The Fall of a Sparrow

Title: The Fall of a Sparrow

Author: Salim Ali

Publisher: Oxford University Press 2006 (First published: 1985)

ISBN: 978-0-19-562127-3

Pages: 252

A definitive autobiography of the greatest ornithologist India had ever produced. Salim Ali rose to great renown by sheer dint of hard work and perseverance against great odds. The book begins from his childhood, how his interest in birds germinated and how he kept the spirit going for many decades to become one of the world’s leading men of his chosen field. The book, written in simple and elegant prose is designed to arouse the interest in young readers to dedicate themselves to an ideal which they deem fit as their life’s ambition. Salim Ali’s career is a great exemplar of how determined men can make a trail where no path existed before. Those who wonder at the relevance of the title find their curiosity satisfied on the front page itself in a quote from Hamlet, which runs ‘there’s a special providence in the fall of a sparrow’. Salim Ali is the author of many world-renowned books on ornithology. The author also tells the story of how the books came into being.

Salim Ali was born in a well to do family with lots of family members as company. An inclination to birds was apparent in the early stages, though as the author himself confesses, it was in the form of the menu on many occasions. Hunting was his pastime in the early periods and a lot of birds and wild game fell before his guns. However, we must take into proper account the era in which hunting was a socially acceptable hobby and a man’s coming of age was often reckoned on the number of beasts he’d felled. Ali’s intention to pursue a bachelor’s degree in zoology was foiled by his strong aversion to mathematics, which also formed a part of the curriculum. He had to skip the course and move to Burma in a bid to work as partner to his brother in his tin and tungsten mining business there. Burma provided ample grounds for developing his ornithological skills. He communicated frequently with experts of Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS) and other leading luminaries. We know that technologies for instant communication and the World Wide Web were not extant in those times, but the moral we must assimilate from Ali’s example is that nothing would hinder the efforts of a determined person. Technology has only the role of a facilitator.

The book contains excellent descriptions of field trips the author performed as part of bird surveys in the state of Hyderabad. These journeys were most often made with the basic minimum infrastructure available whether in the form of transportation or boarding facilities. He also made a survey in Travancore-Cochin as the central and southern parts of Kerala were known at that time. Even though he reminisces about Kerala as a wonderful abode for many species of birds and plants, no noteworthy incident is recounted.  The author puts forward a remarkable observation however, that the birds and fish fauna in Kerala are striking in similarity to that of Eastern Himalayas and Malaya. He argues about an extension of Satpura mountain range which provided contiguity by land and water as the cause of this phenomenon. However, this assertion seems a bit farfetched and requires the attention of geologists and expert zoologists to crack the secret of their coincidence.

                                                  

Salim Ali gives a detailed description of his field trip to Tibet to survey the birds there. The journey took place around Kailas Mountain and Manasarovar Lake, which assumed huge popularity later as a pilgrim route. Ali half-humouredly calls the trip an ornithological pilgrimage. He gives verbatim reproductions of his field diary and the readers get to know that the author greatly enjoyed the trip even in spite of the physical hardships endured on the way. We also discern the gradual, but subtle shift of attitudes of the people in the region at the outset of large scale pilgrimage, which lets loose a torment of commercial interests to wipe off the isolated manifestations of charity and compassion. Being a man of science, Ali finds many of the religious practices of the Tibetans disgraceful, but we may find many of his remarks uncharitable. Also the verbatim accounts of his diary lack any substance of interest, as the author himself confesses later that his writing style is ‘as dry as dust’.

The book is graced with a profound sense of humor displayed by the great ornithologist. This thread of subtle humor runs through the entire narrative and livens up the reading experience. One such incident is so hilarious that I am prompted to repeat it here. The author’s wife Tehmina though related to him by birth, was in a higher social and financial level than him. Many of her relatives expressed reservations about the match due to these differences. So, Ali was ecstatic when a situation presented itself to impress the relations favorably. This fiancée’s elder brother and his entire family were down with influenza. Salim Ali sent a telegraph which left him as “SHALL I COME AND HELP?”, but which was received as “SMALL INCOME, SEND HELP”. Imagine the consternation that would have caused due to this error in telegraphy.

Ali confesses that he was not a non-violent bird lover as so many people have made him out to be, and admits that exclaiming the truth sometimes embraced him. In the true spirit of scientific enquiry, he had to kill many birds to collect details of their diet, behaviour and nesting habits. With compunction in his heart he pulled the gun’s trigger thousands of times, but asserts that each dead bird had not died in vain and it enhanced scientific knowledge in some way. The author narrates one incident in which he came up with a nest full of unhatched eggs. He was cool enough to scramble one egg to make a delightful snack. So, if anyone harbours any idea of the ornithologist warmly caressing an unknown bird in order to study it, nothing is further from the truth.

What one would notice most from the narrative is the candour and lucidity with which he had told the story. Ali’s inimitable sense of humor, often applied to himself, enables him to make a clean breast of even embarrassing situations in order that the readers get a true picture of the incident being described. Even when he sets aside a full chapter to enlist the recognitions and awards won by him, we do not suspect even a trace of pomposity and accept the author’s argument that this list was put there as a tribute, or rather a fitting reminder to those people who mocked him on his choice of career at a time when such unconventional fields attracted rebuke from one’s own friends and well wishers. This was particularly so for Salim Ali in the 1920s when his partnership mining business in Burma had floundered and he had to spend a little time in Bombay as a married jobless guy. The candidness makes the book such a delight to read.

The author’s comparison of rates of transportation, wages and provisions appear naive and the readers are forced to observe that the old ‘bird watcher’ is utterly ignorant of the concepts of monetary inflation and the changes in the value of the currency over a period of time. We must suppress our smile when Salim Ali declares that so many products and services could be purchased at such a minuscule amount of money, typically five or six decades before.   

The book is highly recommended.

Rating: 3 Star