Every morning from mid-September, I lie in bed hoping to hear it. Sometimes, it is early and my wait lasts only a few days. Some years I have to wait a whole month before the harsh call finally sounds. Like many of you, I live in an apartment building in a city. There are very […]
Author: Pavithra Sankaran
The circle of life
A few monsoons ago, a friend gifted us a small, succulent plant which had lovely red flowers. A couple of weeks after we had installed the plant among others in our balcony, when the flowers had fallen away, I saw a small red, white and black butterfly, called the Red Pierrot come fluttering in and […]
My books and their animals
When Bruno the bear went to sleep with the little boy in the story, I longed to have a bear to cuddle up with as well. When Sally the donkey looked shyly at her new owner Gerry, on the morning of his birthday, I knew instantly that I wanted a donkey as well. And when […]
Staying legal, staying reasonable
“How many of you listen to music?” All twenty hands in the room went up. “How many of you share music with your friends?” Again, the twenty hands in the room went up. “And how many of you know that sharing music is a violation of the copyright law?” All hands stayed up. “Then, why […]
Conserving wildlife as if democracy matters
Since 2006, the environment ministry has demarcated and declared thirty-nine Critical Tiger Habitats—the core of our tiger reserves. Every one of them, wrote activist CR Bijoy recently, is illegal. To understand this extraordinary allegation, we need to step back in time, to our most recent “tiger crisis”. One morning in the summer of 2005, our […]
Desperate neighbours: endangered wildlife and the rural poor
An important highway cuts through the Bandipur Tiger Reserve in southern India. It is a busy road, mainly carrying holiday makers and vegetable-laden trucks from Mysore and Bangalore to destinations in Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Yet, despite the activity, travellers report an astonishing variety of wildlife crossing the highway or by the roadside. But if […]
Wildlife beyond boundaries
The elephants stood at the stream’s edge. As the adults drank in measured trunkfuls, calves gambolled in the water. Just above them, on the slope, a large sambar stag emerged silently from the undergrowth. From a cluster of trees above came the scolding call of a giant squirrel, as a troop of Nilgiri langur foraged […]
The elephant in your coffee
Got a cup of coffee in hand as you read the paper this morning? Much of the coffee we drink in India is grown in the hilly, southern districts of Coorg, Wayanad and Nilgiris. To the east of these picturesque and popular holiday destinations is a vast tract of impoverished dry-land agriculture. Farmers here have […]
Keeping a culture of co-existence
Nagaraja Shetty did not want the day to dawn. It would mean that he could see exactly how much the elephants had taken. But the remorseless sun did rise, only to reveal a completely destroyed paddy field. Nothing was left of his meagre one acre. Starvation and deepening debt stared him in the face, but […]
Ecotourist, tread softly!
Humans have always looked upon everything in nature as resources. Forests continue to provide us a staggering range of raw and finished products. Wildlife too, are resources. And there are different ways of using these resources—we hunt deer for meat, trap tigers for skin, poach elephants for ivory. We cut trees to cook dinner, to […]