March 22, 1999, Monday, sunny 14-34C

 

[01:12 (1999-03-23-2) @ Rm.12, Bandhavgarh Jungle Lodge]

     Today is without a doubt the most amazing day since landing in India on January 20. 

     The safari started slowly, in fits and starts, with lots of sitting and listening.

     While having brunch, Faiyaz asked me, “If and when we go to the stars, what will be awaiting us out there, do you think?  Would it be star wars, or heavenly peace?”

     “For Earth’s sake and ours, and the sake of all life in the Universe, I hope for the latter, and I believe so,” I said.  “It would be a tragedy of cosmic proportions if, after all her trials and tribulations, and learning and living the way of harmony, Earth finally organismizes itself and manages to venture out of her cradle, only to be killed in some interstellar crossfire.  What is the point to achieve peace on Earth, just so we could go and fight wars among the stars?”

     “But competition among species has always happened, so far,” said Anne.  “When the TI/IT Spiral reaches the Ecosystemization quadrant of the OSES Cycle on any level, so shouldn’t it occur on the interstellar levels as well.  Is warfare inevitable whenever different species of Stellar Organisms encounter each other for the first time in interstellar space, such as between the Federation Starfleet Command and the Klingons in Star Trek?”

     “War of the Worlds, Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica and even the highly positive Star Trek are but the physical manifestation of Earth’s own paranoia,” said Raminothna.  “Just as intra-species evolution can evolve from Darwinian to Lamarckian, then why not higher-leveled inter-species dynamics as well from war to peace?”

     “That’s true,” said Anne.  “Is it not possible that with lessons learned on the lower levels, say the international, that mistakes can be avoided on the higher levels, say the Interplanetary and the Interstellar?”

     “And is it not further possible that the phenomenon called ‘war’ itself has a transcendence limit, such as on the point of planetary organismization?” said Faiyaz.

     “Let the foolish and destructive foolishly destroy themselves at that juncture, and the wise and constructive survive to participate in the higher cycles of transcendental integration throughout the Cosmos.  Isn’t this good for the Universe at large?”

     “Yes, it does seem that there is never a bad ending,” conceded Anne.

     Towards the late morning, we came upon a 3-elephant “tiger show” centered on a dried river bed, but with about a dozen Gypsies in line ahead of us.  With no other elephants to be had, we settled in the queue.

     While we were waiting, several things happened.  First, a tall Caucasian man of about 30 approached our jeep.  I recognized him as among a group of people in another Gypsy who was staring at me intensely in a previous road encounter.  Well, I thought, another recognition.  And it was.  He introduced himself as Andrew Guppy, from England, and said that one of his party, a young British woman, had recognized me from a TV wildlife documentary on “Channel 5”, and wanted to meet me in person.  “Treat it as a blind date,” he said.  As it turned out, he was a tour operator and the woman was one of his group.  He then proceeded to talk about Ranthambhore where his group recently visited, and complained bitterly that Valmik Thapar had commandeered the lakes for a BBC film shoot and barred tourists from there.  He thought that it was not just a temporary measure, but a permanent situation henceforth.  Faiyaz and I exchanged glances.  Tourism vs conservation again.

     After he had left, another small group came forth.  This time it was a big Ukrainian man of about 30 also, accompanied by his very pretty daughter of about 7 and a Russian-speaking Indian man of about 50.  He began rattling rapidly in Russian, with his Indian friend translating.  He was intensely concerned about the fate of the Siberian tiger and heard from his park guide who happened to be Rajesh Kumar himself (!) that there was a “world renowned tiger conservationist in our midst” (me), and that he should speak to me.  He very reverentially outlined who he was (a rich businessman headquartered in the Ukraine) and what his concerns were, and asked me more or less to help him create and direct (directly or indirectly) a Siberian tiger conservation program funded by himself.  We made a tentative appointment for a meeting some time in the evening. 

     While the wait, I said to Faiyaz, “While we wait, why don’t we go and talk to the guides about tonight’s video show.  They’re all here.  What better time to do it?”  He nodded yes and jumped off the Gypsy.  First he went to grab Vivek who was in another Gypsy, and the two of them did go and talk to all the other guides.  Shortly, he came back and said that the guides all said they would come, and that Rajesh requested a meeting some time this evening since he had to go to Kanha early tomorrow morning for four days.  We’re talking about the Champions of the Wild, which was filmed at Bandhavgarh, tonight at 19:30 in the open-air amphitheatre, with video projector and large screen yet.  They also invited the British Group and the Russian businessman. 

     It’s going to be a jam-packed evening.

     After about a half-hour wait, we (Faiyaz, Anne and I) finally mounted a big male elephant.  At that point, my camera film number was about #17 out of 36.  When we got to the tigers – the three big 28-month-old cubs of tigress Nurani, who had already detached from her, but were still hanging out together  – it seemed that we were just a touch too late, for we saw while approaching from a distance that they were just walking off from the dry streambed where they were resting into the thickets.  We nonetheless maintained visual contact with them and when we arrived, we found they were walking parallel to us behind a scene of bamboo.  Our mahout urged our elephant to go ahead of them to wait around a gentle bend and, lo and behold, they did one by one re-emerge from the undergrowth back onto the streambed.  And there, they continued walking for a short distance, and then one settled down under a tree and the other two lay down side by side in the sand less than a stone’s throw from us.  Meanwhile, our mahout continued maneuvering his elephant for better angles, and our three cameras kept clicking away.  Soon, I heard Faiyaz moan that he was out of film.  I glanced at my camera and saw that I had advanced to #33.  By then, fortunately, the three almost full grown cubs had settled down in their new positions and I snapped off the last four frames and felt my camera having turned into a box of gems.  The cubs were absolutely perfect, in flawless condition, without a single blemish, radiating youthful majesty.

       I heard Anne whisper behind me, “Now I fully understand why you do what you are doing.”  

     “This is the love side of the impulse,” I whispered back.  “We’ve got to save this exquisite beauty for our kids.”

     “If there is a love side, there is a hate side?”

     “The users of tiger parts, the poachers, the smugglers, the traders, previously, the trophy hunters.  I just have this irresistible urge to crush them.”

     “Too bad that of the billion people in India, hardly 1% are aware of the tiger’s plight, have seen real live tigers in their natural habitat, or aware of the killing and the trade and the deforestation,” whispered Faiyaz.  “All they see, and at that rarely, are the painted images of tigers on walls for one commercial products or another, or as the mount of the Hindu goddess Durga.  Unfortunately, few if any of these images manage to capture essence of the tiger in the least - its beauty, its majesty - and are therefore incapable of generating love and reverence for the tiger.  But I have seldom seen anyone who have seen live tigers in a forest that don’t want to protect them.”  

     Being one of the last groups in line and the last load for this elephant, we had the luxury of not having to return to the waiting area at any set time.  So we just stayed there until finally the cubs got up again and vanished into the tickets for good.  I whispered to them a heartfelt “Good luck.” 

     At noon, we returned to the lodge and had our lunch.  There, while we (Anne, Faiyaz, Vivek and I) were seated around one of the smaller tables, I asked Vivek to call Latika to arrange a meeting with me.  Latica is a beautiful Indian woman who is also a prominent, Oxford educated tiger conservationist.  In my previous visit to Bandhavgarh, she recognized me from her jeep and invited me to join her on a foot patrol.  She had a project of using infrared-triggered cameras to study tigers and told me that quite a few of the pictures taken were not of wild animals at all, but of humans who had no business being there in the middle of the night, meaning poachers. 

     When Vivek called at her residence, which was another tourist lodge, it was Latika herself who answered the phone.  She seemed happy to hear from me and asked me if I had plans to go to the park this afternoon.  I said “no”.  She said she was going into the park to do some work, and would call me when she returned to her lodge.  I said “fine”.  But after I had dropped the phone, Faiyaz reminded me of the video show, and I called her back, asking her to attend.  She asked for the time and place and I passed the phone back to Vivek, and that ended the connection.

     Shortly after that, I went for a nap, but was awakened by Faiyaz’s knock on the door, saying that we had to go and meet the park officials for permission to hold the video show (so what’s new around here?) and to invite them to it.  He said it was urgent and had to be done within minutes, but after I had struggled out of bed, we sat around for nearly half an hour for their lordships to call us back. 

     While waiting, we got the hierarchy of Bandhavgarh’s officialdom figured out, which by nomenclature is different from Kanha’s.  In ascending order, it is: Forest Guard, Deputy Ranger, Range Officer, Assistant Conservator of Forest, Deputy Director, Chief Forest Conservator (Bandhavgarh’s equivalent of Kanha’s Field Director).

     Finally, they did call and we did go, and it turned out to be actually quite a pleasant meeting.  Present were the CFC, the Deputy Director (of the park, Bandhavgarh has no buffer zone), a couple of other VIP-looking men and an older Indian gentleman in white costume who was obviously respected by the officials, who introduced himself as from, surprise, Toronto, but who had maintained a once-a-year-visit schedule over the last 20 years.  They were very complimentary of what I do and gave their verbal condonation of whatever outreach we wished to do.  The CFC even volunteered his personal assistant at our disposal on grounds that the aid was fluent in local dialect and would eliminate whatever alienation there might be due to Faiyaz’s outsider-dialect.  This I interpret as a double-edged sword, partly as a help and partly as yet another “monitoring agency”.  I respectfully invited them to see the video and they said they would come.  One major happy surprise: the old white-robed gentleman on his own accord talked about the wisdom of raising park fees and have part of the proceeds go to the park and the other part to the villagers, and the other VIPs agreed!

     Back to the lodge, I had a cold water shower and shampoo.  After that, Vivek took us (Anne, Faiyaz and me) out for a walk along the park boundary nearest the lodge.  There we saw fencing of three different configurations.  First we encountered was a combination of a 3’-ditch, a 4’-loose-stone-wall on the park-side of the ditch, and a 5’-electric-fence behind it.  We came upon breaches in the stone wall here and there, and eroded parts in the ditches.  Vivek opined that this fence system may partly keep slow cattle from entering the park, but it was ineffective to keep fleet-footed deer from jumping out.  Farther on, we came across a 4’-ditch / 5’-4-strand electric fence combination, some of whose wires had been cut, some hanging loose and some strands tied together to make passing room underneath.  We touched the wires and found there was no current in them.  Vivek said that the locals regularly cut the wires with axes, and of course once cut in just one place, the entire electric fence is disabled.  This changed my pro-electric-fence thinking in an instant.  And then we came across a 6’-chain-link-fence / ditch combination and this seemed the most effective of all, but upon closer inspection, we also saw cut holes here and there big enough to admit people (wood-cutters) and goats if not cows.  Looking at the landscape on both sides of the fence, we saw forest with a grazed fringe on the park side, and a totally over-grazed and wood-poached wasteland on the other, with a large herd of cattle still nibbling on whatever grass and root remnants still remaining, tended by a boy with an axe in his hand.  So, all of the fences were ineffective to one extent or another, and without a fence on other parts of the park perimeter, the damage to the park can be imagined.  It seems that a regular foot patrol of the fence line and park periphery is needed, which currently does not exist.

     Back at the lodge, we (Faiyaz, Anne, Vivek and I) sat together and strategized on what most effect thing we could do while I’m here.  I openly told Vivek what I had in mind.  Given just a week, an outreach program would be of limited scope, but a fact-finding mission would be immensely impactful if we could discover sensational material that can generate a high profile article for media in the West.  And what more sensational material than what happened to the most famous tigress in the world – Sita?  If we could find out how she died, we would automatically also have uncovered the flaws of the entire Bandhavgarh park system.  Vivek seem totally for the idea, and showed that he had information to offer. 

     Soon, we had to break to change for the evening.  We got to the amphitheatre by 07:10 and, with the help of the local technician, set up the video projector – under the stars!  By the time most of the people had assembled, which included the park officials, the British group, the Russian businessman’s family, Latica and friends, the guides and a number of local villagers, it was past 07:30.  At 07:40, Faiyaz and I gave our intro, pre-corrected the few factual errors in the video, and let Champions roll, at the end of which Vivek announced that I would give a slideshow presentation same time tomorrow night.  After that, there was the usual hand-shaking and questions and comments, amongst which was the British groups’ invitation to the White Tiger Lodge for a drink around 21:30, and the Russian family’s invitation for a meeting at the same lodge at 20:30.

     The meeting with the Ukrainian family took place in their room, attended by his family, Rajeen Saxena, MD (the Russian speaking Indian gentleman), Rajesh Kumar and our guide-of-the-day, and us – Faiyaz, Anne, Vivek and me.  The Ukrainian gentleman, Mr. Valera Levchinovskiey, further introducing himself and what he wanted to accomplish, his anguish at not quite knowing what to do, and his need and desire to have me help him save the Siberian tiger, mentioning the possibility of me going to Russia at some juncture.  At one point, he was talking with great disdain about German hunters going to hunt the Russian Brown bear.  I asked him back a few questions and gave my own self-intro with the help of my media folder, with emphasis on my 1996 anti-bear-hunting road tour, and the amount of media I generated in two months.  The eyes of both him and his Indian translator lit up.  Shortly after that, we exchanged contact info and wound up our one-hour meeting.  We exchanged contact information and agreed to communicate further by phone and email.

     Rajeen asked me to call him as soon as I get back to Delhi so that he could arrange a meeting between myself and (ready?) Sonia Gandhi (!), “since your video included footage of Indira Gandhi.

     The R&R with the British group followed at the lounge, and Anne was thrilled with her rum-and-coke.  I talked to two people especially, Delia Jarman, the English woman whose recognized me, who is a librarian and a self-professed read-aholic, and a part-Chinese American woman named Karen Tan who is in the middle of a year-long round-the-world trip, including a motor-cycle segment, with business interest in Tara Handmade Paper & products, “the commercial wing of Development Alternatives, Paper from recycled cotton.”

     In the same group was also Alan & Dorothy Gregson, an older couple from Dundas, Ontario, Canada (!), both retired from Mohawk College of Applied Arts and Technology.  They wanted to maintain contact. 

     Whew!  As if all these were not enough, we also arranged a 22:30 meeting back at the Jungle Lodge with Rajesh.  While driving back to the lodge, with Pushpinder at the wheel, we follow a motor cycle which happened to be carrying Rajesh and our tobacco-chewing guide-of-the-day.  The meeting, attended by Faiyaz, Anne, Vivek, Rajesh, the other guide, Pushpinder and me, had the making of a spy novel episode.  I laid it down on the table what this meeting was for – info gathering for the international article – and secrecy guaranteed if requested.  It lasted deep into the night (01:00). 

     The information that came to light is astounding.  After breakfast tomorrow, Faiyaz, Anne and I will convene to transcribe the copious notes they had taken into my computer.  It should blow the minds of anyone in the West even remotely interested in tiger conservation. 

     It is now 03:24.  I can hardly keep my eyes open.  Good night, Raminothna.