India, Aug. 31 -- On that 11-hour drive from home to Kumbhargaon (Maharashtra), I began with a rejig. No, not a space shuffle in my lily white car with a chauffeur, a Man Friday, and a friend. I was trying to adjust vowels within imprudent consonants in a 16-letter unpronounceable word. Why would anyone name a pretty leggy wading bird's family Phoenicopteridae? The glamorous flamingo with pink plumage deserves a better family name and at least an utterable order. Poor pink thing! It mostly stands on one feet and is burdened with Phoenicopteridae as family name in the order Phoenicopteriformes.

But in Kumbhargaon, a pint-sized village that sits languorously by the backwaters of Ujjani Dam, I had dropped the family, order and the vowels to...