Indian Birds

From the time of moving to Mizoram, I have been happy to see people walk in our office at a time that pleases them, chat over cup of tea, check up the posters on the wall and more so the magazines that are put up for reading. In fact we had converted our sink to a platform for displaying magazines till we recently purchased a new dignified display place for the magazines. Most of these magazines are also distributed amongst these visitors. The idea is to share the magazines once we have read them (or are clear that we are not going to read them) rather than storing them in the office. In remote locations like Saiha it helps when these are shared with visitors who include teachers we are associated with and members of youth associations. Most of them have not had the opportunity to go through this type of material. Since most of these magazines talk of wildlife I look at this practise through the lens of conservation education. The idea being to create and share a platform that encourages deliberations on wildlife. Seeing the action to be of use we have begun sharing magazines regularly i.e. we take those we have read when we go to schools or villages for programmes. When we ran out of stock I wrote to Pankaj for help and he obliged immediately! It’s time to remind him again!

Indian Birds is a publication that adorns our office continuously in that we do not share the issues. During the recent school vacations children from neighbourhood paid regular visits to the office and while they liked the tiger poster they were fascinated with issues of Indian Birds. They kept on turning pages in awe at the photographs and brought in their friends to share their happiness. I was a little concerned of the condition of the pages on seeing their hands deal with the issues but what little I comprehended of their excitement pushed my concerns far away. Here children were getting interested in birds and all I needed was to give them space! Books were meant to raise interest and awareness levels of these and other children and not for adorning our office! My craving for order, discipline and rules seems to be vanishing and this realization pleases me in no small measure!

We showed these children field-guides too! While the snakes scared them a bit they did not show much likeness for the butterflies and birds they found too small in the field guides. They got back to Indian Birds and this time also asked if they could draw these birds! We discussed and before they left for the day fixed a date and time when they could come. Couple of more friends joined in on the stipulated day and of course before time. Most of them started with drawing birds however some of them found it a bit daunting and moved on to drawing a house. The drawing- colouring exercise was a song and the warmth with which they shared resources (table space, pencils and crayons) was invigorating. When it got over we struck these up at the office entrance!

Since am talking of Indian Birds I share something from a recent trip. Focussed reading had taken a back-seat of recent; having been overtaken by sundry web pages online besides the stuff delivered over emails. Fortunately I had put in our entire collection of Indian Birds (2 years) inside a plastic bag that we carried on our recent trip to Phura. Here in the midst of the valley-darkness, where peaks darker that the rest of the surroundings look down upon you, I feasted on them. From special issues on Bhutan and Arunanchal Pradesh where I walked lands I have ever wanted to wander in to visiting past hand-held by people we look up to. Mesmerising photographs from blood pheasants to the white bellied sea eagles added to the pleasure of the feast. Mobile phones, landlines, laptops and electricity too were cooperative to the fullest by virtue of their absence. Every candle burnt was worth its wax!

Thanking Aasheesh Pittie, Pankaj and all visitors.