random samplings of a restless mind scanning life's canopy
For a refreshing change from all the bad news and dark humor I've been sharing here lately, here's a positive story of grassroots community action in one Indian village to save their daughters in a nation still deeply mired in female foeticide, dowry deaths, and myriad daily insults inflicted on women:
The tree-planting has been going on in the village for generations now.
"We heard about it from our fathers and they from their fathers. It has been in the family and the village from ages," says Subhendu Kumar Singh, a school teacher.
"This is our way of meeting the challenges of dowry, global warming and female foeticide. There has not been a single incident yet of female foeticide or dowry death in our village," he says.
His cousin, Shankar Singh, planted 30 trees at the time of his daughter Sneha Surabhi's birth.
Sneha, four, is aware that her father has planted trees in her name; the child says she regularly waters the saplings.
As yet she doesn't know what dowry is, and says the trees will bear fruits for her "to eat".
The village's oldest resident, Shatrughan Prasad Singh, 86, has planted around 500 mango and lychee trees in his 25 acres of land.
His grand-daughters, Nishi and Ruchi, are confident the trees mean their family will have no problem paying for their weddings.
"The whole world should emulate us and plant more trees," says their father Prabhu Dayal Singh.
I'm a reconciliation ecologist studying the responses of wildlife to human influences through an evolutionary lens. I seek ways to apply evolutionary ecology towards reconciling biodiversity conservation with human development. Also a father of two girls; photographer; birdwatcher; bookworm; cinephile; and explorer of the internets.
I'm a reconciliation ecologist studying the responses of wildlife to human influences through an evolutionary lens. I seek ways to apply evolutionary ecology towards reconciling biodiversity conservation with human development. Also a father of two girls; photographer; birdwatcher; bookworm; cinephile; and explorer of the internets.
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