The last population of Asiatic lions is protected by the women rangers of the Gir Forest. For my trip to document them, I'm learning some Hindi. Their word for expand -- as in, to expand your mind -- is badhaana, so the mnemonic I'm using is Bad Banana.
Speaking of bad bananas, in the memoir I'm reading, Dreaming in Hindi, the author's ambitiously libertine friend is warned not to "expand the mind" of an Indian's fiancee.
I don't want to create any international incidents. But I'm going to a country where, beyond the Muslim influence, a Hindi woman is deemed less likely to reincarnate as a man than an animal is to reincarnate into a person. By the way, I tried to find a word for "woman libertine" and failed: all the synonyms suggest tramps rather than someone who is merely adventurous and sensually opportunistic. So Western culture isn't ready to go around pointing fingers at who is sexist. "Belonging to a tribal Muslim community that did not let its womenfolk seek work outside home," one of the Gir lion guards is as much an icon for women's-work home-bodies in our country as, say, Hillary Clinton.
Women like us can be Bad Bananas. We can expand one another more deeply into the web of life.
We can set the standard against which abominations against nature stand out like industrial pollution would in a wildlife preserve.
VC Bestor
FangedWilds.org
Fanged Wilds and Women Program is a 501c3 Tax-Exempt Organization
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