Jadav Molai Payeng, the man of the forest. In India, he single-handedly planted 550 hectares of forest.

1979, India, northern Assam, valley of the Brahmaputra, a river with mysterious sources that rises in Tibet and flows into Bangladesh. A young Indian boy sits on a sandbank, crying. Around him, uprooted plants and animals killed by a series of terrible floods and climatic disturbances had left their terrible mark. In the form of numerous snake carcasses, "dried out" by the heat because they no longer had trees under which to shelter. The sixteen-year-old Javav PayengDespondent, but not giving up, he turns to the Forestry Department, asking them to intervene quickly and plant some trees. No, they say, you'll have to do it yourself, make do, try planting some bamboo plants.

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FOREST MAN INDIA

It sounds like the plot of a good TV series, but in reality this story is real, as is the protagonist and his feat. Yes, feat, because Jadav Payeng, faced with the shrug of the authorities, took a hoe, a shovel, a spade, and some shrubs and began planting trees, all by himself. To combat the devastation and the feeling of being powerless to prevent it. Four decades have passed since that day, and the barren and forgotten land has been returned to the entire world in the form of a lush forest. 550 hectares of dense vegetation, animals, plants, and trees. Planted one by one, day after day, by Jadav Payeng himself, one tree at a time. 

The forest is now an essential natural habitat, a refuge and home to numerous birds, deer, rhinos, tigers, and elephants that previously faced imminent threat. Even ants. Thanks to the birth of the forest, Wildlife is once again populating the Brahmaputra area, and there's even a colony of a hundred elephants that have chosen to give birth and live nearby. Jadav planted countless trees, several thousand, of a wide variety of species, including silk and cotton trees, as well as 300 hectares of bamboo. Together, they form a lush and fertile forest called Molai, which has defeated drought and desertification. 

The man of the forest, Jadav Payeng, has done painstaking, monumental work that has been instrumental in restoring the global ecological balance. In 2015, for this work, he was awarded the prestigious Padma, one of the most prestigious national honors, and was able to build his own home in "his" forest, fulfilling his dream of living in close contact with nature. A nature he helped to honor and strengthen.

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FOREST MAN DOCUMENTARY

Jadav's story and his exploits have not become the subject of a television series, but rather of several documentaries, which have shed light on the birth of the Molai forest and the Indian's feat. Among them, the beautiful “Forest Man” by William Douglas McMaster, shot in 2013 as the filmmaker's first documentary and setting critics alight for its lightness and poetry. Awarded as Best Documentary by a Newcomer at Cannes in 2014, and in the same year as Best Director at theInternational Film Festival of Cinematic Art of Los Angeles, Forest Man is the story of a man who begins a journey that becomes a mission, conceived somewhat by chance, driven by the desire not to give in to despair. This soon becomes a conscious choice to restore greenery, trees, animals, and ecosystems to the entire planet. A concrete example of what it means to be the change you want to see in the world.

(Featured image taken from a screenshot of the documentary Forest Man // Photo and Video Credits William Douglas McMaster)

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