SSSSSS-SIMPLY ENTHRALLING!

SNAKES AND MORE…A Curvy Path Less Taken.

If you are the type terrified to confront the creepy crawly creatures of the night, skip this piece please. Others, should you be convinced that to go looking for them in pelting rain in the dead of night is stuff crackpots indulge in, then i accept the compliment. Read on.

Packing my faithful rucksack - which must easily be a strong contender for the ‘most vividly travelled rucksack’ global award, if there were to be a category of this kind – with essential trivia’s, i set off last week on a herpetofauna expedition, i had registered for earlier, in the forests of the Western Ghats. Hepetofauna, a generic term, refers to all species of reptiles and amphibians. But this one was slightly more precise. A Pit Viper Expedition!

You guessed it right! Like many of you out there, my family too thought i’d lost my marbles. Demented, the new buzz word, was closer to it. Mom was almost at breakpoint and managed to convey her exasperation through my kids, who turned approvers and became the mainstays of my logic, whatever that logic was. Wifey was too stunned to offer a comment. Convincing my way through all of that, it was time to head for Goa, from where this craziness was to commence. Which other place, i thought, could be more befitting?

Nirmal Kulkarni, the tall, lanky, soft-spoken herpetologist and scientist, has almost 20years behind him handling, documenting, conserving, basically indulging in reptilian study and works out of Goa. For the latter part, i envy him. Likewise, petite Mittal, disciplined Devdatta and humourous Shrinivas have each excelled in their fields of studying amphibians, millipedes and centipedes, butterflies, birds besides venomous snakes across Indian terrain. So, the rest of us relative greenhorns, Suhas, Omkar, Tapoti, Sarang, Glenda knew were secure amidst the vast coils of collective experience when it came to confronting the much avoidable fangs of the Viper.

The brief given to us was ssss-simple! To look for and find any one of the three types of Vipers viz: Bamboo Pit Viper, Malabar Pit Viper and the Hump nosed Pit Viper. All three resident species of the region. Anything else was welcome and surplus on the expedition.

Over the next four nights and days ten of us scanned the hills, ponds and trails of Amboli, the ghats and lateritic plateaus of Mhadei Wild Life Sanctuary near Chorla, Bhagwan Mahavira Wild Life Sanctuary at Mollem and Castle Rock near Dudhsagar falls. Incidentally, these places are spread across the States of Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka.

Vipers are essentially shy and nocturnally active snakes, with striking colour morphs on their body, and posses a distinctly triangular head. They are largely misunderstood and try to minimize their confrontation with mankind. Growing to a maximum of 4ft in length, they like to hang around water holes for the prospect of prey at nights and head out to tree canopy reaches by daybreak. However, it is this genre that also accounts for a huge number of painful deaths annually due to their unforgiving bites in the fields and farms of rural India. Located in between their nostrils and eyes, are two heat sensing pits from which it derives its name. So sensitive are these pits to temperature change that a variation of 0.001 degrees Celsius is enough to alert them and take note of the passing prey to complete the job at an impressive strike rate of 99.5%! This weapon, along with its ‘wait and watch’ approach towards preying, helps wonderfully well in the dead of night. Unmindful ‘passers by’ such as rodents, squirrel and frogs are caught unawares only to end up in the innards of the reptile. It is not strange therefore that an important missile in the US weaponry, the Sidewinder, was inspired and developed on the very basis of this ‘page from nature’ technology of heat sensing and guiding.

The days that followed kind of had a typical cycle. Wake up. Breakfast. Travel to destination. Scan the area. Lunch. Walk into wilderness for opportunistic finds and document them. Tea. More field work, fill-up work sheets on finds. Dinner. Scan forests and plains in the dead of the night for more species and specimens. Ofcourse, this spine-thrilling routine was interspersed with some very interesting films on the wonderful work being done by Romulus Whitaker and Ashok Captain, with whom Nirmal and others have been working on creating awareness and in conservation of reptiles of all kinds, including the King Cobra. Exchanging anecdotes and tales from experiences in the wild is what bonded this diverse group further. Learning snake bite protocol, anti-venom actions & reactions and Taxonomy (study of snake skin patterns) added value to knowledge quotient.

What caught my wonder was the intensity of sincerity that each one of us was putting into the process. All of those of us novices who had registered for this program had never quite done stuff like this before. Nothing ever kept us away from ‘dressing up’ for the occasions - rainwear, gumboots et al - and heading out without any hint of trepidation into slush, streams and meadows with powerful flashlights and camera in tow to make our finds and document them. Not the leeches that some of us lost blood to, not the stormy nights and torrential rains, not the late hours and miles of searching walks, not the hundreds of tiresome notings on the Kestrel (humidity, temperature and wind speed measuring instrument) and GPS readings, not the never drying and mostly stinking clothes and socks, not the nettles, ticks and mosquitoes. Nothing seemed to slow down our enthusiasm. Not even the straying Malabar Pit Viper that had uncannily found its way in the ladies’ bedroom! My sense is that the constant thrill of uncertainty, the magical rejuvenating powers of nature and the collective bonhomie, all woven by a singular thread of loving kindness for the creatures less fortunate, kept us at it.

At final count, over five days, we had between us spotted, identified and documented eight Pit Vipers (including one which was over a meter long that had just feasted), nine Green Vine Snakes, number of amphibians including some rare finds like the Malabar Gliding Frog and Caecilian, millipedes and centipedes in enviable numbers, water and field scorpions, range of spiders including the dreaded Tarantula, hunting ants (referred to as ‘Crazy Army’ for their ferocious bites and much feared ability to decimate prey in short time). All of this left me incredibly enthralled!

Chill mom, your son maybe crazy but he’s back safe…and happy! How’s that for an ending?

AWARE BUT NOT YET AWAKE

Speaking Tree, ToI, 30.07.2011

The locality where i live in Pune, has an proactive residents forum wherefrom we take up civic issues with officials of various government bodies and elected representatives from time to time. The objective of this registered forum is simple and one pointed: to improve the quality of life of residents. So varied issues such as refuse collection, street lights operation, road surface quality, nuisance control and cleanliness, traffic streamlining and other such issues are taken up regularly. So formidable has this forum grown to be that civic officials actually respond to most matters in 24 hours.

However, there are a set of civilians, besides the incorrigible cynics, who never attend or even bother to voice the civic issues concerning them at this forum. They are well-educated, well heeled, concerned and aware of the issues too. They come across as friendly and social people too with good communication skills and intelligence. Then what is it that holds them back from participating? Through observation and a process of elimination, i came to a conclusion. An aware but an un-awakened mind.

Here is where the difference lies.

An aware mind is one that knows that a problem or issue exists but refuses to do anything about it. For example an overweight person with health issues may know that s/he is in suffering due to weight issues and can get to tackle this situation by, say, getting some exercise or bettering his/her eating habits. But instead chooses to remain in a state of inertia about it. The person is aware (about the existence of the problem) but not awakened to address it. Or a person may know that s/he gets angry easily with slightest provocation and this may have landed him/her into many difficult and embarrassing situations too, but yet takes no steps to calm and reign in the mind when such an emotion arises. Again, s/he is aware of the problem but not awakened to provide a solution to it to overcome it.

It is quite easy to be lazy. Laziness requires no effort. To be active requires effort. To identify a problem may be easy but to tide over it requires great resolve. Imagine if an animal in the forest knew it were hungry but refused to do anything about it! It would certainly perish. Or if we knew we are weak in a particular subject but choose not do anything about it before the exam would prove a certain disaster! Likewise, merely being aware of a problem does not solve it. It is the same difference as between: kuch karna hai (problem identification) vis-à-vis kuch kiya hai (problem redressal). While the former (awareness) is passive acceptance the latter (awakening) is active acceptance. This is the fundamental difference.

Likewise in the case of mind control. In an weak or distorted mind there are tempestuous thoughts and emotions arising every day. Some maybe virtuous but most are repetitive and harmful. Ofcourse, we are not so much concerned about the virtuous ones because they will bring us benefit but what about the others un-productive, vicious ones that constitute a majority, which by nature will bring upon us suffering? Then we say, I read somewhere that we should become aware of their arising and they will subside on their own. This is true. However, the real problem arises is getting down to doing it! Before we realize into becoming aware of their arising, they have already slipped past our vigilance and have raised their ugly head in the form of a speech or body action. And then we realize it’s too late and repent the action later. This happens because although we know we must be aware, we haven’t taken adequate care and effort to be awakened to actually getting down to training our minds. We have become somewhat aware of the problem but we are not awakened about it to tackle it consistently enough. To be awakened about such a mind condition requires training which in turn requires hard work. But we seldom do it.
Our parents, friends and well-wishers may point out some hidden faults in us and we become aware of them. But despite being aware that we need to address those hidden faults, we chose to do nothing substantial about it, which is the same thing as not being awakened to it. It seems too much of an effort for somewhat ‘invisible’ gains.
On the other hand, we may regularly refer to all the internet sites or browse every book possible to add to our work related intelligence quotient. People come to know that you are ‘in the know of things’ and you can impress them with your acquired knowledge. So here we are aware of the repercussions of ‘lagging behind’ and by undertaking tedious work we are also awakened to the situation as it affects our ‘visible’ status in society.

Therefore, when it comes to matters which are purely worldly in nature we seem aware and awakened in doing something about it. However, in matters of the mind or in developing our metaphysical quotient we are often aware of what needs to be done but don’t easily get awakened about getting down to doing it with due diligence.

If we were to bring about generating awareness and awakening in living our lives, it would lead us to a better quality of life within and without.