It was through a small newspaper report that I came to know about the landing of the flamingos for the very first time in Mumbai. The year was 1994, and the place was a fishing village called Mahul, near Chembur.
In order to witness this avian spectacle, we took a bus to Mahul and got down at the last stop. The local fishermen knew the exact location, and one of them ventured to take us there in his fishing boat. His name was Rajaram Mahulkar, and he remains our friend for life.
To reach the boat that was moored in the distance, we had to walk through knee-deep muck that was sticky and black. Dangling our feet, sitting on the edge of the boat, we washed our legs in the sea water before we stepped in; and the motor boat started chugging away.
I must admit, our first sighting of the flamingos was a real dampener. As we entered the serpentine canal leading to the Arabian Sea, on our right we came across a large flock of flamingos; grey in colour and ungainly in gait. Before I could express my disappointment, Rajaram told me that this was only the nursery of the fledgling flamingos where they start their life with dull, grey plumage. It's only when they become adults and start feeding on the blue-green algae that their feathers start getting the shocking pink colour.
As we turned a blind corner in the canal, there it was: The awesome spectacle of a pink, animated line that stretched across two kilometres along the mangroves, uninterrupted. That sight remains as fresh in my mind as the pink-and-white feather I picked up that day and preserved as a book-mark in Salim Ali's Book of Indian Birds.
Our next encounter with these pink wonders was out of India, and it was out of the world. In Lake Naivasha in Kenya we saw at once a congregation of over a lakh flamingos completely covering the lake, shore to shore.
It was only when I saw a photograph of Lake Naivasha shot by the master aerial photographer Yann Arthus-Bertrand that I realised that a bird's eye view of a lake filled with flamingos could be as spectacular as an encounter at the eye level.
Then we met them at a beautiful waterbody near Ahmedabad called Nalsarovar Lake. The vast stretches of blue water had a host of species including pelicans, but the sheer number of flamingos made it a Flamingo City. And how I wished I knew whether even one of those flamingos was present in the group that I had seen in Lake Naivasha, and had migrated all the way from Kenya to meet us here.
The major difference between the flamingos in Mahul and the ones in Nalsarovar was their behaviour. Those in Mahul tended to stay at one place, feeding on the blue-green algae for hours as the tide kept on rising. And once their feet got submerged in the rising waters, they took off into the sky, forming gigantic pink clouds. The way they take off is a sight to behold. First they miraculously start walking on water, and once they gather enough momentum in their fragile feet, and enough wind in their wings, they take off from the watery runway into the horizon, just like an aeroplane. Their next stop is the coastline of faraway Uran, from where they return only during the next low tide.
In contrast, the flamingos of Nalsarovar take off and land at the slightest pretext. So, even as you watch them feeding, on some mysterious cue, they would take off in waves of pink, circle around in the sky, and land at a different spot. Only to repeat the same routine after a while.
Their take off is akin to the call of the cicadas. You don't know what prompts the cicadas to start. But invariably one of them starts chirping, and all of a sudden, inexplicably, the others join in chorus and then the sound spreads like the Mexican wave. The take off of the flamingos also follows a similar pattern. Out of the blue, one among a hundred starts flapping its wings impatiently, and then the pink impatience spreads in the group, till a small cluster finally takes off; the others joining in to form an endless trail of pink.
What's common among the flamingos of the two locations is their uncanny ability to spot the outsiders. When the local fishermen take their boats perilously close to the group they don't even bat an eyelid; but whenever a group of outsiders try and do the same, they quietly retreat. And you realise that however close you may seem to be reaching, the distance between you and them remains exactly the same!
When we made our second attempt to visit the creeks of Mahul, things had got a bit difficult. What was once an unguarded jetty was now fortified with policemen, post the Mumbai terror attacks. We had to get special permission from the Mumbai Port Trust and the RCF Police Station to visit the place, and it took a lot of cajoling and convincing.
This time around Rajaram tied a rowing boat to his motor boat and tagged it along. At one point, we anchored the big noisy motor boat at a safe distance from the flamingos, and transferred ourselves to the small, quiet rowing boat. And we could go really up close and personal, without disturbing the birds. And the tele-lens in my Nikon brought them so close that I could almost touch their shimmery, pink plumage.
Rajaram had looked at the tide when we left the jetty early in the morning, and had predicted that they would fly back to Uran at 9. My son and I were so busy capturing their graceful movements that we had lost all sense of time. And soon, right inside our viewfinders, there began a single pink flutter that became a hundred pink flutters. And lo and behold, the entire flock took off in waves after waves and soared into the sky, with the morning sun fuelling the fire in their feathers. As I looked at my watch I was left admiring the punctuality of two body clocks: one of Rajaram, and the other of the flamingos. The incident happened just as Rajaram had predicted: exactly at the stroke of 9.
PS: Just as the ink is drying up on this page, I see a newspaper report that oil has spilled from the BPCL refinery into the creek of Mahul. This thick oil slick has spread across the creek, already accounting for the death of marine life, and now endangering the lives of these winged wonders. Which leaves me with a question: These flamingos could have migrated to any part of the world, but they did Mumbaikars a favour when they decided to visit us, every year, year after year, for the past 15 years. Isn't it time we returned the favour by preserving their habitat, and helping them remain in the pink of health?
