From the Dead to the Living

By Aniruddha Mookerjee

Lhasa-Ranthambore:
It was a long and winding road from dead to living tigers - littered with scissors and sewing machines, some honest non-violent Buddhism, and, of course, lots of Remimbi.

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In early October, I received an urgent phone call from friends wondering if I would have the time to accompany a sixty plus, but very adventurous, couple from the US, keen to drive from Lhasa to Kathmandu, on to Bhutan and eventually ending the journey in India visiting Ranthambore.

There wasn't too much time to prepare and while I ran around trying to organise warm clothing and oxygen, Ashok Kumar of the Wildlife Trust of India thrust on me an article on a recent investigation on the trade in tiger parts in Tibet and asked me to assess if it had had a positive impact. "See if the Chinese authorities have done something about it," he declared.

Frankly, I have always found the Chinese to be methodically single-minded in doing whatever they set their minds to do. I told Ashok I would be surprised if they had not cleaned up every shop in Lhasa by now, buried a few shopkeepers alive or fed them to lammergeyers. A few years ago when we were in Tibet trying to trace the routes by which Shahtoosh came into India, I was told that there had been a crackdown, and poachers who were caught, were made a public example and executed. It scared me a bit, but needless to say these methods did have an impact and according to recent reports Tibetan antelope populations are indeed rising in two valleys where they were sampled!

We landed at the Gongkar airport, 55 km from Lhasa on October 27 around noon, and went through a spanking new tunnel, which led to a bridge across River Lhasa, cutting the distance down to the city by at least 45 km. Lhasa is no longer that mysterious Shangrila of the great game. It is a bustling city with high-rise buildings, broad roads, mini-skirts and sickeningly sweet Lhasa beer. Four wheel drives, taxis and Dong Feng trucks prowl the streets in that distinct divide between the old and the new quarter. The native Tibetan population stays largely in the old, while the migrant Chinese people coming from the mainland live in new Lhasa that is slowly taking over the city. On the outskirts there is a lot of construction too: Tibetan style concrete housing, pleasing to the eye and Gurgaon style malls and resorts, which are not. Picnic spots with fish ponds are mushrooming on the edges of the city for the migrant population. People spend weekends fishing and drinking beer in these parks for a small fee.

We went through the usual tourist sights. The Potala Palace and Sera and Ganden monastries, walked through bits of the old town and then hit the Barkhor circuit in the heart of Lhasa around the Jokhang monastry on the third day. The sun was bright and the winds weren't too cold. Thick crowds with prayer wheels or beads were doing the parikrama. Both sides of the parikrama were lined with Delhi haat style shops and temporary street stalls selling souvenirs, fake coral jewellery, hats, jackets and sweaters, t-shirts, thankha paintings, food, utensils and a hundred other things. The buzz of Om mane padme hum mixed seamlessly with the bargaining and shouting and reminded me of a Dharamsala street on a much larger scale.

It was in a shop well into the parikrama that I caught sight of something familiar - yellow with black spots. As we moved closer it turned out to be a shop selling Tibetan gowns or chubas as they call them, all either lined with leopard skin on the edges and the collar or with the back and lower gown made fully of leopard skin. The larger chubas would have used two skins. This shop had eight such gowns with many otter and fox caps. The shop owner told me he had more stocks, if I wanted. We tried the gowns feeling strange and ridiculous. I looked very good in it, he said.

"It is perfect, you look beautiful…like high official."

"What is the price ?"

"Very cheap, cheap….you take it, I pack ?"

"What is the price ?"

"I tell you very very cheap, cheap……you buy….only 35,000 yuan." He whipped out the ubiquitous small grey calculator with red buttons that every shop has and punched in the numbers. The buttons were fading and the machine actually emitted an incongruous cheep cheep sound each time a number was punched.

At five rupees to a yuan, this was Rs 1,75,000 for a chuba as a starting price. It's an affront to Tibetan sensibilities if you don't bargain and it is a good natured game where you test each other's limits before you settle on a price. I started at 5000 yuan. The man looked grim, but his eyes were smiling. He shook his head and said something in rapid Tibetan to my interpreter.

"He says if you serious buying, he will give good offer, otherwise waste of time."

"So, what's his good price….."

After some more parleys and cheep cheeps on the calculator he said 33,500 yuans.

"Not good, let's go check another shop," and I said and walked out.

"But this is best price. Lookee, lookee, no other shop better this. Ok, ok I give you last price, 28,500………ok…. 28,000 last last price….." We promised to come back later.

There were six shops in Barkhor market on that day, which were openly selling genuine well-cured leopard skin chubas at almost the same prices as the first shop. These were on display outside the shops as well as inside. Three shops among these had tiger skin chubas at the back, and more in the store if you wanted to see them. These were more expensive, the "last last price" being 50,000 yuan, about 2,50,000 rupees. Additionally there were four others who had fake tiger skins with crude hand drawn stripes, which they were aggressively promoting as the real stuff. I counted a total of 26 leopard skin chubas, seven with tiger skin and two with tiger skin on the collar and leopard on the back and sides. These were on display and there were many more inside.

By this time our guide and interpreter was getting a bit worried. What he thought was a good-natured joke on my part was turning out to be a little more involved than he thought it should be. He took me aside from the guests: "Why you need to buy these skins here, don't you get them in your country?"

"I don't get chubas in India," I said.

"True," he seemed to understand, "but this is illegal here. If police catch you they give you bad time."

"So why are they selling it so openly?"

"Sometime back, I think in September, police catch some people, but they are back again……must be some arrangement….much less now…."

"So if I can't buy and take it out, who buys them ?"

"Oh, its people from the north, especially the rich, who like wearing such things. It is a part of our tradition…"

But strangely enough on an earlier trip to northern Tibet, five years ago, when we visited Taklakot ( also known as Burang or Khasa), Darchen (where the Kailash parikrama begins), Ali (or Singikabah) and Gertse, we had seen lots of Shahtoosh, snow leopard, lynx, otter and fox skins for sale. The otter skins even had signatures on the back. However, there was no tiger or leopard. There were indeed a lot of artificial tiger and leopard prints in silk and velvet being sold in the market. So were the tiger and leopard skins a recent phenomenon. Could it be that the market for skins and chubas was an extension of traditional medicine market ?

In May-June 2004, Debbie Banks, an investigator from Environment Investigation Agency, UK reported 10 shops in Barkhor market selling leopard and otter skins, but no tiger. When she returned in August 2005 with Belinda Wright of Wildlife Protection Society of India, she reported: "…we found there were many more shops in the main Barkhor circuit with skin covered chubas and we saw tiger skin chubas openly on display. During this trip we found 24 tiger chubas and 54 leopard chubas openly on display in 38 shops."

In fact a WWF September press release from Beijing expressed serious concern about China considering the re-opening of the domestic trade in tigers and tiger parts, banned since 1993. "China's plans appear to be limited to the trade of captive-bred tigers for traditional medicine (TCM) from so-called 'tiger farms.' But any legal trade would also threaten the world's remaining wild tiger populations by making it easier to 'launder' black market tiger parts. Tiger bone has been used as a treatment for rheumatism and related ailments for thousands of years in traditional Asian medicine" with absolutely no scientific basis.

I could not go back to the market with our guide. Fortunately, some Tibetan speaking friends were in Lhasa and willing to help. Late evening we went to a house where I watched horrified as a sharp tailor's scissor sliced through three well-cured leopard skins putting them into the right shape and size for stitching. And a large sewing machine clattered in the next room like a super predator from another world chomping through black rosettes. The person manning it was mainland Chinese. I wish I was carrying the right equipment for this happy sightseeing trip.

The owner of the workshop was Buddhist. He went to the monastery at least once a week and donated a lot of money once a year. Was there a mismatch between what he believed in and what he did? He was genuinely surprised: "Why, I didn't kill them? None of those working here killed them. We may eat a lot of meat, but we don't kill the animals."

It was another ten days, before we entered Ranthambore. We crossed high passes, wound through loops and roads that only the toughest vehicles can do and flew, a little over 4,000 km as the crow flies. As we crossed the second gate from the fort side a tigress jumped down from the wall and stopped a few feet from our vehicle as my guests watched her mesmerised. She gave them a brief, but curious look, before walking out of the gate. That evening she came out with her two, year-old cubs as if to show them too. There were a number of vehicles around. The son confidently walked with the mother beside the lake, but the daughter was scared of the vehicles and the crowds, and the popping flashbulbs. The mother walked away into the scrub as cheetal and sambhar kept calling. The brother plonked down next to the lake waiting for the sister. But the sister wanted him to get her. She stood rooted some distance away and meowed for help. This went on for a while, when in utter disgust, he walked over and got her out.

As we watched this drama unfold I couldn't help wondering how long before this happy family, worried only about its next meal, will turn into chubas. It made me angry thinking for just how long will we continue to be apologetic about our criminals and blame it on poverty and the exponentially rising human and cattle populations? It is a sad irony that Remimbi, or Yuan, as it is more popularly known, actually means people's money !!

For me the road from the living to dead tigers was not all that long.

The writer is a director of the Wildlife Trust of India. The views expressed are his own.