Sanctuary | Commentary
IN OUR HANDS
The fi ngers clutching this tree branch in Valparai look
startlingly familiar. Hold your own hand out. Now
compare the shape, the nails, the joints... all fashioned
by the same designer that gifted us our own grasping
tools – nails and all.
The hand on this page belongs to a lion-tailed
macaque Macaca silenus, found nowhere else but
India’s Western Ghats. Handsome beyond description,
this monkey from Valparai has much more going for it
than mere good looks.
Way back in the 1970s, before ordinary people
were even aware of the looming threat of climate
change, all-time greats such as Sathish Chandran Nair,
Dr. Sálim Ali, M. K. Prasad, Romulus Whitaker,
M. Krishnan, Sugatha Kumari and a host of others
were (unwittingly) working to solve today’s climate
crisis. Their partner-in-arms was this Old World
primate that became the symbol of a powerful
national resistance movement against destructive large
dams. In the process, Silent Valley, one of the world’s
most precious moist evergreen forests was saved from
death by drowning.
Then, as now, the primate on this page obeys an
instruction that clever human primates still cannot
wrap their heads around... that it’s far more sensible
to adapt to nature than try and coerce it to obey
human diktats.
So there we have it. An uncomplicated lesson from
a less clever, but better-adapted primate who actually
accepts without debate the wisdom Shakespeare
delivered through Julius Ceasar: “The fault, dear
Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves.”Photographer: K. Hari Prasad/Entry-Sanctuary Wildlife Photography Awards 2017
Details: Camera: Nikon D500, Nikon 300 mm. f/4.0,
Shutter speed: 1/125 sec., Aperture: f/4, ISO: 640, Focal length: 300 mm.
Date: August 17, 2017, 3:57 p.m.