Animal spirits in the sustainability debate

Animal stories have always held a special attraction for the child and adult alike. In the hands of an expert storyteller, what gets the unfettered attention of the children is the saucy insouciance of the animal characters and their complete disregard for the rules of adult life. Rabbits looking after crows, talking lions being outsmarted by mice and smart foxes getting the better of smug humans — it is a universe that makes up its own rules, one that makes the child feel like she is in control.

For the adult, the genre has a slightly different allure: they see a parallel between the animals in the story and people in real life. Sometimes their search for deeper meanings in life ends here with the pithy maxims and morals becoming a cache of principles to live their lives by.

Strictly speaking, the label of fable used for categorising such animal stories does not apply to this book. Nor does the book fit into the bracket in which animals and their lives are used as metaphors for the real world. The good thing is that Whispers from the wild is a sort of a book in a space where the boundaries are still being defined.

The book explores a contemporary issue: human apathy and cruelty towards the environment and its horrifying consequences. It considers this problem from the point of view of a few animals that are on the brink of extinction and tells us their story in their words. In this, the book is fresh and promising in its approach.

It is also courageous because it tries to go beyond the clichéd arguments about sustainability and conservation. It steers clear of bleak doomsday predictions and does not portray humans as arch enemies of all animals. It also reveals interesting and little-known details about the animals — such as, the delightful bit about how tigers often lose out in hand-to-hand combat with wild pigs!

However, promise and courage may be commendable attributes in a human being, but they do not always make for a good book. For that one needs a compelling story that is told well; it needs a confident voice that is skilled, measured and diligent to detail. And it is on these scores that Whispers from the Wild comes apart.

The stories are loosely written and the plots are weak. The one about elephants, for instance, reads like an anodyne personal diary entry, rather than a catching story. The voice of the storyteller changes frequently in every story. It takes on the tone of an awestruck child, then morphs into that of a calm and collected parent teaching a child within the span of a few sentences. This hurts the credibility of the character and prevents the reader from empathising with her predicament. For instance, in the story “If only they could sing like me...”, the endangered owlet speaks like a curious child when he describes the camera as “small metal boxes” making clicking noises in the beginning of the story. But by the end of the story, the owlet hoots like a mature and understanding adult when he says that he knows animals and humans would make the best of friends if only...

A story needs a strong set of characters. In this book, the characters seem to have no space to develop. And apart from the fact that they belong to a tribe of near-extinct creatures, the animals do not really touch an empathetic chord in the reader. The author is unable to convey the wonder and amazement that she says struck her upon discovering little-known facts about these animals. If the objective was to marry these facts with fiction, the book falls way short. The facts make more of an impact in the preface and in the “Notes on the Animals” section than when they are woven into the stories. Ideally, it should have been the other way round.

For instance, the Gharial and the Dugong, both animals threatened by extinction, carry impressive ecological credentials. They play an important role in balancing the aquatic ecosystem as the author reveals in the Notes but the stories do not touch upon that. Instead, the stories focus on the way these animals hunt their prey and on their appearances. To be fair, it is the author’s prerogative to choose which aspect of the character needs to be highlighted. However, the problem is that by leaving out the unique characteristics which distinguish these animals from another, she ends up making every animal sound the same.

The language is archaic, laboured and repetitive. For instance: The smoke rises softly and the hens cackle softly in two consecutive lines; the elephant sinks tiredly upon a patch of grass and in water in two consecutive paragraphs. The writing appears weary in several places and the book would have benefited hugely from a good editor who could have created a crisper, racier set of stories and done greater justice to the research that has gone into the making of the book.

Also a good editor’s deft touches would have avoided the excessive use of the inexplicable and jarring ellipses throughout the book. Ultimately, that and a more controlled use of the craft could have helped make Whispers from the wild a good book, not just a great effort.

The reviewer is co-author of The Weretiger: Stories of the Supernatural (Penguin, 2002) and Spooked: Stories of the Supernatural (Puffin, 2004)

WHISPERS FROM THE WILD
Geetanjali Krishna
Inkblots, New Delhi
92 pages; Rs 550