The Birdman of India

Nice artice.Ofcourse every educated Indian is aware of Salim Ali,he is a legend.
But not many know but his personal life.

Regards
Nandan

#35 soya, it is not caste or anything, its the angrez method ..this was the norm before automation in angrezistan too.

#32
Interesting observation. We overemploy as a means to reducing unemployment - go to a bank or any organization where you need to get work done, we need to go from counter to counter getting papers stamped or new pieces of paper issued, etc. Why have one person do the job when five can share it? This idea in modern india is partly a tradition carried over from our obsession with castes and partly an import from the old Soviet Union where, again, the state created a lot of useless, bench-warming jobs as a way of keeping people employed. Employment was not about productivity, it was a welfare measure.

Mr. Gill,

It`s refreshing to read an article on this topic.

As school kids we use to read a lot about him and discuss in schools about his work, especailly when he came and confirmed about Jerdon`s Courser bird, thought to be exticnt was spotted in AP in 1986. He took pains to educate the people about conserving the endangered bird. He took and preserved the lone specimen of Jerdon`s Courser in Bombay Natural History Society. The BNHS musuem in Bombay reflects the hard work done by Salim Ali. He was one of the inspring role models in pre-6/12 India.

Re: # 16

Yes, I agree with you Delhiwala: You are known to make very insightful and smart comments! Let us hear it!

You know censoring is done by automati searching for key words that imply profanity, curse words or whatever. But that kind of censoring does not work always. It is done to save time. It can even be stupid. So don`t worry. Have patience and drink your cup of tea.

Sahibi has become ingrained in us. I remember recently I had to take a gora to meet a GM of a large company in Mumbai. We sat and started talking. During the meeting suddenly the GM buzzed for a peon and asked him to pour him a glass of water. What shocked the gora was that the bottle of water was all the time on the table and all the GM had to do was to reach out open the bottle and pour himself some water rather than call someone to do it. Next the GM again buzzed, this time for his assistant, and asked him to dial so-and so, the assistant pisked up the mobile from the GM`s table dialled and when the connection was made he handed the phone for the GM to speak. The gora could not believe what he saw, no wonder, in the west they just do not have flunkeys like we do, there is no system of peons., evrybody does his own work, even closer home, in Iran in schools the Headmaster himself rings the bell at the end or beginning of a class unlike here.

kabuliwala:
Yes, he had a passion for motor cycles. His autobiography also shows that he considered Meinertzhagen a bulley although he himself was not daunted by him. He was kind of idiosyncratic in several ways and respected Salim Ali. I did mention in my article that he was a phony too.
I haven`t read Salim Ali`s autobiography cover to cover but have read pieces of it here and there. Dr. Salim Ali was naturally gifted and was fortunate that his greatness was appreciated all the world over in his lifetime.
Mohammad Gill

Dear Dr. Gill,

thanks for writing about the birdman of India...as a kid I used to think that he was the ugliest man ever and was quite scared of his picture...but much later read his autobiography and discovered that he and I shared a passion for motorcycles...his autbiography has quite a few pics of his motorcycle exploits, one of which I believe was travelling on his motorcycle from India to England...so u see, he beat Che both in terms of distance and for conceiving the idea before...while an Islam observant man, he had no patience or understanding for other religions as evindenced by his thoughts on Buddhist and Hindu practices during his survey of the birds in Nepal and Tibet...I found it odd that after having lived and grown up in India, he did not have the heart to understand the native faiths...regards

Kabuli

Re: # 28
Ajeet having repaired televisions myself when there were actual tubes other than the picture tube it has been my experience that when a tube burns out no amount of banging can bring things back to life. And I suppose this anecdote took place in the 70s before the hey-day of solid state electronics.

HP , a herpetologists studies reptiles. He doesn`t reduce the number of snakes, frogs etc. India has a lot of people doing research on reptiles even though a lot of those reptiles appear to be foreign born.

Delhiwala, Europe has been as contentious a continent as Asia. Its been full of Christians killing each other and the occasional Turkish Muslim all the way upto 1945 and also post 1992. Perhaps the British should thank the Indians because we let them get modern by looting us.

I love historical discussion especially when a thief and a murderer like Meinertzhagen is being defended, as being one of the race that taught us how to live.

Please read desis and not desins, in the last line before you get any other ideas.

This is not a question of slackness or stinginess. It is the culture which taught that if you are educated, working with hands was below your status. Also, HP before you get smug, I said desins and not Indians. One of the four guys was a Pakistani.

The Indian is not only a slacker he is stingy as well.....?

``The replacement cost is the key in your story, not the slackness!``(HP)

HP that sentence has a razer`s edge......:)

``He took them out and went to Radio shack and bought replacements,``

The replacement cost is the key in your story, not the slackness!

Re: # 14

Dr Sahib, I have an anecdote, which illustrates this very thing. This is a true story, one of my friends told me. He and three other desis were sharing an apartment. They were all electronic engineers. They had an old TV in the living room, which worked off and on. Every time it stopped working they would bang on it and it would come back to life for a short time. This went on for a long time, until one of the four left. The guy who moved in his place was not an electronic engineer. He was just an ordinary Joe, an American, good at fixing things.
The first day he saw the TV misbehave, he opened the back. There were some tubes that were obviously burnt out. He took them out and went to Radio shack and bought replacements, The next day the TV was working fine.

Re: # 21
Addendum:
WW2 and the reluctance of Indians to serve under Gora-Officers leading to Indian Commissions(IC) was the turning point in educated middle class youth to relaize their potential. These Short Service Commissioned Officers became the fulcrum for making English realize that it is no Longer a feasibilty to rule India with Old King Commisioned Officers and at that rate would have been revolting.