The wild life

When I was much younger, about nine years old, we were on a short visit to Athens – Greece, not Georgia or even Ohio. There I met a lot of what would later form an integral part of my being, literally and experientially. First on the list was that delightful stuff called spanakopita, a gorgeously delicious ‘sandwich’ of filo pastry, spinach and feta cheese, all fabulously spiked with garlic and just a touch of pepper. Then came the monuments – the Parthenon, the caryatids, the columns (that was the time I was learning about styles of architecture and spoke of Doric, Ionic and Corinthian in a tone that even IM Pei and Le Corbusier would envy), the steps…everything that was ancient Grecian and, regrettably, needed urgent archaeological attention.

But what I really discovered and that would stay with me for my whole life was a writer who made me laugh, and still continues to do so. We were walking down a main thoroughfare in Athens headed to meet Father, when Mum and I found a bookstore where we could spend a little time that we had to spare. It sold English books, a sign outside said, and we marched in, hand in hand, Mum to look for a newspaper (probably the International Herald Tribune, something I grew up on as an irregular part of my reading diet), me to just look. We were looked at, too, Mum in particular, with her exotically beautiful face and elegant silk sari.

Newspaper got, Mum decided that the child needed some erudition. Comics were fine, but they didn’t have any that I wanted or liked. So she trolled the shelves holding English books and came up with an author that she insisted I would like and that she and Father could read, too, without feeling like they needed to get back into rompers and mud pies. Our purchases were neatly packaged and we marched out to a chorus of cheery farewells. Later that afternoon, back in our room at our gemutlich little pensione above the bakery, sprawled against the oversized pillows and breathing in air scented with the fragrance of fresh baking from the ovens downstairs, I took a good look at the book. And, halfway into the first chapter, I was a confirmed and life-long fan.

It was The Bafut Beagles, a collecting trip that Durrell made to Africa, to the British Cameroon. It chronicled his adventures with the various animals he was brought by his team of local hunters, his ever-growing for the Dark Continent and his deep friendship with the Fon, the local chieftain. And even as I giggled, I was shocked by words like ‘pissed’, which I saw printed for the first time – Mum shocked me even more when she was so casual about saying “So? It is just a biological function, silly!” (At nine, everything was shocking.) But, more than just a book, it became, for me, a need. Even today I look for that elusive Durrell that we may not have in our collection, often finding that it is a reissue or something that has been renamed to suit a new market.

Over the years, I met various members of Durrell’s family, starting with his hilarious My Family and Other Animals. I progressed rapidly through Birds Beasts and Relatives and Picnics and Suchlike Pandemonium and then, via a veritable library of more-collecting-less-family volumes, into the hysterical Rosy is My Relative and The Mockery Bird, both works of fiction, mixed in with a heavy dose of conservation messages. I ended, more or less, since I had everything that I could buy by then, with Durrell in Russia, more or less a diary of an expedition to that country to film a television series. It all brought together laughter, life in the wild and living with animals in a way that made – and still makes – my heart and mind dance. And that was what reading, to me, is all about.