The Hindu Business Line : Some moments that will remain

As 2007 is taken off the wall, some moments will remain in the files or between pages of books, for leisurely reference in 2008. The Kanha National Park packaged in plastic strips of dew and mist; the jingle of lesser whistling teals in a talav (pond) at Nakti Ghati; the few minutes a crested serpent eagle took to eating up a small snake firmly held down by its claws on a mango tree; the sharp-ending tail of a monitor lizard hanging out of a hole in a tree with the guides reminding one that the lizard has made the hole its home in the last two years; the pleasing sight of a male chital in velvet, standing up on its hind legs reaching for the green leaves of a girchi tree in Kanha meadows; the L&T bulldozer stretching out its long steel nose to put down a 50-year old mango tree in about three minutes on the Seoni Road to help multi-lane the stretch; the quiet sittings in forest corners (with the Gypsy engine switched off) waiting for the Kanha National Park to extend a friendly hand of recognition; and back in Mumbai spending three hours at Kandivili Raghuleela watching Aamir Khan’s easily crafted Taare Zameen Par with a few tears and laughs.

On the 250-km drive from Nagpur to Kanha, we paused near the edge of a scrub forest to photograph a hovering black shouldered kite when another attacked it. The cameras missed the moment. We were ruing our luck when a common mongoose scuttled away.

In Marathi, there is a saying about seeing a mangoose, “Baggetla tar konala sangacha nahin (Keep the seeing of a mongoose a secret)”, as it brings good luck. On the first night we rested at the Centre being developed by the Satpuda Foundation and tried to beat the cold sitting round a wood fire (one is not sure where the wood came from). Amit, who is in charge of the Centre, mans the centre alone and takes a walk in the middle of the night. “Kuch darne ka nahin (There is nothing to be afraid of),” he says in Hindi, though one will never stay alone.

For about five days, we used to get up at 4.30 a.m. and have our first tea and smoke at a hut manned by a woman, who makes tea from 5 in the morning to 10 in the night. A cup of tea costs Rs 5, while land costs have climbed into six figures per acre as resorts get built at a rapid pace to catch the tourist crowd in search of the elusive tiger. At 6 a.m. we would be in the queue at the Kisli gate to enter the Park and roam till 12 in the noon. The best way to take in a forest is to stand at the back though with temperatures dropping to between 2 degrees and 4 degrees, hands turned numb with the finger tips hurting.

The park management deserves some applause for Kanha with its meadows, clusters of evergreen sal trees and healthy regeneration on the forest floors. Khageswar Nayak and Rakesh Shukla in their book Kanha: Glimpses of a Tiger Reserve, dwell on the ways Kanha got its name. “Some say it comes from kanhar, a type of clayey soil found in the area. Others say that the area is named after Kanva, a holy sage who once lived here and was the father of Shakuntala, the lead character in Kalidasa’s famous Sanskrit play Abhigyanashakuntalam.”

For the many coming to Kanha, it is tigers and tigers alone. Like cricket killing all other sports, the shrill support for tigers has deflected attention from the tough job of conserving all of nature; Tiger is at best a part of Nature. Some of the best wildlifers have a princely origin and started out as hunters of tigers; again some set aside their guns for cameras and worked to conserve the animal; in the process, they betrayed the faith giving a bad name to wildlife.

Tiger started as an elitist idea and today the efforts of many like Kishor Rithe of the Satpuda Foundation are to get the tribals into appreciating the economic sense behind keeping alive forests and tigers. The change will take time as the Tribal Bill, allowing for land holding rights to tribals in national parks and sanctuaries, becomes law from January 1.

At Koonthankulam in Tirunelveli district in Tamil Nadu, entire villages are protecting the bird sanctuary. A wholesome process of resettlement could find tribals helping the forest department to keep tigers in safe custody. Every day after the morning round we assembled for the adhrak tea at the lady’s hut.

One afternoon, as we were sipping tea, came a bus load of school boys and girls from an English school in Indore. Their purses had more money than ours and they were upmarket, for no fault of their own. They picked up bottles of cold drinks and packets of Lays. “We did see a tiger,” said one school girl.

At the Satpuda Foundation, on an afternoon, one watched untidy and scantily dressed school girls and boys playing nature games, though one is not sure whether they got the message of keeping the forests behind the game. For them, Kanha is something they live with daily. Possibly, they know more about trees and birds than the kids from Indore. Yet, if the poor kids are not offered living opportunities outside the Park, they will lead defeated lives as beyond a point the forests cannot offer anything. Settle all the tribals in the forests and the forests will go, and the tribals will be worse off than now. There will be no rivers to feed the elite in the cities. There will be no endings; there will be one last Finish.

P. Devarajan

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