The Last Stand

February 2011, Dibru-Saikhowa National Park, by the banks of the Brahmaputra

The only accommodation here is a lousy, uncomfortable room on stilts that can be charitably described as dirty and unkempt, run by a sweet-talking guy who is considered to be a local don of sorts. The food is lousy as well and I yearn for a conversation and company, but the other guests – three British guys out here to go birding – are forbidding.  In all, a bad day and an uncomfortable night.  

I too have come here to see the bird life – wintering water fowl like the ruddy shelduck, which is my favourite – and the fabled feral horses on the island in the river, but there is a surprise in store.  The next morning, a small boat takes me out into the river and, after a while, the guide switches off the engine. We wait.

He taps my knee and points ahead.  In the distance, far ahead, I see a ripple.  As I peer through binoculars, there is another ripple.  And another.  A snout projects out of the river for a millisecond.  The essentially-blind Gangetic (and Brahmaputra) dolphin, a riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma, is Indian wildlife’s hidden star, the watery equivalent of the mythical, mystical Yeti, though real. See a photo of this magnificent animal and it seems to be laughing, a joyful, open, full-throated laughter that seems other-worldly. It is both real and surreal.

This riveting photo by Ganesh Chowdhury titled The Last Stand, won the award for the best photograph at Nature In Focus 2020.  

But this group of dolphins does not show itself - over the next few minutes, we watch in awe as the ripples-and-snout show comes closer.  

And then, they slip away quietly.  
They are gone.

Those moments are with me.  Not the discomfort and the food and the absence of friends, just the memory of that river and its king.  

Years later, I read Witness To Extinction, the story of the Yangtze dolphin, now extinct.  It is a sad, poignant story and I console myself by thinking, At least, we – here in India – have not done anything like this.  

A decade after my sojourn in Dibru, in 2020, there is an industrial accident: Oil India’s oilwell at the periphery of this heritage national park catches fire and blows up.  It causes immense destruction, with a film of oil on the Brahmaputra River, while the Maguri-Motapung wetland - a precious paradise - is pretty much wiped out.  And, one dead dolphin washes up ashore.  But how many didn’t? 

I have seen this photo a dozen times and wondered….we did the unthinkable; we set fire to the river.  

That oilwell should never have been there.  Our priorities and our hubris, they are the problem.

Yesterday, July 23rd, was World Cetaceans Day, the family to which the Gangetic dolphin belongs.  It was a day for us to celebrate their existence.  But to listen as well.  For, there is a message from that hidden star, a sonar message from the depth of the Brahmaputra and the Ganges.
It is a call to leave its habitat alone.