Photo by The Guardian
Newcastle University is facing a backlash from conservationists over the appointment of the heir to an Indian oil and gas fortune who runs a controversial mega-zoo as a professor of sustainability. Anant Ambani, 31, is the son of India’s richest person, Mukesh Ambani, and worth an estimated £90bn. His father made his fortune primarily in oil and gas, owns the world’s largest oil refinery and has close ties with the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP). Ambani set up Vantara, a 1,400-hectare (3,500-acre) private zoo near the family’s oil refining facilities in Gujarat, which reportedly has more than 150,000 animals including 200 lions, 250 leopards and 900 crocodiles, and where he hosted his opulent pre-wedding celebrations attended by celebrity guests and politicians. Tap the link in bio for the full story.
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@organicfruitjungle 😭
@pardadaari 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭
@sorsheilish কানা পোলার নাম পদ্মলোচন
@ranichawdhary Vantara's 1000+ acres reforestation + solar power = real climate action, not just talk yaar 🌱
@pritam_ghosh2006 The Permission You Already Own You've been waiting for someone to hand you a key that you've been holding all along. Permission doesn't arrive in an email or a phone call or a moment when everything finally feels right. It arrives the moment you stop asking for it. The gap between where you are and where you want to be isn't filled with talent or timing or the perfect circumstances. It's filled with the willingness to begin before you're ready. Every person who did something remarkable started exactly here—in the messy middle of uncertainty, moving forward anyway. Your doubts aren't disqualifications. They're evidence that you care enough to do this right. Your imperfections aren't flaws waiting to be fixed before you start. They're the texture of someone real, someone human, someone worth following because you're not pretending to have it all figured out. The world doesn't need another perfect version of someone else. It needs the unfinished, still-learning, beautifully imperfect version of you. It needs your voice even when it shakes. It needs your attempt even when you're not sure it'll work. It needs you to move while you're still afraid. Waiting for readiness is just fear wearing a respectable outfit. But stepping forward as you are right now—that's the kind of courage that changes things. Not because you have all the answers, but because you're willing to find them. The permission you're waiting for lives in the next decision you make. It lives in choosing yourself despite the doubt. And it's been waiting for you all along.
@butterflyrim365 # The Arithmetic of Reclamation: Part Twenty-Three There's a threshold you cross when you stop negotiating with your own survival. When the internal argument finally goes silent—the one where you've been defending your right to take up space, to want things, to say no without softening it with apologies. You realize the people who matter don't need you to justify your healing. They don't require you to perform recovery in a way that's inspiring or neat or digestible. Your wounds don't become currency. Your hard-won peace isn't something you spend trying to prove you're worthy of it. The work becomes simpler and somehow harder: learning to exist without an audience, without a narrative, without the constant internal narration of whether you're doing this correctly. Learning that there is no correct way to put yourself back together. That sometimes you don't put yourself back together at all—you just become something different, and that's enough. What emerges is ordinary. Unmarked. A life that doesn't need to mean anything to anyone but you. The kind of freedom that looks like nothing special from the outside—just someone who stopped asking permission to be tired, to be angry, to be exactly as broken or whole as they actually are. This is what reclamation tastes like when nobody's watching. And that's precisely when you know it's finally real.
@sanjuktad88 Reliance targeting Net Zero 2035, Vantara removing 10,000 tonnes CO₂ yearly... measurable projects matter more than criticism 💚
@aashikpatel_official 10,000 tonnes CO2 removal yearly through Vantara... that's measurable impact, not just PR talk yaar 🌿
@rajsakthi_95 Reliance ka Net Zero 2035 target + Vantara's 10,000 tonnes CO2 removal yearly... actual measurable impact, not bakwas talks only 💚
@pue7944 # The Arithmetic of Reclamation: Part Sixteen Count the conversations you've stopped having in your head with people who aren't listening. The rehearsals of explanations for choices that don't require their permission. The imaginary defenses you've finally set down like heavy stones. There's a peculiar freedom in accepting that some people will misunderstand you no matter what you say. That clarity was never the real goal—it was always about stopping the performance. About discovering that the exhaustion you felt wasn't from being misunderstood, but from trying to be understood by people incapable of the attempt. The arithmetic shifts when you realize: not every silence is lonely. Not every distance is longing. Sometimes it's just the sound of someone finally exhaling. Your absence from their narrative isn't absence—it's presence elsewhere. It's the decision to stop being a character in someone else's unfinished story and become the author of your own. The people who loved you enough to make space for your growth won't need you to explain it. The ones who call it betrayal were never meant to stay. You're learning that the most revolutionary act is simply being unavailable for the roles they kept casting you in. Your life doesn't need to make sense to anyone but you.
@tanusree.12chatterjee # The Permission Trap Is Self-Imposed You're waiting for something external to validate your start. A degree. A mentor's approval. A guarantee of success. Meanwhile, the people building what you admire are already three failures deep. The myth of readiness is comfortable because it lets you off the hook. You can tell yourself you're preparing, researching, waiting for the perfect conditions. But perfect conditions are invented by people already in motion. What you're actually afraid of isn't failure—it's being seen trying and not succeeding on the first attempt. That's the real vulnerability. That's what makes you hesitate while others advance. Your skill doesn't precede your action. It follows it. Every misstep teaches something your careful planning never could. Every awkward beginning is the only way to reach a confident middle. The version of yourself that exists in your head—the competent, prepared version—stays imaginary forever. The version that matters is the one taking imperfect steps right now. Stop waiting for the signal. You are the signal. Your movement is the permission slip you've been looking for. Everything you need to start already exists within you. The only missing piece is the decision to stop rehearsing and begin. --- The invisible barrier between you and what you want isn't real. It never was. You built it from doubt disguised as caution. The people who matter aren't waiting for your perfect version. They're watching for your honest one. Start messy. Start now. That's how legends begin.
@storyteller._101 Vantara's 1000+ acres reforested, 10,000 tonnes CO₂ removal yearly... actions speak louder than criticism, no 🌿
@roni_offical_100 # The Arithmetic of Reclamation: Part Three They measure your progress by how palatable you've become. By whether you've softened your edges enough to fit back into the spaces you've outgrown. By your willingness to apologize for taking up room, for speaking truth, for finally choosing yourself. But reclamation isn't a performance designed for their comfort. It's the quiet revolution of someone who stopped asking permission to exist on their own terms. It's recognizing that every apology you swallowed was a coin spent on someone else's ease. Every time you made yourself smaller, you were practicing the art of disappearing. The arithmetic they taught you was always designed to subtract. To reduce you into a number that balanced their ledgers. To keep you calculating your worth against their needs, your voice against their preferences, your freedom against their fears of losing you. Real reclamation is learning a different mathematics entirely. Addition instead of subtraction. You plus your dreams. You plus your boundaries. You plus the people who celebrate your expansion rather than mourn it. It's understanding that every person who leaves because you've claimed yourself was never actually yours to keep anyway. They were just borrowing pieces of you, and now you're calling your inventory home.
@ff01ffgv # The Permission You're Seeking Already Exists Within You Everyone you admire has a collection of failed attempts gathering dust somewhere. Every breakthrough was preceded by work nobody saw. Every voice that moves you now was once trembling with uncertainty. The real distance between your current self and your aspirations isn't knowledge or natural talent. It's your willingness to be uncomfortable in public while you're still learning. You possess more than enough to begin. What you're actually searching for is permission—but here's the truth: permission was never supposed to come from anywhere else. It lives in the decision to move forward anyway. To release something unpolished. To start before every variable is controlled. The world is exhausted by people who claim perfection. What it's hungry for is authenticity. Someone brave enough to show the messy middle. Someone honest enough to fail where others can see it. Your doubt isn't weakness. It's an indicator that you care deeply about what comes next. Stop waiting for a future version of yourself who has all the answers. That person will never arrive. But you—right here, right now, carrying your fears and your fire and your unfinished ideas—you are exactly who should begin. --- The work you're avoiding doing is the exact work that's waiting to transform you. Not someday. Not when you feel ready. But in the doing itself, in the repetition, in showing up even when your voice shakes and your hands aren't steady. Every master started exactly where you are now. They just decided that being mediocre in the beginning was the price of admission for becoming excellent later. They chose to be a beginner publicly rather than remain undiscovered in private. Your hesitation has kept you safe. But safety was never the goal. Growth demands you step into spaces where you might be judged, where your limitations will be visible, where you'll have to learn in real time while others watch. The people who matter—the ones whose respect actually counts—they don't admire perfection. They admire courage. They respect the ones brave enough to matter. Stop asking when you'll be ready. You're ready now.
@chemkamaluddin 🛢️🛢️🛢️$$$ Is this what’s important to the Newcastle University? He may have done some environmental work but surely there is someone more deserving than the son@of a billionaire