February 15, 1999, Monday, sunny, 10-25C

 

[21:36 @ Rm. 123, the Jagsons Regency Hotel, Nagpur]      This morning I called Mom and Dad to wish them happy Chinese New Year – the Year of the Hare.  I probably woke them up, but they were of course excited to hear from me.  Matthew has asked them out to lunch tomorrow, and told them that he received a call from Sue about me being alive and well.  They’ve accepted my world prowling life style with equanimity and even pride.  Love them deeply, and thankfully.

     Later in the morning, Pradeep and I went to his office.  First thing I did was to send off my last e-mail to WCWC.  Then, at noon, he drove me to the interview with Camelle Gill of Today’s Traveler magazine.  He chipped in as well.  Will be an excellent article.  When I told her about some of my adventures with the villagers, and told her about my field journal, she become excited, and asked me to send her excerpts of the journal for another article.

     Yesterday, I received one letter each from Anne and Chris in the lovingly-custom-made envelopes by Chris delivered by someone from Kanha.

 

     The one by Anne says: 

     [Feb. 11/99

     [Anthony:

     [I am sending this note via Veejay the ornithologist who had been at Kanha assisting Peter Oxford with one of his tours.

     [If you have time in your hectic schedule, I would appreciate it if you could bring the following from Delhi:

     [1. a Hindi phrasebook or a Hindi dictionary (with English definitions and phonetic pronunciation) so I can learn to communicate, however pitifully, in this language.

     [2. literature from Tiger Trust and WC2 explaining the organizations.  The guests here have been anxious for such information, and of course we have nothing to give them.

     [3. A big world map for the school.  I think it would be nice for the kids if they could understand where the visitors come from and a little bit about each country.

     [Looking forward to chatting with you soon.  We have much to discuss!  Say hi to Sucheta and Manoj for me.

     [Anne]

 

     The one from Chris says: 

     [2-12-99  In the jungle, the mighty jungle, the tiger sleeps tonight.

     [Dear Anthony:

     [Greetings from the other side.  Please know that all is well and we are anxiously awaiting you return to the lodge.  At present, we are slowly constructing our giant cooker in hopes that we’ll have some tests performed before your arrival (in a perfect world).  So, I’m taking advantage of this opportunity to request a small service.

     [As you know, I am awaiting news from home in regards to my plane tickets and this news likely resides in my e-mail account.____________, password: ________.

     [If you wouldn’t mind accessing and printing off the new e-mails with special attention to any sent from __________ (if there are too many) my attorney.  I am hoping that these updated e-mails provide some insight into the plane issue.  We’ll see.

     [Thank you for your time; hope this doesn’t take you over the edge after having to deal with new Indian fans bouncing you around the big blowup cat.

     [Kindest regards,

     [Christopher Lindstrom]

 

     Well, for Chris, we (Pradeep and I) found over 60 messages since December 98, all unread.  Pradeep spent a whole hour personally downloading the non-trash ones into a Word file and loaded it into my floppy before driving me to the interview.

     The interview lasted almost 2 hours, after which I took a cab to the Palika Bazaar near Connaught Circle – an amazing underground maze of hundreds of small shops of all kinds – and got there around 14:30.  Rushed around and in record time found and bought 6 Hi-8 cassettes (Rs300 each), a Hindi-English phrase book (Rs125) and a world atlas (Rs515; I would prefer a world globe, but nowhere available).  I had needed to dupe the Champions of the Wild video, but even after a couple of days’ calling, the local people still couldn’t get around to doing it.  Anyway, most of the stuff that needed done have been done.

     Tomorrow morning at 06:00, somebody will pick me up from this hotel and drive me to Kanha, to arrive in time for lunch.

     So yet again, I’ve said goodbye to Delhi.  The experience was largely positive, and Pradeep succeeded to impress upon me that if/when he puts his heart into a task, if he applies himself like the full time campaigner that he was in these two weeks in Delhi and Jaipur, he could accomplish great things.  But this merely begs the long-standing question even more: Where is his heart the other 50 weeks of the year?  For the CIDA grant, we are supposed to choose a full-time dedicated NGO, not a part-time NGO that is subservient to the business interest of a commercial enterprise.  And what I have observed in Delhi does not negate a single word I wrote in Kanha regarding my misgiving in grant handling, and the effectiveness of the Indian part of our tiger conservation program.

     At first sight, the Tiger Walk media coverage seemed acceptable, but upon closer scrutiny, they are mostly no-depth one-line captions under single photos mentioning Tiger Trust but not WCWC.  And no matter how well covered the Tiger Walk is, there is nothing that can erase my deep disappointment in the total lack of school outreach coverage in Delhi.  In contrast, the two days in Jaipur organized by Dr. Ziddi generated some 7-8 detailed and in-depth newspaper stories on tiger conservation based upon the school outreach program, and 2-3 TV pieces, with WCWC prominently featured, although, when I asked someone to translate one of the Hindi pieces, I heard, “… the big balloon tiger belonging to Tiger Trust under Mr. Pradeep Sankhala…”

     The flight was India Airline’s subcontractor Alliance Airlines flight 469 Delhi-Raipur-Nagpur.  An unnerving flying experience, and not for the first time.  First off, while boarding, I could not help but notice the decrepit condition of the plane – a Boeing 737 – inside and out.  Its paint was smudged with soot.  There were even wall and ceiling panels missing, with wiring showing underneath.  While descending into the Nagpur airport, with the runway flashing by beneath my seat, the plane suddenly poured on power and climbed steeply, then did a steep banking 360 and landed with a bone-jarring thump, hard enough to cause one of the ceiling panels to come crashing down on to the aisle.  This bounced the plane back up, which then came back down some seconds later in a more normal-feeling touch down.  This was not the first time I’ve experienced such a landing.  Back in 1997, one of the Nagpur landings was hard enough to convince me of the great strength of the plane’s landing gear.  While deplaning, I heard some clunking sound from the left engine and some airport personnel was looking up at it.  For an unforgettable flying experience, fly Alliance!