Shelf Life: Loving a Disappearing Planet With Douglas Adams

Finding ‘Last Chance to See’’ is akin to discovering lost treasure.

(‘What are you reading?’ is a question we ask each other all the time before losing ourselves in meandering conversations around lives scattered between pages. This week, The Quint’s reader Priyale Chandra discovers a little-known treasure. )

I was a monkey looking at a lemur.

Douglas Adams, Last Chance to See

Finding Last Chance to See is finding lost treasure in a long forgotten plot next to your home turf. The book, co-written by Douglas Adams and Mark Carwardine, is one of Adams's lesser known works. For many people, including Adams himself, it holds the distinction of being his best work.

Named after the BBC Radio 4 series, the book recounts the experiences of Adams and Carwardine as they travel across the world for their radio series, raising awareness about some of the most endangered species in the world. From the aye-aye in Madagascar to the Yangtze river dolphin in China, a host of rare creatures fill the pages of this book.

As far as writing style goes, Adams does what he is best known for. He pokes fun at everything, from the absurd settings and people he encounters, to the animals he observes. An example of his style is his description of the kakapo, a flightless bird from New Zealand. Adams describes the bird as "Not only has the kakapo forgotten how to fly, it has forgotten that it has forgotten to fly." He goes on to detail its behaviour in times of agitation, running up a tree and jumping from it to land "in a graceless heap on the ground."

The witty observations and sarcasm might prompt comparisons with Bill Bryson. To be sure, some elements of Adams’s humour do remind one of Bryson’s A Short History of Everything. But those similarities end at the point of making readers laugh.

Last Chance to See is not just a travelogue or a guide to rare species. The stream of witty comments in the book is tempered by sober observations concerning the threat these creatures face.

This is the book’s greatest appeal; blending reality and humour to form an engaging narrative about something that seems undeniably distant to us - the animal world.

Last Chance to See carries us into the animal world with the intention of illustrating its most magnificent and vulnerable examples. It warns us about how we are in danger of losing these, and many other species, due to our own follies and policies.

The onward march of extinction hinted at in here remains real and constant. The Yangtze river dolphin, mentioned in the book as an endangered species, is now thought to be extinct.

The menace of extinction hovering over the natural world is what Douglas Adams protests about. Between his funny anecdotes, there is a passionate plea to preserve what we have now. At the end, the book reasons that the sole objective for preserving the animal kingdom and its constituents is that "the world would be a poorer, darker, lonelier place without them."

Adam's most famous work, The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy has tended to overshadow his other works. Last Chance to See is perhaps his least known work.

A highly underrated book, it makes us laugh, but also makes us pause and reflect. The subtle shift between earnestness and flippancy is what makes this book a wonderful read.

Using wit and absurdity, Douglas Adams makes us appreciate the wonderful biodiversity we have inherited. He also makes us realise how soon we can lose it all. In an era where climate change and its effects are considered a myth by those in power, the Paris Agreement might end in shambles and profit still being more important than conservation, Last Chance to See serves as a reminder about our responsibility to preserve our planet and all its natural beauty.

(We all love to express ourselves, but how often do we do it in our mother tongue? Here's your chance! This Independence Day, khul ke bol with BOL – Love your Bhasha. Sing, write, perform, spew poetry – whatever you like – in your mother tongue. Send us your BOL at [e-mail] or WhatsApp it to 9910181818.)