More on Jamal Ara - finally.

I first read about Jamal Ara in the book Woman in the Wild, which I reviewed here.  I wondered about Jamal Ara, I remember, with sadness and regret.  Sadness for her mental breakdown and deep regret hat her papers were lost forever.

So, the fact that maybe her papers are not all lost - I was hugely delighted!  Please go to the original link and see her sketches and notes.  

The Almirah – In Search of Jamal Ara’s Papers

By Raza Kazmi

The story of Jamal Ara, India’s first birdwoman, was published in a book titled ‘Women in the Wild’, in 2023, and struck a chord with many readers. To me, however, there was so much more left to uncover of the life story of this mysterious, gifted woman. As I recount in my essay, one of my biggest heartbreaks was to learn from Madhuca that her mother, in her last days, had burnt down all her archives – all her life’s work. When Madhuca had asked her, despairing, why she had done so, Jamal Ara would whisper, catatonic – “it was all useless”.

“But what about this ‘Birds of Bihar’ thing that she kept repeating on her deathbed?”, I asked Madhuca. She paused for a bit and then said – “Raza, there is this locked almirah that belonged to her that has never been opened since she passed away. I remember she used to keep some of her books in it, but I am not sure if she continued doing so in her final years. So I don’t really know for sure what that almirah contains. I have never had the courage to open it, and I suspect that whatever might have been in there must have turned to dust by now. That almirah has been sitting in a storeroom for nearly 30 years now.”

Despite Madhuca not wanting to raise my hopes up, I was thrilled to hear this. I immediately started wondering if perhaps some of Ara’s writing and notes might have survived, and if they were sitting in this almirah. However, I could see immediately that this subject was triggering for Madhuca – every time she spoke of this almirah, she would get extremely anxious and uneasy, with a marked sadness and nervousness in her voice. This particular material memory of her mother seemed to traumatise her, perhaps because it brought back painful memories of her mother’s agonising last years as her mental health collapsed. Madhuca would also add that she was worried that opening up this almirah might be a risk to my health as well – “What if everything inside has rotted away and there is just mold and fungus, you might get sick,” she would add.

Every now and then I would gently suggest to Madhuca that if she would permit me, I would be very happy to get into that storeroom, and pry open that almirah to see what might be inside. To soothe her anxiety regarding the possible ill-effects of this exercise, I would tell her that I would put on a mask. However, every time I made this suggestion, Madhuca would dither and get uneasy.

I would try reassuring her that there is a high chance that the material inside that almirah might be completely intact, and that all her fears might be unfounded. She would ponder for a bit and then simply say “Accha dekhte hain agli baar sochenge ispe” (Ok, we will think over this the next time you come over) and hastily change the subject. Not wishing to reopen old wounds, I did not push her further on it. Months passed. I would gently remind her about the almirah in each of our multiple meetings and phone calls during this period, and each time she would promise to take it up in the “next meeting”. In the meantime, the book had come out and Jamal Ara’s story was particularly appreciated by readers. Since Madhuca could not see anymore, I would go over to her place often to read out to her all the messages and comments I had received from the readers telling me about how inspirational they had found her mother’s life story to be. A soft smile would appear across Madhuca’s face as she attentively heard each message. During the course of one such meeting, I informed her that I had joined the Archives at The National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) as a Subject Expert. Happy with this news and all the comments about her mother from readers I had read out to her that evening, she called out to Mona Di, her caretaker, to get us a samosa each with a hot cup of tea to celebrate the good news.

As I informed Madhuca about the work I would be doing at the Archives at NCBS, and more about the collections stored there, I delicately nudged her about that almirah once again – “If we find something in that almirah, we could deposit that material to an institutional archive such as the one at NCBS where it can be preserved for posterity. I am sure Jamal Ara ma’am would have really loved it if her work could find such a permanent home where her archives could be used by a whole new generation of current and future scholars.” “Yes, we must look into that almirah sometime,” she said, nodding in agreement, but still unable to get herself to commit to the idea of opening that almirah. Finally, one morning in March, more than a year after she first told me about this almirah, Madhuca called me up.

    “Raza, I have made way in the storeroom to the almirah.” Ecstatic at this news, I told her that I would be there at her place by the evening.

When I reached, Madhuca was waiting in her spartan, yet beautiful, drawing room. She pointed me to the storeroom, and said “I cannot find the keys to the lock anymore, you will need to break it. I will be here in the drawing room; I am too anxious at the moment to be in that storeroom and watch you open that thing. You can call me out if you need anything.” 

And so as I walked into that little storeroom, there it was – Jamal Ara’s almirah. Surprisingly, contrary to what I had imagined, this was not a usual steel almirah, rather it was a large antique wooden cabinet, a bookshelf. Measuring about 5 feet by 4 feet, carved out of solid teakwood, this cabinet was clearly 70-80 years old, if not more. I knew this because the cabinet was in the standard colonial-era forest department office shelf design, and I had seen examples of such cabinets as part of the British era furniture left behind in a few old colonial forest bungalows and offices. I was quite certain that this cabinet probably would have originally belonged to Madhuca’s beloved ‘Akki’ i.e. Sami Ahmed, an Indian Forest Service officer and Ara’s cousin, confidante, and her biggest support system till his passing in 1966, who had sheltered the mother-daughter duo after Ara was abandoned by her husband.

A flimsy rusted lock held the cabinet’s old-world door latch shut. It was finally the time of reckoning. I heaved a sigh and broke open the lock, and gently unhooked the latch. My heart was racing with excitement and I chuckled to myself – “so that is how all those adventurers across the ages must have felt like just as they were opening treasure chests that they had been after for months and years.” The doors started creaking open, and I braced myself – it would either be heartbreak or unbridled joy. As I opened the doors and the first shaft of lights fell on the contents inside, I heaved a sigh of relief – there were old newspapers securely covering whatever lay inside, and while there were cobwebs along with thick layers of dust settled inside the cabinet and over those newspaper coverings, it seemed like everything was in order. However, I could still not be fully sure until I took off the newspaper shrouds to see the condition of whatever lay beneath them. And so, as I gingerly lifted off the newspapers, what I saw made my heart skip a beat – rows of books, notebooks, files, and other ephemera, all neatly lined up and arranged across the shelves! Additionally, a few plastic carry bags with even more papers, files, cut outs of articles, pamphlets, sketches of birds, and correspondences. I called out to Madhuca. My first instinctive reaction once again was to exclaim – “Come look at this treasure trove” – before it dawned on me, once again, that I could not “show” Madhuca anything, I could only describe it to her. So, I went up to her. She was sitting in the drawing room and looking out to nothing in particular. Hearing me come in, she said – “So what did you find?”. “Ma’am, we have hit the jackpot!”, I excitedly informed her. “You can finally let go of all your fears. Everything in that almirah is intact, and it is in such good shape in fact that it seems as if that cabinet was bolted in just yesterday. And apart from the books, I have found a decent sized pile of her notebooks and other archives. Despite all that your mother did burn down, luckily for us, a fair bit of her work has survived! I cannot tell you how happy I am.”

As she heard me animatedly describe all that I had unearthed, Madhuca broke into a broad smile, a smile that exuded both relief and happiness. Then she spoke,“You know, Raza, I was so scared when you went in to open that almirah. Ever since you had first told me about wanting to open that almirah, I had been plagued by dreadful visions of you opening the doors of that almirah and a pile of dust and ash from rotten books falling all over you. That is why I could not get myself to be there when you opened it… “I am so relieved that it did not turn out to be that way.”

I retreated to the storeroom once again, carefully working through the contents of cabinet. The books in the cabinet were an eclectic mix – there were books on ornithology that Jamal Ara used for reference and research, scores of classical and popular literary works that were a testament to incredible amount of literary reading she did in addition to her natural history reading, and a few books on forestry and botany that had belonged to Sami.

I then turned my attention to the stack of her notebooks – most of which were school notebooks – and picked up one. I gingerly opened the first page, and immediately broke into a smile as I was greeted by an endearing crayon drawing of a colourful flower. Within that flower was a name crayoned in – ‘Jamal Ara’. As I thumbed through her notes, I could feel goosebumps break out all over my arms. It was a surreal feeling – after all this time I could finally touch something that she wrote. The notebooks were a fascinating insight into the mind and work-ethic of Jamal Ara, the amount of research she put into her work, how she categorised and planned out her writings, her inner thoughts, her future plans and so on. Her archives introduced me to many new facets of her work – for instance I never knew that she was a talented artist too, as exemplified by dozens of her beautiful hand drawn sketches of birds, each signed ‘JA’, that I found carefully tucked in an envelope.

I came across several new pieces of her writings – some published in various newspapers that had been then carefully cut out and archived, and many unpublished writings ranging from short stories to travelogues, from political and philosophical writings to a bundle of loose sheets in neat handwritten Urdu which looked like scripts for her programmes for the All India Radio. Then, I almost gasped when opening another folder for in it I came across two unpublished book manuscripts – one on a collection of Adivasi folktales from Chota Nagpur and another on Birdwatching. I excitedly kept shouting out to Madhuca, relaying all these finds in real time. “Anything more?” Madhuca called out as I finally picked up the last file from the cabinet. It had a bunch of typed papers and a notebook tucked within in it. “Yes, one last folder,” I shouted back as I wiped the dust off it to read what this folder was labelled as. As the dust cleared up, my eyes widened as I read the label on the file even as Madhuca called out – “What is this last thing then?” – I stood still and silent for a few seconds, and then slowly walked up to Madhuca with the folder in hand. “What is it?”, she asked again. “Ma’am”, I stuttered momentarily, “the folder label reads – Birds of Bihar”.

Birds of Bihar — Book proposal, outline and main lines of study of field ornithology, MS-046-2-1-1-11, Jamal Ara Collection, Archives at NCBS.

This article was initially published as a print publication in 2024. Read below or find an online link here.

Raza Kazmi is a conservationist, writer, wildlife historian, storyteller and researcher. His fields of expertise include India’s wildlife and forest administration history, conservation policy and conservation issues afflicting the insurgency-ridden east-central Indian landscape. His writings appear in national newspapers (The Hindu, The Indian Express), online media houses (The Wire, FiftyTwodotin, RoundGlass Sustain) as well as various magazines and journals (Frontline, Seminar, The India Forum, Journal of Bombay Natural History Society, Sanctuary Asia, Cheetal, etc.). He has also contributed essays to edited anthologies. A recipient of the New India Foundation Fellowship for 2021, he is currently writing a book tentatively titled To Whom Does the Forest Belong? The Fate of Green in the Land of Red. He works as a Conservation Communicator with the Wildlife Conservation Trust, and also teaches as a Guest Faculty for Wildlife Management at the Forest Guard Training Schools in Chaibasa and Ranchi in Jharkhand.