A Full Circle - Timbaktoo's Uno Life

A Full Circle
Camp – Jaldapara Wildlife Sanctuary, North Bengal, India
Date 14th Oct 2006

(A declaration : Thanks to those who already commented on this post. I don't know if it sounded like a brag, but there are many people like me with their stories yet to be told to everybody. Visit ORKUT-WII communities, WII, and NCF websites. There lies a plethora of self motivated and inspired people. I am just lucky to have known them as my seniors. My blog and this post is dedicated to all those who have inspired me through their books and in person to be what I am, where I am, and to share my toughts with the least distortion (Michael L. Lewis - Inventing Global Ecology) .

Oct 1994 was the first time I came to Jaldapara Wildlife Sanctuary after my +2, and the only possible career options of JEE, IIT’s, AIIMS, AFMC!! along with Leena and my family. This was followed by a longer stay for 6 months stay right within the heart of the sanctuary at the Jaldapara Range from Oct. 1998 during my ‘Wild’ masters on ‘Life’, from Dehradun. Eight years later today I am re-visiting the sanctuary again for pursuing a Permanent Head Damaged (refer to older posts :)).

Those years when Cable connection had just kicked in, I used to be glued to the Idiot box from morning till evening watching any crap that was aired. Some how by mistake I came across National Geographic, one evening, and saw a female staying and living in the forests of Africa for years. I did not know who she was or what was she doing in Gombe Reserve Forest, Africa. All I remembered ever since I saw her on NG was the scene where they showed her typing her thesis sitting inside a wooden house with lots of books, a lamp, type writer, and a fat black notebook. I don’t remember when she became a role model. I was in school when I first saw her. But I always fantasized her, her life and her work.

Her work and books have inspired me to be in forest and search for truth through nature. Einstein of Behavioral Ecology, Jane Goodall studying wild chimps, was the name I always remembered in my trips into wilderness. It was much later into my career that I actually read her and her work on Chimps. Prior to that it was all a FANTACY!! Things you believed you can never do…or may be only in dreams. Sometimes the IDIOT BOX is not as bad as we assume it to be!

Sitting in a wooden log house, surrounded by tropical moist deciduous forest (SAL forests), among birds and wild animals screaming from beyond I believe is a privilege. Technology and Nature together was something I had envisioned only in my dreams. Mobile (its different that mine does not work), Data Analysis, The Black Notebook and Books in a wooden log house sometimes reviewed under candle light or kerosene lamp is something unimaginable. It can never be better than this. This journey initiated many years back from the wooded areas near Farakka (NTPC township) 1984, to the comforts of my apartment in UT 2004, and back to my wooden log house today has been very interesting and adventurous, both personally and professionally. Nothing seemed to have changed here other than time. People, tree and forests have just grown older by eight years. Human beings have few more strands of grey hair, or a tiny but distinctly noticeable accumulation of fat around their abdomen, while the forest and trees seemed to have become taller, greener and denser. All screaming of abundance of resources, in today’s resource crunched world.

I exhaled in peace when I saw the old house and the same people I said bye, many years back. I feel at home. I finally returned to my origin, my home, in wilderness. I started my wild career here, and with my Phd I feel am completing a full circle. Being able to imitate Jane Goodall, is something I never thought I could. Imitating her actions was easy, but imitating the passionate scientist in her is the challenge waiting ahead of me! The journey has begun, is all I know. Growing up in a small township away from civilization has definitely contributed significantly towards my fascination for woods and disappearing in them. Who knows where I would be 10 years from today, but as of now am in my New Foundland about to be complete, A FULL CIRCLE!