Bittu Sahgal on purpose, planet, and persistence
In this episode of Be All You Can, we speak with Bittu Sahgal, one of India’s foremost environmentalists and the founder of Sanctuary Nature Foundation.
From starting a movement to protect India’s wildlife to inspiring generations to take responsibility for the planet, Bittu shares powerful insights on purpose, leadership, and perseverance. He reflects on the defining moments that shaped his journey, the challenges of advocating for nature, and why individual action matters more than ever today.
This conversation is a reminder that real impact begins with conviction—and that each of us has a role to play in building a better future.
Listen and discover what it truly means to live with purpose.
- Other episodes
- Transcript
Off the grid: Travel, terrain and truths ft. Zurvan Marolia
Mar 31, 2026 Aishwarya Sridhar on Wildlife Conservation and Personal Growth
Mar 26, 2026 Medha Sahi on the Power of Singing Together
Mar 14, 2026 Arthur Mamou-Mani on Sustainable Architecture and Innovation
Mar 11, 2026 Liza Goldberg on climate purpose, NASA innovation, and leadership for business growth
Feb 9, 2026(0:02) There are so many useless magazines around, you know, political magazines, film magazines,
(0:08) sports magazines. Where's the wildlife magazine?
(0:10) I had a big problem at that point, uttering this, but I did promise him I will never come
(0:15) back until I give you a magazine.
(0:19) And I had no experience.
(0:20) I had no business plan.
(0:21) I had nothing other than that promise.
(0:24) Hello, listeners, and welcome to Godrej & Boyce’s podcast, Be All You Can.
(0:30) I'm Nyrika Holkar and I'm very glad to host this episode today.
(0:36) We have with us someone whose passion has driven him towards really creating exemplary
(0:44) work in terms of his environmental policy, his advocacy, his science and habitat management,
(0:54) and very importantly, all his work on Project Tiger and really bringing that agenda to the
(1:02) fore.
(1:03) He is the founder of Sanctuary Nature Foundation, he's the editor of Sanctuary Asia, and he's
(1:09) also the founder editor of Sanctuary Club.
(1:12) He has produced 30 wildlife documentaries, led national and international environmental
(1:19) campaigns across media platforms, including social media.
(1:24) So thank you so much for joining us today, Bittu uncle.
(1:28) The idea of this podcast is really to look at purpose and how it drives people's behavior.
(1:35) And you know, just to celebrate examples of leadership with purpose.
(1:40) And we thought it was very apt for you to join us on the podcast today.
(1:46) And just wanted to ask you a few questions about your journey, and also your thoughts
(1:52) on the work that you've done, and how we can get the younger folks more interested, engaged
(1:59) in this agenda.
(2:00) Happily, happily, happily.
(2:02) And when you say young people, include yourself in that, okay?
(2:05) No, I'm not young anymore.
(2:08) We were interested, as G&B, to understand a little bit more about your journey.
(2:15) And you know, what were really your initial motivations that led you in the direction
(2:21) that you've come?
(2:23) Basically, I was always fascinated by things wild, you know, be they trees or a fallen
(2:28) leaf or a grasshopper or a gecko or an ant or a tiger.
(2:31) It was just one of those things, I don't know, it was a gift, you know, I mean, yes, I was
(2:35) born in Shimla, and I studied in Shimla, where there were forests, and there was all kinds
(2:40) of things.
(2:41) But somehow or the other, bless my parents, I don't know, I just never got distracted
(2:48) with too many things.
(2:49) And I just fell in love with things wild, and I needed no other motivation.
(2:54) Lovely.
(2:55) And if you were, if you're thinking of your journey from chartered accountant to advertising
(3:00) to conservation, how would you describe the different facets of your life and how it added
(3:06) to, you know, your mission of conservation?
(3:10) You know, even before my chartered accountancy, I was picked up by the Government College
(3:14) of Sports at the age of 15 to be a wicketkeeper and an opening bat for India.
(3:19) That's what they said.
(3:20) They gave me a scholarship for three years.
(3:22) And then my father said, are you going to play games all your life?
(3:25) So he plunked me into a chartered accountant's office.
(3:28) And it's John Lennon's fault.
(3:30) He said that life is what happens to you while you make other plans.
(3:36) And well, one thing went to the other.
(3:39) I fell in love with my dear wife then, who was just 17 years old.
(3:43) But her father said, I'm not getting her married to somebody without a profession.
(3:49) So I wasn't going to do chartered accountancy.
(3:52) The next best profession, I thought, would be to get into advertising and communication.
(3:58) And I jumped into that and I became a communicator.
(4:02) And because I loved nature and fell in love with it, I'm still a communicator,
(4:06) except my subject is communicating nature and not toothpaste.
(4:11) You know, so that's how it was.
(4:14) Yeah, I think communication is such an important element
(4:18) of both awareness as well as inspiration.
(4:22) And I think definitely your work is very inspirational.
(4:25) And maybe if we just change focus a little bit to sanctuary
(4:30) and its evolution, how did you think about the foundation?
(4:37) And was it organic?
(4:39) Was there some external factors which influenced you?
(4:43) It's actually, again, John Lennon's fault.
(4:46) I mean, what happened was I loved wildlife, you know,
(4:49) and I would keep going back to Ranthambore Tiger Reserve.
(4:52) And there was this man called Fateh Singh Rathod, who was the first field director.
(4:58) And years and years of just living in no electricity,
(5:02) no running water, living there with my wife, two daughters.
(5:07) And after this, the mid 70s and 80s,
(5:11) around the campfire, I asked him that, look,
(5:13) I don't want to just come as a tourist.
(5:16) I want to help.
(5:18) So he was very, very cynical.
(5:20) He said, you Bombay guys are no good.
(5:22) You'll keep doing that.
(5:23) Have many parties.
(5:24) You'll come back next year.
(5:25) And you'll ask me, Fateh, what can I do to save the tiger?
(5:29) So admittedly, we had had a couple of drinks,
(5:31) and I said, I'm never coming back until you tell me.
(5:34) So he fell silent.
(5:36) And he said that, look, there are so many useless magazines around,
(5:40) you know, political magazines, film magazines, sports magazines.
(5:44) Where's the wildlife magazine?
(5:45) I had a big problem at that point uttering this, but I did promise him
(5:50) I will never come back until I give you a magazine.
(5:54) And I had no experience.
(5:55) I had no business plan.
(5:56) I had nothing other than that promise.
(5:58) So that was the winter of 1980.
(6:03) And 1981, October, I handed him the first issue of Sanctuary.
(6:08) And quite frankly, everybody, Salim Ali, Saurabhji,
(6:13) I mean, Kailash Sangla, they all, they all sort of adopted me.
(6:18) And said, we're not going to let you fail
(6:21) You just run this magazine, we have your back. (6:24) That's how Sanctuary was actually started.
(6:26) It was just a continuum of a love affair.
(6:29) And in terms of your work with Project Tiger,
(6:32) can you speak about the origins of the of the project?
(6:37) And we, of course, was very fortunate to see the fantastic film
(6:42) on Project Tiger and your work.
(6:44) How would you describe Project Tiger?
(6:48) How it started?
(6:50) And what were really the effective levers for changing perception?
(6:54) It was Ranthambore.
(6:55) There was a man called Kailash Sangla, who was the first director of Project Tiger.
(6:59) And there was just Kailash Sangla, me and Fateh Singh sitting down late at night.
(7:04) Late was nine o'clock in the evening under a huge banyan tree in Jogimahal.
(7:09) They just kept talking between themselves.
(7:11) And I was just a fly on the wall.
(7:14) And really what the what the conversation was that
(7:17) Project Tiger is not just something where you have to save the tiger per se.
(7:22) Yes, we have that as our North Star.
(7:25) But in order to save the tiger, you have to save its ecosystem
(7:27) with all the species, plant and animals that lived inside.
(7:32) So one of the things that was absolutely
(7:35) opened my eyes was when Gailash Sangla said, he said, Bittu,
(7:39) ek baat sunlo, don't count tiger.
(7:42) You are here sitting in Ranthambore.
(7:44) Just understand one thing that when streams
(7:49) that were dry in the month of July, August, September
(7:53) start running and they start running for October, November,
(7:58) December, January, February, March until the next monsoon,
(8:01) the tigers will come back on their own.
(8:03) He just said a simple thing.
(8:06) What we have to do is to choose different habitats.
(8:09) That was the philosophy of Project Tiger.
(8:12) So different biodiversity vaults, not the ones that had the most tigers,
(8:17) but the ones that were dry, deciduous, the ones that were moist, deciduous,
(8:21) the ones that were rainforests like or mangroves like the Sundarbans
(8:26) or like the Western Ghats or Arunachal.
(8:29) He said, if you protect that germ plasm and it'll come back.
(8:32) So it was actually the world's first to scale rewilding project.
(8:38) And the one line which stays with me till today is.
(8:43) With nature, if you want it to thrive again,
(8:47) do next to nothing to places and allow nothing to be done there.
(8:53) Nature is self-repairing and it will fix itself.
(8:57) And what were some of the difficulties you faced?
(8:59) Because clearly there was behavior which was incentivized
(9:04) if we're looking at poaching.
(9:06) And how were you actually able to shift the needle?
(9:11) Because there are so many vested stakeholders
(9:14) and also profit to be made from tigers.
(9:17) So how were you able to change perception?
(9:20) It's like this.
(9:22) I was still a kid then, so I was more of an observer
(9:26) and I was a leech.
(9:28) I wouldn't leave these guys.
(9:30) And I could hear from what they said.
(9:32) And then I became one to whom they said that, look,
(9:37) the key thing here is we want an absence of human presence
(9:43) because nature was absolutely doing splendidly well
(9:47) until Homo sapiens came about.
(9:50) The problems were many.
(9:52) I mean, the first problem was that people thought it was their right
(9:57) to kill tigers.
(9:58) I mean, that's what the British did.
(10:00) That's what the Maharajas did.
(10:01) Now we've got independence.
(10:02) Why shouldn't we do it?
(10:04) But then we had the support of a prime minister who viscerally felt
(10:09) that, look, protecting nature is good for human beings
(10:12) because the connection between nature and water was well-known then.
(10:17) And she just made it happen.
(10:19) And then the success story, one led to the next, to the next.
(10:22) There were nine tiger reserves to start with.
(10:25) We have about 50 plus now.
(10:28) And poaching is still a big problem, huge problem.
(10:32) That the greatest difficulty was to convince first the planners.
(10:36) Then the next difficulty was to convince the public.
(10:40) The next difficulty was to convince or rather coerce
(10:43) those who were making money by destroying both tigers and tiger habitats.
(10:50) But we managed, didn't we?
(10:51) Now it's 50 years plus.
(10:53) I thought the tiger was dead by the year 2000.
(10:56) It's still alive.
(10:57) So I guess we have to accept that we succeeded.
(11:00) But Nyrika, I can tell you this, I wouldn't consider that to be a success
(11:05) because today the tiger is in the greatest danger along with the termite
(11:09) and the tick on the back of the tiger.
(11:11) And the greatest threat now is the climate change, the climate crisis,
(11:15) the climate catastrophe that's on us.
(11:17) And we have to work on that together.
(11:19) No, absolutely.
(11:20) And I think also, you know, this whole discussion on,
(11:24) you know, getting to net zero and our targets
(11:28) being, in a sense, delayed because of the fact
(11:32) that we are industrializing and must be held to a different standard.
(11:36) And, you know, we see even as a corporate, a lot of focus on energy,
(11:41) a lot of focus on carbon, a lot of focus on water and renewable energy,
(11:46) but less so on biodiversity and nature based solutions.
(11:52) And how would you look at nature
(11:56) based solutions and biodiversity conversations becoming more mainstream,
(12:02) especially with corporates?
(12:05) Let me put it like this.
(12:06) You know, there's a saying in Hindi,
(12:07) ki laaton ke bhoot baaton se nahi maante, which is to say
(12:11) that there are some people who will only understand with a stick, you know.
(12:15) So now the stick is, let's say, the law at one level.
(12:18) The stick is some kind of protest at another level.
(12:21) But the real stick right now is the impact of climate change.
(12:26) So many things that we are doing.
(12:28) We have, I mean, as I say, the the sources of life
(12:33) have been turned into the sources of commerce and economics.
(12:38) But nature is fighting back.
(12:40) It does not give us any judgments.
(12:44) Bittu, such a great guy, started a magazine.
(12:46) Nairika, such a good person.
(12:48) Look what she is doing.
(12:49) That doesn't do any of that sort.
(12:51) It gives us warnings and then it gives us consequences.
(12:55) So in a nutshell, that as far as the corporate sector is concerned,
(13:01) environmentalists have done what they have to do.
(13:04) Now it's the economists, it's the insurance sector,
(13:08) it's the scientists, it's the technologists, it's even the politicians.
(13:13) I've increasingly discovered that the transition from shouting and fighting
(13:17) has shifted to one where you just have to tell the truth without exaggeration,
(13:24) without biases, without,
(13:27) oh, I'm a good guy, you're a bad guy kind of thing.
(13:30) Just tell the truth.
(13:31) Look, there will be no food security.
(13:35) There will be no social security.
(13:37) There will be no health security.
(13:40) There will be no economic security unless we bring that carbon,
(13:44) which we've shoved up into the atmosphere, back down.
(13:47) And then the next question that is normally asked.
(13:50) So what's the solution?
(13:51) And the solution comes back to nature,
(13:55) that there is no technology known to human beings today
(13:59) that you can put a vacuum cleaner up into the atmosphere and suck all the carbon down.
(14:04) The only way that can be done, Nyrika, is to allow ecosystems to come back.
(14:10) Those gardeners of Eden, those maintenance engineers of grasslands,
(14:14) of mangroves, of forests, of lakes, of rivers, of wetlands, of glaciers.
(14:19) Those creatures must be given the ability
(14:23) to fix nature because there's a word called homeostasis,
(14:27) which is things coming back to balance.
(14:30) The whole of nature is self-preparing and we have to have that faith.
(14:35) Even as we look at all your work with Project Tiger and celebration of,
(14:41) you know, a creature who is majestic, larger than life.
(14:44) But then when we have to go down into the ecosystem
(14:47) to, you know, a level of a bee or a sparrow
(14:52) or even the green cover, those are not as
(14:57) inspiring or sexy as the tiger.
(15:00) So how does one captivate people's attention
(15:04) and inspire action at a larger scale?
(15:07) How do we inspire people to action at a larger scale
(15:11) for maybe smaller parts of the ecosystem that are not as prominent today?
(15:17) The tiger has always been the best brand in the world for conservation.
(15:23) Of course, the polar bear is a great brand for its own ecosystem.
(15:27) If we can't save the tiger, if we can't save the tiger using the tiger's
(15:31) own charisma and its own power and its own magnetic attraction,
(15:35) then we are very bad communicators and very bad marketing men.
(15:39) And I think that we need to make sure that when we talk about the tiger,
(15:43) we've done that for 20, 30 years.
(15:45) The story we told children is the story I would tell a parliamentarian today.
(15:50) You can't save the tiger if you don't save the forest.
(15:53) When you save the forest, you save every creature in the forest,
(15:56) including the ant on which the tiger has put its paw.
(16:00) And when you do that, the forest flourishes.
(16:03) And when the forest flourishes, the rain falls, gets soaked
(16:07) and goes down into the aquifers.
(16:09) And then when the rain stops, the aquifers continue to feed our rivers.
(16:13) The rivers feed our farms.
(16:16) The farms feed us.
(16:18) Saving the tiger is saving ourselves.
(16:20) Essentially, I'd say that the logic process
(16:24) and the self-interest is so obvious now
(16:28) that the finest economists, you take Lord Nicholas
(16:31) Stern from the London School of Economics, the India Observatory.
(16:35) He said 15 years ago, the cost of inaction
(16:39) is going to be vastly greater than the cost of action.
(16:42) Then you have Professor Partha Dasgupta from Cambridge,
(16:46) who said that, look, this pandemic was directly caused by the wildlife trade.
(16:51) It was caused by the destruction of ecosystems.
(16:54) All these species were locked into their own ecosystems like we were outside.
(17:00) Now, when we force them to come into our ecosystem, it's love me, love my dog
(17:04) or rather love me, love my virus.
(17:06) Young people, they don't need much motivation.
(17:09) They're running around.
(17:11) But my generation, apart from owing you an apology,
(17:15) my generation needs to wake up and understand that we're in the departure lounge
(17:19) and a touch of humility has to be taken in.
(17:22) And we should be looking to remember ourselves well,
(17:25) be remembered well by our children.
(17:28) And the best motivation is I want to do for my children.
(17:32) I want to do good by them.
(17:33) I want to be remembered well by them.
(17:35) I think those together with nature's most powerful weapon
(17:40) will take away the water that we need to do harm.
(17:43) When we had the pandemic, the skies were blue again.
(17:48) Rivers ran pure again for a while, for a while.
(17:52) All we did was we stopped abusing these ecosystems,
(17:55) which were really our nurseries for us, for our own lives.
(18:00) So I think I am hopeful for tomorrow.
(18:03) And I want my children not to grow up as cynics.
(18:07) But that lesson, Kids for Tigers, the program that we run,
(18:11) which goes out to a million kids across the country.
(18:14) The one lesson that education has taught us
(18:17) was that kids don't do what you tell them to do.
(18:20) The kids do what you do.
(18:22) So we've got to set a good example.
(18:24) And we never saved the tiger.
(18:25) The tiger saved itself.
(18:26) We just stopped harming nature.That's all.
(18:28) Because it's interesting you brought up the pandemic.
(18:31) And, you know, I think it was quite a unanimous reaction
(18:34) that after being locked down for over two years,
(18:39) everybody's reaction was nature's flourishing.
(18:43) It's so wonderful to see the blue skies,
(18:47) to see leopards walking in the streets, to see monkeys.
(18:51) But also equally tragic was
(18:55) maybe the short term or maybe amnesia
(18:59) in a manner of speaking that we're very easily able
(19:03) to dissociate from that learning
(19:07) and that understanding and kind of go back to our old ways.
(19:13) And how do you think innovation and technology
(19:17) can maybe help us to have a better memory?
(19:23) Do you think we can use technology and digital
(19:25) to help people have more of a long term memory?
(19:29) Or do you think it's actually hurting us?
(19:32) No, no, it's not hurting us.
(19:34) What we are suffering from now is ecological amnesia.
(19:39) That we see something we did.
(19:41) It had an ill effect.
(19:43) It's caused us to be traumatized, hurt.
(19:46) Then the time passes like the pandemic passed.
(19:49) We forgot and we start making the same mistakes again.
(19:52) And I think that if we have to go ahead
(19:55) then two things, we have to tell truth without malice
(19:59) and we have to remember the past,
(20:03) go back to the past to negotiate our future.
(20:06) We have everything going for us.
(20:08) I see no reason to despair.
(20:11) But at this particular moment in time, in this particular
(20:14) little pixel of history that we're living in,
(20:18) I think things will change.
(20:20) And if I may add one last thing from my side,
(20:24) there's too much testosterone floating around.
(20:28) Men have been in charge for far too long.
(20:31) It's not that men are bad.
(20:33) It's just that men imagine that they have to demonstrate their power.
(20:38) I can be bigger.I can be faster.
(20:40) I can be taller. I am stronger.
(20:43) Darwin said it so long ago.
(20:44) It's not the strongest. It's not the most intelligent.
(20:47) It's the most adaptable that will survive.
(20:50) If we adapt, we will survive.
(20:53) If we don't, we'll be taught a lesson.
(20:56) I think we'll be all right.
(20:58) I really do think we'll be all right.
(20:59) But it's going to be painful if my generation continues
(21:02) to assault the only thing that gives us life.
(21:07) So uncle, who inspires you to live your purpose?
(21:11) Ah. God.
(21:14) Can I get personal?
(21:16) Absolutely.
(21:18) Vijay, your dad and I spoke about this
(21:21) around 1983-84.
(21:24) And I'd gone to him and I'd said that, look,
(21:28) I want to make these films on Project Tiger.
(21:30) So the first thing he said was, look, for God's sake,
(21:33) please don't give us that the world is coming to an end thing.
(21:36) Let's not aim the films to just the adults.
(21:40) Let's aim them at children, because an intelligent 10 year old,
(21:44) if you can communicate with him, probably the adults will be able to understand.
(21:48) So we produced 30 films together in the 1980s.
(21:53) Rakshak
(21:54) So it was Project Tiger and it was Rakshak and it was so many things.
(22:00) And we had hope.
(22:02) By then, the world was talking about Project Tiger
(22:05) and we were talking about how nature gives back.
(22:07) I fondly remember Rakshak and, you know, all of the episodes
(22:11) and how it really brought the topic to life.
(22:14) And I was actually sad because I was looking for episodes
(22:19) to show the kids, but I was unable to find it anywhere.
(22:23) They all got destroyed by, you know, we had carefully,
(22:27) we shot them on 16mm, we kept the sound negative separate.
(22:31) We kept everything, everything.
(22:34) And they got destroyed because from the roof above us,
(22:37) the person had a leak and we had tons of water
(22:41) pouring down in our little storage room.
(22:44) Oh, no.
(22:45) At that time, digitizing it wasn't that easy.
(22:48) I am still trying to see somewhere in Doordarshan,
(22:52) which put all the 30 films up,
(22:55) whether they have the umatic tapes, at least we can get some part of it.
(23:01) They are not the best films when you talk in terms of Attenborough
(23:05) and things like this, but they are the history of Project Tiger
(23:08) and wildlife of the 80s, which I think was the turning point.
(23:11) But I think that even Doordarshan wouldn't have kept any copies
(23:16) or it was just aired and then they didn't keep any copies.
(23:20) They would probably somewhere keep a copy.
(23:23) I'll tell you, around the same time, I did 12 hours of interviews
(23:27) with Dr. Salim Ali, who was like a North Star for me also.
(23:32) Yes. And for 10 years, I kept saying to them that,
(23:36) look, please, let's put those interviews out.
(23:38) This is oral history.
(23:39) We must have it. Nobody responded.
(23:42) Then I think it was about a year ago.
(23:45) Suddenly, I got a call from Tara Gandhi, who said,
(23:46) Okay
(23:49) hey, when did you do these interviews?
(23:51) I just saw them on the Internet.
(23:53) So there were. Oh really.
(23:54) Yeah, but they only put out about two hours or one and a half hours
(23:58) of those interviews.
(23:59) And I think these stories and firsthand accounts
(24:03) are such a powerful tool for inspiration and action.
(24:08) And it's a shame that we've lost them.
(24:10) But maybe the Internet and its vast resources of data,
(24:15) maybe it's available somewhere.
(24:18) I keep thinking of Saurabhji, I keep thinking of Salim Ali,
(24:22) and I keep thinking of the fact that how much hope we had those days.
(24:26) I think if they were still here with us and at their prime,
(24:30) I think they would be able to actually inspire the world to fight
(24:34) the climate crisis the way it should be fought, which is by
(24:37) going into what we call nature based solutions doesn't fully do the trick.
(24:41) You know, it's basically letting nature do what it does
(24:44) and look upon it as the ultimate asset.
(24:48) You are going to see within your lifetime a return to the worship of nature
(24:53) as a life giver.
(24:55) I promise you right now across the world, this is not just India.
(24:59) India, in fact, has so much latent reverence for nature
(25:05) that we probably will have to cede the world and like us,
(25:08) a few other communities that exist around, particularly the tribal communities
(25:13) that exist in different parts of the world.
(25:16) We'll have to cede people with hope and we'll have to cede people
(25:19) with respect for nature.
(25:21) The moment we start respecting it, we will start protecting it.
(25:25) When we protect it, it will protect us.
(25:27) Absolutely.
(25:28) I was really interested to know an author that you love or a book
(25:32) that has inspired you and for all our listeners.
(25:37) Oh, a good book is always important to have.
(25:41) Well, my wife, Madhu, tells me that there are more books in our house
(25:45) and in our library than there is space.
(25:48) So my my table, as I speak, is filled with books and things.
(25:51) But, you know, it's difficult to read him.
(25:54) But Darwin, I mean, he writes in this style,
(25:59) which was very what you might call old fashioned today.
(26:02) But he wrote the truth and I learned a lot from Darwin.
(26:07) So if you ask me my favorite author, I would still say Darwin.
(26:10) He taught me to ignore what people say or think.
(26:12) Analyze every fact before arriving at my conclusions.
(26:16) And that one liner, it's not the strongest or the most intelligent
(26:20) that survives, it's the most adaptable.
(26:22) That's guided my life, actually.
(26:24) You know, but there are many, many, many other authors.
(26:27) I read like a lunatic.
(26:29) I can be lost in books.
(26:33) And what's your favorite go to spot in India?
(26:39) It's like asking who's your favorite child, you know, but
(26:43) I'd say two places jump straight to mind.
(26:47) One is Ranthambore.
(26:48) I mean, for 15 years, me, my wife, Madhu and my daughter, Sara Miel.
(26:54) That was our home.
(26:55) The other is Dachigam in Kashmir.
(26:58) There's a river called the Dagwan.
(27:00) I have never gone to Dachigam without lying down
(27:04) at the edge of that river and drinking from that beautiful Dagwan river.
(27:09) Of course, the left side of my cheek, if I'm on the right bank,
(27:14) I can't feel it for about a couple of minutes
(27:17) because it's glacial water.
(27:19) But look, forests, water, Dachigam, beautiful, unbelievable.
(27:24) Thank you so much for being with us today,
(27:27) for sharing your thoughts and for really inspiring us.
(27:31) And thank you for being the change we want to see in the world.
(27:34) You are so sweet. Thank you very much.
(27:37) It's an opportunity.
(27:38) And I'll tell you this, you will not escape me.
(27:41) I will be there.
(27:42) I will remind you.
(27:44) I will walk with you.
(27:45) I will do everything that we have to do to leave a better world
(27:48) for your children and their children.
(27:51) Thank you very much, Bittu uncle, for inspiring our colleagues
(27:55) with your work and your life experience.