Silent saviours take risks to save animals in zoo

If you are thinking of this job, all you need is sheer dedication, devotion, sincerity, hard work, presence of mind and tons of patience. You got to have skills of an educationist, engineer, architect, professor, accountant, administrator, veterinarian, public relations officer and economist, all plus a little more. 
Yes. It is not any other conventional eight-hour or morning to evening kind of job but the one that requires your attention 24X7. And No. You do not come first when you take up this job and you shall not be offered any perks or five figure salary!

The only thing that will help you keep going is passion for your work and love for the ones who cannot speak their mind out. It can earn you immense satisfaction and impress family members.

A tough one for many of us to accept but there are a few like head zookeeper  Ranjitsinh Jadeja, Zaheer Khan, Dinesh and Ajmal Khan, who have been doing this for three generations.

 They are the “silent saviours” who are working to conserve animals amidst the hustle and bustle of urban jungle – conventionally we know as a zoo or conservation park -- as animal keepers.

“My father was working at Ahmedabad zoo as a watchman and I used to come to deliver him food. Since childhood, I somehow developed affinity towards these huge creatures that are mostly found in jungles and today they are my family,” says Ranjitsinh Jadeja whose love for these creatures is part of folktales among animal conservationists and animal lovers in Gujarat.

“If Ranjitsinh is in the zoo, all of us are relaxed that he would take the best care of our animals, come what may,” says R K Sahu, director, Ahmedabad Zoo that was established in 1951 and spread over 117 acres.

It is not just Ranjitsinh who nurtures and cares for over 2,500 species of Schedule I wild animals and domestic creatures, even his brother works along as a colleague and his son helps as an animal keeper in another part of the city. Add to the list Dinesh, whose grandfather Bhajan, father Sadhra and uncle Geedha have been master reptile rescuers. “Mahut Zaheer used to live amidst elephants since childhood and learnt minutest nuances of elephant life from his father Yasin, who too served at the Zoo,” Sahu says.

All these men have been working silently for years. “It is true blue collared work that requires tremendous amount of your time, energy and involves huge risk too. At times animals behave as per their natural instincts, putting lives of their keepers in danger,” he adds.

There have also been times that these men have had to put their lives at risk just to get food for these animals. “Ahmedabad has had its share of frequent communal trouble in the past. We have to personally go during curfew to request meat or fruit suppliers to help us source food for animals. It was risky to venture out of the zoo when humans lost their rationality and became violent. However, we have been lucky to get support from citizenry and ensure that not one animal has been without food even once in the last over two decades,” Sahu said.

While the affection these silent saviours have for the animals may not have changed over the decades, their way of work has definitely changed. As it was built way back in 1951, the zoo was set up on old pattern with smaller cages and too many animals put in cramped areas. Today, it has several enclosures where tigers, lions and bears move in open enclosures with visitors having direct line of sight.

“The tigers are kept in such a manner that they are visible to even schoolchildren adjoining our facility, even as bears can be seen by those enjoying the cooler climes on the periphery of Kankaria lake nearby,” Sahu says.

The Centre also changed the parameters for these zookeepers on the way they deal with the animals residing within. If earlier it was establishing a personal human bond with the animals, now the emphasis is more on conservation of Indian wildlife, educating the larger populace that walks in daily and finally assisting educational institutions in research field.

“Most of the animals in our facility are Schedule I and the men no longer are allowed to feed the animals directly with their hands as they did earlier. At the most they sneak in and keep the food in the enclosure and move out. This is done to keep the human intervention to the bare minimum so that when they are to be released in natural fauna, the animals can adopt faster,” Sahu adds.

And with more than two million people visiting the facility every year, the onus of inculcating sensitiveness towards these beasts and birds lies on the way these men upkeep animals and educate visitors. They have also helped in scientific research by way of assisting students of botany, wildlife, forensic studies, architecture and even fashion, sharing their experiences about minutest nuances of animal kingdom. Today, they also help men from 22 similar facilities in Western India by training them on finer points of conservation and animal behaviour.

“For us all, these animals are no less than our children and we are their mothers. There is no difference between smile of our child back home and seeing the animal expressing joy in its own way,” adds the man who works to save some of the endangered species, silently.