A budding romance between Mad Mozart and Melody fizzles out before it has even properly begun, all because the ambitious hero was too clever by half! This delightful tale of courtship of magpie robins, complete with rivals Beethoven, Bach and Hariprasad Chaurasia, and neighbourhood gossips—a noisy set of jungle babblers called Screechers and Shriekers, based on accurate field observations by Ranjit Lal, sets the tone for this gem of a collection.
The selection ranges across centuries: three poems in this collection are by poets (Barry Cornwall, Lord Byron and William Wordsworth) who were born in the late 18th century, while a veritable constellation of stars—Charles Darwin, Jim Corbett, Jules Verne, Mark Twain, Tagore and Robert Frost among others—keep the standard of the 19th and early 20th centuries flying. And then there are contemporaries like Ranjit Lal and Zai Whitaker, absolutely outstanding writers without whom no anthology on the natural world can be complete.
Continue reading this review