Cultural expectations surrounding the elderly are being challenged today, and with good reason!
While it was the norm to slow down and retreat into a quieter life post-retirement, more men and women are finding purpose and joy in doing the opposite.
WisdomCircle honours such men and women by shining light on their journey through an inspiring series called “Wisdom Stories”. These people have successfully smashed stereotypes, and their stories remind us that life should be lived to the fullest, no matter what age or stage.
“Growing up in Puttur, I was raised in a home that didn’t believe in the constraints of formal schooling. My father, Shivarama Karanth, was a polymath and a famous Kannada writer who believed that rigid education killed a child’s natural curiosity. Instead, my siblings and I were homeschooled until age 11 and then studied in Kannada medium until we matriculated. This non-disciplined upbringing was the key to my life; it allowed me the freedom to pursue whatever captured my heart, chiefly animals and birds in the woods around me.
By the age of eight, I could recognise nearly 60 species of birds, guided by Salim Ali’s books and a pair of binoculars. Despite this passion, after high school, India of 1964 offered no career in wildlife. Like many of my peers, I took the pragmatic route and became an engineer, hoping that would pay for pursuing natural history as a lifelong hobby.
I spent years feeling cooped up in factories and machinery sales jobs. However, a Life magazine article by George Schaller about the first scientific study of tigers in India changed everything in 1965. It revealed to me how the lens of science and quantitative study could help me understand and protect wildlife.
I realised then that I didn’t want just to watch animals; I wanted to ensure their survival. In 1980, a Rotary scholarship took me to the US, where I walked into the wildlife department at the University of Wisconsin. I told the dean I was an engineer with no money but a notebook full of field observations. He told me, ‘Turn your notes into scientific papers. Those may open doors for you.’
I returned to India, sold my farm, and dedicated myself to the Graduate Record Examination (GRE). At age 40, I finally earned my master’s degree in wildlife biology at the University of Florida and returned to India to build a rigorous scientific programme for tiger research, eventually leading to a PhD and a full-time career in wildlife biology.
My journey has not been without resistance. I have faced political pressure, court cases, and even had my lab burnt down during riots because my work challenged the status quo of forest protection. But I refused to back down. I introduced camera trapping and radio telemetry to India, replacing guesswork with hard, transparent data on tigers and their prey.
Now, in my later years, I have pivoted from field research to mentorship and teaching. I helped start a master’s programme in wildlife biology that has now graduated over 100 students. To me, conservation is not a sentimental hobby; it is a moral responsibility. We have only tiny fragments of our natural world left, and we cannot create it once it is gone.
My message to anyone looking to make a difference in their later years is simple: invest the time to truly understand the core issues. Experience in other fields is a useful ancillary, but every new domain requires a fresh willingness to learn. Passion and generosity must be backed not just by emotion, but also with rational action based on science to save wild nature for future generations.”
– Ullas Karanth
Interviewed by Nehal Naik for WisdomCircle
Explore more inspiring journeys—read more Wisdom Stories here.
