He walked thousands of miles every year, in forests and on beaches and on mountains and in valleys, studying birds. He would look at them for hours, and sometimes shoot one to find out who it actually was. “Thank goodness they don’t need to do this to people,” I said to my sister.
So what was my problem? Having a famous bird uncle should be fun, right? Well, it wasn’t. It was the opposite of fun. Total un-fun.
My problem was that it wasn’t just Salim mamoo who was a bird star. My whole family were bird experts. My father and mother and brother and sister and our cook Paul. They flipped pages of Salim mamoo’s bird book and found the bird they’d seen in the garden, or park, or forest, or on a trip somewhere.
“Ah!” they’d shout in delight.
“Orange-headed ground thrush!”
And I felt left out.
I wanted to be like them. I wanted to recognise the song of the oriole, and the fork tail of the drongo, and the difference between the male and female paradise flycatcher. But I wanted to become an expert without paying attention, because school took away all the attention that I had. I didn’t have any left for other things.
This made me so sad. But I couldn’t talk about it. Years passed. I grew taller and taller and so did my problem. The worst part was I began to hate birds.
Excerpted with permission from Salim Mamoo and Me published by Tulika Books (January 2017; Rs 175).
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