By the time I was 41, I had to admit that I had lost my long fight with myself and that what people euphemistically term the spread of middle age, and botanists more bluntly secondary thickening had overtaken me. And on my forty-first birthday, I wrote these lines on the Slender Loris, in envy and regret.

I wish I were a Slender Loris And not a massive human being. In such a change, of course Much more is Lost that is gained, for though agreeing With men in lacking tail and manners, The loris is a lowly creature; It’s nothing but a quadrumanous. Leunur, with not one advanced feature. On evolution’s path it lingers Bar back’ we’ve reached the Destination. All day its sleeps with shaking Fingers Over sun-shy eyes, no fesination Lmoels its night; slow-limbed The stories Or trees it climbs for insect plunder. But still I wish I were a loris ~ Beyond all argument it’s slender;

By no means an inspired verse, but factually very sound. The Slender Loris (and even the Slow Loris of north-East India, with its body and limbs much thicker) is a featherweight, the size of a kitten and slim, with a very narrow waist and hard, thin limbs; the great goggle eyes are set on by a patch of dark fur around each of them and as one might guess from its owl-face and big, round orbs, it is a creature of the night.

It is highly arboreal, and spends the day in sleep, deep in the shady cover of a treetop, with its face buried in its chest, bird like and often with its hands over its eyes to shade them from the glare, especially when it is forced to keep awake by day. It is from its round face and this habit of shading its eyes with its hands that it gets its Hindi name, Sharmindi- billi (the bashful cat).

Lorises are among the small creatures that are missed easily, and so are seldom seen. In fact, I can recall seeing a loris only thrice ~ a pair of Slow Lorises high up a tree in Bhutan, and a Slender Loris twice in the South, also up trees and on both occasions late in the evening. Unfortunately for it, the Slender Loris is credited by superstition with the ability to bring one luck, and its gnomelike looks are so unusual that it is commonly kept in a cage and exhibited in zoos, and as a captive animal (usually exposed to much more glare that it can tolerate) it is by no mean unfamiliar.

It is not only that they do not give it a cage large enough and deadly enough small in sleen in comfort through the day on some suitable perch ~ they often give it the wrong diet as well, bread-and-milk and bananas. I do not know if a Slender Loris is exclusively insectivorous when wild; perhaps it also eats eggs and even small tree-living lizards when it can find them, and soft fruits and other vegetarian fare. But I am quite sure that it does need insect food or some suitable substitute.

In fact, its dentition is hardly that of a fruit-eater and, as I learnt in the most unpleasant manner imaginable, it has sharp teeth. To get the picture reproduced here I had the two captive lorises taken out of their cage and placed on a long length of tamarind bough, with one end planted into the earth. Somehow those lorises did not want their picture taken. As soon as they were put on the bough, they climbed quickly down and made for the security of their cage, moving over the ground at an awkward, shambling shurie much faster than on the bough, I caught them both and gently redeposited them on the bough, and in the process got a sharp nip from one, which confirmed my views on its dentition.

A man whom I know, who kept a loris for a pet, told me that the animal once made a bid for liberty, and on being chased, entered a pool of shallow water and swam across, using a rhythmic breast-stroke, only to be caught on reaching the farther bank. I cannot vouch for the accuracy of this report, but believe it, for most animals can swim when they have to.

This was published on 13 July 1969.