GRANT’S DESI ACHIEVER
A MAMMOTH COMMITMENT
Sangita Iyer wears many hats as a speaker, author, National Geographic Explorer, nature and wildlife filmmaker, biologist, broadcast journalist and ecocentric mindfulness teacher. Image credit: KORBY BANNER.
By SHAGORIKA EASWAR
Sangita Iyer’s emails carry a quote from Mahatma Gandhi: “The greatness of a nation and its moral progress can be judged by the way its animals are treated.”
Her latest docu series, Asian Elephants 101, is being aired on National Geographic India TV Channel, Nat Geo Wild YouTube, Nat Geo Facebook, and across social media.
The 26 segments are short, around seven-minutes each, and funded by the Storytelling Award she received from National Geographic.
“The bite-sized features highlight the fact that elephants are of vital ecological importance,” says the award-winning documentary filmmaker.
Her feature-length documentary on the plight of elephants, Gods in Shackles, is a powerful and moving film that has won international accolades and awards. It was nominated at the UN, and screened at the Kerala State legislative assembly in India and at prestigious film festivals. The film is currently available on Amazon Prime, and is airing in over 30 countries through Waterbear Network.
Iyer is the recipient of the Nari Shakti Puraskaar and received this highest award for women making a difference in India from Pranab Mukherjee, the then-President of India, for the courage displayed in the production of the controversial documentary that challenges cultural myths.
She was also one of the first 200 Canadians to be accepted in Al Gore’s Climate Reality Project. World-renowned primatologist Dr. Jane Good-all has endorsed her documentary and written the foreword for her book.
As a speaker, author, National Geographic Explorer, nature and wildlife filmmaker, biologist, broadcast journalist and ecocentric mindfulness teacher, Iyer wears many hats.
As a Nat Geo explorer, she is able to harness her storytelling skills; as a biologist, she understands the science; as a journalist and environmental educator, she is able to break down dense scientific language into something lay people would understand and relate to.
There are approximately 40,000 elephants on the planet, with over 60 per cent of them in India, says Iyer. But despite being an iconic symbol of the country where Ganesha the elephant-headed god is worshipped, they are an endangered species.
“Mental shackles created by cultural conditioning blind people to superstitious myths. In my documentary, a priest says being spiritual, and prayer rituals don’t involve animal suffering. Tourists are awed by the spectacle of the mammoth creatures decked out in ritual finery but don’t see how the animals suffer. Even the locals, who love the elephants, hate what they can do to crops. India is the second-most populous country in the world – poised to become number one in a few years – and there’s intense competition for space.”
In Gods in Shackles, she shares the stories of temple elephants she knows by name. Her personal connection to them is very evident as she hugs and strokes them, specially the gentle Lakshmi.
Viewers learn that she first met Lakshmi in 2013. When she returns in 2015, Lakshmi stretches out her trunk to sniff her.
Iyer confirms the commonly held belief that elephants never forget.
“That is 100 per cent true! She sensed me. Scientifically, they have poor vision, but their olfactory sense is very strong. She sniffed, she nuzzled, she drew me close.”
Iyer fights for composure as she recalls that reunion.
Beaten by her mahout and injured in one eye, Lakshmi’s condition was shocking. Iyer was angry and upset. How could her mahout not see that Lakshmi ate his food only because she was hungry?
“I believe that humans are intrinsically kind, but our responses are based on impulses in the moment. The mahouts are not that well-paid and he was hungry, too. Lakshmi pushed me to delve deeper. I saw that she let him approach her as before and I thought, if she can forgive him, who am I not to?”
Iyer recalls accompanying her grandmother to a temple in Palakkad in Kerala as a toddler. While her grandmother prayed, she played with the bull elephant, watched over by the mahout. When she was a teenager, her grandmother told Iyer of the time she had asked why the elephants was shackled while she was not. Most other little girls would have been very pleased with the silver anklets her grandmother purchased for her, but not Iyer. She questioned why the elephant’s legs were tied together while she was free to run and play.
She was barely three at the time.
“The universe had carved out my destiny long ago, it just took me decades to realize it,” says Iyer.
However, once she decided she was going to tell the elephants’ story, she didn’t really have an idea about how she was going to get the funds to do so.
“The universe again opened up its doors and placed people and resources in my path,” she says. “CTV producer and Night News anchor Bill Hutchison guided me – I used to intern at CTV and knew him. Other opportunities opened up.”
Iyer founded the Voice for Asian Elephants Society because she knew she needed to do more while she was working on the documentary. She needed to be sure she was creating changes on the ground.
The tangible results of her work are many.
There are approximately 40,000 elephants on the planet, with over 60 per cent of them in India, says Iyer. But despite being an iconic symbol of the country where Ganesha the elephant-headed god is worshipped, they are an endangered species. Image: A screenshot from Gods in Shackles.
The Wildlife Resource and Rehabilitation Centre used her film for evidence in India’s Supreme Court. Some temples have banned live elephants and use papier mâché ones for ceremonies. Training camps for elephants are now closely monitored and stringent guidelines have been imposed. The former chief wildlife warden in Kerala is in regular contact because he knows her commitment is genuine and deep.
She wrote a book, Unshackled – How Elephants Guided My Life-Changing Odyssey, set to be published by Hay House in October.
“It’s about how I freed myself from my own cultural demons,” she says. “Each of the elephants revealed how I was shackled, paralysed, and handicapped by fears arising from misconceptions. The parallel realities were too strong to ignore. The natural world taught me that we all have a primordial bond . I now allow that connection to overcome my fears.”
She was born in a family steeped in patriarchy, says Iyer, and her parents charted out her course for her. She wanted to be a broadcast journalist, but she would be a doctor, it was decided. But when a frog came alive while she was trying to dissect it, she switched to botany and ecological science. After completing her BSc, she taught the subject at a school in India and then moved to Kenya in 1983 to teach high school students. A deteriorating political situation and a coup led her to flee to Canada in 1989.
“I came to Canada to be free!” she declares passionately. “I love the beautiful freedom I have here.”
Not pleased with her life and career choices, her family disowned her. She was an embarrassment to them, they said, and for years, there was no contact. It was sad, she says, but nature gave her strength.
“The world comes to India to find Nirvana. I came the other way. I found my spiritual connection in Canada. I was able to explore my innate potential.”
Happily though, the fences are mending. The recognition her work received was a validation, it helped in the healing process.
Iyer is set to launch a program to help women realize their potential. We’re all branches of a tree, she says, we are all connected. We can help and sustain each other.
“Be yourself, don’t try to be someone else. You don’t need to become or act like a man to survive in a man’s world,” she tells women. “We can be elegant and feminine and still get ahead. Look at what I overcame.”
She’d assumed she’d find a job as a teacher in Canada with her experience in the field, but it didn’t turn out to be so. She worked three survival jobs – simultaneously – to pay the bills. She did telemarketing, worked as a door-to-door salesperson for an alarm systems company and at an entry-level position at a records management company, doing clerical work. She worked hard and saved hard for ten years to realize her dream of going back to university to become a broadcast journalist.
Challenges she faced included what she describes as her “thick British-Indian English accent”.
Things are different now, she acknowledges, but back then, a different accent was a bigger handicap. She took speech therapy to learn to speak slowly and enunciate clearly.
She was soon living her dream as an anchor woman at the ABC/CBS affiliate in Bermuda. But still, she felt a lingering sense of emptiness, as she wasn’t really reporting on nature and wildlife, which is the main reason she entered the industry. So, she returned to school to pursue her Master’s in Environmental Education and Communication, and became a nature and wildlife documentary filmmaker.
Working in a male-dominated industry had its own set of issues. It comes with the territory, she says, of being a woman, a person of colour, of being seen as dependent. A video editor was abusive and undermined her abilities, making her feel worthless – despite the fact that she was paying him.
“I was so focused on exposing the elephants’ suffering that I suppressed my own. Paul Lewis, my mentor, knocked some sense into my head. He said, ‘Sangita, you need to get out of this’. But I also came across lovely men. One is faced with the good, the bad and the ugly all the time. You choose who you want to associate with.”
She tells newcomers and women that she took advantage of the opportunities that came her way.
Develop openness, avoid preconceived notions.
Make a few strategic compromises in the initial stages, if need be, but hold fast to your values.
Evolve, but don’t fake. Be humble, ask questions, ask for guidance.
Be persistent, find a way to deal with obstacles.
Don’t get defensive if someone points out an area in which you need to improve, see it as a challenge to overcome to reach the next stage.
Make time for yourself, commune with nature.
Tap into your emotions.
Have a support network.
“These are just basic tenets that allow me to live a fulfilling and purposeful life, but when we develop these, career success follows,” asserts Iyer.
What’s next on the agenda?
“I’m drawn to new challenges, I’m a work in progress. I still don’t know what the whole picture is! But I know the next piece in the puzzle, a big piece, is women empowerment. I want to share my story, by being transparent and vulnerable. Not just telling women what I did, but showing them how I did it. By substantiating my experiences with neuroscience and daily practices. I want to organize nature retreats. I feel I have an obligation to give back, to share what has been given to me. I was molested as an 11-year-old. I have suffered sexual, physical and verbal abuse. But I have been able to work through the trauma, to let go. I have put that burden down because I realized they didn’t hurt me because they wanted to, but because those were the tools they had. That holding grudges doesn’t hurt them as much as it hurts me. It takes years, but if you are disciplined about taking care of yourself, if you detox your mind as well as your body, your mind can be like an open forest.
• Grant’s is proud to present this series about people who are making a difference in the community. Represented by PMA Canada (www.pmacanada.com).