March 21, 1999, Sunday, sunny, 14-35C

 

[03:57 @ Rm.12, Bandhavgarh Jungle Lodge]

     “And the intrigue continues,” observed Anne.

     Yesterday, Anne and I were served dinner by ourselves, whereas Tarun, Faiyaz, Pushpinder, Vivek and Sucheta dined together a little later on the balcony above rooms 11 & 12.  During our dinner, Vivek came to sit with us, and in his usual rather obsequious manner, offered his services entirely at our disposal throughout my one-week stay at Bandhavgarh.  He added the caution that the problems at Bandhavgarh are largely “political”, and whatever information he may provide to us had to be kept confidential.  He would be busy today, the last day for the group of the dozen or so tourists here at BJL, but as of tomorrow, he would be able to devote full time to assist me.  I mentioned a rather innocuous “talking to villagers” and “giving slideshows to schools”, and he seemed to have no problem with these.  But shortly after that, Sucheta pulled him aside and had a long one-on-one with him, during which Anne made the above comment.  If I have to depend on him to translate for me, goodness knows what he would say in Hindi to the villagers on my behalf, and what in English he would say back to me on theirs?  I certainly would not trust Sucheta to translate for me even one word in either direction.  And now that She has spoken with Vivek in this manner, neither can I trust Vivek.  When he returned briefly to us, he talked only of today’s safari.

     While they were having their exclusive session in Hindi, Anne and I had our own in English.  We came to the conclusion that if possible, one of the most effective things I could do within a week would be to dig out the truth of the situation at Bandhavgarh, whatever it is, be it official corruption, privileged poaching, the known heavy loss of at least 4 tigers over the last 12 months (and how many unknown?) out of an estimate population of only 40 and blow it out of the water internationally.  Of special interest is the fate of Sita (“SEE-ta”), the most famous tigress in the world, featured with her last (seventh?) litter of cubs in the cover article of National Geographic, December 1997.  It seems to be general consensus (Faiyaz, Tarun, Belinda) that Bandhavgarh needs a lot more help than Kanha.  In fact, I think Bandhavgarh is in big trouble. 

     Again, to accomplish this fact finding, I would of course need a lot of help, at least in terms of very exact translation, which I wonder if Vivek would be willing or able to provide.

     Thank goodness, Sucheta is finally gone.  All at once the tension evaporated, and except for her lingering presence in Vivek, the sense of suspicion. 

     “You may not look at it this way, but she resents the hell out of you for being here to, in her view, monitor what Tiger Trust does or does not do with the CIDA money, and interfere with what Tiger Trust does or does not do to save tigers in India,” said Anne.

     “Me?  Monitoring Tiger Trust?”  I said, astonished.  “Well, come to think of it, she could look at it this way.”

     “Knowing that the more you look, the more you’d see, and the longer you stay the more you would do, Pradeep and Sucheta are just counting the days for when you leave, and the sooner, the better.  As far as she’s concerned, and Pradeep too, you have way overstayed your welcome.”

 

[11:57]     We just returned from a wonderful wildlife viewing experience back in breath-taking Bandhavgarh.  Off the bat, we (Faiyaz, Tarun, Anne and I) saw the most famous male tiger in the world, the 550 lb. Charger, thanks to Tarun, whose eagle eyes first spotted him from a great distance – all the way across a large meadow where the big tiger was but a very slow moving speck of yellow against the brilliant green background of sal trees.  The jeep (not a Gypsy, but a real Jeep this time), driven by an old man with a long white bread in a long white robe looking like a guru – a most incongruent picture - raced along a dirt path skirting the meadow until we got within petting distance of the old boy (16).  At one point, much to Faiyaz’s chagrin, the jeep got so close as to almost run over Charger in reverse, causing him to look up directly at us (which tigers seldom do) from a distance of about two meters, and growled us a warning.  Other than that, he just kept ambling on, patrolling his empire in the sunset of his life.  We shall all miss him; we certainly miss Sita.  Other than Charger, We also saw jackals, a thick python which had eaten a Rhesus Macaque monkey a couple of days before, and of course some of Bandhavgarh’s exquisite scenery.

     During the park drive, I came across many familiar faces, including the park guard who said, in the Champions of the Wild documentary, regarding the pug marks on a sand bank we were examining, “This is Bara Bacha - ‘Big Baby’ - one of Sita’s cubs.  He is a very heavy tiger.” 

     Most of all, we encountered Rajesh Kumar, the park guide who accompanied the Omni-Film-crew on the “Sermon on the Mound” shoot, and who wrote me a letter via Andrew Gardner and Michael Chechik back in 1998, both of whom spoke highly of him and urged me to write back to him, which unfortunately I didn’t, because his opening address of “Respected Sir” turned me off.  He recognized me at once, stopped his jeep, and walked over to ours to greet me.  I apologized for not having responded to his letter.  With pain written on his face, he told me what several other people, included Vivek, had already done, “We lost at least four tigers here last year.  10% of the population.  We need help.” 

     “I would like to talk to you,” I said to him.  “I’ll be at the Bandhavgarh Jungle Lodge over the next week.”

     “I will come tomorrow evening, if convenient to you,” he said eagerly. 

     “Please do.  I’ll be there,” I said, with as much enthusiasm as he showed. 

     “I like him,” said Anne.  “He has heart.  He is transparently sincere about the tiger, like our Anthony and Faiyaz and Tarun here.”

     “And our Anne,” Tarun said.  “I agree with you about Rajesh.”

     “Thanks, Tarun,” said Anne.  “Seems like we’ve found the very person in Bandhavgarh we’ve been looking for.  Weren’t we wishing for just such a person to be here only yesterday evening?  What a Godsend!  How things sometimes have a way of working out perfectly, just as they should!”

     “Yes, he’s a great guy, and if there is anybody here I trust, that’s him.  But he’s only a park guide.  What can he do?  Wish I have enough confidence in human nature to say the same for our planet, that things are working out perfectly on it, just as they should,” said Faiyaz.

     “You’re not a pessimist, are you Faiyaz?” I mock asked him.

     “Only in view of human weakness.”

     “Then, you’re also an optimist in view of human strength?”

     “Not till I met people like you and Anne, and Tarun, and now Rajesh.”

     “You know, the Chinese martial artists have a saying: ‘If you want to hit something, aim for a point one foot behind it.’  The Chinese astronomers say, ‘If you want to reach the moon, aim for the stars.’”

     “Makes sense.  But how do you apply it in our case?”

     “If you want the Earth to organismize, look beyond it’s organismization, to its offspring’s’ eventual speciation, ecosystemization and socialization in the Solar System, and higher and higher OSES Cycles of the TI/IT double spiral, in the realm of the stars,” said Raminothna.

    

[22:47]     Anne just finished reading Ayn Rand’s [The Fountainhead] and returned the book to me.  It’s a story about a non-conforming architect struggling in an architectural community which lives conformity.  Anne told me about an architect friend of hers who once lamented about the total exhaustion of block-busting architectural ideas and ground breaking concepts, to the point where he just dropped out and became a banker.

     “That’s sad,” I said.

     “He was a big thinker.  If he could break no new ground, he would much rather not do it at all.”

     “Doubly sad.”

     “Well, he might have a point.  I personally cannot think of any shape or colour or texture or style that has not been done by architects before.  He did not find copying earlier works a satisfying way to hold his profession.”

     “Once, I too wanted to be an architect,” I told Anne, “and in fact, after graduating from physics, I presented a portfolio of my art work to the School of Architecture at the U.B.C. and even got accepted.  I did not take it on for about the same reason.  But years later, you know what Raminothna showed me?”

     “What did she show you?”

     “She asked me to go up Cypress Mountain and look down on the city of Vancouver.  ‘What does the city remind you of?’ she asked me.  ‘It reminds me of a patch of lichen on a rock,’ I answered.  And guess what she said.”

     “What?”

     “She said that elsewhere in the Universe there are city that resemble an oak tree compared to the lichen.  She even said that there are cities that resemble doves or swans flying from planet to planet, even from star to star.  ‘Your innovation in architecture, my friend, has merely begun,’ she said.”

     “Wow!”

     “These would be the cities that belong to Planetary and Stellar organisms,” I said to Anne, as Raminothna once said to me.