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Riding Elephants
In a Teacup

Riding Elephants

The importance of habitat conservation in the protection of avian and animal species can hardly be overemphasized. This is why when logging companies talk about reforestation, by planting millions of trees of one species in the place of the multi-species forest they demolished, it is such a farce. Especially the animals, birds, insects, amphibians, and reptiles that used to live in the natural forest and which died with the trees, will never return. That is why when you walk in one of these so-called forests, plantations really, there is dead silence. The silence of the grave. While when you walk in a natural forest, as Hashim and I were doing that morning, the forest speaks to you.

16 min read
Anamallaiselephants
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Corporate Realities
In a Teacup

Corporate Realities

The more I spent time with myself, clearer it became that it is important to be ‘friends’ with yourself. The more you are self-aware and comfortable internally, the more you can enjoy the world outside. When you are not aware of what is happening to you inside or are unhappy with decisions you have taken, or with your own internal processes, the unhappier you are likely to be with your surroundings. The normal tendency is to blame the outer world, but if one looks within, it is possible to find the solution. One rider however, that you will find only if you seek and only if you have the courage to recognize what you see. That is where sometimes the matter remains unresolved. Not because there is no solution. But because we are unwilling to accept the solution or to implement it.

22 min read
Bamboo Bankscareer
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How not to meet an elephant
In a Teacup

How not to meet an elephant

The plantation years were not all about work and unions. They were a time of great fun and fulfillment; of wonderful friendships and personal growth. During these years I was able to be in the rain forests of the Western Ghats and see in their natural habitat, animals that it had always been my desire to see. I have always had an abiding interest in ecology with specific reference to mammals and their habitat. What better place to indulge that than the Indira Gandhi National Park inside which I lived for the 7 years that I lived in the Anamallais.

16 min read
Anamallaiselephants
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Intro to the Anamallais
In a Teacup

Intro to the Anamallais

The biggest learning for me in this entire incident was the difference between theory and practice. I knew from all my reading and talking to experts that even if you get to the stage where you are facing an elephant which snorts in warning, all you need to do is to start moving back slowly. Not run. Not make any noise. Just move back slowly. Continue to face the animal but keep moving away and increase the ‘trigger distance,’ which can precipitate the charge. Now, does this work in practice? Who knows? What I did and what you will also probably do if you are ever in such a situation, is to turn around and run like hell. Knowing fully well that a person has as much chance of outrunning a charging elephant as they have of outrunning an express train. And that unlike an express train, this one is not bound by the railway track. But then there is a force that protects that is more powerful than the elephant, which will pick you up by the scruff of your neck and put you high above harm’s way. So, theory is good. But practical life sometimes plays tricks with theory.

16 min read
Anamallaisdanger
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