Good Old Madras Zoo!

The children of Madras way back in the sixties loved two places most. One was Marina Beach and the other, the Zoo. While we visited Marina Beach once in a full moon our chance to visit Madras Zoo came only once in a blue Moon. When I was an eight year old boy my father took me for the first time to the Madras Zoo. The Madras Zoo was then situated near Central Station behind Nehru Stadium. What huge rain trees the zoo had then ? It looked as if the whole place stood under one green canopy.

I still remember the order in which wild animals were kept in cages in the Madras Zoo. The cages were like compartments of a circus train. The first to greet us when we entered after purchasing our tickets which cost just 50 paisa each, were tigers. Standing near the bars I looked at a beautiful specimen of this species from Bengal. His golden yellow skin with dark stripes, his smouldering eyes , his formidable paws with curved knife-like claws, his whiskers and finally his awesome mouth with those killer Sabre teeth took my breath away. When he growled when a fellow visitor threw a small stone at him my admiration changed into fear.

After the tigers, came the king of the forest His majesty the Lion and his mate. With a mane of gold and eyes of fire the best of beasts was walking tall up and down the cage regally. Though confined to a cage, he looked down on us as if we too were his subjects. Even as we watched, he let out a series of roars heaving his he-man chest and flat stomach. The ground underneath our feet shook and the sound echoed all over the zoo. The iron bars of the cage vibrated.

The tiger was beautiful, strong and long, a kind of iron hand in a velvet glove but he did not possess the look of boldness and predominance of a lion. Despite his strength the tiger had an air of furtiveness about him. He kept his head bent and low whereas the lion was soldier-stiff , holding his head always high, thrusting his chest forward and looking squarely into your eyes. I kept staring at him. When our eyes met my heart skipped a beat. I thought of the extraordinary tale of Androcles who removed a thorn from a lion’s swollen paw.

Next was the Cheetah with a small head and a lithe body with spots. I still cannot forget the sorrowful eyes of a chimpanzee as it stood holding the branch of a stunted tree skeleton planted in the cage, with its long hairy arm, like an old prisoner undergoing a life sentence.

The one creature I fell in love with head over heels was the Giraffe. What an animal it was. "Look at his slide-like neck. Look at his brown eyes with those long eyelashes and his skin of gold with those patterns." My heart cried out. He moved gracefully like a crane on greased wheels.

A chain of cages housing birds stood separated from carnivores. We could gaze at macaws with rainbow plumes from arm's length. Ducks were roaming freely following visitors for titbits to eat. In modern zoos animals are kept in large enclosures. To observe them at close quarters is impossible.

Apart from exhibits of wild animals, the Madras Zoo had within its precincts a beautiful circular moat of lush green water, the surface of which was dotted with lilies and lotus flowers. Visitors to the Zoo could go around in boats rowed by oarsmen. The trip around the Zoo in one of these boats used to be exhilarating. The island created by this moat had camel-hump bridges from which one could feed fish the moat underneath was teaming with.

Those days when you travelled in train from Central station you could glimpse exhibits of the zoo. Passengers could watch the zoo from behind train's window bars while animals could see train passengers from behind their cage bars. Had any of the tigers or lions escaped from their cells it would have been easy for them to flee civilization by catching a train at Madras Central as did Alex the lion, Marty the zebra, Gloria the hippo and Melman the giraffe later on in the movie Madagascar.

Recently I went to the Moore Market area. Nehru Stadium stands there as it stood years ago. I could hardly find any trace of Madras Zoo - the heart throb of children of Madras fifty years ago. Disappearance of places you loved as a child hurts you as much as the disappearance of people you loved and cherished during your childhood.