The Jungle Gypsy

‘Argus’, Greek for ‘watchful’, was 17 when he first laid eyes on a snow leopard in the Himalayas. On hearing it is endangered, he resolved to pull out all stops to safeguard species falling under the same league.

Now 32, this ranger roves from one natural park to the next, doing all he can, as a naturalist, to make the Earth a safer place for animals.

Alert, aware and learning every day, Argus, documents his glimpses into the spectacular landscape of wildlife across the world.

THE STORY

In a desperately developed world, forests are a fairy tale. It is no surprise then that enchanting stories of flora and fauna and our wonderful albeit troubled earth come from it.
The urbanized, homogenized, concrete land we live on now is what we borrowed from the jungle.
We often forget there’s no overdraft facility here. One Earth is all we have. And while we can’t keep renting what we can’t repay or couldn’t care less to, we do.

Some parts of the Earth still breathe. Mercifully.
With jungles for lungs, our planet still has places to call its own.
Argus lives in the parts we haven’t scrounged.
Although threatened with human intervention, the forestland that remains is still fortunately free.
Unless we keep it that way, there will come a day when it will only live in Argus’ journal – records of movements and motives and mere moments from the natural world.

They must be kept; preserved for the generations of the future that we have borrowed this earth from.
Heck, the future must continue to have moments like these and more!
The endangered should be helped, cared for and saved.
The disappearing numbers of fascinating species must be revived.
Nature should have its place; pride of place on this planet.

We’ve known these ‘must’s and ‘should’s for a while. But passivity is an easier proposition.
What does it mean to us if a tiger lounges regally in a pond or a hippo lazes sleepily in another one?
What does it mean to us if a bald eagle miraculously appears or a peregrine falcon disappears?
What does it mean to us if a panther peeps from some dense undergrowth or a grizzly bear finds and feeds on fish that it painstakingly plotted to prey on?
And what will it ever mean to us if the marlin meets the same fate as the mammoth?

Well, while we don’t notice, the world will lose many things of beauty and variety and possibility.
Perhaps, when their worth does dawn on us, dusk may have fallen on them.

Stories that were possible in the present will become stories of the past. And therefore, tragedies.
In his journal, Argus makes stories of sights. Sights that may elude us or intensify depending upon our response to the challenges of and regard for the environment.
When you rove about the jungles of the Earth,
a heightened awareness;
a refreshing humility;
a deeper sense of gratitude fills you.
Of, from and for the bounty of nature.
May Argus rub off on us all.
May his SHOUT! reach more ears than the earth’s cries for help so far have.
May this jungle book become the bible that stops us from sinning against fellow beings – to whom this earth belongs just as much or more.
Sometimes, it takes a gypsy in a gypsy to look through a pair of binoculars or the lens of a camera or the thicket of a shrub, right into the wild and make what he sees stay.
For eternity.
In a story. As a memory, saved for posterity.
Or in reality. A reversal of imminent tragedy.