The point in visiting Point Calimere

Point Calimere wildlife sanctuary is a medium sized patch of forest comprising of the Tropical Dry Evergreen Forest type of South India, Mangroves and the mudflats.  These forests are quite unique in very many ways. The evergreen forests will come as a surprise to anyone who does not know of such forests and are familiar with the hot, arid landscape of the Coramandel coast.

The Tropical Dry Evergreen forest

  Kodikkarai or Cape Calimere as it is also called, is located in a unique position in the Bay of Bengal and forms a part of the Kaveri river delta. It is, by sea, very close to the Palk Strait and beyond to Sri Lanka. Thus a myth that Lord Rama stood there before fighting with Ravana. 

The forest is home to some unique species, most of which are in danger of losing their foothold or are found in small patches separated by the vast sea of humanity. They include the Black buck found nowhere else but in India this once common antelope was associated with the Asiatic cheetah and open grassland plains once aplenty on the Deccan plateau. In spite of their only true predator the cheetah being wiped out from the phase of the earth, the black buck populations have shrunk to small patches spread over the Deccan largely due to human pressures.

The open plains

The last remaining patches of grasslands are facing a major challenge. Due to the ever increasing human population on the outside, increasing degradation of forest from the inside and due to ill thought out management plans of planting trees in grasslands and making them woodlands. I would say that about close to 80% of the original grasslands are now gone but none the less, ambitious plans are afoot to re-introduce cheetah in the wild areas of northern India. 

Point Calimere is also famous to the mind boggling number of birds it used to attract, I say used to because, off late, the number of birds which once used to cover the wintering grounds like the vast plains, mudflats and slat pans have more than just reduced. The reasons range from a salt manufacturing industry altering the habitat and to un-controlled shrimp farming coupled with irresponsible use of pesticides like the DDT and Endosulphan in agriculture fields. The birds which do come find their origins as far as Siberia and the distant Northern European countries and include some of the rarest birds.

Flock of terns

 One must, however visit the place to get the sheer magnitude of the birds that flock there and before that, must see the wonderful award winning documentary by the renowned wildlife film maker Shekar Dattatri titled “Point Calimere - Little Kingdom by the Coast”

Sand dune ecosystem

 The people who live at Kodikkarai are some of the most nature dependent people, in the sense that most of their economy, being a coastal town comes in the form of fishes. Their lives are almost entirely dependent on the sea and many claim that the Tsunami has had a harsh negative effect on their livelihood. 

Dr S. Balachandran, Assistant Director of The Bombay Natural History Society, has spent more than a decade studying birds in Pt Calimere. He is one of the most down to earth persons I have ever met. He has made many contributions in terms of scientific publications, training enthusiasts in Bird banding, inculcating the passion for birds in children. His long term and unstinting work with all the sections of the society has now led to the establishment of the BNHS Bird migration Study Centre which he currently manages. 

Being a bird watcher myself, Point Calimere was on my “to do list” for quite some time. In fact, it was the first thing I wanted to do when I migrated to Pondicherry for a master’s degree. So when Dr Priya Davidar, announced that as part of her Conservation Biology Course we need to go on a field trip and asked for suggestions, I could not but help in bringing up Pt Calimere. So the deal was fixed and I was to take the responsibility and co ordinate the trip, something which I had only done in a small scale during the past. None the less took it up.

With almost a month to prepare, announcements made and Indemnity bonds getting signed we were finally good to go. Dr Bala, more than happily helped in making the trip happen and even planned out an itinerary for us which included the most exciting part- Bird banding! As part of the course, we had some studies to do ourselves and it would keep us busy for quite some time during the trip. Our main intention was to assess the dependency of the locals on biodiversity for their livelihood. This did not including the indirect benefits that we all get like pollination or rainfall etc, which are dubbed as ecosystem services. Before we set off to the place, we had to make questionnaires to suit specific respondent groups like fishermen, fish market, households etc and this was made easy by Dr Priya by making us into groups with one leader who knows the local language.

The trip happened and we all were at the Pondicherry bus stand at 5 am sharp to catch hold of the first bus going to Nagapattinam. With 2 heads which woke up late missing, we reached Nagapattinam after a normal, un-eventful trip. We were able to grab something to eat and were good to go for the second leg of the journey to Vedaraniyam. This trip was pretty bad as it was a local bus and stopped at every village! He took a good 3 hours or so to cover 60 km! Vedaraniyam reached and the third leg of the trip began! We had to take yet another bus to reach Kodikkarai.

This we did and the journey was quite superfast, just that some of us went partially deaf due the loud music being played in the bus! Dr Bala was there waiting for us and we were all allocated to rooms in the station itself and some were sent to the forest department rest house. Hot yummy food greeted us at BNHS field station and almost immediately, we hired vans to go into the sanctuary. The trip was a long bumpy one, and we got to see our share of Black bucks, waders, and a White bellied sea eagle with a half eaten sea snake. The feral horses were quite common too. They are the main culprits to the spreading of the Prosopis weed which has taken over much of the area. Unfortunately, the horses have not been allowed to be euthanized due to some opposition by animal rights activists. The bus ride was quite fun and some of us climbed on top of the van to get a better view. 

 We saw a lone jackal and a couple of cattle on the trip. The blackbuck fawn were joyously playing around and on seeing the jeep would jump up almost up to 3-4m and with the cool sea breeze blowing and the sun glowing behind our backs, it was quite an out of the world experience.

This was followed by Dr Bala showing how the birds are ringed and the prize of the day was a Red winged crested cuckoo, a very rare bird of which nothing much is known. 

Dr Balachandran with the Red Winged Crested Cuckoo

 The next day, he took us to watch birds along the water bodies and mud-fats, giving some of us good opportunity to shoot birds. Most of us later got busy with carrying out our projects of social surveys and the process was quite interesting. The results of which were discussed that night and some suggestions were incorporated in the next day’s survey. 

Lesser sand plover, Curlew sandpipers at the back

 The next day being our last one there, we had to do the social surveys to get a statistically significant sample size and were engrossed in that while Dr Bala was demonstrating bird ringing process to some enthusiasts from all over India. Laura, an intern with Bala had managed to capture close to 50 waders using a “clap trap”. A process where a dummy bird is placed and the other flying wades get fooled and settle on the trap, which can be tripped by tugging a long cable 20m away. The birds get stuck in the net and are extracted, measured, and ringed. After seeing the ringing of almost 40 birds, I finally took the courage to handle one bird and get over the uncomfortable feeling of touching birds. The Lesser sand plover was indeed nice to touch and not as I had imagined and shunned away from all these years.

That evening, we all decided to go on a boat trip, some of them did not come and some came due to the fear of Dr Priya who had  generously bestowed her wrath on some of them for being in bed even at 10 am on a field trip. Dr Priya was a true inspiration for me there. More than double my age, she kept pace and was encouraging and adventurous! The two most essential aspects which are, I would say ,almost entirely missing from this generation of youngsters.

Like a cowboy herding cattle, the reluctant people had to be made to move just after a good meal and at the time for an afternoon siesta. We reached the beach and hired a fishing boat. After about a kilometer into the sea, the boat started to rock violently. Many of them on the boat were on a boat for the first time and their fear is not something that can be laughed off. After a point it became so rough that there was no point taking the risk. So we decided to head back and walk our way back along the beach. 

Dr Bala took us to a mudflat where we saw the “Bar tailed godwit” the bird only recently known to fly the longest distance non-stop flight. I was rather aghast by the fact that some of the students did not realize the magnitude of this and kept blabbering and instead losing out on what might be once in a life time opportunity to see the bird!

The rare Bar Tailed Godwit

 The walk in the muck was a pleasant one with the molluscans pricking the feet and squelchy mud going in as soon as we set foot on it. 

The day came to an end when we all took to the sea and had some bit of gamboling in the warm extremely salty waters! It was indeed refreshing after a long days work.  A large portion of the night was spent in settling accounts and managing the money as we had to leave the next day, quite early in the morning at that.

The next day came and I at-least did not want to go back! But I had no choice, so we headed to Vedaraniyam on a van with couple of guys sitting on top with all luggages to catch the bus which we had managed to book in advance, a non-stop bus in which we could get down right in front of our university! 

 The bus came many parted their ways in the bus stand to grab some good food while some of us went on to the university directly and crashed to get what was a well deserved sleep after three days of slogging in the hot sun baked paradise, truly a “Kingdom by the Coast”.

The four legged dish washers!

The kitchen in Mundanthurai is well known for three things. The head cook- Manoharan, edible food (sometimes good by mistake) and a unique system of doing the dishes. It is hard for someone to believe that such a remote god forsaken place has a dishwasher to do the dishes. Yes, a mobile one that comes for free at that!
The Inspection Bunglow area is home to many bonnet monkeys in the day and a couple of pigs at night. These starved pesky monkeys have been the subject of numerous researchers in the past as they are very easy to observe and the researcher need not have to get bitten by ticks and leeches and risk life in going after these primates looking at what they do. All the monkeys in the area are in Mundanthurai for a certain time in a day and all one has to do in order to study them is get a flask of hot coffee, a chair, a cigar, a book and a pen; sit under a tree and life goes on as good as ever. May be binoculars to make closer observations and that’s it!

I am not, however sure if someone has worked on the wild pigs like with that of monkeys.
The guests residing in the Bunglow and dormitory come three times a day to eat or rather relish with difficulty and appreciate the culinary skills of the kitchen team. The primates appear almost instantaneously out of nowhere as if they were conditioned by the experiments of Ivan Pavlov, the Russian Noble laureate in Psychology who discovered classical conditioning. They seem to know, that when humans come to the kitchen, there is food for the picking and the whole horde pitches camp at ease, as if they got all the time on earth. Sometimes the really hungry ones look at humans and make faces, some try to jump on the plate itself and a few more males try to bully the humans by snarling and grunting! But some, the somber ones, wait for the better evolved kin to finish and drop the plates at the tap. Then, there is no stopping. They go haywire and take plates, lick them clean, snatch, throw, play Frisbee and do what not with the plates. They get the food, the dishes get scrubbed.

With the dusk taking over, the wild pigs come in families of 4-5. They grunt snort and run around too. But they are not the kinds who wait patiently looking at humans to finish. They evolved separately and have no respect for the line of evolution as with monkeys! For the pigs, humans are no superior. When all the humans are gone and the kitchen is locked, the drama continues. The pigs come and lick clean the plates. Whatever little food gets stuck on the plate gets eaten by them.

All this, made Manoharan and crew to order the guests to rinse the plates once they finish eating and leave the plate for them to clean it again with soap. This is to prevent the loss of plates due to monkeys misplacing them. The new rule has very well come into existence and the monkeys no longer wait for guests to drop plates but boldly try and snatch things form the plate itself! This gave Manoharan the job of chasing the monkeys with a stout stick, always kept at easy reach for this sole purpose.
Whether the dishes are cleaned with soap later as claimed or not? Nobody knows. It is a question not to be asked but to be assumed. After all, the dishwashers did a neat job right?

Prayer of a Tailed Cousin

This is a story that happened some time back in the forests of Mundanthurai. For those who are not aware of Lord Sori, I shall say that he being in forest is more of a curse to forest creatures than a blessing.

He attracts up to half a million people to come into the forest and worship him.

 The people come there also to meet people and get marriage proposals and all that.

Similarly, the better cousins what we call the Bonnet macaques also come there to see their bad cousins- humans.

They come to meet their own kind and also to eat on what the bad cousin throws out as waste,

in forms of plastic, plantain leaves, rice and

even sacrificed goats!

Like their cousins, they too have to sleep in the night, and what do they do? They go to the temple and sleep above their bad cousins. Only the tail hangs down like vines in a forest. In day time, the tailed ones gang up and scour the forest for food and fight among themselves.

The tail less ones gather around and worship god, cook food and eat, sleep and make merry- for only once a year can they come and relax in the cool waters of Tambaraparani.

The poor man’s Jacuzzi.

One day, an old and concerned member of the tailed ones came to Mundanthurai Kitchen. It came to look up at the better cousins- Ecologists; for they were the only ones to share their concern with him. He was feeling bad that the cousins of his were destroying the forest. What could he do alone? His members left him and went to eat the waste thrown by their cousins. 

His self esteem was hurt. They were free beings of the earth; their order did not allow eating of waste thrown by others.

He wanted to end all this. So he came to us. Seeing us, he began to feel proud. He noticed that the ecologists worked very hard. They all looked green, brown and dirty, slept very little, and always roamed the forests looking for the relatives of the jungle world. They were always talking about the bad things due to Lord Sori.

He looked deep into himself on the wind shield of the jeep.

 At the same time, he wanted to pray to his cousins to stop the nuisance and let the jungle denizens live in peace. So he climbed over the jeep. The ecologists now began to see him. They did seem to understand the talk of all beings. He looked up at heaven and read the words Ecology and Conservation. He knew that he was close to ending all this. He wanted more people to support him, his noble cause. At the same time, he wanted to pray to his cousins to stop the nuisance and let the jungle denizens live in peace.

They silently saw. He bowed his head, asked Lord Sori to forgive him for what he was doing against the lord.

Then looked up at the heavens, thanked his stars for having found us.

Then he looked at the direction of temple and sat silent. He did not speak for he knew that his human cousins had alienated themselves form nature and would not understand their mother tongue.

He kept staring and we understood what he meant. He then began to weep. He felt miserable. He could not even drink water in the Tambaraparani River. This was the river where he grew up, had fun and frolic with his mother and brothers. They were all now gone; disillusioned by the free food they got from the degenerated cousins.

Sobbing, he looked up, met eyes. Both of us had nothing to say. Each understood the deep feelings of the other. The ecologists realized what the pain was. They wanted to cure it. He got some what reassured.

His sorrow now seemed to have lessened after weeping. His heart was light. He began to become normal again. He wanted to run. Something held him back. He was convinced we would do something. Something to help him.

He looked up again at the words Ecology and Conservation written on their vehicle. His heart became lighter than ever.

He looked up at us. Saw that we were equally concerned. He seemed to ask us if we would stand by our word. Deep inside, he could hear the reverberating yes. And with that, he jumped and vanished into the forest. We never saw him again.

 

This was a story, a story of a primate, looking up at their long lost relatives for help. Help- to make their world a better place. For him. For us. For all. For generations to come.

PS: The characters featured in the story are purely fictional. No relation to persons alive, dying or dead should be made. Any similarities seen by the expert eye are purely co-incidental and are the result of the handiwork of the devil’s kitchen of empty minds. 

All photographs are by Seshadri.K.S, please request permission before using any of it.

Please note, on a serious note, I have tried to Build a story based on some pictures I had. The story is clearly cooked up but the issue is real. I have no Intention of making fun of the pilgrims or the ecologists quoted here and it has been written so in light sense of humor. Enjoy reading!