Shrikant_s Sahyadri – Shrikant Ingalhalikar

Shrikant’s Sahyadri

Shrikant Ingalhalikar is a 1971 product of COEP. Joined Tata Motors (those days Telco) from campus and was part of the third Graduate trainee engineer program at TML. Those days the GTE training used to be an intensive two year program. There was not much manufacturing happening in the Pune plant then. The first person to be recruited at the Pune plant was Sharma ji who was going to be involved in greening the barren rocky campus. Sharma ji was the person who is behind Bangalore’s famous Lal Bagh. The next person in was Kulkarni saab, who worked as a training manager with ACC. The philosophy was simple – trees and people need time to grow, and so TML would invest in both.

The first year of the GTE program was spent with the FTAs, the Full Time Apprentices, who would be taking on operator roles at the factory. The GTEs stayed in the same hostel, ate food from the same mess, cleaned the same toilets  – and were put through the paces in the same workshop. Shrikant remembers this as the most formative year of his entire career. He was also deeply impressed by Sharma ji’s work in greening – and possibly that was also the beginning of his green thumbs.

Am not too sure of how he also got interested in birds, but the very small birding community of India soon started recognizing Shrikant’s work in the field. In the late seventies, Shrikant was called one day to the GM’s office. Shrikant was working with the Ancillary Development Department, which looked after purchase of new components. He went in a little worried – as it is not very common for lowly engineers to be summoned to Big Boss’ office. The worst that he had expected had almost come true. He was given his marching orders – to Ladakh! Salim Ali, the bird man of India, was working on an assignment to ship a few eggs of the black necked crane to be incubated in the US. The black necked crane, I hope it has not become extinct now, was a very endangered species then, which would nest in marshy areas in Ladakh. There would typically be only two eggs in a nest. And a very vigorous sibling rivalry. The stronger one would eventually push the weaker one out of the nest, so that it could claim full share of nutrition provided by the parents. The idea was to reclaim one of these eggs – and send it across to the US – for incubation. Salim wanted Shrikant to be involved in this project – and he had called up Sumant Moolgaonkar – who gladly consented to letting Shrikant be part of the mission.

Shrikant remembers his trip quite vividly. About negotiating the marshes with the help of the Indian Army. Of a Ladakh that was strewn with jerrycans, the leftovers of the Indo China war. And how they could find only two nests in the entire trip. And how they used these jerrycans to negotiate 1 km of frozen marsh to reach the crane’s nest. And the measurements taken of the nest. And how a decision was made to not disturb the fragile existence of these birds.

He returned back from his trip to a very hostile reception from his parent department at Telco. His unplanned departure had not gone down too well with his ADD bosses. And Shrikant found that no work was assigned to him for the next two months. Having to choose between nature and a comfortable corporate existence, Shrikant chose to go with nature – and put in his papers at Telco.

He has lived a very interesting parallel life since then. He joined a small unit, which was making petroleum metering pumps, as a works manager. Worked there for 5 years. And then got an offer from another small unit, which was then operating in the remote suburb of Vithalwadi. He joined as a partner with just an induction of sweat equity. This unit was into making textile machinery and Shrikant was mandated CTO. Moving to entrepreneurship gave  him the flexibility to manage his time, so he would work long hours on most days – only to vanish for a few days in the Sahyadris – pursuing his romance with the flora and fauna of his beloved hills. These frequent departures to the hills led to the formation of Shrikant’s unique management philosophy: no goals, no forecasting, no planning, no accountability, no rewards and no punishments. The workforce is under no pressure, but work still gets done.

On the work front, the eighties were tumultuous times. One fine day, the PM, with an eye on impending elections in West Bengal, announced that cement and fertiliser could only be packed in jute bags. This was done to encourage the Bengal jute industry. Shrikant’s unit made machines that were 100% into plastic sacks. The basic raw material is pellets which are extruded into thin films. This film is shredded and the 1000 denier filaments are then wound into rolls. These rolls are then used to weave the fabric which is then made into bags. (I wonder why the bags are not directly extruded out. Must ask Shrikant about this the next time I meet him.) Shrikant’s firm made the filament winding equipment. And with the forcible imposition of jute, orders dried up overnight. His senior partners, who were involved in other businesses, found the going tough, and got going. Shrikant, who had no choices, was left holding fort – and spent most of his time negotiating with the bankers. The company was declared bankrupt – and Shrikant who still continued to see a good future for it – purchased the assets and made a fresh beginning – now as a proprietor, not a partner.

In 1993, he purchased some land further down Sinhgad road – not very far from Khadakwasla lake. He wanted to call his new unit Lake Zone Winders, but decided to settle on the abbreviated Lexon Winders. And that is where you will still find the unit in existence, just behind the HP pump at Donje.

On Diwali day of 2021, I landed up there with Arvind Gupta ji, who was his junior at Telco. The unit was closed, but we were not there to see the factory. What was outside the factory was more interesting than what was inside. I have known of stamp collectors, coin collectors, matchbox collectors. But this was going to be my first meeting with a tree collector. Shrikant’s favourite trees are like the black necked crane we mentioned sometime back, the ones which lead an endangered existence. Shrikant has been documenting the flora of the Sahyadris over the years. He started a publishing company, Corolla Publications, to print his work, and has published more than 6 books on the local trees of the Sahyadris. His love for trees is a pure one – for he does not discuss any economic or medicinal value for any of the trees in his books. And his labour of love offers no commercial returns to him. To the contrary, he spends almost Rs. 50,000 a month to pay for the upkeep of the trees – and building up an excellent nursery for these trees. This he calls his Individual Social responsibility (ISR). He does not sell the saplings, for he considers them his children. (He does have two human kids too – son and daughter – both are grown up now – and are now managing the factory.) So he gives the trees out for adoption. And he does a thorough check on the foster parents before he gives out even a single sapling.

Another hobby that he cultivates is paddy art. On a half acre field behind the factory we mount a platform to admire his latest piece of art – an image of a rare Sahyadri  bird – which has been made using rice saplings. for the background. For the line and block work he uses the regular Indrayani variety and for the background he  uses Nazar Bhat, a special rice variety which has black leaves. The same way that Indian moms put a small black spot on the faces of their babies – Indian voodoo if you would want to call it, farmers plant a small patch of black nazar bhat, so that unke rice ko nazar na lage! He came across that variety when he was working with the Dhangars in the Sahyadris. We asked him about how he transfers images to the field. He uses grids – where he maps out the pixels, starting from 10 ft by 10 ft and scaling it down to 6 in by 6 in, which is the space required for a single sapling. Another use of grids is for documenting leaf structures for his book. He uses 1 cm by 1 cm squares on which the leaf is placed. Readers can then get an idea of the leaf size just by looking at the pictures in the book.

Like my friend Pravin Bhagwat, Shrikant is not an advocate for getting economic returns out of trees. But unlike Pravin, Shrikant does not want a label of environmentalism attached to him. He feels that if he can focus on trees alone, the rest of the environment takes care of itself. And though he has as much of an interest in birds as he has in trees, he does not feel that we should read too much into the relationships between birds and trees. There has been a long term decline in bird numbers for many years – and this may not have a correlation with urbanisation. Another interesting insight about deforestation was shared by him. Most fort builders were the original forest cutters. They did not want to be surprised by enemies making surprise attacks under forest cover!

Most ‘environmentalists’ have been critical of the gliricidia invasive species that is now covering Pune hillsides. There have been experiments where the forest department has cut down gliricidia trees and tried to plant other species – but all of it has failed. Most ‘environmentalists’ may not be aware that even Banyan and Peepal are actually not local to the Sahyadris – they are native to Bengal! We have to learn to live with dubious definitions. Coming back to gliricidia, the literal meaning of the word gliricidia is rat poison. Some believe that the rat population has come down in the forests and so snakes have started entering human habitats. Rat poison indeed can be made by gliricidia leaves. But for that the plant leaves need to be processed and the chemicals inside have to be increased to relatively high levels of concentration for the poisoning to be done.

Shrikant believes that any monoculture creates problems. And gliricidia was not a bad choice at the time and place where the plantations started. It is a nitrogen fixer. Given the sad condition of our soils, it has really helped. If it forms 20% of the plantation, it is really good for the other trees. In fact, Shrikant has planted gliricidia next to his rice fields. He chops off the branches every year around the monsoon and the leaves are mixed with the soil to form fertiliser.

Moving on to rice, he finds some of the rituals really practical. One of them is to put mango branches into rice fields around Diwali time. This is when the grain starts maturing – and the insects attack. The rice plants are not strong enough to offer perches to the birds for hunting their insect meals. The branches help attract birds and keep insect population down till the time the harvest happens.

We then moved on to his other farm next to the Sinhgad foothills, close to the Krushnai water park. He has actually converted it to an arbotarium. The langurs, boars and peacocks have been major consumers of his farm produce – and so he decided that he is better off planting trees there than crops. So he has 300 trees – and about 225 species. We saw a lot of peacocks at his farm – and they tend to come a lot in an area close by – where the local restaurants have started dumping their food waste. Most animals will act as scavengers given an opportunity.

Shrikant has built a lovely house on the property with 3 independent stone huts. The houses were built using local stone – and have been painted over with a special paint that looks like mud. I was amazed to find out that this painting was done 30 years ago – and no touch up done since then. He has a very interesting gate actually – it was originally made by having two pillars with holes in them. The bamboos are slid in and out of the holes to open and close the gates. Designed to let the grazing animals out and nothing else. Off late, the bamboos have been replaced by PVC pipes.

He has counted more than 90 species of birds that visit his ungated arboreum. There are some bird nests made out of mud – and the camouflage is so good that the nest has been in continuous use for the last 30 years. The house roof is also a home for a pair of civets. Shrikant laments that today’s birding community is mostly interested in bird photography and nothing else. He has spent most of his birding career without a camera, although he does have two SLR cameras that gather dust in his bedroom cupboard. According to him, serious birders need to study bird behavior and not bird aesthetics.

We were delighted that he could show us a crane nest in a mobile tower, not very far from his arboreum. One of the junior cranes was almost ready to get into flight mode. He narrated an interesting anecdote of finding a cuckoo parasitizing a sunbird nest. Sunbirds are so small – one wonders how a cuckoo could fool the little sunbirds into raising young cuckoos. That observation cited a mention in the Bombay Natural History Society journal.

My younger daughter had come along for the trip. And as we returned back she had a few observations to make. One was about conservation. Folks like Shrikant are more about preserving. He likes to call himself a conservator, much akin to how the forest department folks tend to designate themselves. But what may really be required at this stage is some more aggression in reforestation. Another was about personal sustainability. For a person to really engage in such a passion over so many years, he needs to invest in building cash flows so that there are no worries about family income and security. So I hope that the younger daughter follows in Shrikant’s footsteps when she grows up – and finds and funds her own lifelong passion.