumbled over, actively pursued and devoured several books on the topic of animal behaviour and cognition. It's a field that seems to be spoken about more frequently in books, which can be passed off as extended opinion pieces, rather than in factual, objective, scientific papers. Perhaps that's also because most long-time behaviourists find it easier to put their thoughts out into the larger, more accepting public than have them critiqued in the cautious world of scientific journals. The primary reason for this discouragement of juicy, emotional material in the academic world is one giant, taboo word - anthropomorphism.

I've wanted to write about this for nearly two years, but haven't because I was constantly reminded of the several unread, cognition-based books lying on my shelf that could change my mind about the topic. What I've found instead, with more reading, is nothing but mounting evidence for why the constant cautiousness regarding anthropomorphism may be unneeded. I received a final push to support the 'Of Course Animals Have Emotions!' team after reading what Carl Safina had to say about the matter.

"Evidence and logic can be trustworthy guides. In fact, one term for evidence+logic is: 'science'." 

This is the stance that seems to be lacking in the community of behaviour scientists who look solely at descriptive ways of recording behaviour and actions without attempting to interpret them. It is widely accepted to say, "The elephant approached her dead calf, ran her trunk over him slowly, and stayed with its carcass for three days before joining her herd that had moved on" but not to say, "The elephant was experiencing grief". By fearing that one is anthropomorphising an animal in doing so, one is being all the more anthropocentric.

I've finally learned that there is a wealth of undeniable evidence, from a cumulative of several hundred years of observations, of intelligence and emotion in the animal kingdom. This, combined with the logic that any scientist (or layman) who has been exposed to certain species for several years possesses, could come together to produce wonderful science, finally laying the foundation literature that better understanding of animal cognition must rest upon. An unnamed scientist once loosely mentioned, "I have no way of knowing if that elephant is any more conscious than this bush". I feel compelled to point out that elephants are known to make decisions, care for their offspring and, perhaps even more interestingly, share nearly the same nervous and hormonal systems as human beings. This is just one of many cases of ignoring hard evidence in the hope of remaining an objective, well-reputed researcher.

One of the reasons why most scientists only tell stories and write articles or books about their evidences for feeling and emotion in animals is that such 'stories' or 'anecdotes' fail to fit the scientific framework of collecting empirical data, analyzing it, and producing statistical evidence for or against their hypotheses. But, quoting an eloquent professor of mine, "there's no such thing as anecdotal data". This is further substantiated by an uncomfortably small niche of literature like this one. If more behaviourists or ecologists began publishing isolated instances of interesting behaviour, even if purely descriptive and non-inferential in nature, these so-called anecdotes could potentially collect over time to produce the statistical support needed to validate them within that very scientific realm. The collective support of past researchers who took the effort to inform the world about their chance anecdotes could encourage others to look closer for similar (or identical) behaviours, together building upon the subject and enriching it.

From Jane Goodall who speaks of emotion in chimpanzees to Rick McIntyre who studied wolves, multiple researchers and authors have passionately advocated for the recognition of emotion in the animal kingdom. A recent book, 'The Hidden Life of Trees', speaks of how trees, too, communicate and feel. The fact that animals perceive and respond to others around them and feel fundamentally physiological emotions like pleasure and grief, or feel the need to play and relax may be more readily accepted among the pet-owner community. I highly doubt that anyone who's known a dog, cat, pig, bird or any other (hopefully non-exotic) pet disagrees with the fact that animals can make bonds with other living beings and emote in ways that we can, at least partially, understand. Whining dogs or spitting cats are understood by their owners, behaviourists or not.

To truly understand an animal, we must delve into topics like consciousness, awareness, intelligence and emotion. None of these, however, have any standard definitions. Each of these could mean different things based on the fields we come from, and so, sentience - an amalgamation of all of these - remains undefined as well. We distance ourselves from these topics, trying to have an objective, outsider view of things, but this seems to me like losing valuable data. We are already on the inside. We share so much of the physiology that a plethora of other animals have, that we ought to be using our knowledge of how emotions manifest in our minds to better understand that of other beings.

Our evolutionary relationship with animals is sadly misinterpreted due to years of convincing ourselves that "humans" and "animals" are two completely separate categories. It's us versus them. Although we train animals to work for us, share diseases and living space, it's near impossible to believe or even imagine that we fall into the same bracket of beings. Our insecurities as a species are beginning to creep into our science and hinder it from progressing.

So sure, we may be one of the only species to feel sadness, happiness, love or pain in the poetic sense. But it's time we realized and acknowledged that these emotions do exist in other species that we've spent decades studying. Even if their grief is different from ours, it still exists. Truly comprehending the nature of these emotions is a huge task which will probably require the use of future advancements in science, but admitting that they exist is the first step towards it - one that we should have taken a long time ago.

Cynthia Moss, who spent over 50 years studying elephants in Amboseli National Park, had this to say:

"I'm interested in them as elephants. Comparing elephants to people - I don't find it helpful. I find it much more interesting trying to understand an animal as itself. How does a bird like a crow, say, with so small a brain, make the amazing decisions it makes? Comparing it to a three-year-old child - that doesn't interest me."

This is our biggest clue to overcome our ingrained fear of objectivity in studying animal cognition. We need make inferences about the animals we study without bringing to them our own emotional baggages and insecurities. Anthropocentrism, if not dealt with soon, could plague our research for good. The qualities and characteristics that we so staunchly believe are purely human, like friendship, compassion, sorrow, happiness did not suddenly come into existence with the evolutionary step into a world of Homo sapiens. These are deep-rooted in times that predate mankind. Our brain's origin is inseparable from that of other species'. Just like our mind.

Chameleons

After weeks and months of zero-break workload, a couple of friends and I escaped over our unusually long weekend to a patch of forested paradise, also known as the CFL school in Bangalore, for 17 hours. Now, several deep breaths of non-polluted air and two chameleon sightings later, I feel like a brand new person.

While chameleons go about their days doing their best to be inconspicuous, with their slow and calculated behaviour, they can't always escape seasoned eyes of the likes of The Great Chandy (see below, looking pretty in a tree). Thanks to said eyes and expertise, we contained our glee as the chameleons showcased their unintentionally comic personalities. We got to see young chameleons turn from solid green to striped, move their eyes independently and hang surreptitiously off of swaying branches. We got to feel their unsmooth, textured skin as one held the corners of our palms with delicate-yet-firm grip.

The Great Chandy

This was the first time I've ever seen or held a chameleon, and it may have just been one of the most exciting 'lifers' I've ever had. Now that I've been initiated into this world of tiny, odd, green wonders, I hope to see many more henceforth.

Colouration that lasted but a few seconds after we put him back on the branch.

Found this guy hanging by his tail.
For a long time.
A long, long time
Until he plopped onto the branch and carried on.