A Complete Life

What would motivate one to go beyond the usual pursuits of life to choose a call of heart? What would inspire someone to answer the call of heart and go behind an ethereal pursuit whose fruits are invisible to most of us? People like Lawrence Anthony and Valmik Thapar throw some light into the strange motive that guided them in their pursuits. Lawrence pursued a self-motivated path to learn the art of not only communicating but sharing a unique relation with the largest terrestrial Mammal and building something close to shared home within sweltering African bush.

What Thapar had pursued is an inspired life following the biggest predator in India which was at one time almost extinct in its homeland. He followed closely the footsteps of his mentor, Fateh Singh Rathore, another great human whose dream and pursuits shaped the footprint of Tigers in India forever.

Though separated by miles and belonging to different Land, ethnicity and culture, these motivated men, strived to realize their dreams of conservation against insurmountable hardship and personal sacrifice.

That journey brings a wealth of experience and knowledge that is to be shared about the animals which have their own personalities, behaviors and code that in the process is revealed over the time.

All these things are not magical or did not happen overnight. It required these men to grapple with harsh problems with almost no training or previous know how, being able to inspire themselves and seem to fashion solutions by coaxing the unseen threads of nature and instinct.

The toughest of start is communicating with the Animals whom they loved and shared a bond. That brings to focus, an elementary problem which we humans have taken for granted and use and abuse all the time. Lawrence explains the dilemma and resolution of this, which is the first step in their journey with those large beings who grace their dreams.

"Communication is not the preserve of humans; it is the one thing that is truly universal.

I had at last grasped that the essence of communicating with any animal, from a pet dog to a wild elephant, is not so much the reach as the acknowledgement. It’s the acknowledgement that does it. In the animal kingdom communication is a two-way flow, just as it is everywhere else. If you are not signalling to them that their communication has arrived with you then there can be no communication. It’s as simple as that."

Yet while being able to communicate with them, Lawrence believed in keeping the animals wild and not bending them to human fantasies and cravings. So he took extreme care to not make them too familiar to human interaction, the same value shared by Fateh Singh, as reflected by Thapar, many thousand miles across the ocean.

"I reiterate here that the best policy would be to leave wild tigers alone and not interfere in their life cycle be they adults or cubs. Some will die, others will live. These are the ways of the natural world. Our job is to protect the tiger’s turf and not to interfere with its inhabitants. This primary responsibility should never be forgotten as it will determine the tiger’s future."

What is remarkable from the encounters they narrate, is the ability of the animals that they strive to protect, were themselves that fired the sustenance of the wild! An elementary lesson in food chain, which is vital fact that is usually read and forgotten conveniently.

While the dreams and inspirations have indeed been firing them into their passion, the less mundane realities, nevertheless deadlier ones, especially the government driven efforts in India seems to have been hitting a rough road quite often which puts the fortunes of the conservation efforts in a see-saw. Compared to this, Lawrence's experience in South Africa seems to be slightly better. But what they both espouse as a reason for their modest success is the local participation, absence of which could have had dire consequences for the conservation efforts.

The realization of this brought about an organization founded by Late Fateh Singh Rathore, Tiger Watch ( https://tigerwatch.net/ )

Finally, there is a rare light shed on their motivation when,

"But perhaps the most important lesson I learned is that there are no walls between humans and the elephants except those we put up ourselves, and that until we allow not only elephants, but all living creatures their place in the sun, we can never be whole ourselves."

That perhaps, is why herds of elephants walked 12 hours across the Zulu Land Bowma to reach Lawrence Anthony's residence without anyone having to announce, when he passed away in faraway land and his mortal remains were being brought back, making his life complete as he always dreamt.