February 20, 1999, Saturday, sunny, 12-26C

 

[18:10 @ Rm.112, Kanha Jungle Lodge]

     We (Faiyaz, Anne, Chris and I) started for the park at 06:30 this morning, with me at the wheel, and were surprised and a little disappointed to find that Tirath had already gone into the park with another party.  We took on Johan as guide, and headed for the Kanha Nature Centre in the centre of the park mid-way between the Mukki and Kisli gates.  There, we met Mr. Negi, Deputy Director of the core area, and managed to catch Mr. Rajeesh Gopal, Field Director of the entire Kanha National Park, core plus buffer, just before he left Kanha on a trip to Delhi.  Both were interested in the conference, and Gopal even said that he would bring his own slideshow.  Negi conversed with Faiyaz at length, in Hindi, then asked me what my intention was to organize the event.  I answered: communication, which leads to understanding, which leads to meaningful action.  It is certainly the most effective means to propagate the idea of solar cooking to the villages we can think of.  He seemed satisfied by that.  Negi also said that he would suggest a number of names of people he would like invited to the conference.  So, it seems that all quarters are in favour of the conference idea, except Pradeep, whom we still have been unable to contact, and who has made no effort to contact us.

     After the meeting with Gopal and Negi, we took the long and slow way back to the lodge.  By mid morning, we pulled up on the rise overlooking the meadow for brunch. 

     “How many termite mounds are there on this meadow?” Raminothna asked the group.

     “A couple of dozen,” volunteered Chris.

     “If we crammed a couple of hundred of them onto this meadow, what do you think would happened?” 

     “They would probably exhaust all food sources in short order and begin dying of starvation.  And/or the population of termites per mound would decline.  Eventually, they would regain the current stable density of no more than thirty in the meadow.” 

     “Would they differentiate and cooperate among themselves?”

     “No, they would not.   Nor therefore would they integrate and transcend.  They would not form a multi-mound city.  Is this what you are driving at?”

     “So, what do you derive out of this?”

     “That unlike a human village, a termite mound is a nonsocial Tribal organism.  And so, on the Tribal level, too, there are nonsocial and social organisms,” said Faiyaz.

      After we had returned to the lodge, second thoughts about the conference made themselves known.  It seemed to me that the thing had quickly grown beyond my original concept of just having a meeting with the villagers.  The way things look, the conference is going to be all in Hindi, as demonstrated by the Faiyaz-Negi conversation this morning, between the panchayats and the government officials, and they may take off on a tangent from our central thrust which is tiger conservation.  And we (WCWC and Canada) may become irrelevant, in which case we’ll have served as facilitators, but not participants. 

     Also, the panchayats would come without any basic tiger conservation awareness and the conference might arrive at a conclusion unfavorable to the tiger.  I called another meeting to discuss this problem.  After much discussion and debate we decided that as originally planned, Faiyaz will invite panchayat members into the lodge several at a time on a daily basis, and I will give them a slideshow, with Faiyaz translating.  This would give them at least some forethought on tiger conservation and set the tone for the conference, which we considered deferring until April or even May, after I have left.  We would then inform the panchayats about the conference during the slideshow.  This will also keep me much busier than in the original plan where Faiyaz will go out to organize the conference, and Anne and I will more or less just be sitting here waiting for it to happen.  Faiyaz also suggested that I get all the Delhi and Jaipur media clippings send to me for presentation to the local Project Tiger office.  He believes that the clippings will get me easily in the door, and my ideas (e.g. raising park entrance fee) taken seriously.  After about three hours of this discussion and debate, we adjourned on this note.

     Around 15:00, Faiyaz and Chris went to Baihar to phone Delhi, partly to relay my message that both Anne and I wish to stay at Kanha until I leave India.  As before, Pradeep was not there, and they spoke with Manoj.  Again, Manoj overstepped his bounds and question Faiyaz why we would need the clippings, but Faiyaz told him to just send them.  Manoj also informed Faiyaz that Tarun et al, with the new Gypsy, will arrive back at Kanha this evening, via Bandhavgarh, and that Kim, and perhaps the other Chris (Chris Cook, a volunteer for Dynamic Yours from Britain) too, who all but insisted to come back to Kanha, citing extreme idleness and boredom at Bandhavgarh, and that she was not even allowed to speak to the tourists by a certain tour operator, whom Anne and Chris (Lindstrom) believe to be Peter Cambridge - “a prick”, by their consensus.  Much as I’d love to see Kim again, this will complicate the situation somewhat, since then Anne may have to go to Bandhavgarh to take Kim’s place.  We’ll see how it goes. 

 

[23:16]     In the middle of the evening, someone walked into the lodge, and guess who?  Chris Cook from Bandhavgarh.  Yesterday, he and Kim tried to get to Umaria under their own steam without success, and had to turn back.  He struck out on his own this morning at about 06:00 and finally got here by about 21:00 via many changes of buses.  Having devoted three months of his time to the Bandhavgarh Jungle Lodge, and paying the lodge US$200 per month for the trouble, this is the treatment he gets.  They don’t even have the decency to give him a ride to Umaria.  Further, when he was leaving, Pushpinder, Pradeep’s Bandhavgarh Jungle Lodge manager, didn’t thank him, didn’t acknowledge his services, but said to him, “You used 65 bottles of mineral water during your stay.  You’ll have to pay us Rs.1300 for them before you leave.”  Pretty tacky, if you ask me.

     Of course we crowd around Chris C. for news from Bandhavgarh.  One thing he said, confirmed by both Faiyaz and the tribal employees at the lodge, is that Pushra Singh, a descendant of the maharaja of Rewa who used to own the land where Bandhavgarh now sits, has specially permission to go into the park to hunt animals at will. 

     “Tigers too?” I asked Chris C..

     “I hope not,” he said.