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Book Review
Writings from another era
G. ANANTHAKRISHNAN
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A naturalist’s witty and entertaining take on creatures of the neighbourhood
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Illustration by F.C.Macrae in the book “The Tribes on My Frontier”
A NATURALIST ON THE PROWL & THE TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER: Both by EHA; Penguin Books India Pvt. Ltd., 11, Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi-110017. Rs. 295 each.
Naturalist E.O.Wilson wrote that it is possible to spend a lifetime in a “Magellanic voyage around a single tree stump.” Such is the diversity of life that years of careful observation can take place just around one tree gaining new insight into nature. A writer with a keen eye for nature could turn his experiences into beautiful tales.
EHA, or Edward Hamilton Aitken, is one such naturalist who recorded his personal observations of the smallest creatures with a signature literary style. So remarkably absorbing were his descriptions that the great ornithologist Salim Ali says in his autobiography The Fall of a Sparrow, “Among my favourite and most admired naturalist writers are W.H.Hudson and E.H.Aitken (better known as EHA).” Salim Ali praises EHA for devoting extra attention to honing and polishing his “seemingly effortless essays.”
Source of delight
EHA’s A Naturalist on the Prowl and The Tribes on My Frontier, republished a 100 years after they first appeared, are a source of great delight for nature lovers and anyone who loves good writing. In the pages of these books creatures that share the neighbourhood with humans, whether in the countryside or in urban surroundings, come to assume a character of their own. Ruskin Bond points out in his introduction that EHA’s talent, and his uncommon sparkling wit and charm bring all these creatures to life.
The finely tuned sense of humour and equally acute sense of drama in nature make the books a pleasurable read. The Sahib-style narrative lends a unique charm. To EHA, a python devouring its crushed prey appears so similar to a yawning grave that is rapidly closing on the dead; a king cobra looks like a cold, truculent foe, staring with chilling determination, ever ready for furious pursuit. In his story, EHA ends the stalemate by shooting the king cobra, and earning in the process the admiration of simple local folk as well as the displeasure of the secretary of the Bombay Natural History Society.
One tends to ignore his fanciful assertions, based on folk tales, that king cobras are known to devour a man whole and then dispatching him by coiling themselves around a tree trunk.
Nature treasures
To book lovers of today, many of them ardent conservationists living in jungles of concrete, glass and steel, EHA offers a trove of nature treasures. Readers are treated to descriptions of rare fruit trees of the Indian subcontinent that are all but forgotten. He describes not just the trees and their sweet and sour fruit, but their capacity to support myriad life forms. The lessons are delivered in a chaste, if somewhat dated and formal style, but with vivid imagery.
His description of “The Banian Tree” in The Naturalist on the Prowl for instance, should make busy city-folk a sad lot; after all life-giving trees such as the Banyan and Peepul are disappearing. Many animals depend on these trees but their numbers are now so low that it is difficult to spot them. “To sit in contemplation under the majesty of a noble Banian would make a man a Rishi if he were not so before,” EHA says. He recognises that the tree is “a world in itself, populous with beasts and birds and myriads of little things...bountifully feeding them all.”
The Tribes on My Frontier offers lessons in sustainability for a humid, tropical country such as India. Referring to the common practice of banishing all animals from gardens and houses, resulting in the proliferation of pests, EHA says, “...the way to fight uncivilised enemies is to encourage them to cut one another’s throats, and then step in and inherit the spoil. But we murder our friends, exterminate our allies, and then groan under the oppression of the enemy.”
Thrilling encounters
With that preamble, EHA, who was born in Satara in 1851 and served the Government of Bombay, guides the reader through a set of thrilling encounters. He makes perceptive observations about his stay at Kharaghoda on the Little Rann of Kutch. This is the place that he refers to as the hot and dry “Dustypore” around which his narrative is centred in the book. Here, EHA delights with his accounts of rats, mosquitoes, lizards, crows, spiders, ants, white ants, bees, wasps, butterflies, frogs and so on.
Nothing illustrates his style better than the chapter, “The Rats”. After enlightening the reader about the history of rats in England and the fortunes of the black and brown rats there, he provides a hilarious account of what might be called “operation rat” — the most efficient ways of annihilating troublesome rat specimens. The reader gets a vivid sense of an angry EHA armed with “a supple cane”, going after an agile rodent raining blows; this is further enhanced by an illustration of the author by fellow Scotsman F.C.Macrae, whose line drawings greatly add to the value of both the books.
With his gift for keen observation and felicity of expression, EHA was undoubtedly a unique literary species himself. The little exaggerations quickly become unimportant, because there is an underlying charm to his stories. They contain the message of how much is happening around us, and how little we care to notice.
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