In the Forest of Lies

Author Note

I grew up in a village in Bengal in the early 90s. I used to cycle to school every day. It took me about an hour to get there. The journey was really something — I saw ponds and fields and cows scattered along the route. There were birds sitting on wires and big lizards crossing the road. Sometimes I even saw a jackal fleeing. Nature was a part of my everyday life. There was a tree near my school; every evening, hundreds of birds would sit on its branches. They made so much noise that you could not even talk. Looking back I think I took all of this for granted. I was a kid so I thought everything would always stay the same.

Years later I went back to that road. Everything was different. The field where we used to play football was gone. There were houses and shops everywhere. The tree was gone too. In its place they had built a structure with sculptures of animals and birds. The real birds were not there anymore. The fake ones were. The real tree was gone. They had put up a fake one. I stood there for a while trying to figure out why it all felt so wrong.

The animals that used to live there had disappeared. Now they were back as decorations. We had taken away the natural world and replaced it with a fake one. That moment started my photography project — ‘In The Forest of Lies’.

As I started paying attention, I saw that this was happening everywhere. I saw tigers and elephants and deer in cities. They were in parks and malls and even in front of offices. It seemed like people were putting up animals everywhere while the real ones were disappearing.

On 17 January 2016, research scholar Rohith Vemula committed suicide on the campus of the University of Hyderabad. In his suicide note, he wrote: “….I loved Science, Stars, and Nature, but then I loved people without knowing that people have long since divorced from nature. Our feelings are second-hand. Our love is constructed. Our beliefs are colored. Our originality is valid through artificial art. It has become truly difficult to love without getting hurt. The value of a man was reduced to his immediate identity and nearest possibility. To a vote. To a number. To a thing. Never was a man treated as a mind. As a glorious thing made up of stardust. In every field, in studies, in streets, in politics, and in dying and living….”

I found that people put these fictitious, lifeless animals everywhere in the name of beautification or developing the urbanised society. They actually make me wonder why we are okay with fake nature but not with the real thing.

I think we are always chasing something that’s not real. We are taught to care about the things, like how much money we have or what kind of house we live in. We forget about the world around us and the people in it. It is weird that someone can read about elephants disappearing and not care but then take their kid to play with an elephant. It is weird that we do not care about animals losing their homes. People like these animals because they make them feel successful. They take pictures with them. Post them online.. They are not really connected to the world around them.

This is a problem especially when we think about how many animals are really disappearing. In India there are fewer wild elephants. In 2017 there were over 27,000 elephants. By 2025 there were only about 22,446 left. Elephants are losing their homes. It is getting harder for them to survive. Even though real elephants are disappearing, fake ones are everywhere. We care more about the image of nature than about nature itself.

When I was working on this project I realised that we cannot separate the way we treat the earth from the way we treat each other. Both are connected to how we think about the world. Kids are not born thinking they are better than others. We teach them to think that way. We also teach them to think they are separate from nature. We think of forests as things to be destroyed, rivers as things to be owned, and animals as things to be used for our benefit. The forest becomes a place for buildings. The river becomes someone’s property. The animal becomes a decoration. The world becomes a throwaway thing.

As Rohith wrote in his last letter, we’re getting disconnected from nature, from each other and from our memories. In the years following Rohith’s death, forests in the areas surrounding the Hyderabad campus (in the Kancha Gachibowli area) were cut down indiscriminately. As trees fell, the cries of peacocks echoed through the landscape. I often think that these peacocks were victims of the same system of discrimination that Rohith suffered under. The forms of violence are different, but their roots are similar. Both emerge from a worldview that divides life into hierarchies, deciding whose existence matters and whose can be sacrificed in the name of progress, development, or social order.

The fake animals in this project are not just decoration. They show how out of touch we are. They show that we want to keep the image of nature. We don’t want to deal with the real thing. Many of my pictures show these animals as though they were the last ones alive. They are in parks, in front of buildings, in shopping centres. They look stupid. They arouse thought, investigation.

What if we know more about these animals than the actual ones? What happens when a kid knows more about a statue of an elephant than what elephants do? What happens when forests exist only as ideas for buildings? These are not questions to answer. But they are important now when the earth is in trouble and cities are growing fast. ‘In The Forest of Lies’ is not about fake animals; it is about what is missing. It is about the disappearing landscapes and memories and relationships. It is about the disconnect between what we say we care about and what we actually do. The fake birds and elephants and tigers in my pictures are a reminder of a world that is slowly disappearing. What type of world we will leave for our children?

At its heart, ‘In The Forest of Lies’ keeps coming back to a simple but pressing question. We live in an educated society that understands the importance of ecology, biodiversity, and wildlife. These ideas are taught in schools, discussed in universities, and available in abundance through books, research and media. And yet, knowing this, we still refuse to see what is happening around us. Why? Why is it that we don’t care when forests are lost, wetlands drained, and wildlife habitat fragmented? Why do we accept artificial substitutes for the living world? What has been lost in the process?

The project asks whether we are consciously choosing to leave behind a simulated world, a world of replicas, for future generations. Do we want to bequeath this future? A future where children learn about animals through sculpture and not ecosystems; where nature is only decoration, and where even the simplest act of breathing might become harder and harder. If we already know the ecological consequences of our actions, then our failure is no longer a failure of knowledge. It is a failure of accountability.

—Subhajit Naskar