FORESTS, PATIENCE AND BLINKIT GENERATION
My eyes had already sketched and re-sketched their contours so many times that they were already etched on my mind indelibly. Every time i would be incessantly staring into the wilderness through that cryptic tree grids inside the 1700 sq km forests or was asked to look right, left or upwards, I would either see a leopard or a tiger or a bear or yet another deer. I wasn’t hallucinating but it was the sheer unquenchable greediness of the human mind which wanted to capture all possible real situations in the lives of every animal inside the jungle.
How else was I seeing a deer from far which would turn out to be leaves of a newly germinated plant intermingling with dry leaves on the ground along with some part of the old tree next to them. It was like a mirage of water, turned out every time that it was not to be and the wait was never ending. These were the Chandrapur Forests we were visiting not just to experience hope but to strengthen my resolve to work towards a greener tomorrow. We were staying in the Pombhurna Tehsil next to a water body created by the forest department for animals to drink water from. You just wouldn’t know when a wild boar or a tiger comes to drink water there or a Sambhar/Chital/Barasingha just strolled behind your guest house. We were in the middle of the forest and the drive every day inside the forests was nothing less than enchanting. For my restless 5 year old son, it would get boring in a short while and we would keep giving him ideas to look into the wilderness and search for a cock or a rabbit or make him chase the whistling of the birds. He just missed a alligator who went inside water, the moment our jeep stopped just before the swamps and he is excited.
Forests have their own way of going silent and putting you to silence too! When it rains, animals move the least and when the sun is strong and the temperatures are high, there is all the chance that the animals shall come to the water bodies. We were learning but nothing is gospel’s truth in the forest. You would learn every day to unlearn the next day. But the greedy us want to see a tiger the moment we enter forest. Maybe to meet us over tea! Someone grumbled when we stopped in Tadoba for a water break that why don’t the forest officials collar them and track them on their mobile and take us where the tiger is. I wondered, what would be the meaning of coming to the forests and spend days and weeks together to capture the majestic tiger in his various acts if their locations were made available at the click of a button. What would be the difference between the forest and the zoo?
Forests are a way of livelihood for the villagers and a home for animals and we are hell bent on cutting them for wood, extracting coal, diamonds and other natural resources. Humans are not realising that whatever they are building for the current and future generations, by chopping the trees and the forests won’t be of any use if natural calamities go up, summers get hotter and hotter and more and more cities follow Cape Town to Bengaluru go without water. We are used to Blinkit now but we will have to leave the forest the way it is. We are on this planet to protect everyone’s home and live sustainably with mutual respect. Let us not even fiddle with the idea of animals being made available to us at the click of a button for us to see them and let them go once we are bored which we are most likely to in today’s world.
We started at 6:30 am and it was 9:40 am already and my family was feeling disappointed that we had not seen a tiger or a leopard. All we had seen were wild boars, deer, cocks, many variety of birds. It was around 9:45 am when our gypsy guide got a SOS call from his team mate that they had sighted a tiger. This was not known to us but we could guess when the speed of the gypsy went up. Through our forest drive, they kept telling us that they don’t like any visitor going back disappointed but personally I wasn’t because I wanted to see any and every animal not once but innumerable times through all my sojourns to different forests in the country in extreme uncertain situations. We finally saw a tiger at 9:50 am with his entire torso inside the water and him lazily gazing at all the inquisitive eyes parked behind the camera lens clicking him incessantly. This was not the end but the beginning and another forest was already on our minds. The animal kingdom awaits and for us to keep diving into it, we will have to protect it. The dream of a greener tomorrow was getting more and more illuminated in front of me. A Green Day which I have always dreamt of.
Jeevesh Gupta is the Founder of Campaign For Differently Abled & co-author of a recently published Book titled: A GREEN DAY by Hachette Publishers