Rude Awakenings - Forest Sangha Publications

^0 T H I R D M O O N 06in Bettiah. I had written out a formal letter of commendation addressedto the bank’s president. At the bank, the official in charge of the foreignexchange department already knew about Mr. Mishra’s action. He explainedthat he had recently been authorized to accept the cheque andto reimburse Mr. Mishra. He took my letter, solemnly assuring me thatit would go to the president and that “it will be very much to Mr. Mishra’scredit,” and I left the bank feeling I had returned one good deed withanother.It was from the bank that I began the quest which led, via a series ofdingy offices, to the Patna Zoological Gardens and the small office ofthe wildlife division of the state forestry department. That was a goodafternoon. The gardens, to me, were a treasure house, as they had manyof the species that I might see as we crossed the forested hills of southernBihar. There was an enclosure with most of the native species ofdeer, which would have been great for learning to identify them, but thelist of the names displayed on the fence gave no way of identifying whichwas which. Luckily a passing janitor was able to help. Elsewhere, therewere tigers and leopards, and an aviary with birds of prey and owls. It wasa weekday, and the better-off locals who would visit the zoo were in theiroffices. I had many of the exhibits to myself, and I never had to queueeven once at the tea rooms, to which I returned several times for a newdiscovery: wonderful chilled cartons of mango juice called “Fruitees.”There was no one at the wildlife offices—not unusual for Bihar stateoffices I had already discovered—and I was able to wander round, studyingthe big wall maps showing the forest areas, the distribution of differentforest types, and pictures of the wildlife. On my second visit, twojunior officers turned up. They were very enthusiastic about our plansand gave useful advice. They knew personally all the forest officers inthe regions we were passing through and threw in details about each ofthem. The field jobs went to junior officers like themselves, and they hadall been to college together. They told me which forest resthouses wouldbe on our route and to which of the district forest offices to write to get1 8 0