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The Man who created a forest

Khaleej Times meets Jadav Payeng, who single-handedly turned a barren sandbar into a big thick forest.

His green mission could ultimately save the world’s largest river island

A herd of wild elephants in Payeng's forest

“Why did you call me here?” he asked Tarun Gogoi. It was a straightforward question from a man who can be brutally honest. So it hardly mattered to the man that the question he threw at was the chief minister of his state — a chief minister who makes the most insensitive comment on the gravest of issues with a toothy grin.

It was only fitting then that such a politician was left scratching his head by Jadav Payeng.

So then, why did Tarun Gogoi, the chief minister of the Indian state of Assam, invite Payeng — a school dropout — to his office?

“He wanted to give me a certificate,” Payeng told us.

“I never wanted to meet Gogoi. He invited me to his office and then made me wait outside his room. That’s why I asked him why he called me in the first place.

“I told him that important people from Mumbai, Bangalore, Delhi and even France had invited me and I never had to wait so long to meet those people there. But here in my own state, I needed to take permission to enter his room. I told him I don’t like people like him wasting my time!”

Yes, Payeng’s time is more precious than Gogoi’s. On one hand you have a chief minister who has failed to provide a semblance of stability to his state despite being in power for 14 years and on the other you have Jadav Payeng who has given 36 years of his life doing nothing other than planting trees after trees, single-handedly turning a barren sandbar into a 1,360-acre forest.

Yes, it sounds scarcely believable, but those who know Payeng in his locality have now learned to appreciate what he has done even though wild elephants from Payeng’s forest often make their lives a haunting nightmare.

Payeng has begun planting trees on another sandbar in Majuli which could give birth to a new forest in 10 years.

Payeng planting a tree during the Global Conference on Sustainable Development in France in 2012

The villagers would vouch that Payeng, who belongs to the Mishing tribe, would do anything to protect the love of his life. They know because when they assaulted him and threatened to cut down all the trees in his forest after elephants had destroyed their crops and homes, Payeng just stood like a broad shield and retaliated with sharp words that pierced through their hearts.

“If you want, you can chop me into pieces, but I will never let you cut down the trees. If the elephants are troubling you, go to the forest department. It’s their duty to protect you. And remember it’s not just you but nature has given these animals equal right to live,” Payeng told them.

Smitten by his resolve, the villagers soon named the forest Molai Kathoni (Molai Woods).

Molai is Payeng’s pet name and his forest is situated in Jorhat district.

The elephants are not alone in his forest! This man-made paradise is also home to deer, wild buffaloes, Bengal Tigers, the elusive one-horned rhinos, vultures and white-rumped shama. The mighty Brahmaputra’s close proximity to Molai Forest means the bird lovers can also find grey heron and snakebirds on its water.

Now you know why Payeng could so nonchalantly ridicule a chief minister whose forest department had broken his heart by not doing enough to stop poachers from killing a rhino in his forest in 2012.

Not for nothing has the revered Jawaharlal Nehru University of New Delhi honoured Payeng with ‘The Forest Man of India’ title.

William Douglas McMaster, a Canadian filmmaker, made a moving documentary — Forest Man — on Payeng which has earned a prestigious award at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014.

Now Payeng is also a recipient of Padma Shri, India’s fourth highest civilian award.

But awards don’t really inspire this man. He has even requested prominent organisations not to invite him to felicitation ceremonies in April, May and June.

“I don’t like to go out in those three months as the conditions are ideal for planting trees during that period in Assam. Also I don’t like these ceremonies. I often tell them that if you really want to give me an award, come to my forest and plant a tree. That would be my biggest reward,” the Forest Man says.

Payeng’s mystic connection with nature began when he was only 15. In the summer of 1979, a heat wave had followed massive floods in Assam. It was then that a young Payeng, who had left his parental home, was shattered emotionally when he saw snakes that died looking for tree-cover on a sandbar of the river Brahmaputra.

“I thought even the human beings would die like this if nothing was done to save trees,” 52-year-old Payeng told us after we crossed a body of water on a boat and travelled another seven kilometres on the trailer of a tractor that defied a narrow, uneven road to take us to his forest.

We were soon greeted with refreshing greenery. It was an ugly sight back then when Payeng saw dead reptiles on a barren land. “I was restless. I wanted to do something. I went to the nearby village to talk to the elders and they asked me to plant bamboo saplings.”

So Payeng started planting bamboo saplings. It was an arduous process as he sometimes had to carry the natural fertilisers like reds ants with his own hands. He was often stung by the ants but the end result tasted sweeter than honey as the ants enhanced the soil quality, helping the bamboo saplings to grow.

Buoyed by the unexpected success, Payeng began to plant proper trees. He was watering the plants everyday as though he was showering the lost souls in a desert with unadulterated affection.

Now there are hundreds of thousands of trees in his forest with many of them having medicinal values.

Payeng often sought advice from Jadu Nath Bezbaruah, a retired professor who had quit his job as a state government officer after becoming disillusioned with the corrupt system.

So Bezbaruah began to teach at the Assam Agricultural University and authored books on environmental protection. But his best student turned out to be a school dropout.

“I have known Molai since he was a kid,” Bezbaruah, who lives in a nearby village, tells me.

“He would often come to ask me about tree plantation. I shared all my knowledge and experience. But not even in my wildest dreams did I think of him planting a forest. I don’t think even he knew the magnitude of what he was doing. He was just planting trees because he loved it,” said the 83-year-old Bezbaruah who took great pains to organise our trip to Molai Forest.

Despite everything, the world would have never known Payeng’s unique story if not for the inquisitiveness of Jitu Kalita, a wildlife photographer and freelance journalist from Jorhat district.

Canadian filmmaker William Douglas McMaster (right); Jitu Kalita (third from right), the man who discovered Payeng; with him and his wife Binita (left); in their hut

One day in the autumn of 2007, Kalita hired a boat to take pictures of birds around the Brahmaputra. Everything was normal until he saw vultures and a dense forest around the sandbars.

“I couldn’t believe my eyes,” Kalita tells me. “I asked the boatman who said that was the Molai Forest and warned me about wild animals.

“He also told me that the man who made the forest lived there.”

Kalita found it weird but the journalist in him was unable to resist the temptation. He even asked the forest department about it, but they had no knowledge of it.

So Kalita put his own life at risk by going there many times in the next few months, hoping to the find the man the boatman said was the maker of a forest.

“Then one day I finally saw a man with a big knife in his hand. I wasn’t sure if it was him. But the man was coming towards me. I was scared and tried to hide behind a tree but then I heard something.

“It was the man shouting at me: ‘Can’t you see? There are wild buffaloes behind you. Run, you idiot!’

“I turned around and saw the buffaloes. I ran towards the man as I realised that he was just trying to save my life,” Kalita remembers.

That man was Jadav Payeng. “He told me I should not have come there. But he took me to his hut in the middle of the forest. I met his wife and three children there. I realised that theirs was a secluded life; they were earning their livelihood by selling milk in nearby villages,” Kalita says.

Remarkably, the Payengs still earn their bread by selling milk.

“His wife Binita told me that they had lost several of their cows to the tigers in the forest and that Payeng never got upset with it. Everything I heard from her fascinated me,” Kalita says.

“So I began to visit them often and eventually learned the entire story from Binita and the people from the nearby village. I decided to write a feature for a local Assamese newspaper. But Payeng was reluctant. I didn’t relent though and eventually convinced him that the world needed to know about a man like him.”

So Kalita submitted his story in 2009 only for the newspaper editor to dump it as a work of fiction. Eight months later the newspaper finally took the story. And based on that story, even the Times of India carried a big report, bringing Payeng to the notice of the Jawaharlal Nehru University which invited him and Kalita to attend their seminar on Earth Day (April 22) in 2012.

The scientists at the seminar asked Payeng and Kalita zillion questions on tree plantation before honouring Payeng with ‘The Forest Man of India’ title.

Kalita has since accompanied Payeng on his every trip, including the one to Evian (France) for the Global Conference for a Sustainable Development in 2012.

“When we received the invitation from France, I told the organisers that we were too poor to travel abroad. But they said they were ready to bear the expenses. They even helped us financially to apply for the passport and the visa,” Kalita said.

Now Kalita’s life revolves around Payeng. He also dons the role of an interpreter when Payeng needs to share his ideas on environmental protection with global audiences at prestigious seminars.

When I asked Payeng about his thoughts on protecting the environment, he came up with the simplest of solutions. “It’s not a difficult task. Make environmental science a compulsory subject in primary school and encourage kids to plant trees.

“Today global warming is threatening our very existence because the man has always used nature as his slave. So we need to teach the kids the value of trees. Only then will they love trees,” says Payeng who feels Sanjeev (11), his youngest son, is already in love with nature. And he hopes that the boy will keep his forest alive.

As I was about to say goodbye to this remarkable man, his mobile rang and he was like, ‘Yes, it’s Jadav Payeng here. No, Molai is my pet name. Okay, thank you. Yes, yes I will.’

I thought it was just an ordinary phone conversation until he turned around and his face broke into the most beautiful smile.

“It was the call from Delhi,” he told me.

“They formally offered me the Padma Shri and asked me if I would accept it. I said yes.”

Payeng then said something that was even more beautiful. That he had begun planting trees from 2012 on another sandbar in Majuli which was once the largest river island in the world.

Now Majuli — home to more than 150 thousand people and famous monasteries — is facing a serious threat to its existence. The island goes through a heartbreaking ordeal every monsoon as large-scale erosion has led some scientists to predict that it could completely disappear in the next 20 years.

The Forest Man, unsurprisingly, is desperate to help Majuli.

Payeng believes his efforts there would give birth to a new forest in 10 years’ time.

He knows it may not be enough to save the island from the onslaught of erosion, but he hopes his sweat and love for trees will conjure up some magic.

rituraj@khaleejtimes.com