Catching hold of Tykee isn’t easy. She is a busybee taking care of her own little farmhouse in Kotabagh, just 5 km from Jim Corbett’s village, Chhoti Haldwani, as well as the development activities and welfare measures for the villagers around her place almost round the clock. But once you manage to get hold of her, talking to her is a sheer pleasure. She continues to regale you with stories from her childhood, as well as her own Jungle Lore.
Please watch her interview by clicking on the following link…
One story that will particularly interest the audience is about the absence of fireflies and butterflies around the Kotabagh area, where she has set up a small but beautiful place. As she dug deeper into the issue, she realised it was due to the overuse of chemical pesticides. She tried to persuade the farmers against pesticides, but her pleas went unheard. But, gradually, her efforts bore fruit, and one day, as the power went off, she was the faint glimmer of a firefly.
The time when she came here, the place was in the midst of a dense forest. She lived in a tent, and beasts like elephants, leopards, and tigers were a common sight. But she learned to live peacefully in the wild, and they have brought her no harm to date.
As we are celebrating the 150th birth anniversary of Jim Corbett, the conversation had to veer in that direction only. And lo and behold, she revealed that her father, Mr. Ome P. Anand, a renowned conservationist himself, had published a souvenir to commemorate Corbett’s centenary in 1975.
She also revealed that she set up the Jim Corbett Trust way back in 2006 in collaboration with the British Council to carry forward his forest, environment, and wildlife conservation work and undertake welfare measures for neighbouring villages. She not only trained children from Chhoti Haldwani as forest guides but also took them to Delhi to meet then President APJ Abdul Kalam.
