The Hindu Business Line : Lucky sighting

BRANCHING OUT: A rare sighting of the Crested Hawk Eagle at the Gir sanctuary in Gujarat. The sanctuary has more than 300 species of birds. — Paul Noronha

FROM Rajkot station, Sasan-Gir is a five-hour run. At around 4.30 in the evening Paul and myself wearily dropped out of a blue and white Gujarat State bus to a welcome of dust, smoke and a certain barrenness in the air. On one side of the road are a few dabbhas serving even green salad with a spray of sugar. The hotel is a seven-room outfit bound on three sides by walls, with little air circulation; through the night rotating fan blades kept away a throttling, closed-in feeling.

For about four days we took tea from a stand-to manned by 30 year-old Suresh Raval. He is there at his gas-run stove by 6 a.m. serving tea and closes shop at 9 in the night. During the monsoon, when Gir is closed, he floats around selling tea to Government officials and bankers at the State Bank of Saurashtra. In this place, credit cards, ATMs and mobiles are unknown with business being only in cash.

We became his regular customers as Suresh agreed to serve us sugar-less tea costing Rs 5 a cup. "You come at 8 in the morning and the tea will be better as the maldharis (milkmen) bring in fresh buffalo milk from their homes in the Gir forests," he told us, and on the last day we had milky white tea. We were the only two who were served tea in steel glasses as for the local population it is just one saucer of tea with a bidi to go with it. After the bidi, they stuff their mouths with small balls of mawa (tobacco) slightly smaller than a table tennis ball. They come in the strong 150 or extra strong 300 class. There is never a moment when a male in Sasan-Gir is without his mawa in his mouth slurring talk.

At the paan shop they arm themselves with mawa rolled in small pieces of plastic paper and firmly tied up. Their teeth are stained a deep brown; every five minutes they artlessly spit the place red though the females seem to be completely out of it. "Idhar public bina khana jayenge par 300 mawa tho unko chhahiye (they can go without food but not without 300 mawa)," says Rawal, who does not smoke, chew or drink. "Saab, main Brahmin hoon (I am a Brahmin)," he says. He is unmarried having to maintain the family of his elder brother who died of a heart attack.

On the fourth day, Rawal confided the food served at the dabbhas was bad and could only put off visitors. An outsider is compensated by the dry Gir forests with its teak, babool, ber and other varieties including the banyan. Strands and strands of teak trees stand barely in their own litter of crackling broad brown leaves shed by them after the rains. From Gir flow out seven perennial rivers: Hiran, Saraswati, Datardi, Shingoda, Machhundri, Ghodavadi and Raval and hold enough water following good rains. It's the best reason to protect Gir. The Kamaleshwar dam provides enough water for the animals during the hot summer when temperatures top 40 degrees.

On an evening run, our guide Janak Dhariya, spotted a crested hawk eagle atop a leafless tree. The light was perfect and the whiff of a wind played with its crest. From slightly more than 25 ft., it was the first time we sighted the predator with its sharp, yellow eyes tinged with cruelty. It did not fly off but took us into confidence. After about 10 minutes it winged away to a nearby tree displaying its wings in flight; from there it called a ki-ki before bidding a final bye. That evening we were dished out luck in ladles as Janak spotted a short-toed eagle with its owl-like head. For this writer it was hard to grade the sighting of a full-grown tigress and a crested hawk eagle, predators with different styles; but if compelled one will put the bird slightly ahead of the mammal.

From long we saw three gazelles loping away as is their style while the surprise was provided by the large number of black ibis. They were there all over Gir including a roosting site a few yards away from our hotel. Their jarring notes can be unpleasant but one has never seen so many of them at one place. A five-striped squirrel on a mast tree near the Gir ticket counter completed the trip. One heard chit-chit notes and after a search with the binoculars saw the squirrel with five stripes unlike those with three stripes with which one is familiar in Borivili. The five-striped variety does not tap its tail and looks slightly more bulky than its three-striped cousin. It would have been unfair to have asked for more.

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