The Hindu Business Line : Nature's wayward ways

Thanks be to 56-year-old naturalist Bojan, belonging to the Badaga tribe, that one spotted clusters of the tiny flower (Strobilanthes kunthiana) peeping out of rocky wedges dotting steep hill tops.

"There are many varieties of this flower with Strobilanthes kunthiana flowering every 12 years," said Bojan.

Forester Manikanthan helped us spot the annual white flower, Strobilanthes whitey, at Mukurthi National Park. We were driving from Kalhatty to Ooty and parked our car at Thalaikunda to see the flowers from close, while Anathan climbed the hill slope to get them on film.

Enjoying a smoke after having got to see from near Nature's wayward ways (why should the flowering be every 12 years?) one got talking to a tribal woman. She was on her way home, but stopped on the road to inquire about us.

Abundantly mixing up short takes from the Ramayana and Mahabharata, she told us, that Rama and the Pandavas did camp for some time on the hills and offered the neelakurunji while praying to their gods (Gods praying to Gods).

The flowers have the dry feel of a newspaper and do not smell. "Neengal Ramayanam padichhiruppel illaya (You would have read the Ramayana)," she asked in Tamil and one came up with a dishonest smile having never read the epic in any detail, being ignorant of Sanskrit. In the past, the flowers were all over the hills.

Now, there is little left of neelakurunji in Nilgiri with the hills being blasted and mined by contractors, she added. While talking to the woman one heard a blast from near as some contractor was merrily mining the hills.

Forest laws do not seem to exist in Tamil Nadu. Women in the area never touched neelakurunji, she asserted and for her it was a matter of faith becoming a fact.

The chat was short as the roads were getting piled up with vehicles sporting party flags as the panchayat elections were near. "Kuppathotti elections (dustbin elections)." She said with a beaming laugh.

No political analyst could have put it better. She had binned the farce of elections and democracy in three Tamil words and that could apply to any election in the country. We spotted the flowers in the afternoon on the drive from Kargudi situated on the edges of the Mudumalai sanctuary.

At Kargudi, we stayed at the Cuckoo annex of the Peacock dormitory with neat rows of tall teak trees lined up in front. In the morning, one walked up to herds of chital, nibbling fresh grass and Ananthan nearly stumbled over one chital.

"A Malabar Giant squirrel comes to my kitchen every day for food. Surprisingly, it has been absent for the last three days," said Krishnan Kutty, who runs a canteen. He is a Malayali settled in Gudalur.

But we saw the maroon top of four to five Malabar Giant squirrels gamboling on top of the teak trees when the sun came out abruptly like news flashes on TV channels.

The bushy animal with a whitish-yellow tail tip could be seen with bare eyes as they leaped fluidly from one treetop to another. By about 9 in the morning we had poori bhaji for breakfast.

Ananthan and myself went for a stroll and had tea at a shop located inside a hut when strong winds and rains hit us. The wind roars while taking the heads of the teak trees and reminded one of the din of the sea at Alleppey in far-off Kerala when inward winds dump water in heaps on the sea shore. The forest and the sea vocalise the same way.

Sitting under the trees, Bojan talked of himself. He is a small tea grower and does all the work as it is costly to employ labour.

Since 1986, he has been trekking the area in and around Niligiri and regularly offers Nature tips to schoolchildren and takes them on outings.

"I am no activist. I do not have the courage to take on the government or others. I prefer to take children out into the forests as they are the best bet for the survival of our forests and animals," he told us.

Short and muscular, Bojan spends about 15 days in a month in the Nilgiri forests and now his daughter wants to join him. As we had spare time he suggested going to Bandipur reserve, some 25 km away on the Ooty-Mysore Highway.

The forest drive did not yield much sighting and our forest driver had warned us in advance. Yet near the Information Counter, one had a glimpse of a chital chewing and swallowing a plastic bag.

Ananthan missed it by a whisker and cursed himself. This despite a ban on plastic displayed in English and Kannada on all the approach roads and at the sanctuary gate.

Fast food is for one's stomach and plastic bags are for animals. While driving out of Bandipur we came upon a rather funny sight on which we spent some 20 minutes: Sunning themselves on a cement platform, three bonnet macaques were grooming a common langur.

The common langur stretched out in obvious pleasure as the three macques did a neat job of picking and cleaning. One Bangalore-based cameraman rushed to his car, pulled out all his electronic equipment to shoot the scene.

"This rarely happens," thought Bhojan. Macaques have cheek pouches while the langurs have none. "Such food as it cannot consume immediately goes separately into a special pouch in its stomach," writes S.H. Prater.

That day the two were one.

P. Devarajan

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