He doesn't take his kids to the zoo, he brings the zoo home
HOUSE number 4. On the 18th cross of the 15th main road, Subramanyapura, south Bangalore. Sounds like just another gloomy, nondescript hole somewhere in the concrete jungle? Wrong guess. Dr M.K. Shashidhar and his family, the Iengars, are not its only denizens. They share the 2,400 sq ft living space with the most quaint assortment of boarders—poisonous snakes, wild birds, rare reptiles, jackals, bears, a wild boar, a pangolin, a mongoose and a cub lioness.
Dr Shashidhar, who supports this live-in menagerie all on his own initiative, has 20 different species of animals dotting his personal landscape—including a mongoose, cobras, a python, vipers, a monitor lizard, two loris, a tortoise, parakeets, a kite, bulbuls, a pond heron and an owl.
It is the largest collection of domestic and wild animal species outside a zoo or a circus in the country. The live 'exhibits' are complemented by a mini-museum which has on display cement models of animals, paintings and embroidered works of animals, dead baby snakes preserved in bottles, crystallised cobra poison, skin shed by snakes, snake eggs, models of insects and pests, and strangely, even a minute human embryo preserved in a quarter bottle.
The silence is deafening on the first floor terrace, where winged and clawed creatures in cages of various sizes seem to be in silent protest against the departure of Sheeba, a cub lioness who was the most popular inhabitant of the mini-zoo and who had to be returned to the Bannerghatta national park outside Bangalore recently.
One of three newly-born cubs in Banner-ghatta, Sheeba (as she was later named by the Iengars) was abandoned by its mother for a deformity in its foreleg. She was dehydrating to death when the national park authorities decided to hand her over to Dr Shashidhar, a freelance anaesthetist whose family has been caring for injured and sick animals for nearly two decades now. "She needed 24-hour care which the national park authorities could not ensure. Since we are known for caring for such animals, we were allowed to bring it home and nurse it," says Shashidhar, 40.
Sheeba was nursed back to robust health and soon became the cynosure of both the Iengars as well as their visitors' eyes.
Outsiders were allowed to visit her on Sundays for an entry fee of Rs 5. She was a particular favourite of Shashidhar's 9-year-old daughter, and was allowed to move freely around the house and slept in one of the bathrooms. All that, however, ended when the Iengars celebrated Sheeba's first birthday and she became the focus of local media attention. The family expressed dif-ficulty over feeding a growing cat that consumed about 4 kg of meat a day. Embarrassed forest department officials promptly brought Sheeba back to Bannerghatta, where it is making efforts to adjust to its new surroundings.
The saga of Sheeba is nothing new to the Iengar household. A family of animal lovers, the Iengars inherited their love for injured and sick animals from their late father, M.K.S. Iengar, a mining engineer who worked in wildlife-rich regions. Over the last two decades, the family, including Shashidhar's elder brother M. K. Srinath, officer-in-charge, World Wide Fund for Nature, Karnataka, and mother Janaki Iengar, has nursed a wild boar, about half-a-dozen jackals, two bears, a pangolin and numerous poisonous reptiles and birds.
"The animals are usually brought by people who find them injured. Or we're informed that such and such animal is lying injured somewhere in town. Sometimes, we confiscate snakes and species like the loris or the giant monitor lizard from snake charmers or people trying to sell them," says Shashidhar. "There is no set-up to rehabilitate or nurse injured and sick wild animals. The forest department doesn't have the infrastructure to do the job. So we are just filling in a gap." He claims that feeding the animals alone costs nearly Rs 10,000 a month, and that expenses were even higher during Sheeba's stay.
The family, however, is firm about not seeking funds from either the Government or NGOs—"they always have strings attached"—and depended on donations. Bha-rat Electronics Ltd paid for all the cages; Garware Paints donated paint for the cages, Eureka Forbes donated a vacuum cleaner to clean the snake cages. Sundry individuals contributed in cash and kind. The entire Iengar family is involved in caring for the animals though the younger in the family credit most of the effort to Janaki Iengar, 64.
But some people are beginning to feel that there is something fishy about this unconventional passion. Though the family takes extremely good care of the animals under its supervision and even returns some of them to their original habitat after they have been nursed back to health, the state forest department is beginning to suspect their motives after the Sheeba episode. Most of the wild animals kept in the Iengar household are on the schedule of protected wildlife and cannot be kept in captivity without a possession certificate. While Shashidhar claims to have possession certificates, a senior forest department official who spoke to Outlook on condition of anonymity said he was not so sure. "I don't know if they have got the certificates renewed regularly. Our department erred in allowing them to keep wild animals like the cub lioness and the wild boar," he says.
The official accuses the Iengars of using Sheeba for personal gain and of making exaggerated statements that she might die after she was returned to Bannerghatta. Says he: "Their whole objective was to get some funds from abroad and make merry. How could they charge an entry fee to visit their house without the permission of the Central Zoo Authority of India? We are planning to inspect their place and probably seize all those animals on the wildlife schedule." While agreeing on the need for a wildlife care centre like the Iengar residence, Suparna Ganguly, secretary, CUPA (Compassion Unlimited Plus Action), a voluntary animal-care organisation in Bang-alore, feels she would never advise keeping mongooses or snakes constricted in the way they are by the Iengars. Says she: "Personally, I don't believe in keeping healthy wild animals in captivity."
Counters Shashidhar: "It is a misconception that animals are unhappy in captivity and need freedom. They are much more happy in captivity as there is no competition for food, no threat from predators and protection from natural hazards. All they need is affection which we shower on them." But after the Sheeba episode and with the forest department having different plans, the Iengars would probably need to do more than shower affection on the animals to hold on to them.