Women in the wild - book review

I overlooked storing this on the blog.

Viji, the Turtle Girl from Chennai and other Women in the Wild � Madras Musings | We Care for Madras that is Chennai

Viji, the Turtle Girl from Chennai and other Women in the Wild

I discovered the pleasures of birdwatching quite late in life, and through birds I experienced trees, flowers, nature and the outdoors in a rather different way – I learnt to observe, I marvelled at all that I had missed and have new respect for all those who work so hard to protect, preserve and document all that binds us in this completely interconnected web of life on earth.

It was but natural, therefore, that I picked up Womenin the Wild to read. Edited by Anita Mani, this book is compelling both for the astonishing work done by the profiled scientists and the delightfully smooth and empathetic storytelling of the various essayists. In her introduction, Anita says of the women portrayed: “they are here because they have either had substantial impact on species/landscape conservation or because their work has contributed to the resolution of environmental challenges confronting wildlife in India.” In the same vein she mentions that, as an editor, she aimed to find authors who knew their subjects personally. 

Editor Anita Mani with the Indian Pitta collection.

The Madras/Chennai connections to many of the women field biologists featured in the book made my reading experience more personal.

Anita herself grew up in Chennai. Schooled at Rosary and a graduate of Stella Maris, she trained and worked as a journalist, moved into the corporate sector and tech writing for a while, before going back to writing and publishing. She worked with a children’s newspaper before launching Indian Pitta, India’s first bird book imprint under Juggernaut. Anita says that learning about Vijaya’s remarkable journey and experiences seeded the inspiration for the book and the rediscovery of the sadly long forgotten birdwoman, Jamal Ara. 

There are a trio of women from Chennai featured in the book: Vijaya, in The Turtle Girl, Divya Mudappa in the Canopy Crusader and Divya Karnad in Like a Fish to Water. India’s Wildlife Detective Uma Ramakrishnan’s family hails from TN and Vidya Athreya and Ghazala Shahabuddin studied at Salim Ali School of Ecology (SAS) in Pondy. Anita Mani observes in her Introduction that SAS and the Bangalore based National Centre for Biological Sciences (NCBS) created a channel for women field biologists in a big way and helped them build a mutual network and support system.

The Turtle Girl J. Vijaya, Viji as she was called, is part of the history of herpetology in India, and one only has to search “cane turtle” to learn about the impact of Viji on the species, their study and conservation. She cut her teeth at the Crocodile Bank with the legendary Rom Whitaker, and who better to write her profile than Zai Whitaker? Viji “discovered” the Crocodile Bank via the Snake Park one summer as a student at Ethiraj College, writes Zai, who was her senior by a few years, and came to know her closely as a colleague and friend. Escapades while trying to discover the mouth of the Cooum with her sister Prabha, collecting crocodile dung, dealing with men acting “fresh” on the Chennai buses, and the onset of the schizophrenia that brought a cruel end to a much too short life: Zai describes all this and more in a personal and poignant recollection of Viji’s life and work. Zai recounts in an interview that Viji was different, the key word was her passion. She loved the animals around her – the cats, dogs, monkeys and squirrels and also had a balanced scientific approach to her field work. 

Divya radio tracks a brown palm civet in Sengaltheri, KMTR (1999). Photo by Dr. AJT Johnsingh.

Divya Mudappa’s journey towards understanding the historical and cultural context of landscapes in order to better and more effectively conserve them effectively is well told by Shweta Taneja, who was fascinated by her deep commitment to the terrain of Valparai. Divya spent her childhood in Madikeri and came to Chennai for her Bachelor’s in Zoology at Stella Maris. It was her volunteering with the Chennai Students’ Sea Turtle Conservation Network (SSCTCN), that probably set her on a path to wildlife research that included moving on to a master’s degree from SAS Pondicherry, interning with Raghupathy Kannan and going through the heartbreak of experiencing degraded rainforests in the Western Ghats. Setting up Nature Conservation Foundation NCF with her life partner, working on the Stanmore patch first and then tying up with Parry Agro to restore the rainforest at Lower Paralai – every step brought learnings about the complexities of rainforests and their interdependencies. Shweta does full justice to the tribulations faced in this journey and the frustrations that almost drove Divya to give up. 

Anita Mani herself chose to profile Divya Karnad, the Zoology graduate from WCC, who spent her childhood dreaming of a career in wildlife in 1990s Chennai, when STEM was the only respectable thing to do. She also volunteered with SSTCN, and then went on to National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore for her Masters, stayed with the turtles, working in the now famous Rushikulya beaches of Odisha, where her experiences with the fishermen brought home the truth that successful conservation has to include and involve the local communities. Anita evocatively describes the coastal ecosystems and fishing communities of Chennai, the social habits of seafood consumption and the genesis of Divya’s website-based intervention “In Season Fish”. Divya’s focus on sustainability in seafood is unique and remarkable and also very relevant to our city.

The Oaks Call her Home is one of my personal favourite essays. Neha Sinha writes about Ghazala Shahabuddin and the oak trees of Uttarakhand. Neha’s descriptions of Ghazala’s work with the oak forests and the diversity they carry in terms of bird life is a story of love, of a woman finding her voice in a patriarchal society even as she discovered her passion and stuck with it.

Much has been written and said about Raza Kazmi’s sensitive and detailed portrait of Jamal Ara, the forgotten birdwoman of India. Raza writes about his chance rediscovery of Jamal Ara via Jamal’s daughter Madhuca. Madhuca movingly recounts her mother’s struggles in marriage, her joys while in the forests and doing her wildlife research and her final battles with mental illness towards the end of her life. “A strict mother, a very private person, who loved to be in the forest. She wore green trousers and a green shirt in the forest, and at that time for a married lady and a mother to wear that was out of the question!” How a person with so much impact on government policy, protection and documentation of the biodiversity of the Chota Nagpur area besides being a gifted translator and short story writer, could have been so utterly and completely forgotten is disappointing and sad to say the least. As I discussed this with Anita, she wondered whether Jamal Ara’s gender and accompanying lack of self-promotion had led to her erasure from memory. Was it that she hailed from and worked in small town India? This anthology should be the start of the re-discovery and celebration of Jamal Ara.

The compiled portraits and profiles are a tribute to the successes of these women, a description of their journeys including some of their gender-based struggles. I also found appealing the generous sprinkling of tips for young women who may wish to follow their paths in wildlife biology. Divya Mudappa speaks of resilience in the face of challenges, Ghazala of the importance of sisterhood, Usha Ganguli of learning to be bold and Uma of believing in one’s self without guilt.

A common thread that will strike the reader is that women field biologists seem to bring empathy and emotion to their work. This helps them engage positively with communities which, in turn, positively impacts conservation and sustainability at the ground level. This is a book I will dip into time and again.

Braiding Sweetgrass

 In my To-read list now - “Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants” - a book of essays by scientist and SUNY Professor Robin Wall Kimmerer.   The book has sold 1.4 million copies, according to the NY Times article - You Don’t Have to Be Complicit in Our Culture of Destruction.  An article that was shared by Dr Ravi Chellam on the MNS group.

Of late, I have been listening to arguments about science vs other modes of enquiry - and how not to slide into what I would call old-fashioned superstition and blind belief, while at the same time being open to older traditions of wisdom and learning. 

She says - "sometimes what we call conventional Western science is in fact scientism. Scientism being this notion that Western science is the only way to truth. It’s a powerful way to truth, but there are other ways, too. Traditional ecological knowledge, Indigenous science, is a more holistic way of knowing. In Western science, for often very good reasons, we separate our values and our knowledge. In Indigenous science, knowledge and values are always coupled. It’s an ethically driven science."

I came across a similare dialogue between Amitav Ghosh and Dr Annu Jalais at the Kolkata Literary Festival, '23, and since it was in the context of Sundarbans, it felt very relevant and immediate for me.  So tiger charmers, masks at the back of the head, vaccinations...and I must say I am more in line with Dr Annu in not dissing science.  

 

But the telling point that Amitav Ghosh makes about how all countries seem to be still in a colonial mindset of trying to control and consume, despite the glaring evidence of climate change, finds an echo in Prof Kimmerer's response as well, I felt.

 Q:  I see the success of your book as part of this mostly still hidden but actually huge, hopeful groundswell of people — and I mean regular people, not only activists or scientists — who are thinking deeply and taking action about caring for the earth. But that groundswell isn’t part of the story that we’re usually told about climate change, which tends to be much more about futility. What are the keys to communicating a sense of positivity about climate change and the future that’s counter to the narrative we usually get? 

Ans:  The story that we have to illuminate is that we don’t have to be complicit with destruction. That’s the assumption: that there are these powerful forces around us that we can’t possibly counteract. The refusal to be complicit can be a kind of resistance to dominant paradigms, but it’s also an opportunity to be creative and joyful and say, I can’t topple Monsanto, but I can plant an organic garden; I can’t counter fill-in-the-blank of environmental destruction, but I can create native landscaping that helps pollinators in the face of neonicotinoid pesticides. (Which research has suggested is especially harmful to wild bees and bumblebees.)

 So much of what we think about in environmentalism is finger-wagging and gloom-and-doom, but when you look at a lot of those examples where people are taking things into their hands, they’re joyful. That’s healing not only for land but for our culture as well — it feels good. It’s also good to feel your own agency. We need to feel that satisfaction that can replace the so-called satisfaction of buying something. Our attention has been hijacked by our economy, by marketers saying you should be paying attention to consumption, you should be paying attention to violence, political division. What if we were paying attention to the natural world? I’ve often had this fantasy that we should have Fox News, by which I mean news about foxes. What if we had storytelling mechanisms that said it is important that you know about the well-being of wildlife in your neighborhood? That that’s newsworthy? This beautiful gift of attention that we human beings have is being hijacked to pay attention to products and someone else’s political agenda. Whereas if we can reclaim our attention and pay attention to things that really matter, there a revolution starts.

Being creative and joyful in our interactions with the natural world - something I recall that Garima Bhatia and I spoke about when we met a couple of months ago, and that organisations like NCF and Palluyir Trust, and MNS also are doing.

The birds are returning to Arunachala

... Enough to warrant a book.

Arun is the kind of modern super hero the world needs. A green warrior who has let his actions speak.  And Chennai's loss is Tiruvannamalai's gain.  He has mobilised and focussed native tree replanting on the hill, along with the prompt dousing of forest fires, and the results are beginning to show, as a forest and an ecosystem comes back to life.

And the returning birds have played their part, dispersing seeds and exponentially leading to forest revival.

The book, published by The Forest Way Trust this year on recycled paper, lists over two hundred species of birds that now can be seen in a 10 km radius around the hill and in the water bodies.  The restoration has been supported by the district administration as well.

Hearing Arun speak about the revival of streams, the local communities working to put out the fires and the survival rate (some 1%) of planted trees, brings home the efforts that have led to this.

In the Introduction to the book, is a paragraph that I particularly like:

But while we humans may feel proud of our efforts to reforest the mountain, thinking that we have proved a home for birds in the process, the truth is that birds themselves have done far more to reforest the Hill than us.  Many of the trees that we see now growing on the mountains were not planted, but came naturally, and it is often the birds that spread the seeds.  And because they can fly, it is possible for birds to bring seeds a good distance from other forest areas, thus increasing the plant diversity of each place.  With this, many forest birds not seen here in living memory, have made their return, like the wonderful Racket-tailed Drone.  This is the most important lesson that we all must learn from nature; that other animals live their lives while making their home a better place for other life too.

All the original artworks in the book are photographs of paintings dome by Tiruvannamalai artist Kumar on limestone slabs in the Arunagiri Forest Park, at the base of Arunachala.

The book introduces Kumar, who began his association in the project as an artist painting birds, and has now become an expert birdwatcher.

Valley of Flowers - books for my trip

The Valley Of Flowers: Frank S. Smythe

An account from Smythe who "discovered" this beautiful Valley.

Flowers of The Himalayas - Oleg & Adam

A reference book for the flowers I hope to see.

Birds of North India - Inskipp & Grimmett

Some birding too I hope!

Two stories

This last month I read two rather different books, each in a very different way dealing with nature and the environment. One was set in Kenya and the other in an imaginary futuristic US. One was joyous and heartwarming and the other bleak and foreboding.

I shall not go into the stories or plots of each, as you can read that on Amazon, instead here's what I thought of each of them.

The Kenya book was borrowed from Chitra, and is called A Guide to the Birds of East Africa. It was a delightful, charming read, with the central character, gentlemanly Mr Malik being challenged to a bird race by the more racy Harry Khan. I think I enjoyed it all the more because of the bird descriptions that I could relate to, the vagaries of a bird race that I have also experienced, and the familiarity with descriptions of Kenya, so similar to colonial India. But above all, it was uplifting to read a book where no one is really bad, if you know what I mean, and people make ethical choices and ambition takes a back seat. Nicholas Drayson is the author. There's this bit where Mr Malik strikes it rich finding so many birds around a sewage pond, and it reminded me of our trips to Pallikaranai, and our wonder at seeing so many birds so close to garbage and polluted waters!

Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood was a completely different reading experience altogether. I picked it up from the library. So bleak, it was like being among the Deatheaters I tell you, peopled by greedy, unscrupulous, fickle characters. And yet, I could not put it down. It's one of those apocalyptic future books, where a group of committed eco groupies are fighting the system, with an alternate way of life. Why is it that every future scenario is imagined with humans at their basest character, with the only advances being made in technology? Dystopic rather than Utopic? There is no change in human thinking at all. Atwood takes our current socio-political structures to its logical extreme end, with gated communities and governments run like corporations and everything artificial - gene splicing, cloning, all kinds of new creatures.

I don't know why, but I am greatly affected when women characters are so badly abused....it just bothers me to read about women so powerless and exploited, as they are in the Atwood book. I found it completely joyless, the book I mean, and even the eco groupies (called God's Gardeners by the way), seem to have no sense of joy or wonder, more a sense of "this is my duty, and this is what I have to do".

I would readily recommend the Drayson book to all, but not the Atwood. Besides the bleakness, the plot itself and its resolution is all too pat and disappointing.

But, it is the Atwood book that had me thinking for days....does it really need us to believe in the cause of the environment like a religion to make a change? Do we need to create new gods and saints, like Adam One does in the book? Why does the Asian psyche not lead to such future-scenario books?