A Rainbow Dream
-By Vivek Menon, Executive Director, WTI

I have had a dream for two score years by now. It is persistent. It is immediate. It is enrapturing. It is in monochrome. My colour is green.

My dream is that India’s natural heritage is secure. It is a fascinating vision. One in which clear streams sparkle through verdant hillsides, where tropical canopies blot out the sun from the sky, where aquamarine worlds team with shoals of floral fish. In my dream there are more than 1411 tigers, more than 2000 rhinos, many, many more than seven central Indian wild buffaloes. The Malabar civet and the mountain quail are alive and well, the olive ridleys come to shore in the arribadas of Orissa and the whale sharks swarm off the coast of Gujarat. The tribes of the forest are at peace with their neighbouring beasts and the elephant is Ganesha once more in the minds of the Indian. In my dream there are no sub-committees debating the use of plastics by man, no activists raising the banner of protest against ships being broken up against our coast or dams coming up in the northeast simply because they are unnecessary. The earth is at peace with itself and humankind is flourishing materially, emotionally and spiritually.

I did warn you that I was dreaming. It is a worthwhile dream, even if it is one from which I have been startled awake daily by the shrill clang of a fire alarm in the natural world. You fight the fire all day and then settle back onto the pillows to dream once again. In its rhythmic cyclicity it has been the mother of all dreams but of late I have been dreaming a slight variation.  

The difference is in the colour. Like all other monochromatic images, however beautiful and esoteric, the mind yearns for some colour. And now I am dreaming of the world part in technicolour. Not the gaudy improbability of Bollywood nor the chaotic explosion of Chinese fireworks but an orderly rainbow dream.

There are seven colours in a rainbow. Green is only one of them. A green rainbow, however eco-friendly it might be will never shine as resplendently as one with seven colours, nor be captured in the dreams of a child; it will fade from our memories faster like other monochromatic occurrences. It is in the admixture of its emotions and the interplay of its shadows that a rainbow stands out against the sky. Why should our ‘green’ movement be anything but that? Traditionally all movements have stuck to their cause and colour. There are thousands of groups fighting for conserving our cultural heritage and very few of them are concerned with the natural heritage of our earth. There are groups who look at upliftment of the poor with no concern about the environment or the cultural heritage of the country. Those fighting for gender forget that animal inequality is as galling at times as their own cause. We take what is closest to us and hold it against our heart with great passion, forgetting the passions and causes that others spend their lives trying to achieve. Perhaps it is time to try some bit of holism in some of our works. I say this with the humility of knowing that it is impossible for the human mind to accommodate the myriad needs of this earth and life on it. Nor is it practical to weave every dream into one fabric. Which is why the rainbow. Seven is a limited single digit number but the rainbow holds in its bosom unending interpretations and hope. Let me give you a real example of something that we have been doing that exemplifies this idea.

A herd of Tibetan antelopes

For over a decade now, the Wildlife Trust of India has been trying to save the Tibetan antelope or the chiru, an endangered mountain ungulate that is poached for its fine underwool. We in northern India have known this fine fleece as shahtoosh, a Kashmir heritage item that is banned by national and international laws and treaties for the effect that it has on the animal. WTI has argued for and supported this ban. It has also led a dramatic campaign across India in the early 2000s that brought the country’s attention to this problem, the fact that the shawl so effortlessly flung over the cognoscenti’s shoulder was in fact dripping in the blood of twenty or more antelope. All illegally poached. However, in a departure from normal conservation agency functioning, we have also been spearheading an alternative for the artisans of Kashmir, something that will save the antelope and the tradition while creating some economic alternative for those who were affected by the ban. We call this product Pashm-e-shahi. It is also a classical ‘rainbow product’.

A woman spins pashmina yarn

The product is a shawl that is handspun by Kashmiri women artisans from the finest Pashmina wool that is combed of a domestic goat. It is then woven using an all natural process, many of which, centuries-old that had been forgotten in a mechanised world,  into a featherweight shawl that slips through the proverbial ring but in an animal friendly way. No antelope is killed for it. The money that is made is legit and is shared through a cooperative. The project has brought some hope to several families in the troubled valley. We had started this as a green project, to save the chiru. But through this wonderful product, the project had been imbued with all the seven colours of the rainbow. The shawl is an all natural handicraft, it is conservation and animal friendly, it is gender-balancing as the spinners are all women, it is helping preserve a cultural and art heritage of Kashmir, it is a fair trade product and it is a peace product, bringing hope in a conflict zone. I like to believe that the Pashm-e-shahi is a rainbow product and the WTI project a rainbow project. The colour green may have been its raison d'être, but all the other shades have embraced each other to form this colourful band of hope. This holistic thought process is the way that my dream has taken shape.

Does this mean that no one can specialise anymore? Should those who combat hunger be thinking of fair trade? Should the green movement be gender sensitive by necessity? Should  the cultural and craft tsarinas now be thinking animal welfare? Yes. There is no question in my mind that we must bring the various facets of social justice and earth-friendliness into any of our projects. Each can choose their core. Specialisation will thus survive and not be threatened by each other. But we can each try to lessen the others burden in making the world a little less grey. And in doing so, pass on this rainbow dream of mine.

Photos: WTI

More on 'Notes from Vivek Menon':
On Safer Shores
Rescue in the new year
Goats on the Border
Time to count tigers once again