Travel Diary: Dec 28, 2010 - Jan 1, 2011

Day 11 - Tuesday - Dec 28

Guwahati

I'm up at 7.00 am today, much before the others. I talk with RB's dad. Tell him we're planning on visiting the museum today since we have the time. He tells me about a rhino wildlife reserve nearby called Pobitora. Says it's close by and gives us directions.

I tell ZP & RG when they awake. They like the idea of the wildlife reserve too. We leave at 11.30. Just the 3 of us. RB is at work. Head to Palthan Bazaar by bus. Collect ZP's passport size photos that he had taken on his first day here before we arrived but didn't collect. We find a private car for Pobitora. A WagonR, like RG's car, for Rs. 1100 for the full day. Had to bargain it down from Rs. 1500.

The drive to Pobitora is really nice. We get to see some good Assam scenery - flat fields and farms with blue skies, a welcome change from the concrete jungle that is Guwahati. Like what we saw on the ride to and from Aizawl, only this time was better because we could stop the car whenever we wanted to take pictures.

We see a domesticated elephant on the way, a buffalo, and finally a couple of rhinos on a large field, just before coming to the main entrance to the reserve. Apparently, this land around the approach road also belongs to the reserve. There are many security personnel, trucks and even a crane parked on this field. We figure there's a rhino trans-location going on. Rhinos are being moved from this reserve, where they're in abundance, to a national park, where they're needed. And all this can be seen from the main road that approaches the reserve. What a free treat! Especially for the villagers who live nearby, many of whom are watching the spectacle from the road.

The rhinos are fantastic to watch. This is the first time I'm seeing real live wild ones right in front of me. We try to take pics but the animals are really far away. I have to use the digital zoom on my 18x optical zoom Panasonic Lumix FZ35 (borrowed from friend NC) and go up to the maximum limit of 72x to get the rhinos to fill up the camera frame. The pics will be blurred on 100% magnification, owing to the fact that I'm not using a tripod.

Of course, the rhino trans-location means that the reserve is closed, so we can't take a jeep or elephant safari inside. A bit disappointing, but we do save over Rs. 300 by not doing this, and we already got to see and click wild rhinos and some excellent scenery, so we don't feel too bad. We have a lunch of pork chilly at a restaurant at the reserve called Kunki's. I like the ambiance but the food's a bit pricey.

The drive back is via an alternative road that's also very scenic. We get some excellent pics of the sunset lit clouds. It's nice to be excited about a subject. We haven't taken these many pics in one day since Cherrapunjee. We need this. Being stuck in Guwahati for 3 days has left us a bit edgy and in a bad mood, so this one fun productive day really lifts our spirits.

We get back home, but not before booking the same guy to take ZP, RG and I to Machkhowa early tomorrow morning to catch our ride to Tura. He's cheaper than the rickshaw guys out here. At home, ZP realises he's lost his camera. He searches the house, then calls the driver who says it's in the car and he'll return it tomorrow morning.

We go out for a walk with RB, then to a cyber centre, and then meet K again, who takes us for a drive. A few drinks and smokes later (them, not me), he leads us to Beatrix restaurant, quite a nice place with this cafe look on the ground floor, and caricatures on the walls, like Mondegars in Mumbai.

We all order the 'king burger', this huge chicken burger for Rs. 95. Very filling. K orders 3 rolls too, cut into 2 halves, but RG and I can't touch ours. We're too full. We all head back home. Stop outside RB's house for more smokes (them, not me) and stories of illegal activities. It's really cold now. Need to zip up my jacket. Head inside at 11.30 pm. We've got an early start tomorrow.

Day 12 - Wednesday - Dec 29

Guwahati/Tura

We take the 6.30 am shared sumo to Tura. They had originally booked us into a Bolero but cancelled that and moved us into a Sumo instead to accommodate the people who's trips have had to be cancelled over the last 2 days.

The journey is uneventful. The Guwahati-Tura road is good. Beautiful early morning scenery. We reach Tura by 1.00 pm (6 hrs). It's a small town. Quiet compared to Guwahati. The city centre, where we find a cheap hotel for the 3 of us for one night for Rs. 550, is a dump. Mostly outsiders (read Bangladeshis) staying here. We don't see many locals.

Tura, and most of Garo Hills that we've seen so far, just seems like one unending forest, with pockets of habitation here and there, which is what Tura would qualify as. A town spread out in parts here and there in the middle of a forest. There don't seem to be any plains here. Just forested hills. 

Without lunch, we ask around for transport to Nokrek, the biosphere reserve. We've heard a lot about it, and I'm guessing we'll need a full day there to go exploring, but half a day is all we have, since we're leaving tomorrow for Baghmara (we would have stayed an extra day or two in Tura if we had the time, but those strikes in Assam have cut our trip short). Unfortunately, no one here seems to know about Nokrek or how to get there, though they've all heard about Balpakram national park near Baghmara, which is our next stop. Even the rickshaw people either don't know about it or are reluctant to go there.

So we cancel the plan to visit Nokrek and instead take a shared rick to the Forest Office in Dakopgre, a suburb, where we hear there's a Gibbon reserve. We find the place easily, but since we're not sure they allow tourists inside, we pose as official visitors on forest business. However, we see mostly empty offices and residences belonging to the forest dept. The support staff tells us that everyone's on Christmas leave, that there's no reserve here, and that we should try Nehru zoo in Danpokgre if we want to catch some wildlife. One of the staff is leaving on an errand in a car, and drops us half-way there.

We take a bus the rest of the way to the zoo. There's a ticket counter, but no one manning it. We slip inside. RG decides to sit tight, while ZP and I take a long walk around. It's 3.00 pm now. Nehru zoo is really one big garden, with the zoo area hidden away towards the extreme left. We do see a few creatures - bears, barking deer, serpent crested eagles, owls, wild cats, a rock python. 

The animals all seem to approach the cages as we go past. Maybe hoping for food. I hope they're being fed. I can't see anyone around. We're the only ones here, apart from some villagers nearby. There's no security here. We could come in with some wire cutters, steal a pair of leopard cats and be gone before anyone knew.

We take a bus back to town and book a shared Sumo to Baghmara for tomorrow at 5.30 am. There just seems to be one private travel agency arranging transport  to Baghmara. The only other option is the bus. Again, we haven't had much of a breakfast and no lunch so we go for a buffet dinner at Brenga restaurant at the Hotel Rickman at 7.00. (Rs. 185 per person). ZP eats his money's worth.

Back to the hotel. Watch some T.V. Pack. The others are cranky.

Day 13 - Thursday - Dec 30

Tura/Baghmara/Balpakram/Mahadev

Early morning drive from Tura to Baghmara in a Sumo. The road is bad in parts, but we're there in 3 hours. Baghmara is a really small town. We stop at the main bus stand and shared transport ground a little further down from the market area. Our first order of business is to arrange for transport back to Tura/Guwahati. 

They tell us there'll be no transport at all on the 1st. And we don't want to leave on the 2nd morning since that would mean spending the night in Tura on the 2nd and leaving for Guwahati on the 3rd, and ZP has to be in Guwahati in time for his train on that day. We're not aware of any night transport. So the only option left is to leave for Tura tomorrow, the 31st, and try to get something for Guwahati on the 1st or 2nd from there. But the problem now is none of the private operators are willing to guarantee transport to Tura for tomorrow, since they have no one else travelling that day and they usually pack in 10 people in a Sumo, and we're just 3. So we're stuck for now.

We decide to at least try to see Balpakram since we came so far, and see what we get in terms of transport to Tura tomorrow morning. We get our permits done at the forest office nearby. Again, most of the staff are on leave but one of the guys lets us write out or own permits in the absence of official forms, and then stamps them. We then return to the grounds where we book a shared Sumo to Balpakram (Rs. 180 per person) and park our bags in the Baghmara tourist lodge on a hill above the grounds (Rs. 20/ person for a really really good room). We hope we can return to the lodge to spend the night. It looks really nice, cosy and has a beautiful view.  We return to the grounds, have a quick pork-curry-and-rice lunch, and take the shared Sumo to Balpakram. 

The drive starts off well on a tarmac road but soon ends upon a rocky dirt track. Balpakram National Park is 60 kms from Baghmara, and it takes us 2 hours to get there, the road being narrow, curvy and bad. We can see the plains of Bangladesh from the mountain road we're on. We reach the entrance to the park; it's on the main road, but there's no one around. We go snooping about. A couple of the residences around the entrance seem to be occupied. They're unlocked, so someone's living there. In one of the residences, someone has just cooked a meal and left. We find a guard's badge in one of the rooms. Maybe he's on patrol. 

We go for a short walk, return, hang around for an hour and then leave. We could stay here for the night in one of the residences, whether our mystery guard returns or not. We even have some supplies. But we decide to see if we can get transport back. We meet a bike on the road outside who tells us we probably won't be getting any transport back at this time (it's almost 3.30) and ask us to check in at a guesthouse about 20 mins away. 

We walk there, but the guesthouse is being renovated. The caretaker kindly directs us to the next village 5 kms away - Mahadev - where he says we might get accommodation in the PWD guesthouse. We start to walk, and then hitch a ride in an approaching border security van. The officers are nice; they seem amused at our story and how far we've travelled, and drop us at Mahadev, which we learn is on the border with Bangladesh and where the army guys have a checkpost.

We get a lot of glances at the village. The people are friendly but curious about the 3 foreign boys who've just been dropped off in their tiny village by the army. We find the guesthouse soon enough; it's situated on a hill just before the bridge that leads to the village, and is unoccupied, so we finally have our accommodation if we need to spend the night here. We look for transport but find none.

It's getting dark. We chill out at the village. This is a really beautiful place. The guys aren't cranky anymore, which is surprising as this is the one point in our journey so far that I'd expect to be the tipping point at which their anger would boil over and we'd all be at each other's throats, but I guess people can surprise you sometimes. RG seems in a wonderful mood. He's happy that a series of unrelated events has let us to be stranded at this beautiful place almost on the Bangladeshi border with little hope for return in time for any transport back to Tura tomorrow.

We shop for supplies at the village market. Supplies for dinner tonight and breakfast tomorrow. ZP's phone is the only one that's been working up till now, but even here, as in Cherrapunjee, he's on a Bangladeshi mobile network. He finds someone who'll let him make a call to his travel agent to book his tatkal ticket. He also finds someone to make us dinner - fish curry & rice & Maggi. Oh joy! He's especially kicked about the possibility of the fish coming from Bangladesh.

In the meantime, RG stops a bus going the other way and confirms that a bus will be leaving to Tura tomorrow, coming from the next village farther up the road. The bus usually stops in Baghmara, but they're running a service to Tura tomorrow because it's New Year's eve. We're in luck at last.

We sit in the village and look at the stars while munching snacks and waiting for dinner. We can see so many of them in the sky because of the darkness. It's wonderful. Then we eat. I have a little Maggi. But all that travelling has left me without much of an appetite. The helpful villagers guide us back to the guesthouse with torches.

We return to the guesthouse. The lights go out as soon as we unlock and open the door. ZP is scared. He believes it's haunted. The guesthouse is a 2 bedroom one, with a small dining area joining both bedrooms. He insists we all sleep in one room. So we drag the mattress and sheets from one bed to the floor of the other bedroom. Some of the glass panes in the windows in both rooms are broken. And the metal grill along the top of one bathroom wall is rolled back a little. And we can hear tribal-sacrifice-like drum beats coming from the caretaker's house nearby. ZP is spooked. We spend the night shivering with 2 candles for company, wondering at the strange turn of events.

Day 14 - Friday - Dec 31

Mahadev/Baghmara/Tura

New Year's eve. We were originally supposed to be back in Baghmara early in the morning for a 6.30 am shared Sumo to Tura, but we've obviously missed that now. Instead, we're out in the cold in Mahadev at 6.00 am, waiting for a bus to pick us up and (luckily for us) take us all the way to Tura. The only catch is that our backpacks are still in the Baghmara tourist lodge, so we'll have to stop the bus there to get them. Will they let us do this? Or will we have to get off altogether and spend New Year's at Baghmara. The place is nice, but spending a night in Baghmara means we might not get transport to Guwahati back in time for ZP's train. And RG wants to get back at least a day early to make sure we don't miss our flights in case of another bandh.

We take a lot of early morning dawn pics while waiting for the bus. We wait for an hour. One of the villagers tells us how easy it is to cross the border over here. Everyone seems to be doing it both ways. He even points a couple of Bangladeshi traders out to us. The bus arrives at 7.00. The ride to Baghmara is slow and bumpy. It takes us twice as long to reach Baghmara as the Sumo to Balpakram did yesterday - 4 hours. I have a small snack at a stop midway. We reach Baghmara by 11.00.

What follows next is nothing less than a splendid moment of success. We've already told the bus conductor to stop the bus beside the hill on which the tourist lodge is located, and wait a minute for us to get our bags. We leave ZP waiting at the bus and RG and I dash up the steps set into the little hill leading to the tourist lodge, sprint to our room, which I unlock, grab our 4 bags, and dash down the steps to the bus, all in under 2 minutes. We're panting from the effort. And extremely proud of ourselves. 

The bus continues on to Tura, stopping in between at a place where I eat a roti for lunch. The others are surprised that I'm eating on a journey, something I usually don't do. But it's just a small snack. The journey takes 4 hours, longer than the previous 3 hour Sumo ride. The ride is bumpy and dusty. We reach Tura and search for transport for Guwahati asap, and when all we can get is something for the 2nd, book it and search for a hotel again. RG & I want to stay at someplace better for New Year's. We need to rest, and clean up big time. We haven't bathed for over 2 days. ZP wants to take up a cheaper place, but I tell him I'll treat him to dinner if he goes along with us, and we can stay in a cheaper room on our second day here.

We check into Hotel Rickman, clean up, relax and get some BBQ dinner from outside - 4 pieces of chicken, 4 pieces of pork, and chicken liver. Very delicious. We're starved. We also order some food from the hotel - pork fried rice & manchurian chicken (we had originally ordered 2 plates of rice but they screwed up our order, to our benefit). An amazing new year's meal. One that I will always remember.

I gather that in general, though English is widely spoken here, there seems to be a communication problem. People in Meghalaya can't understand us and we can't get through to them. It's probably easier to converse in Hindi.

We're done with dinner by 10.30 and chill out for a while, watching T.V. ZP and I take a walk at a little before midnight. We move away from the town centre, and discover that Tura is actually quite pretty at night. The town explodes into crackers and fireworks at midnight, and we get to see a real spectacle. Church is over for most people by this time, and everyone's zipping about on bikes & in cars, wishing everyone else. The town's in celebratory mode. It rains for a while too.

ZP returns to the hotel at 1.00 AM, and I continue walking for another hour. It's generally cool outside, but not cold. All the walking has left me hot, and the hotel room is stifling.

Day 15 - Saturday - Jan 1

Tura/Guwahati

We take our time getting up today. A lot of our past mornings have been spent on early morning starts to get early morning transport to some other place. And since we're not going anywhere today, we sleep in. We miss the complimentary hotel breakfast that ends at 10.00, so RG & I go out in search of some and a cheaper hotel room.

Almost everything is closed today, except for a few grocery stores. Like in Aizawl, they really take this time of year seriously. RG and I eat a tasty omelette breakfast at a restaurant nearby and book a room at a cheaper hotel. We return to Rickman, and the 3 of us check out. 

On leaving, we see a travel operator nearby who actually has seats available for today afternoon i.e 1 hour from now, in a traveller, a 13 seat vehicle (like a coach). We book at once, even though we've already booked tickets elsewhere for Sunday. The plan is to get out of here asap as everything's dead. We cancel our booking at the new hotel, and dump our bags in the vehicle. It's cloudy outside. Signs of rain. Beautiful weather.

The journey to Guwahati takes around 6 hours, as before. We stop at Machkhowa again, take a rickshaw to Palthan Bazaar, and a bus to Wireless, where we finally get home, and go out with RB for dinner to a restaurant nearby - where we eat pork masala, pork in bamboo shoots & rice.

A very delicious New Year's meal. 

Over dinner, he tells us of a run-in with the cops a day after we left. Ruined his New Year plans. He might have been better off with us. We head home for an early night.

Travel Diary: Dec 28, 2010 - Jan 1, 2011

Random Creature Pics

There's this shot of a creature flying through the air in all its splendour & glory, leaving you in awe of the natural world.

And then there's this shot of a creature flying through the air, period.

Random Creature Pics

It's not Disney - A Lesson On Animal Treatment

I always wonder why people treat wild animals like they're from some kind of full length Disney animated feature, where the wildlife is always tame, friendly, and possesses an affinity for speech and altruism. Where they're predictable.

And you can get as close to them as you like because they're not dangerous and are smart enough to know you mean no harm and just want a better picture and of course they have no problem understanding that and obliging you like they can read your mind. They're so predictable.

Here's what happens to you when you think that way.

A tragic story that took place over a year ago. A visitor to the Guwahati zoo, perhaps awash in ignorance and overconfidence, crossed the barrier to the tiger enclosure and put his hand through the cage to get a better picture of the tigers there. The tigers then attacked him, severing his hand, which led to his death. All in the presence of his family. Now why did he have to do something like that? Simple, he believed that nothing would happen to him, that the tigers would just sit there posing for him.

News flash people - wild animals remain wild - no matter how long they spend around humans. Plucking a creature from the wild and putting it in a zoo doesn't domesticate it. It remains wild, with all it's wild habits, like wanting to protect it's territory, intact.

The same goes for animals born in a zoo. The fact that they've been born and hand raised there doesn't make them any less territorial. They will still attack you if they perceive you as an enemy infringing on their territory. This goes for all cute and cuddly animals as well. Even herbivores.

Farm animals attack their owners if they feel they pose a threat to their new offspring. And those hand reared offspring will later attack their owners if they perceive a similar threat to their offspring.

Animals in game safaris have been known to attack visitors who get too close. Some visitors believe that just because a creature's used to jeeps getting close, that it won't attack them. But sooner or later, one of them is proved wrong, the fallout usually being varying degrees of blood loss.

People just don't get it that in the animal kingdom, what you see is not what you get. Just because a creature looks harmless doesn't make it any less likely to kill you in an instant if it feels like it. You cannot predict animal behaviour by thinking of it in terms of human behaviour. Just because an animal looks cute and cuddly doesn't mean you can pet or touch it.

Here's a list of animal incidents in supposedly safe controlled conditions.

The lesson to take away from this is that all animals are unpredictable, even your pet dog and cat, to some extent. So don't make a fool of yourself and end up hurt or missing an appendage or worse.

Updates:

25/Aug/09: Shocked gamekeeper runs for his life from three ton hippo

19/Nov/09: Caged circus tiger bites off man's fingers

10/Dec/09: Animal tamer mauled by tigers

21/April/10: Security guard attacked by lion in national park

14/June/10: Man choked to death by his pet Boa

It's not Disney - A Lesson On Animal Treatment

Wildscreen '09

Attended the Mumbai leg of the Wildscreen festival, an international wildlife and nature film festival, on Thursday and Friday, at Film City. It was a gathering of amateur and professional wildlife and nature lovers, photographers, documentary filmmakers, interested souls, etc.

The festival is a part of the activities conducted by Wildscreen, a U.K based charity that, according to their website, seeks "to promote the public appreciation of biodiversity and the conservation of nature through the power of wildlife imagery."

The main festival is held at Bristol every two years, with an awards ceremony, where they hand out Panda awards, and hold debates, seminars, screenings, workshops, etc. The international version of the festival is essentially going from city to city screening films and holding workshops encouraging wildlife filmmaking.

Thursday, 12th Feb.

I arrived in time for registration at Whistling Woods International, close to the Goregaon gate of the SGNP at 9.15, only to see the British Council people, who were organising the event, begin setting up.

Sipped coffee while waiting for everyone else to turn up and then sat inside the main auditorium waiting for the 10.00 A.M inauguration to begin. But things like laptops and stage furniture were still being set up. There seemed to be a lot of confusion and poor planning and it was only by 10.15 that things got started.

John Lee, the Dean of WWI, gave an introductory speech, followed by Harriet Nimmo, the CEO of Wildscreen, at 10.20.

Bittu Sahgal, sans ponytail, then gave a typically impassioned talk at 10.30. He stated that the entire film budget of a Wildlife documentary in India is less than the budget of the second sound unit of a BBC documentary. His entire talk was one long rant, mostly about there being no money to work with.

We saw a David Attenborough film from 10.40 to 11.40, Can we Save Planet Earth?, one half of a two part documentary on global warming. The most interesting things about it were the 7 steps to arrest global warming as put forth by a Princeton University professor, and interesting graphics to support main ideas.

Had a 5 minute break after which Harriet Nimmo delivered a Master Class on 'Trends in Wildlife & Environmental Filmmaking'. She described for us the Wildscreen Festival, told us the next awards ceremony would be in 2010, for which they would be accepting entries in January next year, and described ARKive, a relatively new Wildscreen product, a website that collects wildlife pictures for use by others.

• I learnt that blue chip documentaries are those dealing primarily with animal behaviour (like David Attenborough films), as opposed to human-animal interaction at the opposite end (an example would be Saving Luna).

• Expedition Guyana was quoted as an example of getting realistic footage - a man in a tent capturing on camera his thoughts and fears about a storm passing overhead.

• Meerkat Manor: The Story begins was quoted as an example of a new trend where a T.V series is so popular it spins off into a movie. The clip of the start of the movie was good. It built up a description of what was to come to make it seem like some sort of dramatic epic. Also, I liked the shot of the sun rising just as the movie title fades away.

• Another new trend is wildlife documentaries making it to movie theatres, like March of the Penguins. A lot of people are now looking to make something as popular.

• The trend nowadays is to get people's attention, and one way to do this is by keeping them laughing and entertained. They might not want to see something gloomy after a long day at work.
  

The example shown to us was a funny ad for Rethinking the Shark.

• The clip on Polar Bears on Thin Ice taught us to really engage our audiences, use graphics interactively, and make good use of sound and music.

We had lunch after which Producer Amanda Theunissen delivered a Masterclass on 'Storytelling' at 1.45.

• She stared off with telling us to remember 2 rules.

1. You must have a story.
2. The story must have a beginning, middle, and an end.
   

She told us that you must have a story, and even though things may change while filming, so that parts of the story or the story itself change, you still need to have a plan to allow for continuance of the story.

She also told us that the rules shouldn't be straitjackets. You were allowed to develop stories around the rules, but not develop narrow stories to fit the rules.

• We were shown a clip where two kingfishers were fighting and trying to drown each other, when they suddenly get attacked by a predator, showing us that in rare instances, filmmakers do get lucky.

• We were told that two minutes into the movie, your audience needs to know two things:

1. What is the story?
2. What kind of story is it?

We were shown clips of the intros to episodes of Animal Planet shows Meerkat Manor and Vets in Action to demonstrate these points. While the former's intro narrated the the latest dealings in Meerkat Manor, making it seem like a soap opera, the latter's was urgent, clear and to the point, describing the three main cases it would be dealing with. Both intros answered both questions. Their narratives answered the first question, while their tone answered the second.

• For a quick lesson on audience responsiveness, we were shown 3 clips from documentaries about the Wolverine, having to pick the one that we felt appealed to the most number of people.

1. The first one was German; it built up on suspense but otherwise wasn't exciting and didn't show the main subject till the very end.
2. The second was American; it was a bit in-your-face, with a thriller-sounding narration, and showed the wolverine right from the start, making it look ominous and scary with music to follow.
3. The final one was Japanese. It showed ridiculous drawings of a story involving a wolverine with childish sound effects to describe actions that were taking place in the pictures.
   

I personally liked the first and second ones more or less equally, but disliked the third. However, I wonder how I would have felt about the first and second had I seen them in their entirety. As regards which would be the most appealing to the masses, I went with the third. Though it didn't appeal to me, I guess a simple cartoon type documentary would work well on DD.

Others felt that all three would be appealing, but to different audiences. The first one to serious documentary watchers, the second to the normal Nat Geo, Discovery, and Animal planet watchers, and the third to kids and the masses.

• We were told that studies have shown that you just have 5 seconds to capture your audience's attention.

• We were also told that it's best to include a discreet reminder of where the narrative is going somewhere in the documentary.
  

• A question you were supposed to ask yourself is how much does the audience need to know. Too much information and they may get bored.

• The Jeopardy factor. Many filmmakers include something exciting or some amount of tension mid way through the film. (For example, a major challenge confronts the explorers or the main subject.

False jeopardy is when there is false or no tension; when it's played up to be something its not.

• Humans on film need to be understanding, likable, and interesting.

You need to use only interesting people who can carry the audience with them.

• Studies have shown that a person remembers only 3 facts from a documentary and the ending needs to be one of them.
• There shouldn't be too many endings.
• It should be definite and wrapped up well. One example is Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth.
• It should end with the main character if there is one.

We finished at 2.45 and had a 15 minute break, after which we returned to watch another David Attenborough feature, 'Life in Cold Blood: Armoured Giants'.

Friday, 13th Feb.

The day was supposed to start at 10.05. I only reached at around 10.45, but was able to catch a lot of Paul Donovan's Masterclass on 'Sound'.

• He showed us videos as examples of sync recording.

• He quoted David Lynch on sound - you can't have all sound all the time or too little sound all the time. Sound usage depends on the story.

• Layered sound.
  
• Do it piece by piece.
• Use Atmos for background effect.
• Then add sound effects.
• Then add a soundtrack.

We then had a 10 minute break, after which we were supposed to have Naresh Bedi present one of his films, but I guess he was running late, so they showed us the hour long Earth: The Power of the Planet: Atmosphere, instead, which they were supposed to show after lunch.

We then had lunch, followed by Naresh Bedi introducing his film Cherub of the Mist, to us, followed by an after movie discussion, where we learnt about the hardships he faced while filming, like standing alone in the cold for a shot lasting only a few seconds, and having to endure leeches. He then showed us a clip from one of his other documentaries.

All this uptil around 2.30, when Rabiya Nazaki, one of the faculty from WWI, and one of Mike Pandey's proteges, gave us a talk on Mike Pandey's films, and showed us Shores of Silence - Whale Sharks in India, and one of his Earth Matters episodes.

We then had a short break, followed by a viewing of some The Animals Save the Planet shorts, and the morbid movie Global Dimming.

Wildscreen '09

A Movie, an Exhibition, and a Show

Oh man, yesterday was a busy day.

Went for the 10.00 A.M Mass, which I realised was a Feast Mass when I got there. The church grounds (formerly a parking lot) and the streets outside were filled with stalls selling interesting stuff and mostly junk respectively.

Mass finished early and I spent about an hour at home before catching an almost empty train to Bandra for a one and a half hour movie that started at 2.00 (supposed to start at 1.30) - Good Morning Heartache - which turned out to be a dud. I was only one of four viewers.

Ate a Sub after the movie, walked to the station, and took another almost empty train from Bandra to Churchgate. My destination was the Piramal Art gallery at the NCPA for 'Walk on the Wild Side' - a Sanctuary-RBS wildlife photography exhibition. Walked to the NCPA from Churchgate station, passing the Oberoi Trident on the way, which is currently being renovated following 26/11. The entire footpath around the hotel was cordoned off, and almost everyone passing the hotel along the road outside or Marine Drive opposite paused to take a look at it and maybe take a photo as well.

Reached the NCPA at 5.00. The exhibition turned out to be very good. It was divided into segments featuring 'Mutts' cartoon strips; the top three annual Sanctuary prize winning photos from 2000 onwards (the ones that stood out were mating muggers, pelicans in the water vying for food with sunlight glinting off their beaks and the water, an elephant carrying a dead monitor lizard, a red panda, an elephant struck by a train); special mention photos detailing rare birds, mammals (like young desert foxes), amphibians, and animal behaviour; and photos detailing poaching and the wildlife trade. Articles about the link between wildlife trade and terrorism were also displayed.

Left the exhibition at 5.30 and sat at Marine Drive for a while to get some pictures of the sky at sunset and surrounding buildings.






Then headed off to Bandra once again for a performance at St. Peter's by different parish choirs. Listening to Christmas carols is the best way to bring in the Christmas feeling, and with church choirs, you get to listen to the more spiritual ones rather than the pop ones. Choirs I liked best were St. Anne's and the children's choir. St. Peter's and Mt. Carmel were pretty good, while St. Michael's, St. Andrew's, the Chuim choir, and St. Teresa's were O.K.

People don't realise how hard life in a choir can be. It may look romantic and awesome on stage. That's what the audience gets to see. What they don't see are the continuous rehearsals that take place one or twice or thrice a week, with practice frequencies increasing as the performance date nears. They don't get to see how each person in the choir is tested and then assigned a place based on his/her voice, how they have to memorise the words of each song, and master their timing so their twenty voices are made to sound as one, how the choir master makes them start the entire song over again each time something goes wrong or doesn't sound right, no matter how painstaking it may be; the final feeling of elation the first time during practice that the group pulls of a song perfectly, and the camaraderie formed.

It's always fun to see children sing as well. Their voices make for easy listening, and it's always fun to see them bowled over by the audience applause, with their conductor telling them to bow, and them being in a daze and not hearing her all at once, so they end up doing something resembling a reverse Mexican wave with their bodies :-)

Left the church at 8.30, had a Kesar shake at Karachi (they make excellent ones), and went home at last. Passed by I.C Church on the bus home and was glad to miss all the commotion at the fair. Seriously, we really need to do something about toning down the fair or banning it altogether. It's a blot on the colony, a security nightmare as well I'm guessing, and an pot pourri of pollution and crowding, with all it's associated problems like inappropriate behaviour, eve-teasing, harassment, etc. Whatever happened to simple good old fashioned fun? What we have here instead is a filthy Mela with the suburb's choicest collection of rowdy low-life's.

And here's Milburn Cherian's depiction of what happened the last time someone tried to clean up a holy place.

A Movie, an Exhibition, and a Show

Wildlife NGOs - A Quick Summary

I've been following the work of quite a few NGO's recently and while I'm happy at the number of organisations and people vying to protect Indian wildlife, It's also interesting to see that each one has a definite vision and and clear purpose. While the goal of each organisation may be the same - to protect India's wildlife and environment, the paths that they follow to achieve this may be different. I've described a few of the major ones below.

Wildlife Protection Society Of India (WPSI)
http://www.wpsi-india.org/

Provides support and information to government authorities to combat poaching and escalating illegal wildlife trade.

Wordwide Fund For Nature (WWF)
http://www.wwfindia.org/

Conducts education and awareness programmes for the public, studies threats related to wildlife and the environment using scientific information gathering and works with local NGO's and government agencies to develop and implement solutions for these threats through education, capacity building, policy development, etc.

Greenpeace
http://www.greenpeace.org/india/

Lobbies for issues of concern and campaigns to spread awareness of the same.

Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS)
http://www.bnhs.org/

Focused on research based conservation. Research followed by government lobbying. Also conducts education and awareness programmes for the public.


So each organisation has a different vision. While WWF India is involved in more or less the entire spectrum of conservation programmes, WPSI is mainly focused on combatting poaching, BNHS on scientific research, and Greenpeace on activism.

Wildlife NGOs - A Quick Summary

Thinking about the Zoo

I was recently doing some research on conservation when I came across this site dedicated to informing the public about the Byculla Zoo redevelopment plan -

http://www.saveranibagh.org/

While I do keep track of issues like these through the newspapers and the Net, I must admit that this site caught me off guard. It offers actual scanned copies of the CZA's (Central Zoo Authority's) initial report and its criticisms of the master plan to redevelop Mumbai's only Zoo, previously not seen among the popular media.

The newspapers and T.V channels, by contrast, seem to have not given us the whole picture, and instead have focused on merely reporting actions and reactions from different parties involved rather than conducting an analysis of the gaps inherent in the master plan, leading most of us to believe that every thing's alright with the plan itself.

While I understand many of the concerns about the New Zoo - I can't help but wonder about the logic behind creating a zoo in the first place. This brings up a few interesting questions, which I'd like to tackle through an imaginary friend -

Me - Why do we need to have a zoo in a city that contains a large national park?

My friend - Because the zoo, unlike the SGNP, will have assorted wildlife representing all the diversity of India.

Me - Right, so the Zoo has rhinos, etc. that you wouldn't find in the SGNP, but does that justify building a zoo in the first place?

My friend - Yes, because we can't expect everyone to travel all the way to Corbett or Kaziranga or other such supposedly beautiful national parks where they may or may not get a chance to glimpse a rhino, Marmoset, etc. In short, it's troublesome and expensive. We'd rather bring the wildlife to us than go to the wildlife.

Me - Right, but all you've done is prove to me that it's easier to visit a zoo than a park. The fact that this is a easier option does not in itself justify creating a park in the first place. Don't tell me that the reason you want to create a zoo is because it's easy to visit one. That's not really a reason. That's just an argument for argument's sake.

My friend - Well, we have to have a zoo because zoo's have birds and animals, things of beauty,and things of beauty are a joy forever. We need these things close by for the sake of our children, for education, so they can be made aware of conservation issues. You've said yourself that real conservation begins young.

Me - True, but at what cost, would you imprison an animal just to educate a child, or entertain the public. Surely, that's a mockery of education. Aren't there other ways to do this. Zoos used to exist because the public had no means by which they could marvel at wildlife, other than books or actual travel. Now we have T.V, the Internet, we can watch birds and animals at our leisure. We can travel without leaving our living rooms. And use these very resources to educate and entertain people. Doesn't that render the zoo obsolete?

My friend - No, because nothing compares to seeing one of these creatures in the flesh. You've been to the Dubai zoo. Would you position that experience at an equal level alongside an hour of Animal planet?

Me - Maybe, it depends, I'm not sure. But you're still justifying imprisonment for the sake of personal pleasure.

My friend - And what's wrong with that. A lot of the things we do for personal pleasure necessitate undesirable actions. Think of the ice cream you so love. Think of the ingredients. Milk? Think of the process to acquire it. Don't cows suffer, forced to live in squalid, cramped conditions? You're a non-vegetarian. Don't you advocate animal slaughter? So how can you now change track and be concerned about animal welfare. Or is it just 'exotic' animals that you're concerned about?

Me - You're going off topic. That's a different issue. I do admit that a lot of people out there seem like they're wearing blinders. They seem to want to protect only rare wildlife, yet don't care about strays, or even poor people for that matter. For my part, I believe that killing animals for food is O.K, as long as it's done humanely. And so I don't see any contradiction in being a non-vegetarian and fighting for animal rights at the same time. But what I'm talking about here is both similar and different. We need to make sure no animal suffers unduly for our sake. Food is a different issue. I'm O.K with killing domesticated animals for food. But we can't use that same logic to kill whales and tigers for meat. Why, because there are so few of them. Maybe if we brought the tiger population up to 1,00,000 we could then go about hunting tigers for their meat? That's an interesting point but I don't want to get into that now.

My friend - So what you're saying is you are O.K with killing animals as long as there are many of them and its done humanely. You're also saying that we need to be concerned about animal welfare in general, whether in a zoo or a farm.

Me - Exactly, the only difference, in my opinion, is that zoos are unnatural because we can get by without them, whereas we need farms, and farms being a case where animals are kept captive, we need to make sure their stay is as comfortable as possible.

My friend - I agree with you there, but I'm not clear about the line that you've drawn between domesticated and wild animals. You seem to have drawn an imaginary line between the two , thereby concluding that one group is fit for captivity and the other belongs in the wild only. I know that looking at history, we can see that some animals have become fit for domestication and companionship. But just because we've managed to domesticate some animals because of their nature, does not mean that the rest have to be restricted to the jungles, even if they are dangerous. We can always exhibit them at zoos, making sure they're comfortable, and their level of discomfiture wouldn't really be that much different from any domesticated animals, would it?

Me - I'm not so sure you can compare the two groups. Domesticated animals seem to be fit for captivity. They seem to enjoy it , or have adapted to enjoy it. Zoo creatures, on the other hand, seem listless and sad, confined and trapped.

My friend - Is that really your expert opinion, or a guess?

Me - More of a guess based on observation. Assuming I'm right, that zoo creatures do suffer unnaturally, then that would negate your argument about exhibiting creatures for personal pleasure, with the caveat that this suffering is really unnatural.

My friend - We can imprison animals in enclosures that simulate their natural settings, removing their feeling of imprisonment...

Me - But would that be enough? I feel we need more research here. My questions are these -

1. Do wild animals differ from domesticated animals in that they suffer to a degree that we can't ignore when they're placed in zoos?
2. Do their offspring suffer as much?
3. If yes, then is the existence of zoos suspect if all they do is exhibit creatures without using them for conservation purposes like breeding, etc.

And here's where we end our discussion, with doubt...

I'm still searching for answers.

Thinking about the Zoo