Of Indian Wildlife & Nobel Women

 The first fortnight of October has many interrelated international and national observances and fall festivities.

1st to 7th October 2026 is Indian National Wildlife Week. The year's Nobel Prize winners for the six categories were announced in the  weekdays of Nobel Prize Announcement Week: October 5th-12th, 2026. This year the Nobel Prize went to two women in two categories thus adding two Nobel Women to ten Nobel Laureates this year. 

 

This is also Navratri/Dusshera season celebrating the power of the Divine Feminine - Goddesses of the Hindu Pantheon and the victory of Good over Evil. The trinity of goddesses Goddess of Power, Parvati, Goddess of Wealth and Luck, Lakshmi and the Goddess of Wisdom, Knowledge and Eloquence, Saraswati, are worshipped in turn every three days (3X3) over the nine days of festivities and they a re worshipped in combination the warrior Goddess Durga a combination of Power, Luck and Strategy used to destroy injustice truly resonates with the Nobel Women of 2026 and all the Nobel Women who came before. 

The festival of Dusshera is a celebration of victory of Good over Evil, Divine Justice if you will, both the context of the Supreme Warrior Goddess Durga killing the shapeshifting  near immortal buffalo demon Mahishasur as well as the killing of the 10-headed Demon King of Lanka Raavan by the exiled Gangetic plains prince, Ram - an avatar of the Divine Protector Lord Vishnu of the Divine Trinity of Gods atop the Hindu Pantheon - in the climax of the Divine Play recited in the epic poem Ramayana: the rescue of his kidnapped wife Sita from the Demon King. 

 

Indigenous People's Day (October 12th), International Day of Rural Women (October 15th) and World Food Day (October 16th); World Migratory Bird Day and Mental Health Day (October 10th, 2026: 10/10/2026) are all important international, US and UN-led observances during the first part of the month. 

The 80th Indian Foreign Service Day (IFS Day, 9 October 1946) coincided with the 100th Hangeul Day - centennial celebrations of the national holiday across the Korean peninsula in honor of  580 years of the Hangul script of Korea established by the Korean King Sejong to replace complex Chinese characters (Hanja) accessible only to the elite thus ensuring almost universal literacy in Korea as of 1446! 

Diplomacy, literacy, mental health, power and innovations are all vital for success just as much as a resilient natural world, environment and a ecosystem that supports life and livelihoods is essential for all our survival. 

Indian Wildlife Comeback

In time for Indian National Wildlife Week, the need for local communities and government to work together to successfully protect the environment and its flora and fauna was emphasized in The Hindu op-ed by  UN Environment Programme (UNEP) awarded and recognized Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officer Supriya Sahu, who is currently additional chief secretary of the Environment, Climate Change and Forests department of my home state, the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu.

Source: The Hindu

Many endangered species have made a comeback slowly and surely because of community level participation in the conservation of them. It's a win-win for people and planet!

As an avid bird-watcher living near wetlands and water bodies that attract many birds and migratory birds my mental health gets a boost from the avian visitors and their birdsong. Bird song is believed to lower cortisol levels thus reduce stress and the feeling of awe - which is evoked by the miracle of nature heals mind, body and soul. Thus nature conservation and biodiversity preservation doesn't just create avenues for eco-tourism and income streams from revived natural habitats but actually directly heals humans and human psyche. 

The theme of this year's world migratory bird day in honor of the 60th Anniversary of  International Waterbird Census is "Every Bird Counts: Your Observations Matter!" The words and sentiment is "birdsong" to a birdwatcher's soul. Add to this the recurring coincidence of World Mental Health Day and World Migratory Bird Day annually on the spectacular date of 10/10  (October 10th) is perfect. Travel and nature watching does wonders for mental health!

Nobel Women of 2026

 This year on 10th December, Human Rights Day, there will be a Nobel Woman in both Oslo and Stockholm receiving Nobel Prizes. Canadian classicist Anne Carson will receive the 2026 Nobel Prize for Literature - a woman among eight male Nobel Laureates sharing the 2026 Nobel Prizes for Medicine, Physics, Chemistry and Economics in Stockholm, Sweden. While South African of Tamil origin celebrated jurist Navi Pillay will shine alone in Oslo, Norway and receive the Nobel Peace Prize 2026.

Gender Equality in world-shaping is still not a reality recognized by the prestigious Nobel Prize awarding committees! 

Meanwhile we celebrate the wins and establish links. I love that the Nobel Prize for Literature this year goes to a Classics Professor - Anne Carson's public funded national and international education in the Greek Classics was foundation on which she made her soul work (meraki) innovating in the field of  Literary Arts.

Meanwhile the 2026 Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Navi Pillay overcame poverty as well as racial and gender discrimination by harnessing the power of knowledge and law to become a world shaking jurist whose work and public life is a testament to the causes of the Sustainable Development Goals especially SDG 16 - Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions as well as SDG 5 - Gender Equality.

Not just a lawyer and jurist of international crimes tribunals Navi Pillay also co-founded the international women's rights organization Equality Now in 1992, long before Hillary Clinton's famous words as First Lady of the United States in 1995 at Beijing from her "Power of Women" speech, with the iconic "Women's Rights are Human Rights" line.

Thus, its heartening for me that on Human Rights Day 2026 - 10th December 2026 - Navi Pillay will be the single star of the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo. And the fact that Navi Pillay has ancestral roots in my home state of Tamil Nadu is the cherry on top! The fact that the Peace Prize was announced on October 9th the IFS day was a superb cosmic coincidence. 

Source: Times of India 

While it has repeatedly been proved that proximity to power is not power, influence and experience still is world changing. Young African woman and former UN worker Yasmina Bensimane shared this in a powerful substack. 

...that real power, the kind that actually moves things and actually resources people, actually creates conditions for different outcomes, is almost always connected to money and to the control of resources. 

            ... 

The stated agenda is always something like sustainable development, gender equality or climate justice. The real agenda, the one that never gets written into the communiqué and never gets discussed in the plenary session, is maintaining the relationships, the financing structures and the institutional arrangements that make the whole machinery possible.

those rooms actually run on, which is an enormous amount of unpaid and underpaid labour from exactly the kind of young, talented, passionate people who are most drawn to the mission

These “UN influencers” have become an extension of the abusive, colonial, patriarchal and exploitative system. 

Her words expose the power divide and invisible labor of women and young people in international organizations and corridors of power. Yet it reinforces the subtle influence of art, knowledge and people of influence - especially Nobel Prize Winners and Nobel Women. 

It bears repeating, Literature does not change the world but it changes the people who can change the world. It reminds me of the fact that V.D. Satheesan the Chief Minister of "God's Own Country" the South Indian state of Keralam, the first state to achieve universal literacy sharing that his decision and policy to establish a Maritime Museum in Keralam was influenced by the work of author Amitav Ghosh - The Nutmeg Curse, that breaks down the colonial context of the quest for the spice among other things!