In the forests of Vidarbha, where he spent most of his adult life, Maruti Chitampalli did not walk so much as listen. While others mapped territory, he absorbed language—of birds, of trees, of the people who lived among them. Over four decades as a forest officer in Maharashtra, he moved not as a bureaucrat but as a student, learning from former hunters, Adivasi elders, and the long silences of the jungle. To them he owed his real education. The theory he had picked up in the Coimbatore Forest College—on timber yield and tree girth—was soon rendered secondary. He rose to become Deputy Chief Conservator of Forests, but it was his work outside of formal duties that left a deeper mark. He helped shape protected areas such as Karnala Bird Sanctuary, Nagzira Wildlife Sanctuary, and the Melghat Tiger Reserve, and designed orphanages for displaced wildlife. Yet his most lasting achievement may have been as a communicator of the wild to those who would never step into it. He wrote 25 books in Marathi—some factual, some impressionistic, some encyclopedic. His first, Pakshi Jaay Digantara (“The Birds Migrate Beyond the Horizon”), published in 1981, was an immediate success. His later works—Pakshi Kosh (on birds), Prani Kosh (on animals), and the unfinished Matsya Kosh (on fish)—made scientific knowledge accessible in local idioms, often borrowing from tribal dialects. He introduced new terms to the Marathi language, blending folk knowledge and field observation with philological care. Chitampalli’s commitment to language was methodical. When he realized he…This article was originally published on Mongabay