Diaries of the Wild

An introduction to Indian wildlife that doesn’t offer anything different from what is already available.



The Wild Wonders of India, Biswajit Roy Chowdhury, Niyogi Books, 2008, hardcover, p.151, price not stated.

There have been a plethora of books on Indian wildlife in the last few decades, many of them of admirable quality. So, to make a difference, a new book should have a distinct thrust. It is not clear what the main thrust of the book under review is. I s it a field guide to Indian wildlife or a tourist brochure? This book tries to provide an introduction to Indian wildlife by describing the species, the habitat and in the last section some of the protected areas in the country. But it ends reading like a piece of tourist literature.
Even the short introductory chapter contains howlers such as “The people who lived in the Indus plains were known as Aryans”, “Ashoka ruled in 8th BC” (his reign was 273-232 BC) and Jim Corbett gave up hunting on the advice of F.W. Champion. Information such as these could easily have been verified by referring to any standard book on the subjects.

Plenty of photographs

Photographs dominate this book and there are some beautiful images like the Plain Tiger butterfly on a flower petal and some portraits of rare animals such as the Madras Tree Shrew, the Hoolack gibbon and the Himalayan marmots. The picture of the spectacled macaque is a precious image. This elegant primate is restricted to a small patch of forest near Imphal. The bulk of the photographs is by the author B.R. Chowdhury. He has to his credit some stunning images — the pair of clouded leopard on a tree, for instance. Then there are also the works of other celebrated names in wildlife photography — Ian Lockwood, Vivek Sinha and Kuttappan.
However, a number of animals in captivity have been photographed and included. The Snow leopard, the goral and the Thamin, to cite a few. It is not difficult to get good images of creatures like the Lion-tailed macaque. Some images are of poor quality and they need not have been included. The one of Great Indian Bustard for example. There has to be a balance between the rarity of the image and its quality. Evidently, no photo-editing was done. There are three different pictures of the Clouded leopard. It has to be borne in mind that the arrival of digital photography in recent years has drastically changed the wildlife photography scene.
The layout of photographs does not seem to fall in any pattern and are poorly executed. The picture of the Small-clawed Otter and the Rufus-tailed hare seem to merge and appear as one image.

Carelessly edited

The book has not received adequate editorial attention and this reduces the readability. There are quite a few grammatical errors and syntax problems. For instance, the use of the term Blackbucks. Capitalisation has been used indiscriminately. Distances are given in miles and lengths in feet, instead of in the decimal system. The author has tried to cover as many of the major sanctuaries as possible and this has resulted in repetition. The Silent Valley National Park is disposed off in three sentences. Vedanthangal sanctuary has been covered in twice in the book, in page 121 and in 137. Mundanthurai, a Project Tiger area, is spelt wrongly.