Why Bamboo Matters?

The title of this blog Bamboo Matters is a play on words – it is about bamboo matter as in bamboo stuff but it is also about why bamboo matters. In that context, I would like to relate a tale, which was in a way, a major turning point in my life. 10 years ago, I traveled with an official from the UN, Ecuador from New Delhi to Guwahati, Assam. It was a clear and sunny day and we could see miles below us as we flew over the Gangetic Plain. To my real surprise, the visitor had tears in his eyes. He looked down with great sadness at the vast expanse below, dry and dusty except where rivers meandered through, the small plots marked out looking even more miniscule viewed from so many miles up in the air. I asked him what was wrong and why he was crying? He said “ Now I understand why there are hardly any tigers in India. There is hardly any jungle left. In Latin America, if we were to take a flight for two hours across any country, all we can see is a sea of green. Our forests are still living. You have no forests left in India All I can see is dry earth”. I was left speechless, the bare truth of what he was saying lying in front of my eyes in the patchwork of fields below us, the ochre, browns and yellows making for a pretty sight. But it was a deceptive beauty. Man’s need for more land for crops and for habitation had been at a real cost – we truly have destroyed our jungle. I decided then and there that I would do something to save our forests. Bamboo as an easily renewable resource is a good alternative to wood and by promoting the use of bamboo in myriad forms, be it for furniture, construction, home décor and even charcoal, we will be preventing the chopping down of trees. We need more and more people to join the bamboo movement simply because in the last ten years, tigers have well and truly disappeared from India and we need to keep forests alive to save even more species from extinction. Therefore bamboo matters a lot!!