New Year’s Eve and we are in the hills, staying with friends. The view is glorious and the company even more so. The weather is freezy-cold but during the day there’s bright sunshine and at nights, there are wood-fires and beds made up with electric blankets lining the mattresses. There’s nothing quite so delightful as to get into a bed that’s toasty-warm on the inside with ice-crystals forming on its outer surface.

They are single beds too, which is a great boon because Bins is (of course) a remorseless blanket-bandit. I would be tempted to say this is true of All Men, but that would make me sound like a bed-hopping adventuress, so I will suppress that comment.

On the first night there, I am so tired from the journey — waking at 4 am, getting to New Delhi Railway Station at 5:30, leaving at six on the Shatabdi, arriving at Kathgodam five hours later, then another three-and-a-half hours up the hill roads by taxi — that I wake up the next morning without even knowing I’d fallen asleep.

At breakfast, Bins claims he spent a restless night. Why? “Because there was a woman screaming in the forest all night!” Our hostess, a beautiful white-haired lady looks up innocently. “Well! I hope you jumped right out of bed and ran into the forest to help her?” Bins has a stricken expression on his face. It never even occurred to him! “Uhh ... well ...” he stammers, blushing bright red. “I thought maybe it is better not to ... umm ... interfere, you know? In private affairs?” I am no help at all, since I was dead to the world at the time he heard the sound.

Our hostess grins broadly. “Don’t worry! It’s a bird.” She goes on to say, “For some reason, our bird-books aren’t very clear about the exact species. Want to help us?” Of course we do! That evening, I hear the call too. It begins around six o’clock and sounds exactly like a distressed damsel. “We’re sure it’s an owl,” says our hostess.

The question is, Which one? According to the Internet, Sri Lanka has a “devil bird” with a spine-chilling shriek. But when we listen to the online recording we all agree it’s not quite the same as what we heard in our forest.

The next evening, I record the bird’s call on my cell phone so that we can compare it to the Sri Lankan one: similar but not the same. Meanwhile there’s a brown wood owl belonging to these hills. It too has an eerie call. The next morning, Bins and I both hear the shriek. “There she is!” he cries, leaping out of bed in the pre-dawn murk. Half an hour later he’s back, all excited. “She was there!” he exclaims. “I saw the silhouette clearly against the sky — smooth head! So it’s the wood owl!” Because the Sri Lankan shrieker has highly noticeable horns.

“Ooo, wow,” I say in a weak whisper. “That’s outstanding! Tell her to wait!” I mumble. “Feed her chocolate mice!” Then I burrow deeper under the covers, realising that I’ll never be a wildlife expert and fall fast asleep once more.

Manjula Padmanabhan, author and artist, writes of her life in the fictional town of Elsewhere, US, in this weekly column

Next episode: Romedy Romp

Last episode: Cheap Thrills

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW