Mrigdesh: A Tale of How The Animal Kingdom Came To Be

By S Thyagarajan

About the Book: Triggered by the tragedy of the killing of the last of the tigers, animals of the forest, driven by the sense of their own danger of extinction, form an extraordinary alliance, come together and challenge man’s hegemony and fight for freedom, and lay a claim to the remnants of their forest as their country. Following simple actions, many that are learnt in a process of “doing” during the freedom struggle, the animals fight an uphill protracted war; and despite lacking man’s superior intelligence and ability to plan and organize, by acting on thoughts that occur on the spur of the moment, and through doing simple acts repeatedly and perseveringly, force man to accede. Mrigdesh, in the form of narration of the animal freedom struggle by the wise and elderly of the animals as a story to their young ones, is based on exploring known animal behavior with generous extrapolations, and is not without some lacings of fantasy. For one should also make this bit allowance to an animal and wilderness lover, writer or reader who would love to give back to the animals their forest to them to live in without any influence or interference from man.

About the Author: S Thyagarajan is now retired, and a contended organic farmer. He lives in a small town close to his farm with his wife, closer to nature and away from hustle and bustle of a city. He is an amateur birdwatcher and environmentalist, who has managed to keep in touch with the forests and wild despite his long, and intense career as engineer and manager in various companies, private and public. He is passionate about simple and sustainable living and conservation of wild places. He has one son who lives abroad in whom he is happy to have inspired the same feelings of love of nature. This is his first novel, though he does a lot of writing which has remained for private circulation. He can be reached through email at [e-mail], or his Facebook page, Amrafarms

• Language: English
• Publisher: Pencil
• Release date: Nov 24, 2020
• ISBN: 9788194804598

Book preview

Remember

PROLOGUE –

THE TIGERS LAMENT

If you had only learnt to warn us of what lay ahead

Of snares laid that spring as we on it unwarily tread,

Heeded us off, thus spared of this horror and dread,

For in its grip relentless, our limbs are torn and shred,

In vain we tug and strain; in our impotent anger and pain,

Roar like never before, such the jungle will never hear again

With all our might we fight, sinews of steel, tooth and nail,

In vain flail, and in the end, must fall as our strength fail!

If we had only learned to warn us of intruders foul,

With intent cruel, weapons deadly on the prowl,

In signs and language of our own: with warning growls,

Whistles, barks, howls, screeches, and hoots of owls,

His shadow that forever darkens our land, a threat to all-

Is not our danger, your danger? Our fall, your fall?

If we the animals could become one by oath and pact,

Learn with our combined strength against odds to act,

Wonders we could do, even if they be so highly stacked!

Usurped he has our lands, spared no forests, valleys, hills,

Cattle now he brings to our grounds, once pristine and pure,

Supplanting the rightful, to graze, against our combined will,

Oft diseases they bring, to which there is no defense or cure,

Compelled, when these animals we hunt that stray,

Villain! he cries, and seeks out our half-eaten slay,

To lace with poison, malice and hate;

Of which when we our hunger sate, tryst make with cruel fate

If you had learned to warn us of our meat so defiled,

Abandoned it we would have, not so horribly died!

Once, did we roam in forests our home, boundless,

By day or night as we chose, without restraints any—

But now brought to the brink, like thieves we slink,

Constrained, only by the cover of darkness to hunt and drink…

By some (your well-wishers we are all! they swear,}

Beguiled we are, collars on our necks made to wear,

Crafted it is to stick to us like a leach,

Impervious to tugs and pulls beyond our reach,

An adornment now we have no choice but to bear

Shunned now are we by near, dear,

Even our mate is all airs,

Taken to be, we are, for a fool

That feels not such halters!

Nay, even our own self at the reflection mock,

As we bend down to drink from the rock…

Now tracked, espied are we from jeeps, elephant-back, on foot,

With relentless zeal pursued, their aim is our images to shoot,

Our every moment-— stalk, hunt, our panting by the pool in summer hot,

When we at repast crunch the bone and tear the meat, The outrage!

Spared we aren’t, even when we in courtship engage!

And as we suckle our newborn, tracked we are to our hidden lair,

And with his shots, he gloats, What a beauty, pictures so rare!

Even as, perhaps, the last of my brothers are being felled elsewhere,

Stripped to the bone, turned into soup, amulets, and fancy-ware

Oh, only if we could teach him our wisdom within us so ingrained,

To abandon the path of proliferation that cannot be sustained,

That he would learn from us to live for ones wants, not greed,

For there is no wanton in our killing, we take only what we need…

In the days of yore, did we not share,

Our kills often, with panther and bear?

Teach man we will, if he would only learn,

To take with dignity only that you justly earn…

1

IMAGINE!

Just try and imagine give a free rein to your mind, do not discount that what seems impossible can become possible. Believe nature is full of twists and surprises, and it is not just man alone of the living creatures that can shape the entire history.

Just imagine the following sequence of events:

The animals of the forests, at some point in time, shocked into realization that man is pushing them dangerously close to the brink of extinction, come together and embark upon an ambitious fight for freedom.

The animals, while on this path, rediscover the art of speaking in one language, and through engaging in a purposeful communication across species, discover the power of joint action.

The animals, though with limited capacity to plan and execute when compared to man, still manage to come together and engage in a heroic struggle for freedom.

The animals, in the end, emerge successful in their fight for freedom and reclaim their living spaces.

Just try and imagine a time and place in the world where things as such have come to pass and that there in that world:

Exist pockets of deep forest spaces where animals hold the sway, where they rule, where their writ alone runs, and where it is their will that prevails.

A nation has been carved out for and by the animals and is ruled much in the manner man does with rights and responsibilities.

There is now more equality and balance between all animals, man and animals in particular.

Man, in his wisdom and compassion, has graciously (though a little grudgingly) let it be thus

Well, it may sound like I ask a bit too much of you. I won’t blame you if you react the same way, as when an imaginative child runs up to you and says a spaceship has landed in your backyard, but I must persist and go on. You see, ever since our civilization dawned, from the time we became better hunters with weapons such as cudgels and spears, we have been a domineering species. We have driven many animals to extinction or near to it, even if they are much larger and stronger than us, the mammoth for example; some animals have been won over and made slaves, and the remaining driven deeper and deeper into the wilderness. Step by step, they were made to retreat, and conquered by our subjugating will, as does the ringmaster with nothing more than a whip. Their living spaces we have taken over, and ordained them into villages, farmland, towns, and cities, leaving only a niggardly portion as forest for the animals to crowd in; and punished them with utmost severity at the times they strayed out from within. Worse, as our civilization progressed, our harassment has grown further, and we have begun deadly raids into their homes maiming and killing them just for sport-indeed, often turning their own kind to hunt for us. Later on, with the march of our civilization, we have become squatters in their homes for the greed of the wealth hidden there.

Nonetheless, the animals have so far put up with all these transgressions and violations. But as they are slowly pushed to the brink, don’t you think it is possible that one day it will all come to a boil, which will trigger some extraordinary rebellious response from them, something which our scientists have not yet predicted? And that the outcome of this, as the dust settles down, could well be this WORLD? We do know every animal when cornered fights back with an energy that it can find only when at the end of its tether; but isn’t it also possible, that one day when all animals perceive a collective threat, a collective back to the wall fight will erupt? More than enough provocation already exists to aggravate even the timidest, and all that it probably requires is a trigger. It could so happen (however remote the possibility) that a series of quickly cascading man-caused events occurs, all causing a grievous negative impact on the animals, culminating to a flashpoint that unleashes a sudden retaliatory explosive force of unimaginable intensity. And why shouldn’t it be in the form of the animals getting together, revolting, and seeking freedom?

I do agree that the freedom struggle will not come over as a one of kind response to an oppressive situation. The process will require more than just one simple trigger. It will not happen in a day or two or happen as smoothly as day follows night. Yes, freedom struggles are protracted affairs, and they require endless sacrifices, doggedness, courage and unity. But yet, to begin with, this is all I ask of you, to concede this possibility so that I can proceed with my tale.

You laugh at me, assail me with a thousand arguments, facts and theory, all backed by the great authority of the accumulated human knowledge obtained through scientific enquiry, the most trusted philosophy of modern man. With individual animals, you say, yes, it happens very often, almost invariably. The wild boar or even the timid stag will cause injuries, even kill sometimes. When cornered, they have the weapons for it, but all the animals coming together? Well, well, well! That is nothing but fantasy, a fairy tale, a fable. As I said, skirmishes with individual animals lead sometimes to injury-even to death, but eventually, the animals will invariably be the losers. And this joint action possibility, all the animals banding together, an animal civil disobedience movement, if I may so call it, a remote possibility. Yes, maybe in a million years from now. But this will be by an individual animal species which evolves and challenges man. But this oranges and apples coming together to protect their orchard — well this is a childish story, a new nursery rhyme…"

No, do not dismiss this so easily, I am not done yet. Human beings, a few hundred years ago, never had an idea of how different this world would be. To them, things like heavier than air flight, instant communication across the globe, and nuclear weapons were the stuff of fables and mythology. They would have never dreamt of things like telecommunication, satellites around earth, the computer, the internet-all that you now take for granted. Even today, we all accept as legitimate aspirations, and dare dream of travel to distant parts of the universe, though we have no means to do so as of now or in the foreseeable future — a journey that would take hundreds, thousands of years even when travelling at speed of light. Yet you dismiss this possibility, a dream or longing, which lies unexpressed in the heart of every animal (I am sure) as fantasy. Is this fair? If you have so much faith in the power of humans to achieve things beyond your imagination, why not accept the same to be true of animals too?

All my arguments are in vain. You dismiss my story as pure nonsense, not worthy of any further comment. An outcome of an imagination of a febrile mind, I can imagine you saying under your breath. Outpourings of a frustrated wilderness and animal lover who feels genuinely sorry at their growing plight that stems from the general helplessness of his kind in not being able to do anything about it, maybe you charitably add, but no more.

Well, I have to try one more weapon and I must use it, lure you into my time machine and take you forward to a time a little ahead into the future: to kidnap you, to put you into a time capsule in which you will hibernate, and wake when it opens sometime in the distant future. There, in this marvellous brave new world, which we all know will be totally different and changed from what you know it to be, you will wander and wonder at the unbelievable, incomprehensible, and unimaginable changes man with his technology has wrought. There, in this world you may find that to our children of the future, there is nothing strange in words like animal zone, animal kingdom, animal country, animal nation (all of which means the same) because they physically already exist; and matters like how it came to be, how their forefathers sometime in the past conceded the forest space to the animals, how sovereignty and self-rule were granted, are all but a matter of hoary history.

If this is how it is in the future, you will have no choice but to swallow your disbelief, reconcile, and accept the wonder of the animal nation as just another wonder along with the so many other man-conceived, breathtaking ones of this future. Maybe you may even find it to be so minuscule, the achievement of the animals, and far easy to comprehend, compared to the marvels man has created. You will thus return from the future softened up a bit, your objections, hopefully, overcome. Stretch your imagination only this much, for the length of time you read this book. Just pretend that you are back from such a future, suspend your judgment, and for the sake of animals believe it will happen; for faith and belief can create miracles or something near to it.

2

THE SCHOOL FOR ANIMALS

0ur story opens in this distant future — one you will no longer find it difficult to imagine, I hope — in a school. Wait a minute, this school I must hasten to mention, is one for young animals, birds and denizens of the fledgling, a young animal nation, not for humans. These schools (or camps whatever we choose to call them as the animals have no name for it), as you will further read, would not be very different from one of our own summer camps for our children. Such schools or camps were started quite early on after the animals won their freedom. The idea of running such camps, which are now a regular feature in the newly formed animal kingdom, was the idea of the founding fathers who, in their wisdom and foresight, saw the necessity for such. The primary purpose of such camps is to impart new skills to the young ones that will equip them adequately to the task of defending the newly established kingdom. It is also expected to serve several other noble objectives: to make the young ones learn co-operative behaviour across species, to imbibe in them a spirit of belonging to a special nation in which all of them are now equal citizens, and many other things. Such ideals as you will all agree, are important for any nation to survive and flourish.

In the beginning days, these were run with enrolment optional, but now with the passing of years and with all the animals having understood the benefits of such camps, children of all the animals come voluntarily to attend these camps making these camps run full. This is a place where they come for a brief period, as the rains diminish and turns to a light patter that will make the trees gently drip, the ground soft, streams rich with fish, and the earth quivering with worms and insects. They will come setting aside for this brief while their prey-predatory instinct, for there, will be young ones of species of all kinds here, the carnivores, the herbivores, the frugivores, the insectivores-all partners now of the grand alliance.

Young animal of every kind attends these camps, big and small, timid and bold, nocturnal and diurnal: the long-snouted bear and the boar, the fearless panther and the timid hare, the deer and doe and the diminutive mouse, the howling jackal and the barking deer, the mighty elephant and the lowly rat, the bristly porcupine and the smooth otter, the antelope and the anteater, the black langur and the languid loris, the white socked bison and the padded-footed wild cat, the wary jackal and the fearless macaque, the goggle-eyed civet and the cynical hyena, the whistling dhole and the chattering giant squirrel — and depending on where it’s being organized (camps are now very popular and being organized in many places), there could be special attendees such as the rhino, the swamp dear, the martins, weasels and many other kinds you will rarely encounter in the jungle. Once a school for only animals, it now boasts of representatives of the avifauna too. For you see, the animals soon realized how incomplete and inadequate their efforts would be, if the birds were left out of this grand design. Thenceforth, birds like owls, hornbill and many kinds, including several of those sharp-eyed hawks and eagles, started attending these camps. Here they are all protected by the school decree; and for obvious reasons, the predatory instinct of the carnivores needs to be suspended necessarily. The food for the carnivores will be a wholesome substitute, namely, fish and insects which the school provides. The herbivores are given enriched grain harvested from the forest to save them the time of grazing. For a brief period, they live as one, learn as one.

What they learn here is nowhere anything like what children of humans learn in their school. In these camps, the animals are not taught