We found ourselves in the town of Phalodi on Sankranti this year. Here were we, more than 2,000 kms from our home in Madras, where I grew and schooled. I discover that two of my classmates have their ancestral roots here. It somehow blew my mind then, and continues to do so now, as to how families just upped and moved across the continent. Their migration similar to the long one that the cranes undertake it seemed.
We trundled in to the neighbouring town of Kichan on the evening of 14th to see the visiting Demoiselle cranes at the lake in the town.
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| This was our first sighting of these birds, as the sun was setting. The local villagers and children seemed to pay no notice to them. |
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| And neither were they bothered by us. Coming all the way from Mongolia every winter and familiar to the locals as koonj. |
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| Supposedly in Hindi litereature of old, a beautiful woman was compared to the koonj, with its graceful neck! |
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| The little lake had other residents - lapwings, stilt, shovellers, godwit, kingfishers, little grebes - but of course the cranes were the big attraction for us. |
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| As the sun dipped we could see the spire of the local temple. |
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| Rakesh and Mukesh who befriended Sekar. They quite charmed him, as he gave them his camera and made them click a couple of pictures! |
The chugga ghars of Kichan were our destination the next morning.
And because he is a better narrator of stories,
Sekar writes
Phalodi is a nondescript town on the Jodhpur-Jaisalmer
road. As you enter the town and drive
past the railway station, you are assaulted by the sights and smells of small
town India. Cattle, goats, pigs,
two-wheelers, autos, lorries, cars, buses and pedestrians all jostle for space
on pockmarked remnants of roads. Sewage
spills out of the open drains, there is litter everywhere as is that bane of
today’s India: plastic waste.
We entered the town at dusk, past long lines of dimly lit
shops, establishments selling auto parts jostling for space with eateries,
godowns, money lenders and recycled waste peddlers.
Why would anyone want to live in a place like this? Why does an entire town need to look like the
contents of a dustbin? And why this
cacaphony of trade and traffic? And, as
with every Indian town crowded with right-angled concrete pillar and beam
structures, why this complete lack of aesthetics?
Quite abruptly, we turned into a narrower lane complete with
open sewer, and with much less room to manouevre. No pigs and dogs here: only cattle occupying
the middle ground and daring vehicles to bump them as they attempted to squeeze
past. As we drove further into the lane,
it struck me, one, that the noise levels were lower; two, that we were in a
residential part of town; and three, that the residences themselves were not
unadorned concrete and brick rectangles.
Dusk was nigh and the light fading, but we could see that house after
house had red sandstone facades, many with elaborate carvings. Some houses had small overhanging balconies.
Elaborate carved doors and windows faced the street. The buzz and noise of India were largely absent
and this was puzzling.
We had a little time early the next morning and decided to
explore.
School girls, smartly dressed in their winter uniforms, went
by on bicycles, wishing us good morning and wanting to know if we needed
directions. It was nice to see such good
cheer on a dull, cold, and foggy morning.
We walked past a shabby fort with crumbling walls, modest by Rajasthani
standards. Advertisements and graffiti
covered the lower ramparts.
Mere
antiquity without history or aesthetics is meaningless it seems. I wondered how long it would be before the
real estate the fort enclosed fell victim to modern development.
We then turned into the street with the sandstone facades.
This part of town was indeed different. The houses we had seen the previous evening
lined both sides of the streets like books on a packed bookshelf. There were no trees on the street and no
front yards or gardens: the houses opened directly onto the street. The houses themselves were in various states
of repair. Some were derelict and
unoccupied; others locked up but clearly being maintained; and yet others with
open doors, drains emptying into the open sewers, and people going about their
early morning business.
We could see
courtyards, some with trees or little gardens, through the open doors.
The stonework adorned the first floors in most
cases. The windows were framed with
elaborate carvings and topped with varied overhanging eaves all in the same red
sandstone. The houses looked broadly similar:
two stories in most cases, similar windows and doors, and the same red
sandstone faces. Details marked each one
from its neighbour. They differed in
size, though. Modest buildings with a single
pair of windows flanking their doors stood next to grand havelis that stretched
half the length of the street.
One in particular stood out, both for its size
and the richness of its ornamentation.
Built by the Dadha family more than a century earlier, it has been
lovingly restored by the family and is now part hotel and part museum
The story of the family and the house they built echoes that
of Phalodi. The town was once (and I’m
told still is) a centre for salt trading.
The elaborately decorated houses belonged to merchants, usually Jains,
who made their fortunes as salt traders.
The salt trade continues, but it is not what it once was.
The days when an unjust tax on salt could
inspire a march to the sea at Dandi are long past. Other opportunities beckoned, and people
migrated to Calcutta, Madras and Bombay, the administrative and business centres
of the British presidencies.
Members of
the Dadha family moved to Madras, eventually setting up a chemicals
business. They retained their Phalodi
roots even as, over the years, the shoots they had put down in their new homes prospered
and grew, and even as they acquired the languages and customs of their new
homes. In many cases (as with the
Dadhas), only the family homes remain as reminders of their past in Phalodi. Even today, we occasionally had the sense of being in a ghost town.
Kichan, not Phalodi, was our real destination. We spent the night at Phalodi only because
Kichan, five kilometres away, lacked even the most basic of hotels. And we were at Kichan because of the birds.
Many species of birds winter in India. Rajasthan is home to large numbers (and many
species) of these winter migrants, and draws bird lovers and ornithologists
from around the world. Kichan, with a
few open fields and a couple of small ponds, is on the face of it an unlikely
destination for either birds or birders.
There are plenty of large water bodies throughout Rajasthan, and the state
itself has become greener over the past several decades. And yet it is Kichan that boasts of perhaps
the most spectacular display of feeding birds.
Birds, Demoiselle Cranes mostly, have been
coming here for centuries. About a
century and a half back, some local Jains began leaving grain in the fields for
the avian visitors. Over the years the
numbers of birds grew, and today Kichan is home to over 20,000 demoiselle
cranes every winter.
By itself that would be a magnificent sight: cranes are
graceful creatures, even if their version of birdsong tends to the
raucous. What makes Kichan special is
that the cranes follow an orchestrated schedule: you know where they are going
to be at any given time of day and for a birder that is a huge blessing.
We arrived at Kichan the previous evening, an hour and a bit
more before sunset, just in time to see the last of several flocks finish their
evening feed near a small lake before taking off for the night. There were plenty of other birds going about
their business in the lake: pintails, grebes, stilts, lapwings, herons and many
others, but the cranes, congregated by the opposite shore, caught and held our
eyes. We caught our first glimpse of
their behaviour as a flock. At some
point, they gathered together, turned in the same direction and started moving
purposefully, almost as though they were readying for a takeoff. And takeoff all together they did, the flock
flying together towards the setting sun.
We were awed, but this was the merest appetiser for what we were to see
the next morning.
‘We need to be in position by 8.30 latest,’ Nabeel, our
guide, informed us. ‘We need to be on
the move by eight.’
Our quick recce of the Phalodi havelis and a hurried
breakfast done with, we drove through still sleepy streets and, some fifteen or
twenty minutes later, parked on a nondescript street next to an empty,
fenced-in, plot of about half an acre.
Single story houses stood on either side and elsewhere on the street.
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| Sewaramji (left) and Nabeel, our guide |
It was a dull, overcast day, but the sharp cries of the
cranes was very evident and as we looked up, we saw flock after flock wheeling
overhead. We were welcomed into a small
courtyard by the very appropriately named Sewaramji. A stocky, uniformed man with a stud adorning
each ear, Sewaramji is the person responsible for spreading out the birds’ feed
– jowar – around the empty plot. This is
a substantial task. Twenty thousand and
more cranes fly in around late August to mid September and leave for their
Mongolian and southern Siberian summer homes only in March.
They consume around 600 kilos of feed every
day. Various Jain charities pay for all
this and Sewaramji and his helpers ensure that the food is ready when the birds
are.
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| The Chugga Ghar. The light brown patches are the grain spread on the ground. |
And then, with an immense fluttering, a huge flock of pigeons flew past, circled the field once and then landed to begin a feeding frenzy amidst much frantic cooing and clucking. We had come to see the cranes, not pigeons. Just wait, Sewaramji assured us, the pigeons always feed first and leave and only then do the cranes come for their feed. So we waited – and waited – while the pigeons leisurely had breakfast. Even bird lovers find it difficult to like pigeons and there was much grumbling and noticeable annoyance all around. In the meanwhile the cranes continued to mass on the open areas all around while small groups circled overhead crying all the while.
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| The pigeons arrive |
Quite abruptly, a third of the pigeon flock took off, then a
second third, followed very quickly by the rest leaving only five greedy
stragglers and a cat that had strayed into the ground.
A lone crane made the short hop from the open ground over
the fence and into the feeding ground. The cat eyed it and made as if to approach
it.
A few more cranes followed, then
even more, and before our eyes the plot began to fill up.
Soon there were thousands of feeding birds
and the cat withdrew in some confusion and alarm.
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| Demoiselle cranes are midsized birds, about 70-80cm high, but they are the smallest of the cranes. They have red eyes, graceful grey bodies rising up to a long and dark neck with a ruffled bib of feathers in front and a white plume trailing the head. |
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| Their long necks are extended in flight with their feet tucked back. Perhaps because it was the feeding hour, they were noisy even in flight. |
Known locally as Koonj,
these birds are said to have inspired Valmiki’s poetry and are a metaphor for
faithful loving couples in the legends and literature of North India.
They were clearly social birds. The way they flew in flocks for the feed, the
way they congregated as they fed with a minimum of jostling and quarreling but
with plenty to say as they fed, they way they left in batches as they finished
and the way the entire lot moved from place to place around Kichan all
suggested strong social bonds.
But the sight (and sounds) of them feeding! I’ve never seen anything like it and, judging
from their comments and loud exclamations, neither had anyone else. For one thing, there was the sheer number of
birds packed into the field, and the racket they were making. Then, how close we were to them. Most birds are shy (crows and pigeons
excepted of course!) and observing and photographing them requires patience,
knowledge of their habits, and heavy duty equipment. And yet here we were, less than ten metres from
the closest birds which were going about their feeding completely oblivious to
our presence.
Artificial? Perhaps yes in that the feed had been
deliberately laid out by human hands.
But the birds’ migration, their presence in Kichan, and their social
behaviour as they fed were all for real: nature showcasing herself for us.
The local populace takes pride in the birds’ presence; they
are aware of their movements, timings and habits and ensure that they are
protected. The birds themselves go about
their routine unconcerned about the humans they share their space with. Kichan is not an official sanctuary. There are no guards or rangers here, no
prohibited areas or protected spaces.
And yet, because the people here have let them be, the Demoiselle cranes
come here year after year, increasing in numbers as the years go by. Perhaps that is a lesson for all of us: there
is no reason why we – humans – and they – everything else – cannot peaceably
share this land we have all been born into.
