A lush green Forest and A home for the Bulbul !

Every one of us wishes to have a lash green garden. Who doesn’t? It adds beauty to our home and becomes the neighbour’s envy and owner’s pride! This time the grasses were growing for a longer period in our backyard. This happens quite often as I find little time left for managing the house and keeps forgetting to call the person to clean the backyard. In spite of rubu’s repeated reminding jokingly that the grasses  are getting taller and taller and that even tiger’s may hide behind them, I was somewhat neglecting the issue !

My hubby always thinks that I am a bit over enthusiastic who wants to convert the house to a

 zoo !  He is sometimes irritated that the verandahs are sometimes filled with grasses or the small twigs that keeps on falling from the nests of the sparrows or that long slender brush like branches peeps from overhead.  He advises me to clear the nests as soon as the baby sparrows or the mynahs fly away. I always answer in affirmative and say next time pukka promise ! Which I conveniently forgets every time J ! Even if I remember, next year they again comes!

 But of course I have to call people to clean up the bathroom exhaust fan of guest room, after each season of nesting. Though usually I become deaf if someone in the household complains about a peculiar smell or about the twigs dirtying the bathroom !

The backyard is my favorite retreat. the night before it rained heavily. After I woke up in the morning I immediately went to backyard to take a snap of the raindrops that falls on the hedges.

                                             

 I come across many varieties of birds ,  some rare which I haven't seen or heard before. Probably I will be able to write about them someday. sometimes squirrels or the barking deer peeps  from somewhere who are always alert ! One day I was just sitting on the verandah, 

when some movement in the tall grass caught my attention. I waited with a batted breath,praying frantically,  hoping it’s not rubu’s  tiger ! To my utter surprise

 a small bird suddenly flew away with a long grass in her beak, which was longer than it! Before I could click my shutter  it vanished  with the green grass trailing behind !  I waited patiently  for it to comeback. 











  

 I could almost hear  my own heartbeat, as I was trying to go as near to the grasses  as possible  and  sitting,  trying not to make any sound  or movement.  To my utter relief it came again and many more times . Each time to take one more grass or feather to our verandah or bathroom exhaust ! The neat  and tidy work was fascinating as it could torn the grass with just few strokes of the beak.

I was always fascinated by the beautiful images of Humming bird’s pictures ! Oh ! if only I could take one of them. But where on earth you will find them ? Waking up at 5am is dreaded by most of us, but , I was reading an interesting book with my camera nearby. Suddenly I saw a movement in the ashoka plant. Only a leaf was dipping. Without any thought I zoomed the lense and started clicking.

I didn't have slightest idea what it could be as I couldn't see anything from the distance and nothing was visible except the leaf dropping.  After I downloaded the pictures in my laptop and expanded. Wow !  Unbelievable it was a hummingbird !

  Few months ago we have come to know about a person named Jadav Payeng aka Mulai. He was there in the news papers, TV , and articles, who had been planting  trees in a forest in a remote village in Majuli district of Assam  and taking care of it for the last  30  years, inspite of people belittling him. He started living in the forest itself so that he can care for them as his own children. Situated  near the bank of river Brahmaputra it covers now an area of 550 hectors. In 1979, Jadav, then a 16 yrs old boy, had seen that large number of reptiles had died after floods washed them  onto the tree less sand bar. One day, after the waters had receded, Payeng , found the place dotted with the dead reptiles. That was the turning point of his life. The snakes and reptiles died because of heat  and barrenness of the place.

"The snakes died in the heat, without any tree cover. I sat down and wept over their lifeless forms. It was carnage. I alerted the forest department and asked them if they could grow trees there. They said nothing would grow there. Instead, they asked me to try growing bamboo. It was painful, but I did it. There was nobody to help me. Nobody was interested," says Payeng, who is  47 now.

He left his home, education, and started living in the sand  bar  so that he could  start planting and watered them morning and evening. After a few years , the sand bar was transformed in to a bamboo thicket. "I then decided to grow proper trees. I collected and planted them. I also transported red ants from my village, and was stung many times. Red ants change the soil's properties . That was an experience," Payeng says, laughing. Soon, there were a variety of flora and fauna which burst in the sandbar, including endangered animals like the one-horned rhino and Royal Bengal tiger. "After 12 years, we've seen vultures. Migratory birds, too, have started flocking here. Deer and cattle have attracted predators," claims Payeng.

 

Now that once-barren sand bar is a sprawling 1,360 acre forest, “Mulai  kathani”( মোলাই কাঠনি ) or  Mulai’s forest, as the locals named the place after his pet name, houses , Bengal tigers, Indian rhinoceros, deers, rabbits, apes, varieties of birds,vultures, many valuable trees. A large herd of elephants regularly visits the forest home to several thousands of varieties of trees and an astounding diversity of wildlife .

Mulai’s  forest was  accidently detected , when  the forest department officials  came in search of a 115 elephant herd , which damaged  property in Aruna chapori, and retreated into the forest, which was around  at a distance of 1.5 kms.  They were really surprised to see such a huge forest.

Mulai  is now eager to go to other places of the state and start another venture. His aim is now to spread his forest to another sand bar inside of Brahmaputra River. He lives in a hut in the forest with his wife and 3 children. He has a small farm and selling milk is his only source of income. Though he has lost around 100 of his cows and buffaloes to the tigers  of the forest, still he blames the large encroachments and destruction of the forest by the villagers, for the plight of the animals.

Jadav Payeng was honoured at a public function arranged by the School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University  for his remarkable achievement.  JNU vice-chancellor Sudhir Kumar Sopory named Jadav Payeng as "Forest Man of India". In the month of October 2013, he was honoured at Indian Institute of Forest Management during their annual event Coalescence.

Various documentaries has been made on him till now.  william Douglas McMaster ,a   Canadian cinematographer  made a documentary film in  2013 “ Forest Man "  on Jadav paying and his work on  Mulai Forest . This Documentary will be displayed at  2014  Cannes Film Festival . You can view the trailer in you tube

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wIXk8gkqYGU&feature=youtu.be&noredirect=1

Arati  Srivastava  has alos made a documentary on Jadav Payeng.

http://www.humanitywatchdog.org/films/foresting-life-2013/

http://www.souloftheforest.in/motivation.html

http://carlobevilacqua.photoshelter.com/#!/index/G0000PkiOhXbyZY8/1

The Shanmukhananda Fine Arts & Sangeetha Sabha, a Mumbai-based charitable trust, has conferred seven ’Diamond Awards’ on people "who by dint of devotion to duty and exceptional commitment to the field of pursuit have added to the goodness reservoirs of our ancient land, Most of them have been unseen, unsung but have gone about their work, despite hardships inflicted upon them by the system, one of the awardees had been Mr. Jadav Payeng. Five of the seven awardees have been selected on the basis of TOI reports.

Jadav Mulai has been repeatedly awarded accolades for his efforts. Today, the inhabitants of the villages near the forest are proud of the work that has been done but the early years were not easy for Mulai. In fact, after some elephants destroyed a village many people blamed Mulai for what had happened and he had to ask for help and protection from the forest department. When the villagers asked to cut down the Forest, he said he will kill himself instead of the trees.

Today his new goal is to recommence a second bio diverse forest in another sand bar island in the Brahmaputra River and teach the world the priceless heritage of biodiversity.

Thanks to Mani Phukan Sir’s writing I was able to write about this man which I was thinking to write for some time.

http://malicedmind.blogspot.in/2014/04/a-little-bird-that-came-to-stay.html

 Jadav Payeng's  incredible work, insights, perseverance and strength may provide us the extra boost to accomplish our treasured dreams!

Each one of us may not be as passionate as Mulai, but definitely we can teach our younger generation to plant trees care more for our eco-system and help the Earth become greener.

At night  we often fall asleep hearing the calling of the barking deer at our backyard, or the elephant screaming, which come down from deopahar range. When I wake in the morning by the chirpings of the mynah or bulbul, or  the cuckoo , I feel rejuvenated for the day’s work.

I belief by- “if you can’t be an oak

                     Be a sapling

                    If you can’t be a sapling

                     Be a grass!

                   But be a lively green one!

Images courtesy google for Jadav Payeng, other pictures are copyrighted @barnali