The Age of Endlings: Explorations and Investigations into the Indian Wild

By Jay Mazoomdaar

Conservation sometimes kills
Endling noun The very last individual of a species.These are not trophy tales of the wildlife photographer or his ancestor, the hunter. Nor are these entreaties of the save-the-world variety. Curious and clinical, irreverent but reasoned, these essays and exposes by one of India's best-known investigative journalists and wildlife reporters, Jay Mazoomdaar, raise fascinating questions to better understand the Human-Nature interfaces in an increasingly crowded and edgy India. Alongside the gripping whodunit and the sobering myth-buster are the stories of a cursed river, a tiger reserve on sale, a desert snake that 'breathes' death, a tribe that threatens to die if forced out of its forests and a species destined to become the loneliest on earth.The result of over a decade of investigations in the Indian wild and the human ecosystem around it, The Age of Endlings is as compelling as it is unflinching.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperLitmus
• Release date: May 15, 2016
• ISBN: 9789351775553

Jay Mazoomdaar

Jay Mazoomdaar is a journalist, traveller and, occasionally, a film-maker. Born in Calcutta, he grew up riding Bon - the black family mutt - by a pond under a giant mango tree; later feasting on, among others, Gavaskar, Maradona, Satyajit Ray, Mujtaba Ali, Bibhutibhushan, Conan Doyle and Corbett. He moved to Delhi after scraping through Joyce, Foucault, and a university degree in 1996.

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Introduction

I

t is not often that one gets preoccupied with a word—however ‘Tolkien-esque’—younger than oneself. The term ‘endling’ was felt necessary barely twenty years ago. As the reality of extermination became routine by the turn of the century, scientists started describing the very last individual of a species as an ‘endling’. The nineteenth century may not have had a name for them, but it gave us a handful of known instances, and ample premonition that the grim procession had only just begun.

To describe these extinctions or extinctions-in-waiting as tragedies is preposterous. Because it dares slot within the coordinates of our perceptions the incomprehensible finality of losing a life form for good. Because it pretends to fathom the utter loneliness of the last few—and then the very last—of a kind.

The first time I realized that we had an endling at hand was in Bharatpur. For six years, the national park harboured a solitary tigress who, as a very young female, possibly followed the course of the Gambhir river from Ranthambore in search of territory. Though not the last of her species, she had never encountered another tiger since she settled down in Bharatpur in 1999. At the risk of sounding anthropomorphic, one wonders if this loneliness made the tigress a recluse and led to her premature death (officially blamed on heat stroke) in the summer of 2005.

That was the year I began my investigative series on the status of tiger conservation with the wipeout of tigers in Rajasthan’s Sariska. The nagging thought of endlings accompanied me as I reported from nine reserves across the country—particularly in Panna (Madhya Pradesh) which would soon go the Sariska way, and Buxa (West Bengal) where another local extinction would have been imminent but for the visiting big cats from adjoining Bhutan. Soon, the thought would stick with me.

I have been travelling to India’s forests since my college days but had never so much as written a travelogue on my frequent escapes till the mysterious ‘abundance’ of leopards in Sariska intrigued me in late 2004. The Sariska investigation was my first wildlife conservation story. Till then, I had never felt obliged to chase after elusive tigers for prized sightings or click everything that moves. What fascinated me always were trees, particularly those grandfatherly ones—rooted, timeless and often formidable, but ever indulgent.

But the disastrous course of Sariska, Panna and Buxa turned what used to be personal vacations into work assignments (at times, wangled from reluctant editors). Over the last decade, I have had the opportunity to investigate a range of issues that push species to extinction and bring the planet closer to its next endling.

Protected forests are among the most hostile habitats for investigative journalists. Access, if and when allowed, is almost always guided. Unauthorized entry necessary for unrestricted groundwork is punishable with a lengthy jail term. If the officialdom doesn’t get you, the mafia—poachers, loggers, encroachers, miners—most likely will. And the job only becomes tougher if you are an independent journalist without the might of a media house to back you or bail you out.

The bigger impediment, however, is not unique to my chosen turf. It is the entrenched system, the very antithesis of accountability and reform. A number of my investigations bore immediate results—a few suspensions here, some inquiries there—but often the powers-that-be would eventually restore status quo in some form or the other. It could have been easily frustrating but what made my work possible was the tacit support and in turn expectations of many who belonged to the very establishment. Not to mention the invaluable complicity of the unnamable—outcasts and outlaws included.

It is perhaps not remarkable that causes of conservation or wildlife, even as a fad, have few backers for real. Of those who care, many harbour pet theories that run counter to the goals of wildlife conservation and a shared future. Most frequently, I encounter ‘animal lovers’ who don’t think twice about risking the future of a species to help an individual animal in distress. A large segment of the green constituency righteously gives primacy to animal rights over human rights, thus alienating entire communities from conservation. Then there are certain experts and NGOs driven by personal or collective bias, agenda or interest. Over the years, I have tried to explore such positions, and learnt on many occasions that reason is not always the best antidote to belief or motive.

Thankfully, there were also occasions in the last decade when I could simply travel, at times more than a thousand miles on wheels, with friends to just indulge our curiosities and chase the ever-abundant red herring.

Of these investigations and explorations, this collection packs twenty-two pieces. The Sariska expose and the subsequent ground reports from tiger reserves across the country are not part of this book. Those, and the continuing tiger conundrum, is another book in the works.

Shorter versions of some of the essays and investigations in this collection were published in Open, Tehelka, FirstPost, The Economic Times, Current Conservation, Hindustan Times, Daily News and Analysis and The Indian Express. I thank the editors for giving me and conservation space.

This collection would not have been possible without Kanishka who thought it was time, and Ajitha who somehow didn’t disagree. I am grateful to Radhika, Jyoti and Smriti for reading and improving the draft. The credit for the illustrations in the book goes to Sudeep Chaudhury.

It is not possible for me to mention all those who have helped my understanding of ‘the subjects’ at some point or the other but I must acknowledge late Fateh Singh Rathore, Peter Jackson, M.K. Ranjitsinh, P.K. Sen, Ashok Kumar, Asad Rahmani, Vinay Tandon, Ajay Desai, Ashish Kothari, Biswajit Mohanty, Qamar Qureshi, Vidya Athreya, Yashveer Bhatnagar, Rahul Dutta, Faiyaz Khudsar, Dharmendra Khandal, Neeraj Vagholikar, Jose Lewis and Shubhobroto Ghosh for their generosity.

Evolution—and T.S. Eliot—taught us that the end is where we begin. That natural progression has been derailed by the recent spate of mass exterminations which are evolutionary dead ends. Yet, the first ‘man-made’ endling did mark the beginning—and the subsequent ones became milestones—of a journey fuelled by human thoughtlessness. This is a journey to the very end—if not of the world, certainly of the world as we have known it.

Indeed, man may well learn to survive in a self-serving order with only a handful of farmed species necessary for consumption. But it is still too early to resign to the conceit and loneliness of that destiny. Those who believe in a shared future value it not only for mutual sustenance but also for the infinitely diverse possibilities that coexistence promises.

The essays in this collection explore some of these possibilities and investigate how some others are being undermined. I am no expert and cannot credit myself with anything more than a basic education, some common sense and ample curiosity. These limitations deprive me of any allegiance to the who’s who of conservation or their dogmas.

I am aware that putting together some of my journalistic work in a book might be seen as plain self-indulgence, but I believe you—the reader—will take away some answers and more questions and make it worth your while and mine.

EXPLORATIONS

It’s not a silly question if you can’t answer it.

—Jostein Gaarder, Sophie’s World

1

In Search of Thar’s Snake Demon

In the heart of South Asia’s Thar Desert, a mysterious snake is believed to be snuffing out the lives of its victims without ever having to bite. Snake catchers, doctors and victims alike say the deadly reptile crawls up the chest of people while they are asleep and envenoms them simply by breathing on them. Horror stories about the peeuna (one that sucks out life) have travelled across the sands for centuries. Even today, many deaths are blamed on this ‘snake demon’. In 2009, the author travelled thousands of kilometres chasing the myth to find the snake behind the scare.

T

he furrows between their narrowed eyes cut deep. The chunky gold earrings glittered with sweat in the morning sun. The spades dug swiftly in short bursts and threw up coarse desert sand in the air. Their shrill excitement and nervous movements betrayed discomfort. Master trackers they were, but they always killed the snakes they found. Never before had they even thought of catching snakes alive.

The Kolis are the traditional snake people in this part of Rajasthan. But unlike snake charmers all over India, they do not need to pet snakes for a living. In the desert where snakes are no less fabled than demons, the Kolis just have to find, kill and display dead snakes—venomous or not—to earn a fast buck. But this morning, their brief was different.

Suddenly, a scream erupted from the huddle of heads circling the rodent burrow that was being carefully dug up. As the bodies straightened all around me, I bent over and saw the forked pink tongue flickering out of the rat hole at our feet. A little more digging and the shiny red head was exposed.

Immediately, I could identify the snake. My heart sank. The Kolis went hysterical. ‘Catch it, catch the peeuna before it strikes. Now!’ I obliged mechanically. The uproarious Kolis stared in awe. Some patted me for picking up the deadly peeuna with my bare hands.

As the beautiful snake–no less than 4 feet long and quite forceful in its twists—wriggled between my fingers, I feared that my quest had hit a dead end.

I first heard of the peeuna in 2002 in Pokhran, a small Rajasthan town that shot to global recognition as the site of India’s two nuclear tests. On my way to Jaisalmer, I had stopped for a quick cup of tea at a highway food stall. Some local businessmen were discussing snakes and idle curiosity made me join them.

What I gathered in fifteen minutes sounded bizarre, more so coming at the seat of the new, nuclear India: In the deserts of Rajasthan, a snake called peeuna killed victims in their sleep by ‘sucking their breath out’ during the night. There were two varieties of peeuna—red and black—and both killed their victims by ‘exhaling’ poison.

I heard the same story again in 2009, but this time from Dharmendra Khandal, one of India’s brightest young field biologists. On a field study, Khandal had travelled to some parts of the Thar Desert last year where he had heard about the myth. He also confirmed that many deaths were still blamed on the peeuna.

This got me thinking. Granted, science could not explain the peeuna’s unique killing method. But since many peeuna victims were still reported in Thar, something must be killing these people. Was it really a snake? Or was it something else?

Extensive search online yielded precious little. Only that the peeuna myth was prevalent beyond the boundaries of India, in Pakistan’s Sindh province, where the snake was also known as phookni (one that forcefully exhales).

A couple of websites identified peeuna or phookni as the Sindh krait (Bungarus sindanus)—a rarely reported variety of krait believed to be ‘10–15 times more venomous than India’s big four’—cobra, Russell’s viper, saw-scaled viper and common krait. Apparently, the Sindh krait’s habitat—in and around the Thar Desert—was where this peeuna or phookni myth was prevalent.

One authoritative source that offered clues to the Sindh krait’s identification was A Contribution to the Herpetology of West Pakistan (1966) by Sherman A. Minton Jr which talked about a krait variety with a mid-body scale count of seventeen (instead of the usual fifteen). Minton, in fact, mentioned pee-un as a local name for the Sindh krait but did not elaborate.

I then tapped India’s most respected snake experts. Ashok Captain dismissed the peeuna as a myth that might have originated among victims of Sindh kraits or other varieties of kraits. Romulus Whitaker agreed that symptoms from the bites of different kraits could have led to the peeuna myth. Whitaker also accepted that most species of kraits looked remarkably similar and it was difficult to tell a Sindh krait (Bungarus sindanus) from a common krait (Bungarus caeruleus). And no, no red krait—Sindh or common—had ever been recorded.

There was no preserved specimen of the Sindh krait anywhere in India. The snake was reported by G.A. Boulenger way back in 1897. But very little was known ever since. Malcolm A. Smith’s volumes on snakes under Fauna of British India (1931–43) series, the ‘Old Testament’ of Indian herpetologists, mentioned the Sindh krait as a krait variation but did not distinguish it from the others.

The species was listed, but without details, in the ‘New Testament’—Snakes of India (2004)—authored by Romulus Whitaker and Ashok Captain. The book, however, included photographs of Wall’s Sindh krait (Bungarus sindanus walli), first reported in 1907 and named after F. Wall, and found easily in central India.

Nothing known about the Sindh krait suggested that it could envenom victims by breathing or exhaling into them. It might be many times more venomous than a common krait, but it still required to dig its fangs into victims to deliver the poison.

My rather disappointing research ended in September, the beginning of the three-month ‘snake season’ in the Thar Desert. Arranging for Dharmendra Khandal and his precious kit of anti-venom serum to join me on the way, I headed for ground zero.

Our first destination was the pink city of Jaipur, where we had sought an appointment with Vishnu Dutt Sharma, retired principal chief wildlife warden of Rajasthan, famed to know the desert like the back of his hand.

I drove down from Delhi to Jaipur and found Khandal at Sharma’s terrace garden. We spent nearly an hour with him but made little headway. Like us, Sharma had heard about the peeuna and confirmed that the geographical reach of the myth coincided with the region of shifting sand dunes.

Sharma recommended that we visit the desert headquarters of Zoological Survey of India (ZSI) at Jodhpur before we ventured out further west, a 300 km drive.

As chance would have it, we stopped for dinner at the Tiranga (tricolour) dhaba (highway eatery) near Akeli village, a few kilometres from the town of Barr. Raju, the diminutive proprietor, left the till to join us the moment we mentioned snakes. Animatedly, he told us how cobras and vipers were literally everywhere. ‘We have had a naag (cobra) at this dhaba for years but it never struck anybody. God’s ways are mysterious,’ he said, looking upward with folded hands.

But what if someone was bitten?

‘The best option is to take the victim to the Kesriya Kawarji temple. It’s not far from here. On auspicious days like Naagpanchami, snakes come to the temple and drink milk. There is no priest at Kesriya Kawarji. You just need to tie blessed threads from the temple on the snake-bite victim. Hundreds go there and get cured.’

And what about the peeuna?

‘We don’t get peeuna cases here. But if we got one, Kesriya Kawarji would have cured it.’

With that, Raju left us to our open-air dinner. The food was hot and spicy; and with Kesriya Kawarji watching over the Tiranga dhaba, the resident cobra was nowhere in sight.

The director of ZSI’s Desert Regional Centre, Padma Bohra, looked every inch a matchmaking aunt who was more interested in discussing our antecedents than dangerous snakes. When I finally succeeded in veering around the conversation to the peeuna, she wiped the air with her palms and dismissed it as ‘a local name given to vipers by the villagers’.

Spotting our ill-suppressed amazement at the mention of vipers (rather too common to inspire the myth of peeuna), she gingerly admitted that she did not know enough about ‘local snakes’ and looked pleadingly to the man sitting next to her—retired ex-director Narendra Singh Rathore.

Rathore had set up the present ZSI campus and sounded confident. ‘Peeuna? Oh, yes, I know, it is the Sindh krait. They call it peeuna in the desert. You know, Sharma-ji described it as peeuna…’

Sharma-ji, the late R.C. Sharma, was a ZSI scientist of repute and wrote his own book on snakes in 2003. Sharma’s assertion, coming after Minton’s observation, strengthened the case for the Sindh krait. But could one possibly explain the killing methods of a peeuna, given the recorded behaviour of the Sindh krait?

‘You see, the Sindh krait comes close to people in their sleep just like mosquitoes find us. They follow carbon dioxide density. Clearly, CO2 is most dense near one’s nose. So the snake comes close to your face. Of course, how exactly it kills is a matter of research.’

Was there any scientific proof of this CO2 theory?

‘I am not sure. But since Sharma-ji had said this …’ Exasperated, I asked him if he had ever seen a Sindh krait. ‘Me? Umm … Sindh krait … well, of course, we have a preserved specimen at the ZSI museum. Come, I will show you …’

Fingers crossed, we accompanied him to the museum, only to find a very old, discoloured specimen labelled ‘Common Krait’. Rathore looked sheepish for a moment. But he gathered himself quickly.

‘Ah, wrong labelling! Of course, this is a Sindh krait. I will tell them to change the label. Let me take it out. Here, look at it. This specimen was collected some twenty years back. We can check the record but that will take a few days …’

When Khandal offered to count the body scales to determine if it was indeed a Sindh krait, Rathore quickly put the jar back and guided us out.

Pokhran was still very much an army hub with too many no-entry zones in and around. At any time of the day, outsiders could sense a number of prying eyes fixed on them. That Khandal was carrying a snake-catching stick prominently labelled ‘Made in Pakistan’ did not help our case. Six intelligence agencies, we were later told by a government official, were at work, often independently, to protect India’s national interests on this sandy flank.

Dodging suspicious sleuths, we sought out Subhash Ujjwal, a schoolteacher and snake enthusiast who had befriended Khandal on a social networking site. ‘When we were young, peeuna was a big scare even here at Pokhran. In my village, Ujla, children were made to drink milk with garlic and onion in the night as it was said to protect them from the peeuna. Thank God, now we don’t have any peeuna here. But if you travel west, you will find a lot of them.

‘I have read on the web that it is probably a snake called Sindh krait, a black snake. But locals also mention a red peeuna. Black or red, it kills so many people every year. The village women call it a thief. People stay up all night under kerosene lamps. These three months, they live in sheer terror …’

We continued our westward journey towards the land of shifting sand dunes. The landscape started changing soon after we left Jodhpur. Seemingly endless stretches of thorny scrub would give way to dry fields. Most crops looked scorched due to lack of seasonal rain. Where the blackened ears of maize thinned out, there would be rare patches of saline clay. Or suddenly, ancient rock mounds held up their blunted heads against strong winds that shaved the stone like sandpaper.

Against this landscape of dull yellow, bleached green and clear blue, the villagers offered stunning relief in defiant bursts of colour—their turbans, veils, drapes and ornaments a variety of fiery red, flaming orange and indigo.

After a rather heavy lunch, I was feeling a little drowsy in the back seat when a sharp turn made me sit up. I looked out of the car window and my jaw fell. We were about two hours from Barmer and suddenly in a magical land.

The sunset sky was visible only in patches through a number of flying carpets criss-crossing in all directions. The spreads changed shape in the air, their intricate, animated patterns reinventing themselves by the second. We stood watching the carpets fly, float and twirl before gently dropping on the thorny, airy canopies of kair (Capparis decidua) and khejri (Prosopis cineraria).

As one fluttering set settled, another took off as if prompted by some mysterious nudge of the evening breeze. To complete the magic, each flying carpet was full of song. Together they created such a deafeningly happy orchestra that I had to shout to Khandal, who was standing close to me, to rush for his camera.

The light had already deteriorated for the 20 mm lens. We managed to record hundreds of house sparrows, patronias and rosy pastors in every frame, but not the magic of their orchestrated flights.

When we reached the district magistrate’s office at Barmer for a permit to visit the sensitive border areas, the staff was about to leave for the day. While the papers moved slowly, opinions on the peeuna were coming thick and fast.

The DM’s personal secretary informed us that somewhere near a place called Chautan lived a spiritually gifted old Muslim woman, renowned for curing peeuna victims.

The orderly outside the DM’s spacious chamber chipped in with a warning: there was absolutely no cure for peeuna venom unless the poison was scooped out from inside the victim’s throat.

The legal officer, visibly annoyed at being held up