Around four in the evening, after a late lunch, Pamela Gale Malhotra is standing at a bay window of her living room looking out at a picture-perfect landscape바카라a gushing stream in a rain-soaked forest with the abutting Brahmagiri hills framing the backdrop. It was about 25 years ago that she first stumbled onto this view. At the time, she was out scouting for a site for their home and had been hurrying up a hill trying to escape the rain and leeches when it struck her speechless.
The place is now more wooded than it was in 1995 when Pamela, 67, and husband Anil Malhotra, 78, built their home in south Coorg바카라in a coffee estate that had been listed. How they got here is quite a story, told amidst a primordial symphony바카라the burble of the stream and the call of the crickets.
Their first port of call in India was in the Himalayas in Uttarkashi along the Assi Ganga, where they stayed for nearly a decade before deciding to move south. After scouting through a few states, they finally found what they were looking for at the Brahmagiri foothills in Theralu바카라a remote plantation where they could raise a forest, as bizarre as it sounded to the folks around back then.
It might still sound like a nutty proposition, until you drive past the gates of the Save Animals Initiative (SAI) Sanctuary. Suddenly, you are in a thicket with a narrow driveway that meanders some distance to a garage and beyond that the dark peach walls of the Malhotra home. Around you is a 300-acre native rainforest through which the elephant and tiger freely saunter.
Every morning, in more hospitable weather, Pamela and Anil set forth into this grove바카라their walks take an hour-and-a-half usually unless she바카라s checking on the dozen or so camera traps dotting the landscape, replacing batteries, swapping memory cards or switching locations. Over the years, Pamela has collected a mountain of data바카라otter, porcupine, leopard, sambhar, all kinds of species on video. Since it바카라s a wilderness바카라whatever remained of the coffee plants became humus for the trees바카라the couple merely follow the paths the elephants have cleared.
바카라We바카라ve set up this private model,바카라 Anil tells Outlook. 바카라We want other Indians who can afford it, we need even those who can바카라t, to join together to build this.바카라
The hills get covered up and the rain comes down. It바카라s been bucketing down all through the south-west monsoon this year, casting a gloomy outlook for coffee growers in Coorg. 바카라When we came here, it was normal to have 350 inches of rain a year. Even if it was buckets of it, we had this,바카라 says Pamela, pointing to the woods. 바카라This is what the forest canopy is for. It's like using an umbrella with pores in it, it바카라s going to break it up and slow it down.바카라 But over the decades, Coorg바카라s forest cover has been dwindling. 바카라The coffee plant is useless when it comes to retaining moisture...they have extremely small, shallow roots. We바카라ve warned people again and again, 바카라don't cut down your big native trees.바카라바카라
The Malhotras put together their 300-acre sanctuary piece by piece, starting 1991, first by purchasing a 55-acre coffee estate. 바카라Patches were cleared for coffee. So what we did was to fill up the patches with native trees,바카라 says Anil. They planted jackfruit, Nandi, Rosewood, Matti and hundreds of fruit trees. 바카라And, of course, the native trees come out way on top in absorbing carbon,바카라 adds Pamela, pointing to sequestration studies which show that SAI Sanctuary acts as a carbon sink, helping the neighbourhood as well as providing a haven for the wildlife moving between the Brahmagiri reserve forests and Nagarahole national park, an hour away by road.
Down by the stream, a snake slithers away as we approach the water. Most days, the couple crosses over onto two rocks on a small island to meditate. 바카라We were sitting on these rocks once and a matriarch elephant came up,바카라 says Anil. It didn바카라t sound pleased, he recalls. 바카라We kept sitting and mentally saying we have come in peace. They may not speak English but they know vibrations. She started eating the bamboo and then 8-10 members of the family came. They surrounded us for 45 minutes. It was such a beautiful experience.바카라 Frequently, local people and the forest department bring them injured animals바카라dogs, cats, parakeets바카라which find a ready home.
Anil says it is possible for others to do what they did바카라buy land and restore forests바카라even if it바카라s difficult. 바카라It can be done. People tell us 바카라we haven't made the money you made in America바카라. We bought at the right time. I can바카라t afford it today.바카라
Pamela and Anil met in the US in the early 1970s at her hometown, Red Bank, New Jersey, where he ran an Indian restaurant. She worked at an all-night cafe at Asbury Park, where a young Bruce Springsteen (then playing in a band called Steel Mill) would drop in to play sometimes during breaks from the music club upstairs.
바카라But Anil and I were on complete opposite sides of the political spectrum then,바카라 she laughs. 바카라I've always described it as fire and petrol...explosive encounters.바카라 Mostly over the Nixon presidency and the anti-war movement. Soon after, she went back to college to study political science바카라the breaking-out of her conservative mindset of 바카라materialistic Americana바카라 happened then. He sold up and followed her to Colorado, where they stayed for a few years, she working as a sales rep in a pharma company and he with a mortgage firm. The commissions he got were reinvested in real estate in Colorado and then in a forested patch in Hawaii, which they fell in love with on their honeymoon. The couple moved to India in 1986 to visit Anil바카라s ailing father and eventually settled in Uttarkashi where they wanted to recreate their wooded Hawaii home. The land ceiling regulations prompted the decision to look at plantation land in the south.
바카라I could have continued the real estate and all that in America, but what is the point of life then. I can바카라t take it after me,바카라 says Anil. 바카라I'd rather drink pure water and breathe fresh air than breathe carbon dioxide and be ill half the time and give all my money to doctors and hospitals.바카라 Adds Pamela: 바카라Being in Nature helps us physically. Kids today are being hot-wired by not having time out in Nature to play.바카라
Pamela, who received the Nari Shakti awards for her efforts in afforestation in 2016, has given numerous presentations across the country바카라including a recent one at the Apple facility in Cupertino while on her first visit to the US in 20 years바카라to raise awareness. She바카라s currently working on an autobiography titled From the Heart of Nature, slated for publication next year. 바카라When you are away from Nature you aren't thinking clearly,바카라 says Anil. 바카라Grow fruit trees, grow organic food...the demand far outstrips supply. We have planted thousands of native fruit trees now. Last year, we distributed thousands of saplings at schools and colleges telling them this is the future.바카라
The Malhotras, like successful permaculturalists, are mostly self-sufficient for most of the year. They rely on roof-top solar panels, installed in 1997바카라a year after the house was built. The patch next to the house is an organic food garden where most of their vegetables and salads come from. Pamela prefers cooking on biogas.
바카라Everything comes out of our pockets, except approximately two per cent in the form of donations if we are lucky,바카라 says Pamela. Eco-tourism바카라they have four rooms for guests바카라helps meet expenses. 바카라This is our passion, our life. So we have to keep things going. But there are things we바카라d love to do, like Payment for Ecosystem Services. We'd like to sponsor more organic farming,바카라 says Pamela. 바카라I cannot tell you how frustrating it has been trying to raise money for any of these programmes.바카라
The rain lets up for a bit, but the clouds hang low. Pamela and Anil climb up a wet, metal ladder to the rooftop for a sweeping view of their sanctuary. Pamela recalls a dream she once woke up with, years earlier. 바카라I had seen a house on a small hill, overlooking a pond with the river flowing past in the middle of a wooded valley with white-capped mountains all the way around and a lot of wildlife. This was that view...those mountains are white-capped from the mist.바카라 This was before they bought this place in Coorg. 바카라I thought we'd find that in the Himalayas. But it wasn't in the Himalayas, it was here. So, you never know.바카라
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