HEART OF MY HEART (Satis Shroff)

1.Preface

1. The Heart of the World
2. Catching ’em Alive
3. A Dream Led to Another
4. Flying Over the Abode of the Gods
5. Wildlife Versus Humans in Beautiful Nepal
6. A Minstrel’s Songs of Love and Sorrow
7. Betweeen Heaven and Haydn

2.

Preface

I hail from a geographically landlocked Himalayan country surrounded by blue Shiwaliks and Mahabharat mountains, where the people actually live. Having grown up in the foothills of the Himalayas, I was fascinated and awed by the change in colours of the majestic massifs in the different seasons and times of the day. I’ve witnessed magnificent Himalayan sunsets of the Kanchanzonga with peaks bearing names like: Janu,, Kabru, Dome, Talung, Kanchenzonga, Pandim and Jubonu. I was thrilled to the core by the beauty unfurling in front of me. The Kanchanzonga, my Hausberg, has always been a sacred mountain and on its feet are precious stones, salt, holy scriptures, healing plants and cereals. It is a thousand year belief and tradition that the Himalayas, the Abode of the Gods, should not be sullied by the feet of mortals.

The Himalayas are revered and have taught us to be resilient and to bear pain without complaining; to go with the times, to search for solutions and to keep our ideals high and not to forget our rich culture, tradition, religious and spiritual heritage.

The reality of Everest is something else.

I had another epiphany in the Gornegrat glacier area, with the Zermatt as the jewel in the crown of the Swiss Alpine peaks. In winter I regularly visited the North Sea isles of Sylt or Langeooge. I became a child, admiring the crustaceans on the shore, the sound of the wind and waves. In the Himalayas you also find crinoid fossils and Everest is made of calcium carbonate. So the sea and the mountains are interrelated. Both have always given me peace and tranquility. Home is not a specific place for me.

Home can be places: the place where I was born, the place where I grew up and went to school, Kathmandu where I studied science and worked as a journalist and Freiburg (Germany) where I studied further and worked. Home is where your heart is. It’s not a specific place for me because I have been on a journey and quest which took me 8,000 km away from by birthplace in the Himalayas. I left my inside world after school and went to Kathmandu, my first outside world, which in Nepali is ‘bahira.’ If you asked a Nepalese from the hills or flatlands, he or she’d invariably say ‘I’m going to Nepal.’ Nepal was Kathmandu and Kathmandu was Nepal. The world of the Shahs, Ranas, the education, foreign and home ministries, with all those neo-classical palaces, shrines, temples and pagodas. You couldn’t close your mouth. It was so awesome for a Nepalese from the hills.

The place called home remains in my memory because in the winter holidays we’d gather around the fire and my mom would tell us tales from the Bhagavad Gita, a luminous, priceless gem in the literary world, which taught us unity in diversity.

I now live in the outskirt of Freiburg and the Schwarzwald is right behind my backyard. I get visitors like deer, foxes, squirrels, songbirds of the Schwarzwald, owls and bats. Sometime a pair of storks from neighbouring Kirchgarten. The Black Forest evokes wonderful feelings of being connected with Nature:

Whistles, chirps, hoots

And melodious symphony,

A single bird gives the tact,

A strong monotonous chirp.

The others follow suit,

Not in unison

But still in harmony.

You notice so many melodies

When you eavesdrop,

In the beautiful symphony of the morning:

Adagio, crescendo,

It’s all there

For your fine ears.

I grew up in an area with tall pine trees and the smell of the pines in the foothills of the Himalayas and the sound of monks chanting their ‘om mane peme hum’ mantras. In writing home, I return to my country of origin time and again in my poems and carry the fate of my people to readers in the West by inventing metaphors and making them accessible to global readers through my poetry.

I hear the jhaurey song of the villagers in Kathmandu Valley in which they sing:

We Nepalese have gathered wisdom.

We throw away our money

And call hot water ‘tea.’

On Creativity: My main source of creativity has always been Nature, which we call Prakriti in Sanskrit: the Himalayan flora and fauna, the monsoon and the cold winters. And with winter comes hope of a beautiful awakening of Nature in Nepal and the Schwarzwald.

I like the motto of my men’s choir:

In Freud und Leid

Zum Lied bereit.

MGV-the men’s choir from Kappel

In joy and suffering always ready to sing a song. The choir members come from all walks of life: painters, masons, academicians, physicians, dentists, forest workers and it’s great to swap stories in a tavern after the singing is love. We talk about post-war times, of aches and pains and raise our glasses to celebrate someone’s birthday. There are stories, anecdotes, poems and lyrics everywhere. Living in the Dreisam Valley is so pleasant, a valley with pretty detached houses and picturesque Black Forest homesteads on green meadows and protected by blue mountains. And a reliable wind that cools the valley and is called the ‘Höllentäler,’ the wind from the Vale of Hell. On a clear day you can even see the Vosges of France. The symphony of the songbirds in the early morning hours turns me on creatively.

Is this not Heaven on Earth?

The lush green grass in the meadows,

Has long been cut,

The hay already stacked in the barn.

I gather Löwenzahn for our rabbits,

Tasty salad for humans,

A delight for hares and rabbits.

Frau Frutiker greets me warmly,

Offers Schwarzwälder specialities.

She plays the flute,

Her husband Clemens

The trumpet

At the Buchenbacher Musikverein.

In the Himalayas and the Alps the leaves remain green under the blanket of snow throughout the cold, frosty winter and when Spring comes you notice the flowers have flourished amazingly fast. In the Alps I love the creatively, tall snowy peaks and the smell of the alpine flowers like white anemones, violet enzians, thorny pippau, the edelweiss, queen of the Alpine flowers, with its thick white petals, the Silberdistel and the Alpine rose. I think about Grindelwald, and the walk down from the Zermatt to the valley below and muscle cramps the next day.

A walk along the North Sea shores of Sylt and Langeooge. I feel happiness and gratitude sweep over me.

Creativity brings me to Rainer Maria Rilke who advised a young poet thus: ‘Go into yourself. Find out the reason that commands you to write; see whether it has spread its roots into the very depths of your heart; confess to yourself whether you would have to die if you were forbidden to write.’

I find Karl Ove Knausgaard fascinating as a writer and his days of Creative Writing in Bergen, Norway. He writes about real people.

Favourite Word: My favourite word is solitude and I love it when a French lady uses it in conversation or in a chanson. In German it’s Einsamkeit or also Abgelegenheit, literary expressions of loneliness.

O, solitude

Alone in my thoughts

In the woods,

Listening to the Schwarzwald streams,

Away from the crowds.

To make for the open spaces

And the heights of the Black Forest,

Alps, Vosges and Himalayas.

Serene and contented,

With small things in life:

Books and a room,

A simple life.

My pet peeve?

The fact that the neo-Nazis are on the rise again in Britain, Germany and are getting organized at the European level and nobody cares about it. Through the unification of West and East Germany the number of aggression and brutality against migrants have increased enormously. I sing in a men’s choir and every year on Volkstrauertag (Memorial Day) we sing and the local priest and mayor hold speeches on remembering the past, the Holocaust victims and expressing pleas for a better, peaceful world. It is an annual ritual but world peace is far away. The rightists are well-organised in Europe and have manoeuvred themselves, have infiltrated parliaments and work with clever lawyers. It is the task of the democratic elements in these societies to be on the guard and keep the dark, in this case brown, elements at bay, lest the past mayhem take place when innocent people were arrested, imprisoned in concentration camps because of their religion, political views and complexions. The nefarious deeds of the Third Reich are being repeated and politicians are turning a deaf ear by calling them ‘isolated instances.’ What really peeves me is that the rightists have made incursions into the institutions of modern Germany and the predominant society still has a ‘couldn’t care less’ attitude, and the rightists appear in courts and parliaments with the same non-chalance they had during the 1930s.

What defines me?

I would say compassion, kindness and love for Homo sapiens and the flora and fauna of this world and respect for Mother Earth (Prakriti). A smile to open hearts and inner resilience, the ability to keep trying despite the odds. Along the way I have embraced carpe diem and use my time for writing, singing (men’s choir) and art. At school I was taught punctuality is the politeness of princes. I don’t believe in Nepali time. This holds good for everyone who wants to take his or her career forwards. Keeping good habits and eliminating bad ones is always helpful in this long journey called life. In the past I’ve written about the revolution in Nepal, the Maoist takeover of the former kingdom, the ousting of the king and monarchy in Nepal, about remembering World Wars I and II, Stolpersteine in Freiburg’s cobbled streets, and the need to preserve our wildlife heritage through Wildlife Conservation.

The value of my poems and other writings will be decided by time. It is the story of migration from prose to poetry, and also an internal and external migration to the outer world. A migration from the myths and teachings of Hinduism, Buddhism and Shamanism of the Himalayas to a world of ‘abendliche Christianity,’ Greens, leftists and rightists and democrats of different shades. And the resulting need to create and extend a Culture of Remembering Germany’s hoary historical past which affected and inflicted so many nations in Europe, Africa and Asia. To learn not to make the same mistakes we made in history.

• * *

Misty Catmandu

The Heart of the World

Nepalese men and women work in the fields. They use the traditional bullocks and buffaloes that are seen in the villages of Southeast Asia.

They dig the fields manually. The women work beside the men, with babies strapped to their backs. Long wooden hoes are being used to dig and break the soil, whole families pitching in to do the job. And far out in the distance, the all-seeing-eyes of the compassionate Swayambhu observes the land from the towers on which his eyes are painted.

As you start for the temple, you’re first greeted by two Tibetan lions, set in stone, amid wonderful wooded surroundings. Behind the lions you see three colossal statues of the Buddha, serene and daubed in flaming red and gold. All around you there are naked trees in poses of suspended animation.

The ground crackles as you step on the fallen brown and russet leaves. Shrill bird cries ring through the air. It is roosting time, you say to yourself. The trees are silhouetted against the evening sky and the shadows are lengthening. Your eyes discern the prayers carved in the granite slabs as you ascend the seemingly endless stairs.

A bearded tourist and a bevy of girls giggle nearby, talking in French and eating peanuts. They pass some peanuts to the swarm of monkeys who are a regular feature of Swayambhu. The Rhesus monkeys are creeping, jumping, fooling and fighting with each other.

Playful Rhesus monkey family in Swayambhu, Nepal

“How happy they are”, remarks a tourist with a laugh, as the monkeys climb the spire of the stupa. The overhanging eaves of the stupa, gilded with gold, are loosely chained together. The wind blowing from across the silvery Himalayas makes them rustle. You are dumbfounded by the majestic temple.

Three lamas go by: “Om mane padme hum” stirs in the air.

You take a cue from them and go about spinning the 211 copper prayer wheels that girdle the dome. Then you peer at the all-seeing-eyes painted on the four sides of the stupa and look where they look: at the myriad pale yellow, white, blue and crimson lights of the Kathmandu Valley below. You feel that you have indeed reached the top of the world.

It is chilly, and an icy gust of wind blows your hair. The clatter of the prayer-wheels is constant. The stony stairs are set at an extremely steep angle, but there are railings to help you up or down. A Tibetan, probably a Khampa from Eastern Tibet, mumbles his prayers as he comes down from the temple. He is wrapped in heavy mauve woollens. A shaggy Tibetan Apso, a tiny dog, like a Pekingese, with bells round his collar jingles past.

You go on. A few paces up, a monkey stealthily passes by as though he were a big-game hunter. You are again confronted by meditating Buddhas: the Dhyanibuddha Akshobya who rides an elephant and a lion, Ratnasambhava who rides a horse, Amitabha who rides the peacock and Amoghasiddhi who rides the heavenly bird garuda.

The going is hard but the ascent is redeemed because of the breathtaking beauty of the place. More Rhesus monkeys dart around you. One of them takes a joy ride along the railings like a kid, skids off and vanishes. You can’t help laughing. You abruptly come across two statues of horses: short and stubby. You’re weary but you press on and come across small elephant statues, with live monkeys playing pranks on their backs. The monkeys give you a quizzical stare. These are all part of the Buddhist pantheon. Now you begin to understand why the tourists call this temple complex also “the monkey temple”. The monkeys are protected by law (as is the yeti) and have freedom there since over 2000 years. They live on the offerings brought by the Hindus and Buddhists, and peanuts and popcorn offered by the tourists.

Your climb is over. The sky is dark, blue, and is fast changing into Prussian blue, and Venus has already appeared, but you have eyes only for the gigantic white dome and stupa of the Self-Existent One. The stupa is of great sanctity for all Hindus and Buddhists. It is hemispherical and you are struck by its enormous size. The earliest inscription on Swayambhunath dates back to the year 1129, but the stupa is thought to be much older.

You make your way to a Buddhist monk and he tells you a legend about Swayambhu…

“Once upon a time the Nepal Valley was a great lake. It was on this spot, where you now stand that a lotus bloomed and became the heart of the world.”

Swayambhu temple, Nepal

• * *

A Dream Led to Another

I was around twenty years old,

My head full of dreams.

I left the Himalayan foothills to win a dream:

A dream to go to Europe, visit places I’d read about.

The Bastille from Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities,

Where I spent time recalling the French Revolution.

My friend’s Parisienne sister shook her head and said:

‘Monsieur Satish, there are other ways of spending an afternoon in Paris.’

The smell of sea food at a French harbour,

Such as the peasants of Normandy built.

La Rochelle and the German bunkers in the Ile d’ Oleron.

I peered at sea fogs from the mighty Atlantic,

Watched the ‘last oozing, hours by hours,

From a cider-press’ in the Vosges, as John Keats aptly put it.

***

In Blenhelm’s little tavern I saw murals of its famous son:

Winston Leonhard Spencer Churchill.

I stood in front of Churchill’s grave;

Above his remains lay his mother.

The words of James Shirley came to my mind:

‘Death lays his icy hands on kings,

Sceptre and crown,

Must tumble down,

And in the dust be equal made.

With the poor crooked scythe and spade.’

I listened to the English ‘Country Sound,’

I’d read in William Cowper’s verses.

An eighteenth century house, described by George Eliot.

A pub akin to the one in John Burn’s ‘Tam o’ Shanter’:

Even though ‘pleasures are like poppies spread.’

Took a swig of English ale in picturesque Burford,

A Cotswold town in Southern England.

Country scenarios depicted by John Milton in ‘The Poet’s Pleasure:’

‘And the milkmaid swingeth blithe,

And the mower whets his scythe.’

To walk over the Thames Bridge between Waterloo Bridge and Chelsea,

As in Stephen Gwynn’s ‘Decay of Sensibility:’

‘The half-light when the lamps are first lit’ in London.

Where the people are now confronted

With the uncertainties of Brexit,

And promises made by Trump to May.

Peered at the Gurkha and Scottish Guards

Doing their loyal duty near the Buckingham Palace.

One dream led to another;

I found myself in Stratford-upon-Avon,

To be reminded of the Bard’s words:

‘Turning again toward childish treble,

Pipes and whistles in his sound’

From The Seven Ages of Man.

***

‘In Denmark’ with Edmund Gosse,

When he wrote about:

‘All the little memories of this last afternoon,

How trifling they are,

How indelible!’

At the German butcher’s in Oberried with my friend,

Who died later of aneurisma of the aorta,

The Metzer’s daughter was what he called an ‘Augenweide.’

Having read Mary Shelly’s ‘Frankenstein,’

I found myself in the apothecary in Heidelberg castle,

And later in the Anatomy Museum in Basle,

Fascinated by the deformed specimens,

Preserved in formalin.

Back in the lovely Schwarzwald town of Freiburg im Breisgau

I dissecting an elderly German’s body,

Under glaring white neon light.

Did he fight the Russians in Stalingrad?

He couldn’t tell me his story.

***

The inner German border wall,

Long lines of inhuman barbed wire,

Meant to keep humans in,

Not out.

Hitler said: ‘The great masses of the people

…will more easily fall victim to a great lie

Than to a small one.’

***

Queen Aishwarya and Frau Marianne Weizsäcker in Bonn, King Birendra in the foreground at La Redoute. The British Gurkhas were also present on the occasion in civil.

King Birendra and Queen Aishwarya came

On a state visit to Bonn,

With familiar faces from Nepal’s media.

A reception at La Redoute and Graf Zeppelin,

And a salute from the Bundesgrenzschutz

In Echterdingen.

A few years later the Royal family was massacred,

By the crown prince so the tale goes.

‘Strange things happen in Nepal,’ said my Swabian physician.

***

As if in reply to the 20th year of the Berlin Wall.

A metal plate with these words of Konrad Adenauer

Was hung on 13.8.1981 in Bayern-Thüringen:

“The entire German folk

Behind the iron Curtain call us,

Not to forget them!

We will not stand still,

We will not rest,

Till Germany

Is united again

In peace and freedom.”

We’re fortunate to have lived to see the day.

An invitation from President Gauck

And Winfried Kretschmann

Flattered to me one day from Stuttgart.

A Spätzle lunch with the Landesvater

And dinner with the President.

***

My dreams lived in my head with fluid thoughts.

Went to Venice and imagined the speech

Of Portia to Shylock in The Merchant of Venice:

‘…in the course of justice,

None of us should see salvation.’

A dream within a dream,

Of a young man from the Himalayas,

Now grown old with a shuffling gait.

Goes to Crispano to be bestowed the Neruda Award 2017,

For his verses

And thereby hangs a tale.

• * *

Panthera tigris, Courtesy: pixabay

Catching ’em Alive (Satis Shroff)

I met John Sidensticker, a tiger-ecologist from the National Zoological Park (Smithsonian Institute) in Katmandu. He was a tall, thin-lipped, well-built man with deep blue eyes and a matching ruffle of brown hair. John had a PhD in Wildlife Ecology and Management and was in Katmandu with his wife and a two year old daughter. He’d done a four month job at the Royal Chitwan Park when I met him. And there was also Kirtiman Tamang from the Department of Fisheries and Wildlife (Michigan State University).

The goal of the tiger study was to get a detailed ecological and behavioural information on the animal that had to be known if viable populations of tigers were to be maintained in the wild. There was no use in laying a ban on the tiger-hunts and calling that conservation. The tiger is a lone hunter and there’s still a lot to be known about it, in the field of population dynamics, its special features, its social structure, its response to man and so forth. As to the distribution, the Nepalese tiger Panther tigris, is one of eight subspecies of tigers in the world and is Panther tigris is found in Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Sikkim, Bhutan and West Burma. The other subspecies occur in northern Iran, Afghanistan, China, Siberia and in other parts of south-east Asia.

The tiger-density at the Chitwan Park, according to an estimate in 1974 was between 20 to 25. And the Karnali and Sukla Phanta Wildlife Reserves are said to have fair-sized tiger populations. The cause of the sharp decline in the seventies were: over-hunting, poaching and poisoning of the tiger’s prey. The tiger basically needs vegetative cover in which to hide, a source of water and adequate animals to prey upon.

Sadly enough, man’s progressive strides have jeopardised the tiger’s haven of refuge by clearing forests for agriculture, townships and all the paraphernalia that does in the name of development. The gradual dwindling of Panthera tigris’s natural prey leaves it with no option but to go in for domestic animals, thereby bringing it in direct confrontation with a deadly, invincible, ingenuous and fast spreading animal called Homo sapiens.

The fieldwork of the ecologist duo began in the Park’s Sauraha area, confined to the north-east part. The Chitwan Park is noted for its thick vegetation and complexity, so a zoologist working with only a jotting pad and a pair of eyes would hardly get far trying to study the ecology of the tiger in the Nepalese jungle. It might be the other way around. The duo used radio-telemetry to gather quantitative data on the tiger and, for comparison, leopard movements and predatory activities in of the Chitwan tiger. Radio-tracking consists in attaching a radio-transmitter collar around the neck of the tiger or leopard. But strapping the transmitter-collar around the jungle cat is quite a job, because the animal has to be captured first. This is done by shooting the tiger with tranquilliser darts (the drug then in use was: Parke Davis CI-744).

The exact term for this operation is “chemical restraint,” and it is the safest means available to “manhandle these overgrown and ferocious cats”. The technique used is either to dart free-ranging individuals or to box-trap them. John was telling me that the radio-telemetry and chemical restraint methods were very new in South Asia, in fact they were used for the first time in Chitwan. After an animal is immobilised it is weighed, measured and tagged with a transmitter. The tiger comes out of the drug slowly and there’s no danger, I was told. The poor fellow feels groggy and wobbles on its feet for quite sometime. The radio-tagged tigers and leopards return to both: baits and natural kills the same day they were darted, and they went about their home areas just as casually ,unmindful of the radio-collars.

Radio-tagging has taught us that tigers and leopards use and reuse specific areas, and they shift from one area to another in keeping with factors like: seasonal changes, their reproductive status and forest-fires and grassland cutting by the local Nepalese. However, the main reason for change of habitat by the tigers tends to be due to prey species becoming scarce.

During the tourist season, which falls incidentally in winter, the tigers and leopards are highly active and move about day and night. However, as the season progresses and the mercury shoots up, the tiger tends to enjoy siestas in the unburned tall grass areas near a water-hole. They also enjoy the shade.

An analysis of the predatory habits of the tigers was made with the information collected from at least fifty natural kills and more than thirty baits killed by tigers and leopards. Most of the natural kills were located by tracking instrumented cats. These kills tell us about the movement of the tigers in relation to their kills, the time taken to finish the kills, and the distance covered and time between one kill and another. John and Kirti regularly observed Panthera tigris both from elephant-back and on foot. They made systematic observations from machans (Jägersitz)and line transects. All the data have come in handy in analysing how tigers utilise a particular area in relation to the structure of that area.

Like John was saying, “Only from this can we learn how environmental factors affect, for example, hunting, density of breeding adult tigers, reproductive success, immigration and emigration rates and so on.” This has to be known to determine the course management must take to maximise environmental conditions for the tiger.

In Nepal the National Park and Wildlife Conservation Act of 1974 has made hunting, killing or sale of tiger skins illegal, and it is illegal to kill a tiger in any part of the world. In the year 1986 alone 2,000 Bengal tiger skins were imported to West Germany. Furs are status symbols in the western world, especially among Royalty and the super rich. A leopard fur-coat costs 50,000 Euros.

According to a study on tourism carried out by World Bank adviser Michael Wells based on data collected in 1989, tourism has brought more disadvantages than advantages. The number of tourists visiting Nepal were 260,000 in 1989 and they left 44 million marks in the former kingdom. A fourth of this sum came from the tourist’s purse from the fees collected while visiting a protected area. But the National Parks could make no profits. The money collected through Park entry fees was 1,6 million German marks, but at the same time the Parks had an expenditure of 1,7 million.

More than a third of this sum was spent by the Nepalese government to pay the Royal Gurkhas. They had the function to prevent the local Nepalese from felling trees for firewood, which are actually used for the benefit of the foreign visitors. The rounding up, transport and disposal of the garbage and the excrement left by the tourists also costs money. The World Bank expert suggests raising the entry-fees of the National Parks drastically. In his opinion this will serve as a deterrent to the great number of visitors, and they protect the landscape and provide higher income. But whether this will pay off is another story, and has yet to be seen. His trump is Bhutan, which demands from every tourist 200 US dollars per day.

Nepal, which is a favourite destination among low budget rucksack tourists, doesn’t have such strict regulations till now, and no compulsory sums to be spent per day. The tourists spend an average of 32 dollars per day in Nepal.

***

FLYING OVER THE ABODE OF THE GODS

“Will the passengers please fasten their seat belts,” said a soft voice over the intercom. And I slid one end of the belt into the heavy metallic slot, sat back, and peered through the window of the Nepalese jet.
 
The runway was clear and there was an Airbus 310, three Russian-made helicopters and a Dornier-aircraft near the control tower of Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan International Airport. Some people waved from the tower. It was one of those early-morning mountain flights that are run ‘provided-the-weather-is-good’ as they say in tourist-brochures.
 
My seat was right near the port wing and I could get a fairly good view of the engines coming noisily to life. The jet taxied lazily down the southern end of the runway, swerved around and sped towards the north gathering momentum till I could finally feel a hollow in my stomach. We were airborne.
 
It was a steep climb and the blue mountain front was looming close. You could even spot the trees growing on the mountainside. But in a moment we left it behind. I was thrilled at the picturesque panorama of Kathmandu Valley with its pretty brown terracotta houses and prominent pagodas, which receded beneath as the jet banked almost languidly in an easterly direction.
 
The first mountain that caught my eyes, was the conical snowbound Langtang Peak, which was gleaming in the early morning sunlight. By the time Dorje Lakpa loomed on my window, the aircraft had attained its ceiling height of 30,000 feet. Dorje Lakhpa in Tibetan means “thunderbolt hand”. Nearby was another splendid peak, the 19,550 ft. Choba Bamare, reigning in splendid isolation. Choba Bamare rose in the distance and seemed to fizzle out towards the east.
 
I sat tight in my seat, oblivious of the 50-odd passengers in the aircraft’s cabin, lost in a world of snowy fantasy, and marveling at the thought that we were less than fourteen miles away from those Himalayan giants, and feeling snug inside the pressurized cabin. Over the monotonous whirr of the Yeti’s engines, the captains voice boomed through the intercom: “Attention ladies and gentlemen, the big peak to your left is Gauri Shanker.”
 
The 23,442 feet Gauri Shanker, which is part of the Rowaling Himal Chain, was bathed in a ghostly mantle of snow and dominated the scene. This was indeed the Mount Olympus of the Orient, I said to myself. Gauri Shanker, the legendary abode of the Hindu God Shiva and his consort Parvati.
 
The Melungstse massif appeared to be blanketed with snow and looked smooth and even: like a tent covered with snow, except that a depression existed between Melungtse and its sister peak Chobutse.
 
Chugmago, Pigferago and Numbur impressed me with their virgin and silvery summits–looking placid and serene.
 
My thoughts drifted to the ageless Himalayas and their eternal silence. But my Himalayan reverie came to a momentary stop, when a tall and petite air-hostess came offering orange juice at a cruising height of 30,000 feet. It was a toast to the Himalayas.
 
From the 26,750 ft. Cho Oyo onwards, the Khumbu Range began to show their undisputed supremacy, since this range boasted of the mightiest of the mighty among mountains. As the jet flew past the 25,990 ft. Gyachungkang Peak, I was pleasantly surprised to find the steward come over to my window, point out small dotted structures against a rugged mountainside and say, “There’s Namche Bazaar.” I was amazed. Namche of the mountaineer’s delight, and the home of the Sherpas. Namche, the village that has become a byword in mountaineering and trekking circles throughout the world–lay below us.
 
The jet lost height gracefully to give the passengers a closer view, and the snows looked hauntingly beautiful from the port side windows. The warm sunlight filtered through smack on my face. Its warmth was reassuring.
 
The 23,443 ft. Pumori Peak seemed to be soaring in the distance, and that was when I began to ogle at the familiar 25,850 ft. Nuptse peak. Then suddenly, like a revelation, I spotted the giant amongst them all: the grey, imposing triangular massif that was Mount Everest to the outside world, Sagarmatha to the Nepalese and Chomolungma ‘the Goddess Mother of the Earth’ to the Tibetans. There were flecks of snow to be seen along the ridge of the highest peak in the world. A trail of vapor was emanating from its limestone summit.
 
Far below the magnificent Ama Dablam peak struck me as trying to reach for the sky. But I had eyes only for the mysterious, grey and foreboding Everest massif. I recalled Mallory’s words: “There was no complication for the eye. The highest of the world’s mountains had to make but a single gesture of magnificence to be lord of all, vast in unchallenged and isolated supremacy.
 
The peaks Lhotse, Chamlang and Makalu continued to fascinate me. I felt thrilled to my marrow as the knowledge that we were flying over the highest mountains in the world sank into my head. I noticed that the Himalayas occurred as narrow ranges, prominently longitudinal and that the highest Himalayan chains below us were not massive elevations but narrow ridges.
 
Towards the north, as far as the eye could see, was the barren Tibetan Plateau: rightly dubbed the Roof of the World. I was astonished to note that beyond the Everest massif’s central chain there were no Himalayan ranges. It was the limit–the last frontier. The bleak Tibetan Plateau seemed to blend with the horizon towards the north.
 
I could not help feeling nostalgic as the jet turned for the homeward flight. I peered at the blue Mahabharat Mountains below and the Siwalik Hills a little further south–and the extensive, fertile Terai, which blended with the azure sky. While the major ‘snows’  were still visible on the starboard , it was fascinating to see the hanging-valleys, aretes, cwms and magnificent glaciers directly beneath the port windows. It reminded me of a trip I had made to the Swiss alpine town of Grindelwald, where the tongue of the glacier licks almost the town. Occasionally, as the jetliner sped by, the mountain-tarns would catch the sun’s rays on their crystalline surface, thereby imparting blinding flashes of reflected light.
 
It must have snowed the previous night, since the neighboring hills, which were normally beyond the zone of perpetual snow, were also covered in varying degrees with fluffy blankets of virgin snow. One couldn’t help being overwhelmed by the ecstatic and exotic beauty of these high snowbound wilderness areas that we were over-flying.
 
Continental music began to seep into the pressurized cabin and the lithe and beautifully swarthy air-hostess came down the aisle gracefully handing the passengers miniature khurkis (curved Gurkha knives) as souvenirs, with the usual compliment of sweets.
 
I could feel the captain easing off the throttles and saw the spoilers on the top surface of the port wind rising up slowly, in a row inducing a drag and causing the jet to slow as it touched town at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan Airport.

***

Wildlife Versus Humans in Beautiful Nepal

The loss of wildlife habitat in the states of Nepal, India and Pakistan caused by widespread and indiscriminate destruction of forests in the foothills of the Himalayas and the Karakoram has led to an ecological crisis, resulting in floods and landslides after the torrential monsoons. When the forests recede the humans venture further into the habitats of the wild animals to cut and gather firewood.

Take Chitwan, the jungle in Nepal’s Terai for instance. Till 1961 organised poachers wantonly decimated the wild Rhinoceros unicornis in the jungle in order to sell the rhino-horn for a profit due to its healing properties in traditional Chinese Medicine. In February 1993 for instance, four rhinos were found dead in the Chitwan Park and the poachers had removed their hoofs and horns. In Nawalparasi there had been similar cases of rhinos being shot for their horns and hoofs a few weeks earlier.

To assist the helpless wardens a battalion of 8oo Royal Gurkhas had been deployed. According to the then director of the wildlife department Tirtha Man Maskey, “There are 400 rhinos in Chitwan with a reproduction rate of 2% according to research statistics.” A few days earlier 12 persons were arrested with 44 pieces of rhino hoofs and two pieces of horns. And in the Shukla Phanta three Rhino-cubs were found dead. The average life span of a rhino is 60 years. To combat the increased poaching a security committee involving the Chitwan chief district officer, forest officer, security officer along with the representatives of the various units had been formed. The point was: will poaching be stopped in the long run or only as long as the Royal Gurkhas prowl and patrol the National Park? Moreover, the Gurkhas were deployed to stop the Maoists insurgents in the past, and the poachers faced hardly any resistance and started decimating the wild animals. That also scared the tourists, and they were advised from their respective foreign departments to avoid Nepal.

The population of rhinoceroses has decreased the world, and four species are threatened with extinction. The Taiwanese are known to be stockpiling rhino horns as an investment. According to a World Wildlife Fund(WWF) estimate already 10 tonnes are already stored in Taiwan. In 1970 the price of a kilo African rhino horn was $30 and today more than $2,000. The Asian rhino horn, which is smaller than the African one, is worth $50,000 a kilo because the Taiwanese think it’s more potent. Even though commercial trade in rhino horn and its by-products are prohibited under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species, Zimbabwe and South Africa would like to export them and use the money to support effective anti-poaching programmes. It’s a case of legal trade to stop illegal poaching.

But poaching is also a trade. The legal market might “jeopardise rhinos elsewhere” according to Joanna Pitmann, who thinks “Taiwanese traders see gold in stocks of rhino horn.” To think that 30 years ago there were 100,000 black rhinos in southern Africa. Now there are only 3,500, the better part of which are in Zimbabwe, which is notorious for its high poaching-rate. According to Joanna Pitmann: “An average of three rhinos are lost in Zimbabwe every week.”

There seems to be a lucrative market and desperate souls are out to smuggle as many rhino horns and hoofs as possible. But aside from poaching there are also other problems. Thanks to the electrification of the many lodges along the Chitwan Park border the rhinos, tigers, leopards, and other denizens of the Royal forest nowadays have started getting used to techno-sound, hip-hop, lambada, Bollywood melodies, and rock n’ roll music blaring for the delights of the jungle tourists. The noise pollution created by the industry catering to tourism, in what should be a tranquil and serene National Park, is a nuisance indeed for the denizens of forest.

Nepal’s Endangered Rhinos: Once a royal hunting reserve, the lowland valley of sal forest and riverine grassland has come to be known as the Royal Chitwan National Park, and is Nepal’s number one Park. Take a trip down to Chitwan and you will get what I mean.

The wildlife you will get to see ranges from tigers, leopards, gaurs, sloth bears, sambars, chitals, hog deer, barking deer to the noted Gangetic dolphins which are seen cavorting in the waters of the Narayani River. And if you have a crush for ornithology, you will find exotic avi-fauna. Chitwan without the great one-horned rhinoceros would be unimaginable, since the area is internationally known as the wallowing grounds of 300 to 350 rhinos, which incidentally is the second largest population in the world.

Back in 1975 the rhino population of Chitwan was between 200 to 250.If you are planning to make a trip to Chitwan, I would advise you to make it between January and May, because that’s when the rhinoceros concentration down there is the greatest. The lush, green grass provides high quality grazing to the rhinos. In May they begin to shun the tall grass species which are unpalatable, and that is when they make for the paddy fields of the local hamlets to pull nocturnal raids much to the consternation of the local Tharu and other Nepalese farmers. During the day you will find them wading in the shallow rivers and feeding on the aquatic plants.

Do the rhinos have a specific breeding season? Actually there’s no evidence. The habitat in Chitwan is such that it provides a year-round food supply, and the conditions of living are most favourable to them. During the mating season, you are likely to hear “pant squeaks” when a male is hot on the trail of a female rhino. The females emit squeaks of low intensity when the pursue the males. The highest frequency of such squeaks is heard in the month of March. The males can be seen making furrows on the earth or sand as the case may be, by dragging their stubby hind legs along on the toes, while urinating. This was a phenomenon which had been baffling a biologist from Cambridge named Andrew Laurie whom I met, and who was doing research on the ecology of the Nepalese rhinos. He’d been recording the rhino behaviour every month and felt that their urinating and furrow-making during the monsoon may have been due to the “bad conditions for track preservation” He said, “The furrows are made by male rhinos after unsuccessful attempts to mate cows or after encounters with humans”.

The rhino has a long period of pregnancy and the young ones take an equally long time to mature, and all this overrules the advantage of a regular breeding season. When a rhino cow has completed her period of gestation, she heads for a secluded spot. The cow disappears into the thick forest for several days before the birth. Andrew Laurie had evidence for a possible oestrus periodicity of between 34 and 44 days, which he obtained in the months of June and July. Laurie said, “I saw a bull grazing and moving with a cow and her two year old calf from the 14th to 16th June. On 15th June he mounted the cow and remained mounted for one hour, stationary in the elephant grass”.

One whole hour: it was unbelievable.

Laurie went on to say, “I didn’t see the bull again with the cow and her calf until the 19th of July, when he attacked her. It was amazing. He succeeded in turning her right over on her back by lifting from the side with his head between her front legs. And all this while the calf grunted from a distance in the tall grass.”

He said the cow and the bull evaded each other until the 27th of July when the cow started to follow the male around sniffing at his penis, urinating herself and uttering “squeak blows”.

There is a possible peak births during July and August, which would tie in with a peak of mating activity in March and a 16 1/2 month gestation period. But Andrew was of the opinion that mating behaviour and births have been recorded throughout the year, and it was hard to detect a peak. “I’ve christened a healthy calf with the named Lickety Split,” he said with a chuckle because it seemed to dash about in the Chitwan foliage. The movements of the rhinos tend to be linked with food availability. They can be observed during the March-April feeding on the short grasses in the river banks in the blazing and forested plains located below the foothills of the Himalayas.

When grasses are scarce, they try aquatic plants, sedges and other coarse plants rather reluctantly. And when the grasses are burnt by the villagers of Chitwan, they immediately rush to these places to eat the charred stalks, which they relish. They return about two weeks to the same place to eat the new shoots. It’s quite intriguing to watch a rhino eat short grass. It uses its lips to bite off or pull up the shoots. The chewing is continual and often, the animal blinks and then bites off new grass with its lips again. You will discover that some roots and grass drop out by the side of the rhino’s mouth, but the animal normally has a gargantuan appetite and eats even the dead, russet and yellowed leaves on the ground.

And peaceful coexistence is not exactly what the villagers in the vicinity of the Royal Park believe in, at least as far as the rhinos are concerned. The Nepalese villagers have been briefed about the importance of the National Parks for the country, but not the animals. From as early as April in Katar and in the eastern parts of the Chitwan Park, the ungainly, cool and determined rhinos begin visiting the farmlands and feeding on the first rice and maize crops because they are so supple and delicious to them. Some of the rhinos tend to be neurotic and go about eating bananas, weeds and ripe wheat. And some even indulge in coprophagy. Keeping off the wildlife from the crops is indeed an eternal problem that the Nepalese farmers in the Terai face.

Rhino greetings: How do rhinos greet each other? They do it like the eskimos, I mean the Inuits. A young rhino approaches another slowly with its nose stretched forward. The noses come in contact gently, and often a sparring bout ensues with one’s horn circling the other’s snout. But unlike the Inuits, the horns of the rhinos sometimes clash with a great noise. A nuzzling of the side of one’s face with the other’s mouth may take place, with a view to biting each other. And sometimes, you may be able to watch a rhino down in Chitwan bob its head up and down or even grazing and sweeping its head speedily from side to side. However, the approaching rhino, after touching the newcomer’s nose or nuzzling him will graze with him peacefully. The adult cows and bulls behave differently. They avoid contacts. But when they do come in contact, they hold their heads high and snort again and again, and even bare their teeth.

And what do adult males do when they come face to face with each other? They either ignore each other or threaten each other. The meeting is characterised by head-on approaches at times, followed by loud shouts, squirts of urine and touching of horns, low on the ground. And one of them may even turn and flee honking. Sometimes, a fight may develop in which the tusks are used a lot.

Andrew said, “During a fight one November, one male lost half its horn and both rhinos were deeply gashed. One of the animals returned six miles to the south of the Rapti River the next night. He walked very slowly, dragging a back leg and fed for no less than two hours.” Eating after a good fight seems to do them good. You will find that the rhinos show the most aggressive behaviour in their wallows, where threats and fights are very common, especially during the monsoon season. Despite the existence of many wallows in Chitwan, you will find the rhinos concentrated at a few wallows, and the wallows are changed very often. Most interactions involve rhino cows and calves. The approach of another rhino to the wallow might trigger off an interaction.

Attacks normally take the form of a charge. I remember having read an exciting description of a charging rhino by Peter Fleming in my school days, in which he called the animal a “brute”. Well, if you had a huge rhinoceros charging at you, you wouldn’t be inclined to call it friendly or cute either I suppose.

The best thing to do under such conditions would be to clamber up a thick tree. But the tourists in Chitwan are mostly on elephant-back and hence such situations hardly arise. When a rhino charges, the head is held low, mouth open, tusks bared and the charge is accompanied by a loud roar. The rhinos stop facing each other at a distance of one to two feet. The charge is ritually repeated. Or one of the animals might turn and disappear into the jungle: a loser. Each attack results in the loser having to divert to another place in the wallow, or even away from the wallow all together. A banishment and the winner takes it all.

Approaching rhinos sometimes turn and go on quite oblivious of the snorts. Others don’t even bother to take notice and walk right in. Even between the same rhinos in similar situation, the results of encounters are different on different occasions, and not stereotyped, according to Laurie.

“One cow and calf” he said,” always occupied the same position in a wallow no matter which rhinos were present. They never took part in aggressive interaction rituals.” But the normally playful rhino-calves are involved in the interactions.” In one case,” said Andrew, “a two month old calf attacked an adult female after she had chased off his mother. The cow in turned chased him in the opposite direction, but the spirited calf charged twice again. The cow stopped in front of him each time with her tusks bared, roaring loudly. Eventually the calf’s grunts were answered by soft squeaks blown from his mother, who had returned to fetch him.”

Interestingly enough, dung-piles are used by all members of the rhino population. And when a rhino comes across fresh dung, it serves as a signal for him to defecate. Calves invariably defecate after their mothers. And the dung-piles are developed in areas frequented by rhinos especially along paths and near wallows, and they are often 20 feet in diameter. A most remarkable thing about rhinos is that they defecate after an encounter with either another rhino, elephant or humans. So if a rhino defecates after he or she sees you don’t feel insulted. It’s the done thing in the world of the rhinoceros. One would not like to pass judgement, but the rhinos of Chitwan seem to have an entirely different opinion about us humans.

Besides the defecation, urination is also another important communication signal for the rhinos. A rhino squirts urine during or after encounters with fellow rhinos, elephants or humans, especially while walking away. It also urinates while on leaving a forest or grassland, a ditch, a field or road edge. The rhinos, while urinating, are known to scrape and drag their feet. The marking behaviour of the rhinos form a sort of communication system between individuals. The olfactory signals are recognised by other fellow rhinos.

The dung-heap for instance stimulates the rhino to defecate, and the furrows created by them after defecation and urination serve as visual and scent marks. And what’s remarkable is that the only permanent association among the rhinos happens to be the cow and her calves. The adult males are solitary, egoistic and do not tolerate the presence of other rhinos. Physical contact is very important in the cow-calf relationship, and wallowing cows and calves often lie touching each other. The small and chubby calves are very playful and spend long periods rubbing their heads and flanks along their mother’s huge body.

Mating among the rhinos takes place when the calf is about two years old. The calf is driven away usually by the male at the time of courtship. Both male and female follow each other’s tracks in Chitwan or for that matter in Kaziranga or elsewhere, when they have lost contact and greet each other by touching noses. The behaviour patterns change as the animal matures from a baby to a calf, and from a sub-adult to a full grown, breeding adult. Forty years go, most of the rhinos in Chitwan lived in the ideal, wild environment with very few people and extremely low amount of cultivation.

The only deadly enemies were the stately princes and maharajas from Kathmandu or their royal guests from Great Britain, who took pride in wantonly shooting animals after driving them and trapping them through the use of hundreds of villagers who encircled them with endless white sheets of cloth, and the beating of drums, tin-cans to create a great clamour and frightening noise in the otherwise serene jungle in the Terai.

Royal Hunts: The royal shikaris sat on perches called machans or on the backs of tamed elephants and shot the animals, birds and reptiles. Not because they had hunger as is in nature among the denizens of the jungle, but because it was chic and was supposed to be a sport ever since the gun was invented. The idea was not to stalk an animal alone in the ratio of one against one, with the undercover of the jungle as part of the game, and to kill a wild animal to feed the starving wife and children. Agriculture and transportation problems were already solved and hunting and killing helpless animals living in the jungles and forests came in vogue, to be documented for posterity in front of ‘fierce’ animals, not realising that the fiercest and wildest animal was the human himself armed with a gun and lethal cartridges.

In one big game expedition alone, the Nepalese Royalty Jung Bahadur Rana shot 21 elephants, 31 tigers, 7stags, 1 rhinoceros, 1 boa constrictor, 11 wild buffaloes, 10 boars, 1 crocodile, 4 bears, 20 deer, 6 pheasants and 3 leopards. Three successive generations of British monarchs have done game-hunting in the Nepalese Terai jungle. In 1886 when King Edward VII visited Nawalpur he is said to have bagged 23 tigers, 1 leopard and 1 bear. His son King George V shot “in one day in Chitwan” 10 tigers, 1 rhino and 1 bear. That was in 1911.

In 1921, the Duke of Windsor, when he was the Prince of Wales, visited Bhikhana in the Nawalpur district and took part in a shikar (hunt)and was presented the following animals and birds by the Maharaja Chandra Shumsher Rana as a present for the London Zoological Gardens:1 baby elephant,2 rhinos,2 leopards,2 Himalayan black bears,2 leopard cats,1 black leopard,1 tiger,1 Tibetan fox,1 mountain fox,2 sambhurs,1 thar,1 unicorn sheep,3 musk deer,1 four-horned sheep,1 one-horned Tibetan shawl goat,2 Tibetan mastiff puppies,1 monitor and 1 python.For the ornithological collection there were: 4 Nepalese kalij, 1 white crested kalig-pheasant, 4 cheer-pheasants, 2 koklass-pheasants, 4 chukor-patridges, 4 swamp-patridges, 2 green-pigeons, 10 bronze-winged doves, 3 Great Indian Adjutants (L. dubius), 1 hawk, 1 peafowl (P. cristatus). That was just the list of the animals presented by the Nepalese Maharaja.

In the course of the shikar, the Prince of Wales shot 17 tigers, 10 rhinos, 2 leopards, 1 bear, 7 jungle-fowls, 2 partridges, 15 snipes, 1 peacock and a hamadryas (Naja bungarus).

“How long did it take to shoot all these animals?” you might ask.

Just eight days.

Today, the animals in the jungles of Chitwan, as elsewhere in the world, have to coexist with more people in the areas due to the increase in human population and migration of people from the mountains of Nepal under the resettlement programme of the Nepalese government. Much of the mixed forest and grassland areas which are good rhino habitat have been destroyed, giving way to settlements and cultivated fields.

The Nepalese population in 1974 was 12 million and in 1996 it is almost 18 million. Now it is 27 million. The humans multiply despite the so-called family-planning programmes that are publicised in Radio Nepal and Nepal Television, in the Gorkhapatra and The Rising Nepal. The movements of the rhinos and other animals in their original home grounds of the Terai (lowlands) have been restricted, so that they move after dark: stealthily, warily, over areas which used to be previously grassland and dense jungle. Nevertheless, there’s one thing that gladdens all conservationists and animal lovers alike, is that the Nepalese rhinos are opportunists and surprisingly adaptable, utilising a wide range of food.

With proper wildlife management, the rhinos of Chitwan have increased in number. And rhinoceroses have also been translocated from the Chitwan Valley to the Royal Bardiya Wildlife Reserve. In order to reintroduce a part of the endangered species in another part of the country and to provide them with an alternate habitat, and as an insurance against any unforseen catastrophe that could infect the rhino population in any particular area. The translocation might also help reduce the conflicts between the need for protecting the endangered species(and their gene pool)and the Nepalese villagers living in the periphery of the Nationalal Parks.It took 16 hours to bring the rhinos from Chitwan to Bardiya, and was a major success. The WWF(USA) gave a helping hand to the Nepalese, and tranquillising equipment and other support were provided by the Smithsonian Institute.

But there’s no need to be complacent, since the rhinos may succumb if disease broke out among them, for despite their thick armour, they are just as fragile as humans inside, as far as immunity is concerned. The most appropriate measure would be to move the villages from the Park area and to compensate the Nepalese villagers adequately through organisations like the WWF, World Bank or whatever, so that the wildlife may not have to encroach upon paddy fields at night. After all it is the human beings who have been encroaching upon the territory of the ‘wild’ animals, and not the other way round. The rhinos move in relation to the food, and when there is a stiff competition for food from wildlife, domesticated animals and the local people, migration to another territory is inevitable. The National Parks and Wildlife Office and the KMTNC need to be more vigilant in preventing human encroachment and poaching for furs and aphrodisiacs at the cost of rare animals which are a natural heritage, worth preserving.

On the one hand you have the government and conservationists passing laws that the Chitwan jungle be declared a National Park, so the dollar-paying tourists can stay in so-called jungle-lodges and go on photo-safaris on the backs of elephants through the thick elephant grass and drink campari or bourbon-on-the-rocks. And on the other hand, you have the farmers and villagers of the Chitwan area, who are endangered by the wild animals of the National Parks, because the wild animals (elephants, rhinos, tigers, leopards) not only come at night looking for fodder (rice, bananas, maize) and easy prey in the form of domestic animals, but also enjoy the protection of the National Park Rangers and, therefore, of the government.

The Chitwan Park covers 93,200 hectares and comprises also the flood plains of the Rapti, Reu and Narayani Rivers. The confrontation between the wildlife and humans in the jungle areas is pre-programmed. In 1974 there were approximately 400 rhinoceros and 70 tigers in Chitwan Park. According to a recent report published in July 31, 2006 the population of the endangered one-horned rhino in Chitwan has dropped from more than 500 six years ago to around 370. Three one-horned rhinos were killed and one wounded by poachers in around Chitwan National Park in south-western Nepal in the last week of July 2006.

It can only be hoped that the Nepal Terai Ecology Project’s attempts to make solar-powered electrical fences to keep the rhinoceros out of the farm lands will be a help, though prowling big cats don’t make much of such man-made hinderances.

Wildlife versus Humans: The KMTNC has in the past also initiated a grassland Ecology and Human Use project in collaboration with the International Institute of Environment and Development (USA). An American biologist named John Lemkhul made an in-depth study of the grassland ecosystem in Nepal, and the project proposed to develop a management scheme for the thatch grass that is vital for local human needs.

A Nepali grassland expert Keshav Rajbhandari from the Department of Botany also took part as a consultant. The study revealed that the Chitwan Park was providing over 15 million rupees indirectly to the village economy by permitting the local villagers to cut grass in the park for two weeks every year. It was found that 90,000 Nepalese enter the park during the two week season. The cutters are legally allowed to cut khar, kharai, bayo and smiti. The villagers walked up to 3km to get to the park and up to four members of a family helped to cut the grass. Even the Nepalese villagers need an entry permit to cut grass.

But at night, when the wild animals start plundering the crops, the farmers become angry, and try to drive them away. Moreover, there have been tragic episodes enough to fill volumes, whereby the village children and women have been attacked by the wild animals. The Rising Nepal and the Gorkhapatra, two Kathmandu-based governmental English and Nepali dailies, bring out such tragic news often enough. The humans living in the vicinity of the National Parks, that goes not only for Chitwan but also Langtang, Bardia, Rara, Sagarmatha (Everest) National Parks, are tempted to go to the Parks with their lush green grass and vegetation to gather firewood and fodder for their domestic animals. This phenomenon is also evident in the Darjeeling area, despite the forest-officers on duty. Where there’s poverty and an acute dearth of firewood, there’s always a way out of the desperate situation, mostly through illegal means.

It’s not uncommon to read in the pages of The Rising Nepal about the call to “Propagate the Nature Conservation Message” and about the heavy responsibilities of the wardens in the preservation and effective management of Nepal’s national parks and wildlife reserves. And in the same daily you have the story of how wild elephants terrorised and destroyed some thatched houses and saplings in Morang district, and how a village assembly member named Khadga Bahadur Ale was crushed to death while travelling from Letang to Kane through a forest.Or the story of a four year old girl named Sita Devi Paudel of a village in Dhikurpokhari who had been suffering from diarrhoea and was carried away by a tiger around 8:30pm and the next day only some part of the girl’s body were found in the nearby jungle.

Meanwhile, there was another story about wild elephants on the rampage from the Sunsari district, where they’d destroyed the thatched huts of 12 families in the Baraha Chetra villege. And in the hamlet of Bishnu Paduka four cows and two domestic swines had been killed and some goats injured by the wild elephants. Another caption tells the story of how the man-eater leopard which had attacked many children in the Kaski district was killed by a single bullet fired by Ram Bahadur Tamang, a resident of Chapakot village in Lalitpur district. The leopard was 4.5 feet long, and had been terrorising the children belonging to the hamlets of Hemaja, Dhita, Kaskikot, Dhikurpokhari, Bhadauremagi and Sarankot.

The story reminded me of the German TV film entitled “Danger in the Rapti” by Max Rehbein, who’s protagonist was Hemanta Mishra, a Nepalese wildlife expert, who likes to hear Beatles songs, in the role of a swashbuckling local Jungle Jim, in which he shot a man-eater and smoked a cigarette with the thankful village headman, for want of a peace-pipe. Hemanta Mishra used to work in the wildlife office in the early 1970s and ran the King Mahendra Trust for Nature Conservation, and was awarded the J. Paul Getty Prize for Natural Protection. He worked for the UNO later in New York.

Another story deals with a leopard which killed ten children, aged 3 to 13, in the hamlets of Dhimal, Bhadaure, Tamagi and Sarankot. A small 3 year old girl named Maya Adhikari of Malang village in the Sarankot district was snatched away from her mother as she was being washed in front of her house at 7pm on a Sunday. No wonder that the local people living in the vicinity of the National Parks feel insecure and few villagers venture out of their homes after sunset. The tigers turn into man-eaters only when then become old, are injured or have lost their habitat. The question is: Do the tigers encroach into the habitats of the Nepalese villagers or is it the other way around? To date there are 13 national protected areas comprising more than 9% of the total land area in Nepal. According to the Save the Tiger Fund report, the situation of the tiger in Chitwan is optimistic and their numbers are increasing and their habitats are improving. The number of elephants are also on the rise and provided that poaching is curbed, the numbers of rhinos will definitely increase in the future in Nepal.

The situation may take a positive trend if the Nepalese farmers plant trees, for only a fourth of the forest wealth of Nepal has remained intact. The reason is that in the year 1967, the then Nepalese government nationalised vast forest areas in the country. And after that the Nepalese farmers didn’t feel obliged and responsible for the forests and started cutting down trees without second thoughts. In order to combat this, the Nepalese government introduced in 1979 the village-forest, the state-forest and the so-called protected-forest.

Old eco-song & dwindling habitats: “Nepal’s wealth is the forest, said our ancestors” runs an eco-melody over Radio Nepal, but the vast tracts of forests have been encroached upon by people looking for agricultural-land. With the Nepalese forests dwindling, there is an increasing pressure in the remaining forests which have been declared National Parks, and are protected by the government.

There’s no denying that there’s a struggle for habitats between the wildlife and the humans in the vicinity of the National Parks of Nepal, as elsewhere in the world. As long as the Nepalese government and its apparatus, the wildlife offices, are active and educate and warn the people and nab the poachers, there might be hope for Nepal’s wildlife. But can more wardens and wildlife management help in a country where the population has been steadily increasing, and where there’s a dearth of arable land, and thus the competition and habitat encroachment on the part of the wildlife as well as humans in the limited living space in Nepal?

The 104 year old misrule in the past under the Rana heredity Prime Ministers, and the defunct Panchayat government, and the later administrative mistakes on the part of different governments, have led to the reduction in the number of flora and fauna in Nepal, not to speak of the forests which were prized for trees like the karma for furniture, sal in the foothills of the Churai chain for construction purposes. And sadly enough, Nepal needs 7.5 million tons of newly planted trees per annum if it is to avoid shortages.

At this stage I shall have to tell the story of a big game hunter-turned-conservationist. He came to Nepal in 1960,when there were a lot of tigers and no tourists. The tigers were shot till they became almost rare.

Today there are a little more than 60 tigers at Chitwan Park. Some In the year 1999 the number of tourists who visited Nepal were registered as 492,000 but due to the decade of armed conflict between the government troops and the Maoists some 13,000 Nepalese, mostly civilians, died. The tourists were advised not to go to Nepal and the number of visitors sank to 277,000 in 2005. The tourists were obliged to pay a “tax” to the Maoists.

Although over 15,000 tourists come each year to the Terai, the tiger population has nevertheless increased since then. The British banker named Jim Edwards (Tiger Tops) is supposed to have brought about this wonder. He organised jungle tours, wild water trips and trekking in the Himalayas, complete with climbing equipment: all for dollars naturally, because you cannot live in the Himalayas without money, and he has a beautiful residence in Kathmandu, a luxury apartment in London, and a domicile in posh St. Moritz. And till 1960 he was busy making money by organising big game Safaris. And since a couple of decades it’s been ecology and tourism.

Protected Wildlife: The growth of the population in the Terai area and elsewhere in the Middle mountains of Nepal, which shows an increment of 2.6 per cent does and will exert a lasting pressure upon the wildlife and vegetation of Nepal in the long run. And these are the questions that will pose serious problems for the country in the future. For with the construction of new roads, establishment of new industries and lodges and hotels for the foreign tourists, the country expects an industrial and tourist-boom that might disturb the ecological balance of this beautiful biotope that is Nepal, with its diverse flora, fauna, landscapes and ethno-cultural rarities.

Meanwhile, the protected wildlife of Nepal has been divided into 38 species falling under the three classes of mammals, birds and reptiles. The National Park and Wildlife Conservation Act has put 26 species of mammals, 9 species of birds and three species of reptiles in the wildlife protection list (1993). The protected mammals are: the red monkey, hispid rabbit, wolf, red panda, hyena, lynx, tiger, wild elephant, small boar, stags, yak-nak, “napon”, “salak”, “sonru”, the Himlayan red bear, “lingsang”, “charibagh”, leopard, the snow leopard, the rhinoceros, the musk deer, gaurigai, wild buffalo, “chiru” and “chapeka”.

The birds in the protected list are: the stork, orane, Lopophorus impejanus (Nepal’s national bird), “garmujur”, the great pelican, the white stork, “chir”, the munal pheasant and the “sano swar mujur”(peacock with the small voice). The list of protected reptiles include: the python,”sungohari” and the gharial.

After the establishments of National Parks in Nepal a number of projects were started: the Nepal Terai Ecology Project, the Snow Leopard Project, the Barun Valley Project, the Annapurna Project, International Workshops on the National Parks, Rhino translocation to India, the Nepal National Conservation Strategy, the Gharial Conservation project to name a few. The Smithsonian Institute (USA) helped start the Nepal Tiger Ecology Project in the 1974 and then decided to change the name of the project to “Nepal Terai Ecology Project” and expand the research activities “beyond the tiger.”

One can only hope that the delicate balance between the Maoists and government troops will be set aside, and the poaching will be curbed in due time in one of the most beautiful National Parks of the world. For Nepal’s National Parks are worth a visit. The romantic sunsets, the cries of the wild in the jungle nearby, the adventurous hotels and modern amenities for the visitors from abroad, and the friendliness of the Nepalese people from different ethnic backgrounds.

I still hear the frivolous melody Resam piriri played by a Nepali boy with a flute in the Terai, Nepal’s lowland, and it reminds me of the wonderful people I met during my sojourn in my Himalayan country, be they Tharus, Rais, Magars, Gurungs, Tamangs, Chettris and Bahuns or Newars. I still see their smiling faces and their kind words, despite the decade of hardships, terror, intimidation and uncertainty. I admire their inborn desire to survive all these human-made obstacles and misery, to keep a stiff upper lip, and the hope and faith that they have in the Gods and Goddesses of Kathmandu, and Nepal in general.

In diesem Sinne: Jai Nepal, Waldmannsheil, Namaste from the Black Forest!

* * *

(c) Art & Nepali poem by satisshroff

Gainey: A Minstrel’s Songs of Love and Sorrow (Satis Shroff)

The way was long, the wind cold

The minstrel was infirm and old;

His withered cheek and tresses grey

Seemed to have known a better day

(Sir Walter Scott in ‘The Lay of the Last Minstrel’)

Gainey: A Minstrel’s Songs of Love and Sorrow

Go away, you maya.

Disappear.

Haunt me not

In my dreams.

What has become of my country?

My grandpa said:

“In Nepal even a child

Can walk the countryside alone.”

It’s just not true,

Not for a Nepalese,

Born with a sarangi in his hand.

I’m a musician,

One of the lower caste

In the Hindu hierarchy.

I bring delight to my listeners,

Hope to touch the hearts

Of my spectators.

I sing about love,

Hate and evil,

Kings and Queens,

Princes and Princesses,

The poor and the rich,

And the fight for existence,

In the craggy foothills

And the towering heights

Of the Himalayas.

The Abode of the Snows,

Where Buddhist and Hindu

Gods and Goddesses reside,

And look over mankind

And his folly.

I was born in Tanhau,

A nondescript hamlet in Nepal,

Were it not for Bhanu Bhakta Acharya

Who was born here,

The poet who translated the Ramayana,

From high-flown Sanskrit into simple Nepali

For all to read.

I remember the first day

My father handed me a sarangi.

He taught me how to hold and swing the bow.

I was delighted with the first squeaks it made,

As I moved the bow on the taught horsetail strings.

It was as though my small sarangi

Was talking with me.

I was so happy,

I and my sarangi,

My sarangi and me.

Tears of joy ran down my cheeks.

I was so thankful.

I touched my Papa’s feet,

As is the custom in the Himalayas.

I could embrace the whole world.

I remember my Papa saying to me:

‘My son, it was God Shiva

Who taught us humans music.

God Krishna plays the lute,

His Gopinis listen to him full of rapture.

Saraswati is always depicted with the sitar.

So you see, my son,

It was the Gods who taught us music.

You only have to listen

To Nature in the wee morning hours

Or at night,

You will hear glorious melodies

That you capture with your sarangi.

Your instrument becomes

The voice of Prakriti.

My father taught me the tones,

And the songs to go with them,

For we, gaineys, are minstrels

Who wander from place to place,

Like gypsies,

Like butterflies in Spring.

We are a restless folk

To be seen everywhere,

Where people dwell,

For we live from their charity

And our trade.

The voice of the gainey,

The sad melody of the sarangi.

A boon to those who love the lyrics,

A nuisance to those who hate it.

Many a time, we’ve been kicked and beaten

By young people who prefer canned music,

From their ghetto-blasters.

Outlandish melodies,

Electronic beats you can’t catch up with.

Spinning on their heads,

Hip-hopping like robots,

Not humans.

It’s the techno, ecstasy generation

Where have all the old melodies gone?

The Nepalese folksongs of yore?

The song of the Gainey?

“This is globanisation,” they told me.

The grey-eyed visitors from abroad,

‘Quirays’ as we call them in Nepal.

Or ‘gora-sahibs’ in Hindustan.

The quirays took countless pictures of me,

With their cameras,

Gave handsome tips.

A grey-haired didi with spectacles,

And teeth in like a horse’s mouth,

Even gave me a polaroid-picture

Of me,

With my sarangi,

My mountain violin.

Sometimes I look at my fading picture

And wonder how fast time flows.

My smile is disappearing,

Grey hair at the sides,

The beginning of baldness.

I’ve lost a lot of my molars,

At the hands of the Barbier

From Muzzafapur in the Indian plains.

He gave me clove oil

To ease my pain,

As he pulled out my fouled teeth,

In an open-air salon,

Right near the Tribhuvan Highway.

I still have my voice

And my sarangi,

And love to sing my repertoire,

Even though many people

Sneer and jeer at me,

And prefer Bollywood texts

From my larynx.

To please their whims,

I learned even Bollywood songs,

Against my will,

Eavesdropping behind cinema curtains,

To please the tourists

And my country’s modern youth,

I even learned some English songs.

Oh money, dear money.

I’ve become a cultural prostitute.

I’ve done my Zunft, my trade,

An injustice,

But I did it to survive.

I had to integrate myself

And to assimilate

In my changing society.

Time has not stood still

Under the shadow of the Himalayas.

One day when I was much younger,

I was resting under a Pipal tree

When I saw one beautiful tourist girl.

I looked and smiled at her.

She caressed her hair,

And smiled back.

For me it was love at first sight.

All the while gazing at her

I took out my small sarangi,

With bells on my fiddle bow

And played a sad Nepali melody

Composed by Ambar Gurung,

Which I’d learned in my wanderings

From Ilam to Darjeeling.

I am the Sky

You are the Soil,

Even though we yearn

A thousand times,

We cannot be together.

I was sentimental that moment.

Had tears in my eyes

When I finished my song.’

The blonde woman sauntered up to me,

And said in a smooth voice,

‘Thank you for the lovely song.

Can you tell me what it means?’

I felt a lump on my throat

And couldn’t speak

For a while.

Then, with a sigh, I said,

‘We have this caste system in Nepal.

When I first saw you,

I imagined you were a fair bahun girl.

We aren’t allowed to fall in love

With bahunis.

It is a forbidden love,

A love that can never come true.

I love you

But I can’t have you.’

‘But you haven’t even tried,’

Said the blonde girl coyly.

‘I like your golden hair,

Your blue eyes.

It’s like watching the sky.’

‘Oh, thank you,

Danyabad.

She asked: ‘But why do you say:

‘We cannot be together?’

‘We are together now,’ I replied,

‘But the society does not like

Us gaineys from the lower caste.

The bahuns, chettris castes are above us.

They look down upon us.’

‘Why do they do that?’

Asked the blonde girl.

I spat out:

‘Because they are high-born.

We, kamis, damais and sarkis, are dalits.

We are the downtrodden,

The underdogs of this society

In the foothills of the Himalayas.’

‘Who made you what you are?’ she asked.

I told her: ‘The Hindu society is formed this way:

Once upon a time there was a bahun,

And from him came the Varnas.

The Vernas are a division of society

Into four parts.

Brahma created the bahuns

From his mouth.

The chettris who are warriors

Came from his shoulder,

The traders from his thigh

And the servants

From the sole of his feet.’

‘What about the poor dalits?’

Quipped the blonde foreigner.

‘The dalits fell deeper in the Hindu society,

And were not regarded as full members

Of the human race.

We had to do the errands and menial jobs

That were forbidden for the higher castes.’

‘Like what?’ she asked.

‘Like disposing dead animals,

Making leather by skinning hides

Of dead animals,

Cleaning toilets and latrines,

Clearing the sewage canals of the rich,

High born Hindus.

I am not allowed to touch a bahun,

Even with my shadow, you know.’

‘What a mean, ugly system,’ she commented,

And shook her head.

‘May I touch you?’ she asked impulsively.

She was daring and wanted to see how I’d react.

‘You may,’ I replied.

She touched my hand,

Then my cheeks with her two hands.

I found it pleasant and a great honour.

I joined my hands and said sincerely,

‘Dhanyabad.’

I, a dalit, a no-name, a no-human,

Had been touched by a young, beautiful woman,

A kuiray tourist,

From across the Black Waters:

Kalapani.

A wave of happiness and joy

Swept over me.

A miracle had happened.

Like a princess kissing a toad,

In fairy tales I’d heard.

Perhaps Gandhi was right:

I was a Child of God,

A Harijan,

And this fair lady an apsara.

She, in her European mind,

Thought she’d brought human rights

At least to the gainey,

This wonderful wandering minstrel,

With his quaint fiddle

Called sarangi.

She said in her melodious voice,

‘In my country all people are free and equal,

Have the same rights and dignity.

All humans have common sense,

A conscience,

And we ought to meet each other

As brothers and sisters.

I tucked my sarangi in my armpit,

Clapped my hands and said:

‘That’s nice.

Noble thoughts.

It works for you here, perhaps.

But it won’t work for me,’

Feeling a sense of remorse and nausea

Sweep over me.

* * *

BETWEEN HEAVEN & HAYDN (Satis Shroff)

Singing in the Schwarzwald – St.Peter

The Männergesangsverein ‚Liederkranz’ Kappel staged a spiritual concert conducted by Johannes Söllner ‘Heaven and Haydn’ with the cooperation of the Chorvereinigung Hochdorf which was conducted by Rainer Hoffmann. The solists were: Stephanie Dauer (Cello), Andrea Kampe (Orgel) and Christian Kohler also Orgel.

The mixed choir from Hochdorf was already onstage and sang ‘Shalom Chaverim’ after the last notes of the cello played by Stafanie Dauer has ceased. The men’s chor then sang the same verse as they approached the stage. It was a choral duet with the sad and sorrowful wailing of the cello which resounded in the hall of St. Peter and Paul. It was a spiritual delight to listen to the two choirs reaching a crescendo.

The Chorvereinigung Hochdorf MGV Kappel a traditional spiritual songs from the mass ‘Hier liegt deiner Majestät’ by Michael Haydn: Gloria, Credo, Zur Opferung and Zur Wandlung sung with pathosand gusto as the song demanded. The audience had been requested not to applause after every piece and save it for the finale.

Andreas Kumpe played choral introduction ‘Schmück dich, o liebe Seele’ BWV 654 by Johann Sebastian Bach followed by the Chorvereinigung Hochdorf with ‘Herzekrank’ composed by Stefan Kalmer and ‘Im Grünen’ by Felix Mendelsohn Bartholdy.

The ladies of the Chorvereinigung Hochdorf gave a lively performance wearing evening costumes and their typical orange chiffon shawls.

Stephanie Dauer delighted us with her Prelude from Suite in G-major BWV 1007 composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. The deep tone of the cello filled the room ranging from deep bass to the higher tones played with feeling by Stephanie.

We men from the MGV Kappel sang ‘Ich bete an die Macht der Liebe’ composed by Dimitri Bortniansky

And arranged by Heinrich Poos, ‚So nimmt denn meine Hände’ composed by Friedrich Silcher, with arrangement by Johannes Söllner, a young guy who likes to keep his head bald and who has what er Germans call ‘Pfiff.’ He also has a wonderful sense of humour.

Christian Kohler did an improvisation on ‘So nimm denn meine Hände’ which means: so take my hands then.

The Chorvereinigung Hochdorf sang Uti var hage composed by Hugo Alfven, Sommerpsalm by Waldemar Ahlen and the German version of ‚Irish Blessing’ James E. Moore. Wonderful renderings. Christian Kohler did his own interpretation of ‘Heaven is a Wonderful Place’ which was actually meant as a musical premonition for the vocalists.

The MGV Kappel sang their pepped-op version of ‘Heaven is a Wonderful Place’ arrangement by Wolfgang Koperski. Then came the German version of The Legend of Babylon (Farian/Dowe/Reyam/Mc Naughton) arrangement by Peter Flammen.

The finale was the Irish Blessing (Irischer Segenswünsch) a traditional song sung together by the Chorveinigung Hochdorf & MGV Kappel ‚Liederkranz’ and arrangement by Felix Rosskopp, the former conductor of MGV Kappel who now works in Offenburg.

The MGV ‘Liederkranz’ will soon be presenting a programme for ‘young and old’ and want to do a musical together with the voices of the men’s and children’s choir. I think bringing young and elderly people together is a wonderful idea, not only during the musical in the not-too-distant-future but also as a resource for the existing men’s choir. It is hoped that the parents of the young singers will also take interest in the activities of the MGV Kappel and function as active members n the verein or as well-wishers, supporters and passive members.

A thunderous applause followed and it was a good feeling, a feeling of having touched the hearts of the people of Kappel, Littenweiler, Buchenbach, Kirchzarten and the whole Dreisam Valley.

Songs (Lieder as we say in German), have been written by most German poets and there are many folk songs or Volkslieder since the 16th century onwards, with the difference that the lyricists are unknown. A special form is the musical Lied of the 19th and early 20 century. It was Mozart who wrote the first examples. In addition to many individual songs, Beethoven composed the first song-cycle, Liederzyklus, with the title: An die ferne Geliebte. Songs for the distant lover. However, it was Schubert who used melody, modulation and accompaniment to draw out the full meaning of poems. Schubert wrote more than 600 Lieder and two song-cycles: Die schöne Müllerin and Die Winterreise.

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The person Satis Shroff has various faces, of a singer, author, poet, medical lecturer, artist . Which face is near to your heart?

I like writing which means sitting down and typing what you’ve thought about. Writing is a solitary performance but when I sing with my croonies of the MGV-Kappel it is sharing our joy and sadness and it’s a collective song that we produce and that makes our hearts beat higher during concerts. When an idea moves me for days I have the craving to pen it. I get ideas when I’m ironing clothes and listening to Nepali songs or Bollywood ones. When I don’t have time, I make a poem out of it, for poetry is emotion recollected in tranquility. When I prepare my medical lectures I’m transferring knowledge from my university past and bringing them together verbally, and I realise it’s great fun to attain topicality by connecting the medical themes with what’s topical thereby creating a bridge between the two. That makes a lecture interesting, which is like a performance, a recital in which you interact with the audience.

At school I was taught art by a lean, bearded Scottish teacher who loved to pain landscapes with water-colours. Whenever I travel during holidays, I keep an Art Journal with my sketches and drawings, and try to capture the feelings, impressions of the place and people I meet, and it’s great fun to turn the pages years later and be reminded how it was then. I like doing all these things and they’re all near to my heart.  

2. What does literature mean to you ?

Literature is translating emotions and facts from truth to fiction. It’s like a borderline syndrome; between sanity and insanity there’s fine dividing line. Similarly, non-fiction can be transformed into fiction. Virginia Woolf said, ‘There must be great freedom from reality.’ For Goethe, art was art because it was not nature. That’s what I like about fiction, this ability of transforming mundane things in life to jewels through the use of words. Rilke mentioned one ought to describe beauty with inner, quiet, humble righteousness. Approach nature and show what you see and experienced, loved and lost.

3. Normally a scientific mind and literary heart do not go together. How do you manage that? (since you were student of zoology, botany and medicine)

At school I used to read P.G.Wodehouse (about how silly aristocrats are and how wise the butler Jeeves is) and Richard Gordon (a physician who gave up practicing Medicine and started writing funny books). For me Richard Gordon was a living example of someone who could connect literature with bio-medical sciences. Desmond Morris, zoologist (The Naked Ape, The Human Zoo) was another example for me. He has also written a book about how modern soccer players do tribal dances on the football-field, with all those screaming spectators, when their team scores a goal. That’s ethnological rituals that are being carried out by European footballers.

Since I went to a British school I was fed with EngLit and was acquainted with the works of English writers like Milton, Shakespeare, Dickens, Hardy, Walter Scott, RL Stevenson, Rudyard Kipling, HG Wells, Victor Hugo, Poe, Defoe, Hemingway, and poets like Burns, Keats, Yeats, Dante, Goldsmith. Since we had Nepali in our curriculum it was delightful to read Bhanu Bhakta, Mainali, Shiva Kumar Rai and other Nepali authors. At home I used to pray and perform the pujas with my Mom, who was a great story teller and that was how I learned about the fantastic stories of Hindu mythology. At school we also did Roman and Greek mythology. My head was full of heroes. I was also an avid comicstrip reader and there were Classics Illustrated comic with English literature. I used to walk miles to swap comic-books in Nepal. It was mostly friends from the British Gurkhas who had assess to such comics, gadgets, musical instruments they’d bought in Hong Kong, since it was a British enclave then.
Science can be interesting and there is a genre which makes scientific literature very interesting for those who are curious and hungry for more knowledge.

In Kathmandu I worked as a journalist with an English newspaper The Rising Nepal. I enjoyed writing a Science Spot column. One day Navin Chandra Joshi, an Indian economist who was working for the Indian Cooperative Mission asked a senior editor and me:

‘Accha, can you please tell me who Satis Shroff is?’

Mana Ranjan gave a sheepish smile and said, ‘You’ve been talking with him all the time.’ 

The elderly Mr. Joshi was plainly surprised and said, ‘Judging from his writing, I thought he was a wise old man.’

I was 25 then and I turned red and was amused.

As I grew older, I discovered the works of Virginia Woolf, DH Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Authur Miller, Henry Miller, Doris Lessing and James Joyce. The lecturers from the English Department and the Literary Supplements were all revering his works: A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake. His works appealed to be because I was also educated by the Christian Brothers of Ireland in the foothills of the Himalayas, with the same strictness and heavy hand. God is watching you..

Since my college friends left for Moscow University and Lumumba Friendship University after college, I started taking interest in Russian literature and borrowed books from the Soviet library and read: Tolstoi, Dostojewskije, Chekov and later even Solzinitzyn’s Archipel Gulag. I spent a lot of time in the well-stocked American Library in Katmandu’s New Road and read Henry Miller, Steinbeck, Faulkner, Thoreau, Whitman.

Favourite books and authors:

Bhanu Bhakta Acharya’s ‘Ramayana,’ Devkota’s ‘Muna Madan,’ Guru Prasad Mainali’s ‘Machha-ko Mol,’ Shiva Kumar Rai’s ‘Dak Bungalow,’ Hemingway’s Fiesta, For Whom the Bells Toll, Günter Grass ‘Blechtrommel,’ Zunge zeigen, Marcel Reich Ranicki’s ‘Mein Leben,’VS Naipaul’s works,  ‘Joseph Conrad’s ‘Heart of Darkness,’ James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses, Stephan Hero, A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Faust I, Faust II’, Leo Tolstoy’s ‘War and Peace,’  Rainer Maria Rilke’s ‘Briefe an einen jungen Dichter’ Goethe’s ‘Die Leiden des jungen Werther,’The Diaries of Franz Kafka’ Carl Gustav Jung’s ‘Memories, Dreams, Reflections,’ Patrick Süskind’s ‘Perfume,’ John Updike’s ‘The Witches of Eastwick,’ ‘Couples,’ Peter Matthiessen’s ‘The Snow Leopard,’ Mark Twain ‘A Tramp Abroad,’John Steinbeck’s ‘The Pearl,’ Rushdie’s ‘Midnight Children,’ Jonathan Franzen’s ‘The Corrections,’ John Irving’s Last Night in Twisted River.  

Position of Nepali as world literature in terms of standard:

Nepali literature has had a Cinderella or Aschenputtel-existence and it was only through Michael Hutt, who prefers to work closely with Nepalese authors and publishes with them, under the aegis of SOAS that literature from Nepal is trying to catch the attention of the world. We have to differentiate between Nepalese writing in the vernacular and those writing in English. Translating is a big job and a lot of essence of a language gets lost in translation. What did the author mean when he or she said that? Can I translate it literally? Or do I have to translate it figuratively? If the author is near you, you can ask him or her what the meaning of a sentence, certain words or expression is. This isn’t the case always. So what you translate is your thought of what the writer or poet had said. I used to rollick with laughter when I read books by PG Wodehouse and Richard Gordon. I bought German editions and found the translations good. But the translated books didn’t bring me to laugh.

Tribhuvan University has been educating hundreds of teachers at the Master’s Level but the teacher’s haven’t made a big impression on the world literary stage because most of them teach, and don’t write. Our neighbour India is different and there are more educated people who read and write. The demand for books is immense. Writing in English is a luxury for people who belong to the upper strata of the Nepalese society. Most can’t even afford books and have a tough time trying to make ends meet. The colleges and universities don’t teach Creative Writing. They teach the works of English poets and writers from colonial times, and not post-colonial. There are a good many writers in Nepal but their works have to be edited and promoted by publishers on a standard basis. If it’s a good story and has universal appeal then it’ll make it to the international scene. Rabindra Nath Tagore is a writer who has been forgotten. It was the English translation that made the world, and Stockholm, take notice.

Manjushree Thapa and Samrat Upadhya have caught the attention of western media because they write in English. One studied and lived in the USA and the other is settled there. Moreover, the American publishing world does more for its migrant authors than other countries. There are prizes in which only USA-educated migrants are allowed to apply to be nominated, a certain protectionism for their US-migrants.

Motivation to write:

The main motivation is to share my thoughts with the reader and to try out different genres. Since I know a lot of school-friends who dropped out and joined the British Gurkhas  to see the world, it was disgusting to see how the British government treated their comrade-in-arms from the hills of Nepal. On the one hand, they said they are our best allies, part of the British Army and on the other hand I got letters from Gurkhas showing how low their salaries are in the Gurkha Brigade. A Johnny Gurkha gets only half the pay that a British Tommy is paid. Colonialism? Master-and –Servant relationship? They were treating them like guest-workers from Nepal and hiring and firing them at will, depending upon whether the Brits needed cannon-fodder. All they had to do was to recruit more Brigades in Nepal. This injustice motivated me to write a series on the Gurkhas and the Brits. I like NatureJournaling too and it’s wonderful to take long walks in the Black Forest countryside and in Switzerland. As a Nepalese I’m always fascinated and awed by the Alps and the Himalayas. 

A Specific writing style?

Every writer in his journey towards literature discovers his own style. I’ll leave it to Heidi Poudel to explain my writing: ‘Brilliant, I enjoyed your poems thoroughly. I can hear the underlying German and Nepali thoughts within your English language. The strictness of the German form mixed with the vividness of your Nepalese mother tongue. An interesting mix. Nepal is a jewel on the Earths surface, her majesty and charm should be protected, and yet exposed with dignity through words. You do your country justice and I find your bicultural understanding so unique and a marvel to read.’ Reviewed by Heide Poudel in WritersDen. Heidi is a writer from New Zealand married to a Nepalese.

My suggestions to readers in Nepal:

I might sound old fashioned but there’s lot of wisdom in these two small words: Carpe diem. Use your time. It can also mean ‘seize the job’ as in the case of Keating in the book ‘Dead Poets Society.’ When I was in Katmandu a friend named Bindu Dhoj who was doing MBA in Delhi said, ‘Satish, you have to assert yourself in life.’ That was a good piece of advice. In the Nepalese society we have a lot of chakari and afnu manchay caused by the caste-and-jaat system. But in Europe even if you are well-qualified, you do have to learn to assert and ‘sell’  and market yourself through good public relations. That’s why it’s also important to have a serious web-presence. Germany is a great, tolerant country despite the Nazi past, and it’s an economic and military power. If you have chosen Germany, then make it a point to ‘do in Germany as the Germans do.’ Get a circle of German friends, interact with them, lose your shyness, get in touch with German families and speak, read, write and dream in German. If you like singing then join a choir (like me), if you like art join a Kunstverein, if you like sport then be a member of a Sportverein. If you’re a physician, join the Marburger or Hartmann Bund. Don’t think about it. Do it. It’s like swimming. You have to jump into the water. Dry swimming or thinking alone won’t help you. Cultural exchange can be amusing and rewarding for your own development.       

Current and future projects: I always have writing projects in my mind and you’ll catch me scribbling notices at different times of the day. I feel like a kid in a department store when I think about the internet. No haggling with editors, no waiting for a piece of writing to be published. I find blogs fantastic. Imagine the agonies a writer had to go through in the old days after having submitted a poem or a novel. Now, it’s child’s play. Even Elfriede Jelenek uses her blog to write directly for the reading pleasure of her readers. The idea has caught on. In a life time you do write a lot and I’m out to string all my past writings in a book in the Ich-Form, that is, first person singular and am interested in memoir writing, spiritual writing, medical-ethno writing and, of course, my Zeitgeistlyrik . Georg F. Will said: A powerful teacher is a benevolent contagion, an infectious spirit, an emulable stance toward life. I like the idea of being an ‘infectious spirit’ as far as my Creative Writing lectures are concerned, and it does your soul good when a young female student comes up to you after the lecture and says: ‘Thank you very much for the lecture. You’ve ignited the fire in me with your words.’ I love to make Creative Writing a benevolent contagion and infect young minds with words.  

To my Readers in Nepal: Be proud of yourself, talk with yourself as you talk with a good friend, with respect and have goals in mind. If your goal is too high you must readjust it. My Mom used to say, ‘Chora bhayey pachi ik rakhna parchha. When you’re a son you have to strive for higher goals in life. I’d say a daughter can also adopt this. Like the proverbial Gurkha, keep a stiff upper lip and don’t give up. Keep on marching along your route and you’ll reach your destination in life. But on the other hand, be happy and contended with small successes and things. We Nepalese are attributed with ‘Die Heiterkeit der Seele’ because we are contented with small things which is a quality we should never lose. Keep that friendly Nepali smile on your face, for it will bring you miles and miles of smiles; and life’s worthwhile because you smile.

On literature: When you read a novel or short-story, you can feel the excitement, you discover with the writer new terrain. You’re surprised. You’re in a reading-trance and the purpose of literature is to give you reading experience and pleasure. Literature is not the birth-right of the lecturers of English departments in universities where every author of merit is analysed, taken apart, mixing the fictive tale with the writer’s personal problems in reality. The authors are bestowed with literary prizes, feted at literary festivals and invited to literary conferences and public readings.

Literature belongs to the folk of a culture, but the academicians have made it their own pride  possession. Would like to hear Hemingway telling you a story he had written or an academician hold a lecture about what Hemingway wrote? I’d prefer the former because it belongs to the people, the readers, the listeners. In India and Nepal we have story-tellers who go from village to village and tell stories from the Ramayana and Bhagavad Gita. Story-telling has always appealed to simple people and the high-brows alike, and has remained an important cultural heritage. The same holds for the Gaineys, those wandering minstrels from Nepal and Northern India, with their crude violins called sarangis. They tell stories of former kings, princes and princesses, battles, fairy tales, village stories, ballads accompanied by the whining, sad sound of the sarangi.

Literature has always flown into history, religion, sociology, ethnology and is a heritage of mankind, and you can find all these wonderful stories in your local library or your e-archive.

My first contact with a good library was the American Library in Katmandu. A new world of knowledge opened to me. I could read the Scientific American, Time, Newsweek, the Economist, The New York Times, National Geographic, the Smithsonian, the Christian Science Monitor. The most fascinating thing about it was , you only had to be a member and you could take the precious books home.

OMG! It was unbelievable for a Nepalese who came from a small town in the foothills of the Himalayas. Nobody bothered about what you were reading: stories, history, new and old ideas, inventions, theories, general and specific knowledge. The sky was the limit. I had a voracious appetite, and it was like the opening of a Bildungsroman.

Historical novels tell us about how it was to live in former days, the forms of society involved that the writer evokes in his or her pages. In ‘A Year in Provence’ Peter Mayle makes you almost taste the excellent French food and wine, and the search for truffles with a swine in hilarious, as well as the game of bol. On the other hand, James Joyce evokes a life-changing experience with his protagonists Leopold Bloom and Stephan Daedalus in Dublin on June 16, 1904. Ulysses is a modern interpretation of Homer’s Odyssey, an inner monologue recalled as memories of places, people, smells, tastes and thoughts of the protagonist . The Bhagwad Gita is a luminous and priceless gem in the literary world, possesses world history character, and teaches us the unity in diversity. It is a dialogue between the hero Arjuna and Krishna, who is the chariot-driver. Krishna is an incarnation of the Hindu God Vishnu. The Mahabharata alone has 18 chapters and the epic has 18 books with legends, episodes and didactic pieces that are connected with the main story. It is a fascinating reading about the war between relatives, written in the 4th and 3rd centuries before the birth of Christ. He who reads knows better than to be indoctrinated, for he or she learns to think, opening new worlds and lines of thought.

In my school-days I read Charles Dickens’ ‘A Tale of Two Cities’ and it became alive when I went to the Bastille Museum in Paris with a fellow medical student. My memory of A Tale of Two Cities took shape there, as I peered at the old, historical exhibits and the guillotine. Later in the evening my friend Peter’s sister, who was married to a Parisian said, ‘Oh, Satish, there are so many things to see in Paris than a museum the entire afternoon.’ For me it was like time-travelling to the times of the French Revolution, because I’d soaked up the story in my school days. I could see Madame Defarge knitting the names of the noblemen and women to be executed. Dickens was a great master of fabulation. I was ripe for those stories and was as curious as a Siamese cat I had named Sirikit, reading, turning page for page, absolutely absorbed in the unfolding stories. Time and space and my personal demands were unimportant. It was the story that had to be read, even with a midnight candle when the local hydroelectric power supply failed. That happened to me when I read ‘The Godfather’ (Der Pate) while visiting a friend from Iceland. I couldn’t put the book down.

I felt sad when a 14 year old computer-crazy schoolkid said: ‘Who reads books these days? Everything’s in the internet.’ The question is: do kids read books on their laptops and eReaders? School websites, Facebook and You Tube and their apps have added new hobbies for children who’re growing up. Does the cyberspace-generation have only time for games? I tell them they should use: Google Scholar, Pubmed etc. to gather knowledge and learn to transfer it.

FREIBURG AND CATMANDU (Satis Shroff)

Freiburg: the finest spire in Christendom,

Which bombs couldn’t destroy

In two Great Wars.

Old men pulled carts with their belongings,

Along the cobbled Kaiser-Joseph-Strasse.

Women were taken to dances,

By African American GIs.

Children received chocolates.

‘Hallo Fräulein!’ did the rounds,

In poverty-stricken, ramshackled Germany.

The GIs returned years later to admire

The splendour of cities they’d bombed.

The Fräuleins were elderly ladies now,

Who frequented posh cafes, operas and lectures.

Catmandu: the all-seeing-eyes

Of the primordeal Buddha,

Still welcomes visitors

From around the globe.

The hippies have long left

This cannabis paradise of yore.

Its hotels and trekking lodges offer

Western food galore,

And fast-climbs for dudes and nerds

To Everest.

The Gurkhas still die under foreign skies,

For the Queen of England.

The Sherpas and porters carry the sahib’s loads,

Suffer from acute-mountain-sickness,

Or still die as unsung heroes,

As Tigers of the Snow.

The children still beg in its strets

Or work in shady backrooms,

Of outsourced fashion firms.

Cat Stevens sings as Yusuf even today.

* * * *

THE DANCE OF THE BIRCH TREES (Satis Shroff)

The naked white birch trees

Stand close to each other,

Waiting for the music

Of the Dreisam Valey wind

To begin.

A gust comes,

Followed by another,

Making the trees sway,

Like a wise white woman’s long tresses,

The thin, supple twigs

That almost reach half the size of the trees,

Have a faster rhythm of their own.

The hurricane-like wind

Gathers its energy for the finale.

Ah, the upper branches

With capillary-like twigs,

As they anastomose,

Developing into a canopy,

Become intensive

In their movements to and fro.

In the background you see

The blue Black Forest hills,

With homesteads like dots

On the snow-covered hillsides,

That are lit now.

The blueish-grey clouds which were on the move,

Have taken a prussian blue hue.

A weak yellowish light,

Manages to break through,

Above the snowy-clad peaks.

A semblance of a sunset

In the Schwarzwald.

* * *

A TRAIN JOURNEY (Satis Shroff)

A screaming train,

Billowing smoke and sparks,

As it reaches Ghoom hill,

Descends to Darjeeling

Looping its way to lessen its speed.

What unfurls is a memorable Bergblick:

The majestic panorama of the snown peaks,

The Kanchenjunga in all its splendour.

The summits like a jeweled crown,

Bathed in golden, yellow and orange light.

A moment of revelation in life,

Shared on a particular evening,

As the sun goes down slowly,

The mountain range is glowing,

A Himalayan glow.

A feast for the eyes of the beholder,

The play of lights

Evoked by the dying sun,

Upon the massif.

* * *

MY MOM’S GARDEN (Satis Shroff)

THERE’S a microcosmos

In my Mom’s garden.

I hear her calling my name.

No, it isn’t the ‘sh’ of Sanskrit,

Nor the ‘sch’ of the Alemannic tongue.

It’s a Nepalese accent from the hills.

A French lass prounced it

With an Alsatian lash.

My Mom loved and grew roses.

In Summer the fragrant aroma

Of the pink and red roses,

Worked like aphrodiciacs.

She grew cabbages, salads and lentils,

Took delight in her abundance.

Sparrows flew around busily in summer,

Swallows flew low in winter.

Between June till September,

The torrential monsoon.

A parrot ith red eyes whirrs by,

Brings the day to an end.

The trees, shrubs and flowers are thankful

Towards Indra who has sent rain.

After Dad’s tragic demise,

She lives in an apartment in the capital.

No garden, just salbei and a few flowers

On the window sill,

As she prays to the Gods

In the Abode of the Snows.

* * *

WIN THE DAY (Satis Shroff)

WHEN you withhold yourself

You become weak,

For it is you yourself,

Who does this to yourself.

Give in,

Surrender to yourself

And you have won the day.

* * *

STORM IN THE NIGHT (Satis Shoff)

I walke up and peer from my cosy room.

The trembling waves shatter noisily,

With the ebb and the tide.

The frowning cumuli gather in the vast sky.

It’s raining and the waves become choppy,

Trawlers are tossed like logs

By the furious water.

The waves thrash on the cliffs,

Which stand to attention

Like sentinels as the war rages,

The krieg of the elements.

Oblivious of the storm in the night,

I take refuge under my warm blanket,

At the seaside hotel Mon Bijou

In the isle of Sylt.

* * *

MAN’S FOLLEY (Satis Shroff)

Bloody colonial migrations in the West,

Blood feuds between white settlers

Versus the Native Sons of America.

Greed-driven ranchers and gunslingers,

Fighting for land and water rights.

This was how the west was won.

Rights?

The rights of the native Americans?

Or the rights of the invading European grabbers?

The Spirit of the Wild West goes marching on.

America is yet struggling with itself.

The clash of haves and have-nots,

The greed for power of the white mainstream,

The conflict of skin and Social Darwinism

Still spills over in Ferguson,

Mother Earth watches over Man’s folley.

* * *

THE ADMONITION (Satis Shroff)

The motley mother moth

Warns the young butterfly:

‘Beware of the candle’s

Flickering flame.’

The frolicking butterfly replies:

‘It’s so warm and fascinating.’

Golder, flickering flame,

Spending warmth, light and music.

It enjoys the dance,

As the circling wings sway,

And the inaudible music

Reaches its crescendo.

Flying around the burning candle,

In a trance like a Dervish dancer.

In its merry ecstatic rounds

It forgets the words,

And is singed by the flame,

When a boy opens the window.

A frail frivolous butterfly

That didn’t heed,

The warning of an elderly moth.

Wasn’t the admonition

Of Daedalus the same?

* * *

THE UNKRAUT (Satis Shroff)

On the fields are the traces

Of harvested maize.

Where the tender flowers were,

There are now brown, russet leaves,

Scattered by the wind,

From the Vale of Hell.

The leaves that gave joy

In their autumnal gaiety,

Now strewn upon the earth,

To be thrashed by the rain,

Trodden by feet in trekking boots.

An elderly lady on high heels

Wobbles and breaks her dainty femur,

Over the treacherous unkraut.

The lady is picked up

By an ambulance from the Maltese Cross.

The leaves remain to rot.

No one bothers,

As cars speed to and from

The Black Forest.

* * *

MERRY TAVERNS (Satis Shroff)

There are taverns in the hamlet,

Where the wine and beer

Make men merry,

And women in deep decolltes,

Cast glances;

Moving their eyelashes.

I leave them to themselves,

As I flee and shun them.

My heart wants Ruhe,

I’m dying of pain,

Of longing for you.

* * *

YEARNING (Satis Shroff)

Women are like flowers:

Jasmine, tulips,

Rhododendrons and roses.

But need you pluck everyone?

How wonderful to admire them,

Take delight at watching them,

As they bloom and wilt.

I see the Schwarzwald stream,

With its refreshing cold water,

Therein I see my countenance,

A pale man with white sideburns.

Then I see you,

A peaceful mind overwhelms me.

My heart begins to glow

With yearning for you.

* * *

ENDURING PAIN (Satis Shroff)

Nights I wake up

With terrible pain;

Don’t know where to turn.

Despite the potions from the apothecary,

Capsules from novasulfon, tincture opii,

Pancreas powder with amylase,

Lipase, protease,

Oxalis mixture, hyoscyamus,

Valeriana cocktail,

Depotspritze,

Rounded up with Lormetazepam.

I’m in Schmerz.

I kept a stiff upper lip,

When the chirurg solemnly said:

‘Your tumor is like an iceberg,

We only see the top.

Below it’s growing wantonly.

I’m afraid I can’t operate.

If we begin we’ll never end.

Too many mines in this battlefield.’

I’d been brooding after the computer tomography.

I didn’t wince.

I was in shock.

The realisation of the diagnosis

Sank slowly in my mind.

I decided to make the best of it.

No use reeling under

The shattering words.

When will my anatomical ruin fall?

That wasn’t my problem.

Till then I had time to live,

Every day to the full,

With my senses,

With my thoughts and words.

To borrow a line from John Keats:

‘The poetry of earth is ceasing never.’

The beauty and delight of living

Far exceeds the pain from a tumor,

As big as a fist.

* * *

SNOW IN KAPPEL (Satis Shroff)

At 2 o’ clock in the morning,

I look out of my window:

It’s snowing in Kappel,

In the Schwarzwald.

I see the white snowflakes,

Falling ceaselessly, silently, stealthily,

Made visible by the dim yellowish treet lamp.

A car comes crunching down the curve,

Its red rear-lights glowing.

The rooftops and house railings are covered,

As with powder sugar.

The clouds are veiled,

And Heaven has become frosty.

Ah, I sleep and wake up again,

To find the lovely hamlet

Ringed with hills and meadows,

Covered with a thick mantle of snow.

Dazzling whiteness where you look.

On such a Sunday morning,

I take my snowspade,

To clear the winding stairs:

For common courtesy demands

That passersby shouldn’t slip and fall,

On the street before your house.

We all have to kehr,

Lest others despair.

The shepherd from the Molchhofsiedlung

Has left the once-green meadows,

His hundred sheep don’t bleat anymore,

Below Maier’s Hill.

With my snow-chores done,

Followed by a hearty Black Forest breakfast,

I take a brisk morning walk,

Over the snow-clad landscape,

Respire and enjoy the refreshing Bergluft. Posted on November 18, 2020 · Edit

machhapuchare: the fish-tailed one (satis shroff)

the fish-tailed one (satisshroff, freiburg)

your eyes never tire of watching

the different moods

of the fish-tailed one in pokhara.

at dawn, noon and dusk.

this majestic peak,

this sacred mountain of the gurung folk,

who live below it,

and revere this towering peak.

no foreign boots are allowed

to trample this path,

and climb to the peak.

climbers have respected this wish

of the gurung folk.

but the khumbu sherpas,

who are lured by dollars,

offer incense sticks and tormas,

to please, bribe and pacify the gods.

tourism dictates and the locals follow.

enabling global climbers to trudge

over sacred mountains.

no, these moneyed people

don’t worship the mountains,

they worship their egos.

climbing is a conversation piece:

look I climbed everest,

it’s on youtube and facebook.

i made it to the top of the world.

ICH-ICH-ICH.

I did it.

others who weren’t so lucky,

will turn up in a moraine,

years later as stiff corpses.

©satisshroff, freiburg, germany Posted on October 4, 2019 · Edit

SCHWARZWALD POEMS: SATIS SHROFF

ALPINE GRATITUDE (Satis Shroff)

The hamlets are scattered,
Tucked away in the side valleys and spurs
Of the Black Forest,
Which was once dark and foreboding.
A forest that once conjoured myths, legends
And fairy tales.
Under the hay and homesteads,
You find men and mice,
Good natured maids and children,
Healthy and happy cows, goats,
Sheep and swines.
The Schwarzwald farmers paid low taxes,
For Nature punished them enough.
They couldn’t get rich on the craggy soil,
The high elevation and the long, raw winter.
Yet the Black Forest forced the soil,
To yield millet in Summer,
Wheat and barley,
Buried beneath a thick mantle of snow.
Ah, it’s already past the month of October,
The young calves are in the stalls,
After a colourful, traditional walk
From the higher alpine meadows.
There’s corn in the chamber,
Feed for the animals in the barns.
Around Freiburg the apple trees,
Are laden heavily with apples.
Your nostrils smell apple mixed with cinnamon and sugar:
Applekompott, apple moos, apple pancakes and pies.
* * *

FEATHERED FRIENDS (Satis Shroff)

A pair of binocs and patience
Is all you need.
Watching our feathered friends
In the garden or the Black Forest.

Hush! A steglitz with red and white feathers,
Has just come by.
Some pigeons have left Freiburg
And roost on the pine trees,
In the urban outskirts.

The blaumeise is a frequent guest,
With its black streak across the eyes,
And the blue feathered cap it wears.

Yesterday was sunny
And a robin took a speedy bath,
On the stone pool,
Ever on guard,
Lest it be surprised,
By a curious jay or a prowling cat.

Now and then you hear the zaunkönig,
Europe’s smallest bird,
Trilling out loud,
Grabbing everyone’s attention.

But in the evening,
When the sun goes down,
It’s time for the loveliest melodies,
Sung by the blackbird,
From my neighbour’s rooftop.

©satisshroff

Glossary:
Steglitz: goldfinch
Blaumeise: blue tit
Zaunkönig: wren
Blackbird: Amsel

• * * *

CHIRPS IN MY GARDEN (Satis Shroff)

Ach,
To lie in bed
And listen to the birds sing.
I peer at the pine trees above,
Heavily laden with fluffy snow,
Like sentinels of the Black Forest.

I espy something moving:
Three deer with moist black noses,
Sniffing the Kappler air,
Strut among the low bushes
In all their elegance,
Only to vanish silently,
Into the recesses of the Foret Noir.

I hear the robin,
Rotkehlchen,
With its clear, loud, pearly tone,
As it greets the day.
Just before sunrise the black bird,
Amsel,
Which flies high on the tree tops,
Delivers its early arias.
The great titmouse stretches its wings
And starts to sing.

The brown sparrows turn up
With their repertoire,
Rap in the garden,
Twitter and chirp aloud.
All this noise makes the bullfinch alert,
For it also wants to be heard.
It starts its high pitched melody
With gusto in the early hours.

The starling clears its throat:
What comes is whistles,
Mingled with smacking sounds.
The woodpecker,
Specht,
Isn’t an early bird,
Starts its day late.
Pecks with its beak,
At a hurried tempo.

If that doesn’t get you out of your bed,
I’m sure you’re on holiday,
Or thank God it’s Sunday.
Other feathered friends
Who frequent our Black Forest house,
Are the green finch, the jay,
Goldfinch which we call ‘Stieglitz,’
Larks, thrush and the oriole,
The Bird of the Year,
On rare occasions.

Glossary:
English, German, Latin names
Robin (Rotkehlchen): Erithacus rubecula
Black bird (Amsel): Turdus merula
Titmouse (Kohlmeise): Parus major
Bullfinch (Rotfinke):
Greenfinch (jay): Chloris chloris
Starling: Sturnus vulgaris
Woodpecker (Specht):
Stieglitz: Carduelis carduelis
Oriole: Oriolus oriolus

* * *

SUMMER DELIGHTS IN THE SCHWARZWALD (Satis Shroff)

I sat in the garden
With Thomas Hardy’s Jude the Obscure
On my lap,
And saw a small butterfly
With dark spots on its frail wings,
Violet patterns on its tail.
It was Aglais utricae
Flattering lightly
Between the marigolds
And chrysanthemums.

The Potentilla nepalensis
Was growing well
Under the shade of the rhododendrons.
The great pumpkin was spreading
Its leafy tentacles everywhere.
The tomatoes were fighting for light
Hiding beneath its gigantic green leaves.

I removed long, brown snails,
A hobby-gardener of Nepalese descent,
In a lovely white house
With character in Freiburg-Kappel,
An Allemanic stronghold.

Once the subject of dispute
Between Austria and France,
Now a sleepy residential area
Of Freiburg im Breisgau.

* * *

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