Animals

The animals were trapped, until whisked away perforce or death did them in. When they could leave gracefully to more conducive environments, through its many open gates anytime, or simply fly or slither away, crawl or burrow out, as is wont of them, it would strike any as absurd, that they’d chosen to hover around and remain within the confines of a building and its complex, thronged by humans of all hues, different character and proclivities, during the day and suddenly emptied of them, by night.

Their convergence, was never witnessed to ascertain at once, the members that comprised the menagerie of sorts. Their phylum, class, order, sub‐order, family, genus, species, sub‐species, were yet to be researched, studied, identified or chronicled. Neither was any informal survey attempted nor any proposal made for a proper and scientific zoological survey, to collect data on and understand the health of the animal ecosystem within the complex. To the man or men of average

or below average intelligence, perceiving only the obvious, it would appear, only cats, dogs, kites, pigeons, crows, ravens, mynas, sparrows, squirrels, cows and goats, the usual and visible suspects, took shelter in its large corridors, perched themselves on its ornately carved banisters or grazed its immaculately manicured lawns.

Stray sightings, witness accounts and reportage, expanded common knowledge of the collection to include snakes, monkeys, bats, owls and peacocks. A headline once relayed news of a venomous six feet long snake found in a chamber of a Judge, which launched an investigation into whether it was planted by a disgruntled litigant or simply staking a claim to its home. Another newspaper report recorded a court visit of a fugitive peacock, an escapee from Raj Bhavan, the State Governor’s official residence. Both were promptly caught by forest officials and wildlife rescuers and returned to their so called original habitat. A vulture, before their near extinction in Mumbai, was once spotted on a window sill of a court room, with a limb or two of a lawyer’s corpse dangling from its beak.

Some believed or had a hunch, that the many alcoves, unheard, unused or undiscovered passages and stairwells in the building and hidden tunnels, were bound or prone to attract and house nefarious and nocturnal predators, the stealthy kind of carnivores such as foxes, jackals, wolves, leopards and perhaps a solitary hyena. Amphibians and reptiles, two distinct groups of cold‐blooded animals, could have comfortably taken refuge in the public well on its extremity or in the water tanks underground. Turtles and tortoises, crocodiles and alligators, frogs and lizards, ought to be counted as its probable inhabitants. One could never discount that over years, through flood or rain or just by quirk of fate, lizards, frogs and crocodiles might easily have landed in its quarters as babies and in time grown to full length and size. Although never spotted, legend had it that a deadly komodo dragon and a dyeing dart frog, poisonous to the hilt, once made bedfellows, cohabited in a locked room full of records and mated in abundance. Out of the union or interspecific interaction as it’s

called, came a hybrid offspring, strange and hideous, of gargantuan proportion and appetite, with unimaginable abilities and almost mythical qualities. As told, it could survive years in hibernation and when awakened would consume multiple reams of paper and whole humans by the dozen.

Then there were the land invertebrates, caterpillars, centipedes, spiders, snails and worms holed up in every nook, cranny and indent in its stone walls or below floor tiles coming apart. The other evolved invertebrates which could take flight, such as butterflies, bees, fireflies, dragonflies, houseflies, beetles, wasps, moths, grasshoppers, mosquitoes, being unrestricted by movement, were relatively freer and would glide in and out of the building and rove its yards, flitting between flowers, crumbs of food and open human arms. The winged species had their own hierarchy. While kites, barn owls, parrots and crows nested higher up, in the top most branches of trees or beneath awnings on higher floors and snug corners on the rooftop, inaccessible to humans, pigeons, doves and sparrows found room to multiply in full view, atop and between ducts and air conditioners on every floor.

Mice, rats, beavers, squirrels characterized as rodents and constituting almost half of the class of Mammals, universal as they are, were aplenty, and provided an endless source of fodder for animals higher up the food chain. Brown rats, black rats, roof rats, bandicoots and house mice ‐ scientifically named rattus norvegicus, rattus rattus, bandicota indica and mus musculus, were increasing in number, in spite of efforts at containment and constant attack from predators within its ranks. In constant fear of being preyed upon, they would largely stay away from sight, tucked away in the netherworld of inter‐connected sewers and pipes and burrows in the yard, or closeted in attics and old, creaky and broken cupboards. Squirrels including the flying variety, relatively common and sociable, were often spotted acrobatically navigating their way on trees for fruits and resting on building ledges eager to catch discarded morsels of food.

The smallest and microscopic ones, were the hardest to find although most in number. Ants and termites, with their complicated social structures and colonies and evolved predatory behaviors, were adapted to tree foliage and almost customised to devour soggy wood, heaps of files or an entire library. With some focus or perhaps a sting or two, painful never lethal, one could tell the ants around. Ants and termites, though belonging to different orders, were the most feared animals in the court. Large amounts of money were allotted and expended biannually for their extermination.

Yet no amount of pesticide could contain their species, running in the thousands. Instead, silver fish, bugs, cockroaches, mites and ticks, equally prevalent, bore the brunt. In time, resilient as they come, they’d resurface with vigor and increase exponentially.

The animal kingdom provided a breeding ground for ready case studies on competition, predation, commensalism, parasitism, mutualism and amensalism, prevalent in equal measure among the patrons of the court. Many a conversation were attempted by animal lovers, animal activists, wildlife enthusiast and vets with few of the docile and slightly domesticated animals, to elicit an understanding of animal thought, behavior and life, and establish association, but in vain. With no common or link language but only responses to basic stimuli, each interaction left different surmises and little scope for connection.

Hierarchies, social structures and behaviorisms in animals, were analogous to those among humans. Traits and characteristics in humans often mimicked and resembled their counterparts in animals and vice versa. Among ant colonies, is observed what could be termed a class system with a clear social hierarchy, with the queen as founder and leader of the colony given her primacy, drones or male ants being next in the chain, followed lastly by workers entrusted with the lowly task of foraging for food and caring for young. A similar social hierarchy was clearly in existence and in full display between Judges, Counsels, Solicitors, Advocates, fresh graduates and interns. The hierarchies appeared as much if not more ossified as the ant world. The queens or kings or alphas of various groups, basked in all the attention and glory, readily accepting the primacy accorded by their minions, plebeians and lowly with little or no self‐respect, and almost exclusively and unduly appropriated the largest chunk of their sweat, toil and handiwork. The plebeians or betas among the lawyers, were almost always relegated to humdrum tasks, but infused with false hopes, dreams and ambition that they too could eventually rise among the ranks. Crumbs were cast at them in the form of occasional empty compliments and designations, to satiate their immediate needs, just enough so as to not pump up their relevance and quell any thought or possibility of uprising within.

You could find in abundance among lawyers ‐ parasites ‐ ready to eat off others; mutualists ‐ willing to work symbiotically with another; and self‐centered – constantly in battle.

An army of ants, troop of monkeys, murder of crows, pack of dogs, mischief of rats and pandemonium of parrots, as collectives were a contrast to each of their kind when singled out. As a collective, they tended to exhibit bravado, raucousness, clamor, intolerance, fickle‐mindedness, diminished responsibility, fanaticism and pointless resolve, of the kind found in a mob of people. In their numbers, they’d seek security from attack by larger predators and to benefit from the collective wisdom of the group. But the individualist among them, display in their vulnerability, the same quest for independence, self‐reliance, self‐control, freedom, confidence, challenge, quality and excellence, that one would find among the lone rangers or sigmas.

Comparisons between hominoids and animals, were inevitable. The first generation lawyers, parvenus or upstarts, the supposedly pedigreed or unduly advantaged, the hybrids – those of mixed breed, the opportunist, the idealist, the pessimist, the pragmatists, the groupies, and lone rangers, all had their parallels in the animal world. Resemblances between professionals, largely lawyers, running to and between courts in the course of their business and its resident animals, were very striking, some not so. Many lawyers had their soul or spirit animals, which they not only looked and prayed to for guidance and protection, but whose characteristics they noticeably shared and embodied. The occasional snake, slithery and slimy or the vulture, forever ravenous, were seen in several of the men and women in black robes. Lawyers resembling cunning crows, passive doves and clever parrots, were a dime a dozen. The scavenging vultures and owls among them, ready to devour the little left of hapless litigants drained by the system, were rare but not yet extinct. Traits peculiar to dogs of mixed breed ‐ sociability, adaptability, submissiveness and loyalty, could be seen in many of those less well‐off, determined to survive or even thrive at any cost. The social climbers or butterflies, could be seen in those shifting from one firm and lawyer to another, foraging for work, clients and experience. But butterflies don’t last long and perish once their purpose is served, lending color and glamor along the way. Many counsels strutting their ware, personified pliant monkeys performing stunts, tricks and reciting limericks for a fee. Rich litigants, the milch cows of the system, readily obliged for want of better entertainment. It’s happenstance that lions, elephants and tigers were yet to discover the building and smorgasbord on offer, and those lawyers that considered themselves similar, were just delusional. Limitless in their vanity, with their air of superiority, peacocking and flaunting their mundane work as intellectually taxing and of high value, was second nature.

Despite efforts at setting themselves apart, through unilateral declarations and self‐serving statements that they’re different and highest on the food chain, in the system that is a circus, humans remain central but animal all together. Just some, a tad more evolved.

Jacob Kadantot

Advocate