Burroughs forgot to mention which Baltimore academy he graced). He was absent-minded Professor Archimedes Q. Since "Tarzan of the Apes" was first made into a silent film starring Elmo Lincoln in 1918, more than a dozen other actors have portrayed the tree-swinging ape, including Johnny Weissmuller, perhaps the most popular, whose mate, Jane, was played by Maureen O'Sullivan.Ī 1966 article in The Evening Sun said, "Jane was, moreover (perhaps still is) as contemptuous as a collegiate demonstrator of her dear old dad. She is the guardian of the forest.In the recent animated incarnation of the jungle love tale, the voice of Jane is that of actress Minnie Driver, who sounds veddy English with nary a trace of a Bawlmer accent. Tuddu contested the panchayat polls last year for the mukhiya’s post but lost by just 18 votes.īut Tuddu has a bigger job. The state government has recognised the committee’s achievements led by Tuddu with cash awards. Women who earlier had no mode of earning now make plates from sal leaves with hand-operated compressors and earn up to Rs 12,000-15,000 a year selling them in nearby marketplaces. We have shade,” says local youth Kanu Ram Hansda, 28. “Now the summers are no longer unbearable. Her team has so far nabbed over a dozen illegal woodcutters. Last November, Sister Valsa John, a 52-year-old nun from Kerala, was hacked to death with spears, clubs and axes in Pakur district for protecting tribal rights and forests. The forest department has adopted Muturkham as a model village. The village head, Charu Charan Tuddu, says the entire village is in their debt. Tuddu’s women say their forest duties do not affect their household and farming responsibilities. At night, some men accompany the patrol team. The older women guard the foothills with village dogs to prevent illegal lumberjacks from escaping. The youngest is Bahamayee Tuddu, 13, and the oldest is Malati Tuddu, 70.
The Samity membership has now grown to 70 women. Tuddu leads them to the Muturkham forests. A group of around 12 women, some with children in their arms, quietly assembles outside, each carrying traditional weapons and lathis for the daily patrol. It is 6 am and ‘Lady Tarzan’, as she is locally known, is tightening the strings of her bow in her house. Tuddu, however, does not rest on her laurels. Most of these were delivered by the forest department as a gesture of thanks for the Samity’s achievements under the World Food Program and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme.
#Lady tarzan generator#
There is a school building, a generator set and machines to make leaf plates. There is a well and a check dam on a hill stream. A smooth road connects it with the Chakulia-Tata Main Road and an overhead water tank ensures 24-hour supply to every household. Muturkham has been rewarded for its brave enterprise. “Today, anyone caught felling trees is fined R501 and handed over to the forest department.” The amount is deposited in the Samity’s fund, utilised for community welfare work and to purchasing cell phones for better networking during patrols. We had no firewood, no fodder for our cattle and water levels were dipping across a 15-km area,” she says. Her reasons for forming this committee were prompted by basic economics: there was no firewood in her kitchen. Tuddu has worked as a mason as well as a beautician to supplement the family income. Several species of reptiles and avians, wild boars, hares and the elephant have made this forest their home.The local initiative could well be the model for protecting the 23,60,500 hectares of Jharkhand’s rich jungle cover - the size of about 16 Delhis - from timber cartels.
There is a kendu, eucalyptus or acacia tree every six feet the gap between two trees 10 years ago used to be more than 24 feet. The 50-hectare forest in East Singhbhum district which had turned barren (the mafia had chopped down every tree over three metres tall) now has one lakh trees. Word spread that the trees in Muturkham were not to be touched.
The women patrolled the forests in three groups, collared illegal loggers - usually hired hands from nearby villages - and handed them over to the forest department. Jamuna Tuddu, 32, a short and stout woman belonging to the Santahl tribe who had studied till Class X, led a band of 25 tribal housewives to form the Van Suraksha Samity (Forest Protection Committee) and registered it with the state forest department. Until 1999, when Muturkham’s jungle mafia met ‘Lady Tarzan’. No different from the rest of the state, which has lost 50% of forest cover to illegal logging in the last 10 years. Eleven years ago, Muturkham forests, lying southeast of capital Ranchi, used to be the timber mafia’s busy workplace.
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