Fond remembrances on International Day of Forests
Anna, as we used to call our father, like everyone else in a large joint family was a six footer and loved nature. He chased his dream of studying botany and zoology and secured admission in the prestigious Forest Research Institute at Dehradun. In the 1940s it was a bold decision for a young man from a traditional family in Kerala to go that far. He joined the Kerala Forest Department and worked all over the state. We, the children stayed with mother, grandparents, uncles and aunts in Trivandrum. Our grandparents were Appa and Ammai for us and we had no qualms about it. Except my youngest brother who wanted to know why his Appa has white hair and the fathers of his friends had black hair.
We used to eagerly look forward to our father’s weekend visits; finish all the home work and get ready for ‘nature bonding’. Anna would take us to the zoo and make us pet tiger cubs in the nursery and to the aquarium to marvel at fish and corals. We would come home with black mollies, red sword tails and colourful guppies. Visits to the sea beaches of Shangumugam and Kovalam used to be refreshing and educative as we would see Portuguese man o’ war and jelly fish floating by. He would tell us about the puffer fish lying on their backs and crabs scrambling on the sands. Weekend drives through the Western ghats got etched in our minds with his information about the tall Arjun trees, tree ferns, butterflies and the gurgling streams. Some of his weekend visits surprised us as he would bring home abandoned baby animals that had to be nurtured. The animals that we looked after ranged from a baby elephant and a bear cub to a giant squirrel and a mouse deer.
Apart from imparting lessons on wild life and forests to his children, Anna also used to show films in schools, conduct expeditions and display forest products in the city exhibitions. Vanya Prani Saptah, Wildlife week in the first week of October used to be fully packed with activities for my father, with full family involvement. When our neighbours chide him about his home visits in the weekends, he would say ‘kaadu va va engurathu, veedu po po enguruthu’, meaning ‘forest is calling me and house is asking me to go away’. He dealt with all the ups and downs of life with a great sense of humour and his ‘never say die’ attitude. Father got transferred to Trivandrum when his children had joined colleges. His habit of long walks and varied interests made him live fairly well up to the age of 83 years. In the last two years his brain used to falter and he seemed to remember the scientific names of trees better than that of his own children, Alstonia scholaris for the scholar tree and Tectona grandis for the teak. But his heart was always in the right place, in forests and with wildlife.
(Late Sri A S Monie (1922-2006) was the Chief Conservator of Forests, Kerala State)