The Hindu Business Line : Feathered nest!

Speeding down the scenic East Coast Road out of Chennai, you zip past a few landmarks: the Cholamandal artists’ village and the VGP amusement park, and soon after turn left off the dusty highway into a leafy and tranquil avenue. The azure blue sea is a speck in the distance as you drive past the many bungalows lining both sides of this road.

With electrified fencing, the high walls of Cavin Solai (park in Tamil) appear impregnable. You can hear a cacophony of birds even before you push open the heavy gates. The sweep of the place takes your breath away: Spread over three acres, vast and well-manicured lawns make a carpet of green as far as the eye can see. Scores of trees, in the middle of which is a ‘tree house’ on stilts, form a shaded canopy.

Through the thicket, in the distance, you can see a gracious bungalow: this is the home of C.K. Ranganathan, (better known as CKR), the amiable Chairman and Managing Director of the Rs 700 crore consumer goods company CavinKare.

You make your way along a shady pebbled pathway, past fish ponds, around which mandarin and wood ducks are waddling about gamely. Peacocks strut about the lawns while colourful pheasants run by, showing off their multihued plumage. The air is filled with the raucous calls of the over 400 birds housed in the estate accompanied by the barks of 16 dogs, which are in various sizes — from a pug and Labradors (one of them called Google!) to a Great Dane to Rotweillers. It’s not just consumer goods we’ve come to talk about, we are also here to see CKR’s other passion — his vast collection of birds and pets.

Chatting in a glass-fronted lounge, which takes in the vista of the vast gardens, CKR says his passion for birds sprung from an idyllic childhood spent in Cuddalore. His father’s ten-acre farmland ensured enough space to breed birds and even swim in the three large wells in the fields. An unused water tank was where he first built his bird cage with the help of friends. When he was in Class V, he had 500 pigeons which, he recalls, multiplied really fast. “My parents then gave me an ultimatum, it was either my studies or the pets, because even in class I was dreaming about them and would bunk to come and look after them,” he reminisces.

Abandoning his passion, CKR went on to start his sachet business and moved to Chennai and built CavinKare into a successful multi-product consumer goods company. But all along, he didn’t forget his childhood calling. When he acquired this large property and moved to Injambakkam off the ECR, he had the space to indulge his passion.

CKR built his collection of around 100 bird varieties from across continents, buying from an informal network of avid bird-breeders around the country. Today, Cavin Solai is ringed with bird cages housing a bewildering variety of colourful parrots of various hues and sizes: lories, lorikeets, rosellas, conures, cockatoos, lovebirds, parakeets, macaws and king pigeons (which look like plump hens), not to mention the peacocks, kept with the requisite permission. The birds, he recalls, sensed the tsunami in 2004 and made quite a commotion, which he mistakenly thought was because of a monkey.

Everything is well organised — there’s a retinue of helpers to look after the birds, including a full-time vet. As in a zoo/bird park, the cages are neatly marked with the scientific names of the birds and their habitat; the birds’ office has catalogued each of them, their history as well as parentage. The feeding regimen too is different for each species of bird — each has its own diet. While most of the birds like their curd rice with eggs mashed into it, the lorikeets prefer a nectar-based diet, which involves honey, glucose, fruits, sprouts and even baby food! The maintenance tab: Rs 1.25 lakh a month for the birds at this park as well as a menagerie at Cuddalore with 150 emus. His most expensive collection is the palm cockatoos, which today cost Rs 8-9 lakh a pair.

He suddenly jumps up and says, “Come, let me introduce you to Kanmani and Ponmani”, who it turns out are double yellow-headed Amazons (also from the parrot family) in large cages placed in the verandahs adjoining the lounge we are sitting in. Kanmani greets us gruffly with a “good morning” and keeps repeating “hello,” as we listen, fascinated. “They have a fantastic memory and can even be trained to recite long rhymes,” says CKR, adding that they are gregarious birds and love an audience. They even squawk a goodbye to him as he leaves for work.

CKR shows us around his bird paradise, patiently taking us around the hundreds of cages, occasionally pulling out a rosella or parrot to place on his shoulder to let us take a picture. Following us around is Jingle, one of the mini-poms; the caretaker is keeping a watchful eye on him to make sure he doesn’t pounce on one of the birds. CKR stops at one of the several fish ponds that dot the park to feed them some almond pieces; the goldfish crowd around at his feet, gobbling up the feed.

Over a sumptuous breakfast, we ask Thenmozhi, his gracious wife, if she and their three children share the same passion for the birds and she replies that it’s to some extent only. The children are fonder of the dogs than the birds. But CKR is comfortable with that, as he knows that not everyone would share his passion. “But, for me, being with the birds is a way of relaxing after a long day,” he says. He tries to spend at least 45 minutes a day with his pets to unwind. Next on his agenda is a butterfly garden.

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