Abstract
An exalted character in the Ramayana epic tradition, the vulture Jatayu is known for his courage and loyalty. When Ravana abducts Sita and whisks her away to Lanka in his flying chariot, it is the fearless Jatayu who tries to stop him. An aerial battle ensues, but Ravana eventually prevails, chopping off Jatayu’s wing, disabling him from flight and fight and eventually from life itself. Rama performs last rites for the vulture, making kin across species—a line that is more often transgressed in the context of Hinduism than of caste or religion. This love for Jatayu has seen a recent revival in India, where the mythic bird labours both for communal politics (Bisaria, 2016) and for commerce (Deccan Herald, 2021). However, the deployment of Jatayu as a symbol for political and economic ends sits unsettlingly alongside a calamitous decline in India’s vulture population, which has seen a 97 per cent drop since the 1990s due to the use of a bovine NSAid painkiller called diclofenac (van Dooren, 2010).
In this episode of the speculative cinema project Forest Tales, Jatayu is resurrected with a prosthetic wing, only to face the extinction of his kind in the present. Our reanimated protagonist sets off in search of Sita, who is now SITA: Sanctuary in Terra Autonoma—an autonomous forest zone that holds the seeds for human and vulture survival. She is a vision of the future in the present, a queer utopia forged through a practice of reciprocity, where the struggle pulses with life and love and laughter. Will you help Jatayu unearth the queer utopias that are latent in our impaired landscapes and disabled ecologies (Taylor, 2021), so that they may reach towards an alter-future? Begin by watching the video presentation, then follow the instructions in our gameplay worksheet to create your own design for Jatayu’s wing by navigating a series of choices that have both known and unforeseen consequences for our collective presents and futures.
Footnotes
Author Biographies
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