I would have been fourteen when I came out to my parents on being afflicted with naturophilia – an obsessive, compulsive order for being in, learning from and working for the conservation of nature. After what must have been an initial shock for a conventional Indian parentage that boasted an engineer and a doctor, my father came around to it by presenting me three books at the breakfast table from his vast library. The first one I saw featured a wise looking chimpanzee, enigmatically called David Greybeard, on the cover and was called “In the Shadow of Man”. I devoured it in just one day and then re-read it three times over, much as I did the other two books. Jane Goodall entered my life and from thence on remained an integral pillar of conscience that buttressed my service to nature, till she passed away in California two days ago, doing what she liked second best – spreading the word about loving animals and conserving nature.

What she liked best, was to observe chimpanzees in her beloved Gombe in Tanzania. It was her groundbreaking studies mentored by Louis Leakey that set the standards for chimpanzee research and understanding. With Dian Fossey who worked on gorillas and Birute Galdikas on orangutans, Jane formed the Trimates – three beautiful, white women who left the comforts of a developed world where they were born to go to and live in, what was then, unfortunately termed ‘dark Africa’ and ‘the Bornean boondocks’. They showed the world the impact of long term field research, of the fact that human beings could embed themselves in animal societies and be a voyeur to their lives, of the ability to name animals and be deeply emotional about them while analysing data in an unbiased and traditionally scientific method and also of the power of communication and action for bettering the fate of the natural world we live in. Of the three, Jane was the one who left her field of study after decades of work to spread the word globally. Through her best selling books, her passionate talks clutching her favourite chimpanzee soft toy and her transcending the human-ape barriers to spread the message of compassion among Us and Them and even Us and Us, she became the messenger of peace in what had become ironically a ‘dark world’.

There were two memories of her that stand out in the several times I have been fortunate to interact with her these past years. One was in 2003, when I jumped at an opportunity to host her in New Delhi during her India visit and arranged a talk for her at the India Habitat Centre. The hall was packed with people standing in the aisles and cramming eagerly forward to catch every word Jane spoke clutching her chimp close to her bosom. I had asked her if she needed a slide projector (pre PowerPoint days in India) for her talk and she was emphatic in refusing any mechanical aid. “ if I use pretty pictures in my talk they will all look at them and not at me!” She said with a twinkle in her eye “and I want them to look at ME and hear ME”. And that is what she did best. Captivate audiences with her stories told in a soft mesmerising voice coming, as it seemed, right from the centre of her soul while looking into the eyes of her audience through her piercing blue-grey eyes and not letting them get away into peripheral imagery or distractions. At the end of her talk I asked her to sign the only book of hers I possessed then. And she wrote “For Vivek- Together we can make this a better world for all Living things” and underlined Can and All! I tried to keep this as a creed that inspired me as I worked in conservation.

Dr. Jane Goodall during an event hosted by Wildlife Trust of India in 2003

The second memory was a decade later when I was fortunate to spend a long weekend with her in the wonderful home of my Italian friend Frederico Spinola when he used to host the leaders of world conservation to talk of animals and man. I remember sitting on the verandah overlooking the famous rose gardens of his father sipping a neat single malt (a habit that Jane and I incidentally shared) talking of the incessant travel that had beset most of us in that gathering given a global remit. She said she travelled 300 days a year. I said was fatigued travelling 200. And she held my hand and whispered softly “for the animals Vivek, for the animals”! How could I refuse? I changed the topic and I nstead made her sign the other book I had by then acquired titled “ Through a Window- My thirty years with the Chimpanzees of Gombe” by then she has known me well through my work at the international Fund for Animal Welfare as an advisor to her friend Azzedine Downes. Now she wrote rather embarrassingly “ for Vivek – with admiration for all you have done for animal beings in India”. Such humility in this great soul. We spent the rest of the evening talking about the impact of great trees on great human beings and I added to her knowledge of the redwoods of California and the oaks of Europe by talking of Buddha and the Ficus.

Fast forward to 2015 and I was fortunate to be included in her 80th birthday fetschrift The Jane Effect edited by Dale Peterson and Marc Bekoff for which I penned a short piece under the title “ A Sage for Animals”. I have borrowed that title to use once again in her obituary ten years later. What other name can I come up with for the one who transcended science, conservation, diplomacy, spirituality, deep ecology and even deeper humanity? A mahatma has passed. Rest in peace, dear friend!

~ Vivek Menon
Founder and Executive Director
Wildlife Trust of India