OF CABBAGES AND KINGS | Amid Rising Heat, How ‘Rewilding’ Drive Divides UK; As Species Die Out | Farrukh Dhondy

“Love is not a gift, it’s the illusion

That two humans, perhaps alone, adrift,

Find fulfilment in fusion…

Of course it heals, and offers us a reason

To make two one and live an anchored state

From spring to winter, passing very season

Postponing thoughts of our ultimate fate…”

From The Butterfly Flutters, by Bachchoo

In Britain today, apart from debates about whom to support politically or what to do about asylum seekers, there’s the argument about “rewilding”.

It’s the movement to allow the growths of nature to take their course -- like not condemning any form of flora as an unwelcome “weed”. The “rewilders” say that it will stop threated species from getting extinct and disappearing from the planet.

The farming lobby is seriously opposed, arguing that “rewilding” wastes land that could be used to cultivate crops or house and nurture cows, poultry, sheep, etc.

And now that Britain is gripped by the hottest summer on record, the debate about global warming and consequently “rewilding” makes the headlines.

It’s the right-wing that seems to oppose it. The Conservative and extreme-right lobbies are, for instance, advocates of fox-hunting, on the grounds that foxes are vermin. Though the sport of chasing foxes with hounds has been banned by law, they still ride out behind dogs who follow a false trail of fox-scented decoy bundles.

Tally Ho!

(The cry reminds me of a very strange Bollywood song with the usual soupy lyrics, but with a chorus which went “Tally ho, tally ho…” I’m sure it didn’t mean “hunt your lover”, but was perhaps a perverted pronunciation of “Thaaly Ho Jai” -- let clapping prevail?)

In contrast, the “rewilders” want badgers, foxes and the like to breed and flourish, rather than be eliminated or fade away.

Established in 1964, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) estimates that 49,500 species of the flora and fauna of our evolving earth are today classified as threatened with extinction. These include mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles, crustaceans and even conifers and corals.

The IUCN details the human activities that cause or contribute to these threats.

One which caught my attention was the threat to flying foxes -- the brown, furry bat-like creatures -- not directly through human activity, but through rising temperatures. Thousands of these creatures are dropping dead as a consequence of hot weather, which can undoubtedly be attributed to global warming and human activity.

Why did it catch my attention? Quirky reason. In my childhood the family of a friend of mine called Rashid. Rashid lived in a large house with acres of enclosed forest behind it. Rashid’s father employed a “carer” for this forest called Khadeyvak, who proudly asserted that he was an Adivasi. He had built himself a hut in the forest and used catapults and a bow and arrow he had constructed to kill birds and flying foxes which he’d skin, roast on twig fires and eat.

As a gang of young boys, we traipsed through the undergrowth of this “jungle” and of course sat around Khadevak’s campfires as he cooked the flying foxes and, uninhibitedly, shared the meal. I now suppose we contributed to the thinning out of the flying fox species?

We’ve all heard of dinosaurs, unicorns and dodos and are expected to regret the loss of the latter two, but I for one had never heard of numbats or Black Cockatoos. These are among the estimated hundred species threatened with extinction in Australia, now labelled the extinction capital of the world.

More alarming is the estimate that more than a billion animals have perished this year in the raging forest fires.

Throughout history there must have been human tribes that became extinct through wars or slaughter. The religions of some nations disappeared through conversion, even though the populations that held those beliefs multiplied and thrived -- the polytheistic Greeks and Romans converted to Christianity, but didn’t die out.

The Zoroastrian religion of Iran was partially wiped out when in 641 AD the Arabs invaded and converted most of the population to Islam. Those who remained Zoroastrian made their way as refugees to India and settled there as the Zoroastrian Parsis -- my family, me!

And now, because the Parsis refuse to include in the religious community anyone who wants to adopt the Zoroastrian religion and “convert”, and because we only recognise the children of male Parsis as belonging to the religion and reject the children of female Parsis who marry non-Parsis, our numbers are dwindling.

We are indeed an endangered species -- as King Charles III, when he was the Prince of Wales, remarked to me. I’ll tell you: He was on a visit to India and the British high commission asked if he could participate, in some way, in the film I’d written about the 1857 Indian Mutiny called The Rising, which was in pre-production.

Charles came with two equerries and after a mock clapper-board scene, was presented by the producer to the lined-up cast and crew.

When he came to me and heard my name, he said: “Farrukh? So, you must be Muslim!”

“No”, I replied, “I am a Parsi”.

“Ah, a Zoroastrian”, Charles said. “Tell me, why are there so few of you?”

“Something to do with our sexual habits”, I said, whereupon both equerries grabbed the prince’s shoulder and frantically moved him on to the next person in the queue.