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?
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!
Loud honking and over speeding by motorists are things banned in certain countries but in India, only the exact opposite seems to work. Some motorists have succumbed to the Periodic unnecessary honking syndrome (PUHS) and do this all the time. May be they will continue to do the same if put on a plane too! And not just that, they are rash and insensitive while driving about. This has led to many accidents and even communal wars in the past. This same insensitive attitude towards a fellow being gets automatically carried on even when they are driving in the forest areas.
Traffic stopped for easy movement- pic seshadri
Firstly, there should not be public vehicles plying in forests but this cannot be helped and thus measures to reduce the impacts should be in place. This does not seem to be the concern of anybody. Vehicles inside a forest are a nuisance and one must witness the annual Influx of vehicles during the SMK festival in KMTR. The number of vehicles plying on the road are, simply put- astronomical. With local pressures, the roads are thrown open for pilgrims to enter the reserve at night and this, adds to the existing problem of road kills, pollution, dust and other effects. The people in rented or own vehicles will be in a maddening frenzy to reach the temple camping grounds and find a spot to live for the next 10 or so days. This annual migration happens almost up to 10 days before the festival itself. The roads are re done and everything is made easy to facilitate the easy movement of vehicles. The road shoulders are packed with mud and leveled so that the road can occupy a larger volume of traffic and traffic police are put in various places to regulate the people.
The drivers always are of the boorish sort and seem to think of someone overtaking them as an insult often chasing them and blocking their path. And on the other hand, honk their heads off trying to overtake the precursor. To add to this, all most all the vehicles have blaring music which, more often than not, out of tune and being played in cheap Chinese speakers which sound no different than a donkey braying in pain. Almost all vehicles ply at high speeds and people would have hung their wet clothes, from the Agasthiyar watterpallies (read Waterfalls) all over the vehicles. This whole thing is an eyesore inside the forest. The bright light is another impeccable hand of this four wheeled assassin on the run. The lights are so bright that I sometimes think it can reach the moon!
speeding vehicle at night- pic seshadri
All this, has a large implication on the forest and its dwellers. Most of the animals are nocturnal by behavior and those that are not are also forced into moving about in the night due to the train like movement of vehicles in day. When vehicles move in the night too, the animals are left with no choice. They have to either risk themselves from getting run over, stay put in one place without moving or get used to it!
Unfortunately, my observations during the night road transects seem to suggest that the animals have picked the last strategy. This is a bad thing for wildlife. Once they get used to people, it becomes easy for one to walk right up to an animal and shoot it point blank, capture them live or just tease them for the fun of it. The animal might also get crushed by vehicles as they do not bother to run for cover. We in fact had many instances which seem to suggest that the last one seems to be occurring. Many hard to see animals like the Slender loris,Civets, Mouse deers and even Leopards are seen right next to roads and they don’t seem to bother of the hundreds of speeding vehicles. We have many times experimented with shining the lights right on to them, honking badly and revving the engines so as to see their responses and nothing seems to make them run for cover. I even walked up to a mouse deer and shot pictures in macro mode! Another mouse deer was merrily feeding along the roads even as I was shooting pictures and revving the engine badly.
Un-fazed mouse deer Pic- Seshadri
Feeding Mouse deer Pic-seshadri
People who come to the pilgrimage are of course, insensitive to all this, some of them, stop to look for animals, some purposefully increase speed and try to run over animals (and even humans, especially those doing road kill surveys!) but most of them turn a blind eye towards these things. Others do not realize that their actions have or can lead to such behavior changes in animals which will be detrimental for wildlife. They will be more prone to getting run over, caught and eaten by poachers and so on. The problem here is clearly the attitude of drivers and those who come in the vehicles. Strict measures can and should be taken to control this behavior and honking should be prohibited in the forest. The speed should be regulated so that the animals if at all take the risk to cross, will get a little more time before they get hit and die without even knowing what hit them. We need to target this attitude of people and need to work on sensitizing them to their own actions which they seem to be doing without realizing the implications of it. Until things change, the animals of the Mundanthurai plateau and many other forest of India are victims of the sorry state of human mentality.
