The Curious Journal of a Lepidopterologist

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Saturday, September 1901

It is the darndest thing. Seven months since we have arrived at this lonesome place and my nets still lie empty. My wife, Ira, berates me, letter after letter, urging my return to Darjeeling. The Dohertys, she writes, ask her unremittingly what has become of the husband. ‘Has he found his butterfly in the ravages of those mountains?’ ‘How long does it take to snare one of those?’ Piffle and spittle. She detects the colonialists sneer beneath their smiles, and fears that they will fuel the gossip that is circulating – that I have found a new mistress, that I have lost my sanity, that I have turned into a loathsome savage unfit for society because of the company I keep here. I wrote to her in vivid detail what profanities she should offer the dastardly Dohertys and their ilk if they so much as crossed her path. I advised her to study, read, and do all the other things that pleased her but not to venture forth into contemptible society. For the self indulgence of civilized society can make a beast out of a decent chap. The rogue of society cleverly hides behind taffeta, silk, carriages and pearls, and cannot be easily detected by one without critique and question. I urged her to have patience and that I could not return without achieving what I had set out for.  

But failure only nudges me to continue further. Although sometimes I am conflicted. Is my goal to go down in the annals of the London Naturalist Society as the captor of the most mysterious butterfly worth the price that Ira and I are paying? But then I reason with myself that greatness always comes with great unceasing sacrifice, and the thought pacifies my stirring and restless unease.

My prize, my catch, is out there in these purple echoing mountains, fluttering in the icy northern winds that blow down from the Himalayas. My group of lepchas, who have stayed with me through this wearisome expedition, are bored; they drink foul-smelling spirits, garrulously play cards, and fall asleep by the hearth. However, I must not dismiss their gallant efforts. They are steadfast, indefatigable men with senses of a jungle cat who know this treacherous terrain like it were their backyard. Their devotion to me has been unwavering – collecting larvae and caterpillar specimens with me at 10,000 feet. But hasten our search we must. Winter is at its onset a month from now. The wintering adult butterfly will seek shelter in the deep hollows of the conifers and crevices in rocks far out of our reach; hibernation will begin and we will have to await spring.

However, I do not despair. We have had sightings of the butterfly, and with every wispy, paper-thin bits of its exuviae that we find our confidence is restored. But it is undoubtedly a creature most elusive. It drifts about among the tree tops – rarely descending to the ground – from which it flies only during a few hours of the morning, making our task of catching it more Herculean by the day. The iridescent purple of the hind wings and phosphorescent yellow of its fore wings is not as striking as one might think, and if one loses sight of it for an instant, it is very hard to make out again amidst all the merciless green of the forest. Seen from above it must be much more conspicuous. And at night, its dark wings are lost among the shadows. This is the rarest insect I have studied. It has large angular, membranous wings, and its flight is not buoyant, instead it is strong, rapid, and dashing against the harsh winds that blow at these altitudes making it impossible to calculate the direction in which it is going to go next.

It is an enigma that is consuming me. My feet ache and are alive with a colony of sores from the endless trudging through the cruel forest. The lepchas have told me to soak them in hot saline water with a cap full of vinegar before retiring to bed. I have followed their advice stoically.

Tuesday, October 1901

A storm rages and the winds growl as if from the hungry belly of a beast. I find solace in my writing. Yesterday, two of my lepchas came to me with some news as I was writing my journal. They have heard of a man, Pi, a native of these parts, who is a perceptible expert on the butterfly. Without any further ado I asked them to take me to him. Any bone thrown my way was a bone I intended to pick up. I put on my thickest Sherpa jacket, grabbed a lantern, and left. We cut through the thick cover of fog, a sign of a storm waiting in the edges of the light that our lanterns cast. A half hour past midnight we arrived at the local tavern. The low light threw up a few stragglers with worn, wrinkled faces who stared at me unashamedly. A white man in these parts was still a strange sight. The two lepchas I had come with took me to a man lying on a sack of grain, his hand gripping a bottle of locally-brewed liquor.

‘Pi?’ I asked.

The devil raised a glassy eye in acknowledgement.

‘He’s the butterfly man? Is this a joke? The man is a bloody drunk!’ My patience dwindled and I roared at the lepchas.

And instead of an offending retort, which I had most certainly expected for my crude behaviour, they suggested that perhaps this wasn’t the most suitable time to talk to him, and assured me of Pi’s knowledge. I agreed, and we were about to leave when Pi let out a grunt and said in the local (the meaning I drew from my loyal lepcha the next evening when he was inebriated), ‘The dogs of doom sniff at the white man’s trouser ends, but the path to glory is such.’ To which one of my lepchas turned around and kicked Pi in the stomach. Pi grunted in a moment of semi-consciousness. I had never seen my lepchas lose their fortitude, and bade the angry young man to stay his anger. The encounter had me rattled. We made our way back through the night, with me feeling hollow inside for shouting at my trusty companions.

Wednesday, October 1901

Today saw a clear sky and me and my group at Pi’s door. Pi, sober as a turnip, was stirring broth in a charred cauldron. He gave us a toothy grin and gestured for us sit. He spoke to one of my lepchas who understood both the local language and Nepali, and he, in turn, kept up a steady stream of translation so that the other lepchas and I would not miss out anything. Here is an account of what transpired.

Pi spoke, in between puffs of his pipe. ‘Shiny is the day, no? So you search for beauty that cannot be attained?’ To which my trusty lepcha gestured to get to the point.

‘When I was a young man and the blood in my balls governed my being, I would seek the forest as the place for my many misdemeanours. There I would lie, a new ripe maiden, every time, on top of me, her breasts heaving above, and I would wonder if there was any delight beyond that. You know what I mean (here he flashed us another grin). On one such day, as the landlord’s daughter bounced upon me, I saw a butterfly most magical flittering above us. It lingered in a patch of sky, sunlight glinting through its haunting, translucent wings, teasing me out of my rapture. So I tactfully pushed her off me to get a better look, but it was gone. I came back the next day, sans maiden, and waited for it. And at sundown I was treated to a sight that held me frozen in my tracks. A family of the same species hovered over a flowering azalea bush. Drawn by its sweet nectar, the butterflies swarmed around in an ancient dance. I stood there amid the bushes for what seemed an eternity, drinking in that marvellous sight. The earth in its bounty and loveliness can be an addiction for the man who is willing to look and wait. I was altered in ways much more than the spirits I drink each night. And I am a man prone to indulging my weaknesses... I came back day after day, not to take it prisoner but to learn–’

There, his wife, the village washerwoman, stormed into the room with a stream of curses so severe that it could bring a blush upon the devil’s cheeks. The broth was left unattended and she yelled at Pi that she could smell it burning from down by the river. She gave us the eye, embers burning at its heart, and we looked sheepishly looked at our feet. She left as abruptly as she came.

My heart went out to Pi, for at the moment I saw Ira’s wrath, although in the coarse words of the washerwoman, when I would cause domestic indiscretions such as entering the house with muddy boots and leaving my socks strewn across the carpet in disarray. The fury of a woman knows not the boundaries of creed or nations.

Pi continued his monologue unperturbed. ‘I learned from my observation that the creature gives out a delicious odour with every flap of its wings to attract the female. However, the odour is so subtle – redolent of teak and rice – that only the sharpest of noses can trace it. And I, gentlemen, had one such nose. The other advantageous point that was revealed in the course of my study is that when it rains, the butterfly descends from the treetops to alight upon smaller shrubbery, where it droops its fore wings over the hind ones, covering the bright colours, and thus confounding the eye trained to look out for its hues.’

To think that the devil had been right under our noses while we were all too busy craning our necks heavenwards!  

One of my lepchas asked Pi, ‘So what came of it...the search? What did you gain from it?’

The question drew a moment’s silence from Pi before he proceeded to speak. ‘That’s quite a question for a drunk like me. What do I tell you? That I am much the better because of those years? That I have gained wealth for it? Mercenaries will never understand what I mean. See... it has been told that you need to go out and acquire knowledge, for it is the wise that understand the workings of this wicked world. But, gentlemen, knowledge is the butcher’s cleaver, severing you immediately from innocence as you gain it, leaving you but as delicious gravy on another’s plate. But I ramble... (here my lepchas played disinterestedly with a stray puppy that had wandered in). We start tomorrow at daybreak.’ Then he gave us a set of instructions. And soon we left his sooty kitchen to embrace the shiny day.   

Thursday, October 1901

We gathered our provisions, and Pi ran us through his hand signals that we were going follow – talking on a catch is strictly forbidden – and set out with Pi’s nose as our guide. The forest was squelching with the week’s rain, and with mud-caked boots we ventured deeper and deeper, stopping only when Pi gestured. He had the stance of a Sheppard dog close on the heels of its game. By dusk we were at the very heart of the forest. Our pupils had dilated to the fading light, and our ears, sharp to every crackle of bramble and flutter of wings. I thought of nothing else but catching the insect and then getting to the root of its mystery and finally, the glory of christening it. That success lay in just the perfect swish of our nets, made my heart hammer in my ribcage.

Soon we saw it, perched upon a mossy crag of rock, its wings drawn into itself; the creature I had waited these long months. Pi motioned for us to circle the rock – a wise step, indeed, to prevent its escape from any of our nets. We waited for what seemed a lifetime, and when he signalled we went for the kill. A rustle of nets, and we had it! I was so exhilarated that I had not heard what the lepcha beside me was saying. When I unfolded our nets my heart fell. The accursed man! It was a mere Yellow Crested Spangled, rare but one that had already been   

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My memories of Grandpa Xaga had been coloured and brought to life by the raconteur – his wife – and the larger than life picture painting of him, a monocle hanging precariously on the crook of his nose, that glowered at us all while we ate our meals. But with Grandma’s embers still glowing in the half light of the Brahmaputra ghat, we the women – her daughters and granddaughters – were left to sort out the last of their things. The termite-ridden bungalow was going to be put up for sale. I watched my mother and her sisters go through Grandma’s things with moist eyes and memories running amok. Centuries-old things – silk mekhalas that came undone at the slightest touch, silver betelnut cases tucked away in dark corners of a clammy steel almirah. Other cupboards revealed dolls, hands or an eye missing, or an old tin can filled with colourful buttons, shiny sequins and a yarn of paper-thin lace, black and white photo albums with their pages stuck together so that Grandpa Xaga wore his brother’s head while the unfortunate brother stood awkwardly beheaded. The numerous rooms coughed up surprises for all of us. 

But I knew where I was going to start my work. I climbed the creaking steps to Grandpa Xaga’s study where stood the great bookcase cluttered with its assortment of books; the Russians piled over the Romantics, the poets squeezed between the Westerns – all lying there in a dusty stupor making it an ideal playground for an army of elusive silverfish. I looked around at the musty files and books that needed sorting out – my work was cut out for me. Grandpa Xaga didn’t have too varied a collection of books, but did have box after box filled with notebooks. I spotted a weathered diary, and was about to flip a page, when I got up and locked the door. There was something heinous in looking into another’s mind, and better to behind locked doors. I settled into the worn-out Chesterfield but was quickly disappointed. No ‘I’. No Grandpa Xaga. No diary talk. Just figures and facts about insects. The lepidopterologist jumped out at me through his rabid and impatient scrawl. 

An enormous man with a raging temper, grasshopper impulse and tastes that put the white sahibs to shame, Grandpa Xaga had been a thing of mystery and talk during his day. He had devoted his life to the Papilio elephenor otherwise known as the Yellow Crested Spangle. This particular swallowtail butterfly was a rare sight, its habitat being the dense forest blanketing the wild crags of the mountains that ringed Shillong, the plains of Assam, and sometimes Sikkim. There had been several expert naturalists before Grandpa Xaga who had been successful in spotting and studying this rare creature. And one such man’s unfinished account had found Grandpa Xaga during his research in the town library.

The few pages had fuelled Grandpa Xaga’s already fertile imagination and search for the Yellow Crested Spangle. The very thought that there had been a man before him who had probably caught it, seemingly more than once, infuriated Grandpa Xaga. He was wracked with questions every time he flipped the yellowing pages. What had the white man done? Set it free? The thought was preposterous for here he was in his fifties, without so much as a snatch of its wings. The pages mocked his life’s search for the insect, and yet he didn’t have the heart to throw the remains of the journal away.   

I put away the diary and looked around for the curious journal of the lepidopterologist, which Grandpa Xaga had been obsessed with. I wondered if those pages could fuel my writing, like it had Grandpa Xaga’s search, and transform itself into a story I had been trying to write. I pillaged through the sheaf of papers but my search threw up more dusty volumes on insects, and notes. Then something caught my eye.

‘Papilio elephenor: Black upper wing. Sprinkling of brilliant green scales on the fore wing and bright blue on the hind wing. Posterior half irrorated with brilliant green scales and a small claret-red patch touched above with a few violet scales on the tornus. Cilia brown alternated with white. Underside black.’

It wasn’t much but it was something. This was the creature that had cost Grandma a husband, and the husband a life, although she would never put it like that.

The Yellow Crested Spangle had disappeared since the account of the journal and Grandpa Xaga had got it into his head that he’d be the one to rediscover it. He set up expeditions with a motley crew who followed him into the dark forest more out of loyalty and fear of angering Grandpa than for the love of entomology. This was always my favourite part of the story and I would save it till we finished dinner and Grandma would comb out my hair before going to bed. Then, she would turn out the lights and her raspy sandpaper voice would find me in the dark.

In the forest, Grandpa Xaga and his men would tromp about the damp, leaf-covered forest floor, where waist-high ferns blocked their way at every turn and samurai elephant grass cut through their flesh. They would walk on in silence till it grew dark, then they’d set camp and wait. In the green silence they’d listen to the rustle of the leaves, and they’d watch the shrubs and wild flowers in hope of the Yellow Crested Spangle. During the day, the thin beams of light would light up flecks of dust and tease them with hopes of the swallowtail.

And on it went till the silent men ran out of ration and they would have to head back to town. Back home, Grandpa Xaga would shut himself up in the study and emerge only hours later beaming as he would say to Grandma, ‘I’ve got it! This time I’m going to catch that fluttering devil.’ And he’d go about his business, gathering supplies and his crew, and in a few weeks they’d be off on their quest.

One day Grandpa Xaga – his head craned towards the sky, his eyes in a squint – stepped on a sleeping cobra. The seething serpent, not pleased with the heavy landing of thick rubber sole on a part of its anatomy, delivered its deadly bite into Grandpa Xaga’s exposed ankle. It was said that when he lay there mangled and blue on the forest floor, the venom quickly coursing through his blood, Grandpa Xaga yelled out, ‘I see it! That elf! Oh what glorious wings!’ Those were to be his last words. His crew say that there was no swallowtail, and that the venom had played tricks with his mind. Others say that he’d seen god or something like it.

I stacked the books in various piles – ones that I wanted and others that we could get rid of. I worried about how much I could take with me, considering my mother wanted to put some of Grandma’s things into my suitcase. Was it worth it? What if the books came up with nothing? And what if I did stumble across something? Did I want to be mercenary and lay it bare for an editor to hack mercilessly through – telling me that maybe we should make Grandpa Xaga more ruthless in his quest. Maybe have him as an egoistic man of science who devalues the family and ill treats his wife. More racy, you know. Make him the thing he’s not. Untell a tale. Do I want my story just to be delicious gravy on another man’s plate?

Gravy? 


I don’t know where the word came from.

*The Yellow Crested Spangle, a species that was thought to be extinct since the early 1900s, was rediscovered by entomologist Kushal Choudhury in the Ripu-Chirang reserve in Assam in 2009.