How the wolves were tamed

This is a beautiful interview about climate change and its impact on the Himalayas. I was recently at a meeting where climate experts from Delhi University and Saint Petersburg discussed their studies on the effects of climate change in the Himalayas. After I returned home in the evening, I read this article.

I hope you'll be able to read this article to understand the complexity of the climate change outcomes in the Himalayan range. There is wide diversity in the flora, fauna, and terrain from the western to the central to the eastern Himalayas. Please read the interview. A very honest, simple, and narrative interview on how climate change is affecting the people in the foothills, and up in remote villages of the Himalayas. Somewhere the intricate interaction/ collision between the 3 Es of efficiency in production, economic growth, and the environment is reflected very well. The pursuit for productivity and the cost of planetary health.

But this interview had a very different impact on me. It reminded me of Padam Bahadur. Padam was my father’s helping hand, his Man Friday during the turbulent early 1970s in Bengal. My father was a doctor in the Darjeeling District. Those were times when a mild thunder of a Spring Revolution was audible in the near sky. Padam was my father’s bodyguard with a shining Kukri tugged in his waist. He was a Gurkha. He stayed with us. In the day and evening, he protected my father. On many nights, he told me stories before I slept. Folk tales from Nepal. From Mustang, the district from where his family originated.

One story I have not forgotten. I had heard this story from Padam many times. And have told many children in later years. I can never narrate the story as well as Padam used to. But I try.

In the first years of human life, there was a beautiful village in the Himalayas. There was a river by the village. Green forests beyond. During the day, men went hunting. Children played. Women cooked and cleaned their huts and the village. One winter day two big wolves came from the forest. Big, dark, fat wolves. The children were scared. The wolves did not do anything. They just sat. Scary. But silent. The children told their mothers. The mothers tried to shoo away the wolves. The wolves did not go. They left before evening fell. When fathers returned to the village. One day, Tsering, a little boy, saw a dream. (By the way, Tsering was one of my best friends in the boarding school I went to in Kurseong.) In his dream, one of the wolves said, ‘why don’t you call us to play? We would love to come and play with you.’ The next morning, Tsering told his friends of his dream. Later, when the wolves came that day, Tsering led the children and approached the wolves. ‘Come, will you play?’ They asked. The wolves came. And they ran with the children. Soon summer came. The sun shone bright. And the children saw that the wolves were turning golden in the sunlight. And becoming thinner. Over the years the wolves turned their friends. They barked and became dogs. To stay with the children. To play with the children. They became their pets. Padam ended the story by saying, ‘Even wolves become friends, when we play with them. In Mustang, my forefathers used to play with trees, animals and flowers. They lived as one family. Alas, today...’. By then I would be first asleep.

I felt so happy reading this article because it reminded me of Padam.