father said, "we'll sail like columbus!""he was hoping to find india," i pointed out sullenly.
we sold the zoo, lock, stock and barrel. to a new country,a new life. besides assuring our collection of a happy future,the transaction would pay for our immigration and leave uswith a good sum to make a fresh start in canada (thoughnow, when i think of it, the sum is laughable – how blindedwe are by money). we could have sold our animals to zoos inindia, but american zoos were willing to pay higher prices.
cites, the convention on international trade in endangeredspecies, had just come into effect, and the window on thetrading of captured wild animals had slammed shut. the futureof zoos would now lie with other zoos. the pondicherry zooclosed shop at just the right time. there was a scramble tobuy our animals. the final buyers were a number of zoos,mainly the lincoln park zoo in chicago and the soon-to-openminnesota zoo, but odd animals were going to los angeles,louisville, oklahoma city and cincinnati.
and two animals were being shipped to the canada zoo.
that's how ravi and i felt. we did not want to go. we didnot want to live in a country of gale-force winds andminus-two-hundred-degree winters. canada was not on thecricket map. departure was made easier – as far as getting usused to the idea – by the time it took for all the pre-departurepreparations. it took well over a year. i don't mean for us. imean for the animals. considering that animals dispense withclothes, footwear, linen, furniture, kitchenware, toiletries; thatnationality means nothing to them; that they care not a jot forpassports, money, employment prospects, schools, cost ofhousing, healthcare facilities – considering, in short, theirlightness of being, it's amazing how hard it is to move them.
moving a zoo is like moving a city.
the paperwork was colossal. litres of water used up in thewetting of stamps. dear mr. so-and-so written hundreds oftimes. offers made. sighs heard. doubts expressed. hagglinggone through. decisions sent higher up for approval. pricesagreed upon. deals clinched. dotted lines signed. congratulationsgiven. certificates of origin sought. certificates of health sought.
export permits sought. import permits sought. quarantineregulations clarified. transportation organized. a fortune spenton telephone calls. it's a joke in the zoo business, a wearyjoke, that the paperwork involved in trading a shrew weighsmore than an elephant, that the paperwork involved in tradingan elephant weighs more than a whale., and that you mustnever try to trade a whale, never. there seemed to be a singlefile of nit-picking bureaucrats from pondicherry to minneapolisvia delhi and washington, each with his form, his problem, hishesitation. shipping the animals to the moon couldn't possiblyhave been more complicated. father pulled nearly every hair offhis head and came close to giving up on a number ofoccasions.
there were surprises. most of our birds and reptiles, andour lemurs, rhinos, orang-utans, mandrills, lion-tailed macaques,giraffes, anteaters, tigers, leopards, cheetahs, hyenas, zebras,himalayan and sloth bears, indian elephants and nilgiri tahrs,among others, were in demand, but others, elfie for example,were met with silence. "a cataract operation!" father shouted,waving the letter. "they'll take her if we do a cataractoperation on her right eye. on a hippopotamus! what next?
nose jobs on the rhinos?" some of our other animals wereconsidered "too common", the lions and baboons, for example.
father judiciously traded these for an extra orang-utan fromthe mysore zoo and a chimpanzee from the manila zoo. (asfor elfie, she lived out the rest of her days at the trivandrumzoo.) one zoo asked for "an authentic brahmin cow" for theirchildren's zoo. father walked out into the urban jungle ofpondicherry and bought a cow with dark wet eyes, a nice fathump and horns so straight and at such right angles to itshead that it looked as if it had licked an electrical outlet. fatherhad its horns painted bright orange and little plastic bells fittedto the tips, for added authenticity.
a deputation of three americans came. i was very curious. ihad never seen real live americans. they were pink, fat,friendly, very competent and sweated profusely. they examinedour animals. they put most of them to sleep and then appliedstethoscopes to hearts, examined urine and feces as ifhoroscopes, drew blood in syringes and analyzed it, fondledhumps and bumps, tapped teeth, blinded eyes with flashlights,pinched skins, stroked and pulled hairs. poor animals. theymust have thought they were being drafted into the u.s. army.
we got big smiles from the americans and bone-crushinghandshakes.
the result was that the animals, like us, got their workingpapers. they were future yankees, and we, future canucks.
