Apu’s World

Conservation, in India, can become a polarizing subject. Green activists are often seen as woolly-headed intellectuals, out of touch with the realities and prioritizing trees over humans. The media too sometimes present debates this way. There is a growing realization though, that it is not a question of trees over humans; that indeed, humans need trees (and the other living things that form part of the ecosystem) for their very survival. Writings on the environment that are accessible to the layperson, will play an important role in spreading this awareness.

The Sprint of the Blackbuck, a collection of writings on wildlife and conservation in South India, selected from The Blackbuck, the quarterly journal of the Madras Naturalists’ Society, is one such effort. Edited by Theodore Baskaran , himself a well-known writer on environmental issues, it is an excellent collection, that can be enjoyed equally by the layperson and someone more steeped in the academic/scientific discourse on wildlife and conservation.

Divided into 4 sections - Wildlife, Habitats, Conservation and Documenting Wildlife - it covers many different issues and perspectives. Some of the best pieces in the collection, such as M. Krishnan’s Nilgiri Langur in Mundanthurai Sanctuary, cover beautifully the intersection between a particular species, a habitat and it’s response to human-engineered conflict. Indeed, all of M. Krishnan’s writings included in Sprint of the Blackbuck are notable for the love of wildlife evident in the writing, the attention to detail and the manner in which scientific concepts such as adaptation are explained so lucidly. (Next on my reading list is Mazhaikalamum Kuyilosaiyum, a collection of M. Krishnan’s writings on the environment, in Tamizh).

Some of the best pieces of the collection are also to be found in the Habitat section, evocative writings on animals in different environments. One grouse I had with the book is that while the pieces have been picked from 25 years of The Blackbuck journal, the original dates of publishing have not been mentioned along with each piece. This is a drawback for most pieces, but especially for those in the Habitat and Conservation sections - while reading about the scrub jungle on the edge of Chennai or an experiment in conservation at Rishi Valley, it is important to know what period these descriptions refer to.

Another drawback is the absence of good-quality photographs, but this presumably, is a budget constraint. If not, it would have been good to see photographs at least for those pieces where one species of deer or monkey is compared to another, and the layperson does not really know the difference between these.

In all other respects, The Sprint of the Blackbuck makes for excellent reading and will open your mind to thinking of the environment and conservation efforts in a more inclusive manner.

apu Other Social issues in India, The Literary life

While I work on a book review to be put up here soon, do have a look at these two recent posts, both up on the Women’s Web blog.

Strangely, both were inspired by events on Twitter, where I am spending some time to maintain the Women’s Web profile. The first was on an incident of under-age driving - when popular blogger Kiruba tweeted about letting his under-10 year olds drive. The second is really close to my heart; it’s about the abuse thrown at women who dare to be visible in public - do have a look, and if you are on twitter, FB or social media, please show your support in any way you can.

In other news, Women’s Web has completed a year. Strangely enough, there was no specific launch date, although the first bunch of articles went up early April 2010. Work has been so busy that I never even realised that a year was up until the end of April! It’s been a challenging year - a year of finding out how little I know about running an online publication - but it’s been extremely exciting too, and I wouldn’t have given up the experience for anything!

apu Other Social issues in India, Women & Feminism

This post has been written for the Child Sexual Abuse Awareness Campaign - please check it out; this review includes some spoilers though I’ve tried my best not divulge plot details.

When I received the copy of HUSH that I had ordered online, at first, it seemed like there was more packaging material than book. HUSH is a slim book indeed, but weighty nonetheless. A graphic novel that takes on a troubling and uncomfortable subject that most people would prefer not to think about - child sexual abuse.

With absolutely no text, and very few images, this graphic novel by Pratheek Thomas and Rajiv Eipe tells the story of a girl in a seemingly normal urban family, which really isn’t normal at all. While I am not going to divulge the details of the story, suffice to say that the book makes a strong impression. A couple of things stood out for me.

One was the helplessness of children - not just in the context of abuse but in general. For adults who have the care of children, I can understand how frustrating their behaviour can sometimes be - the yelling, the tantrums, the way they sometimes can embarrass parents - and yet, how frustrating must it be for a child to constantly be told not to do something or not follow all their natural instincts. (This post - “Respect” is worth reading in that context). In one of the panels in HUSH, a little girl cowers in the Principal’s room, and while I don’t think it was meant to indicate sexual abuse, the question of power and the use of fear to control children loomed large. If we teach children to fear adults and that good behaviour always means saying Yes, how can we teach them at the same time to say No?

A while after reading the book, another thing that really stays in the mind is the vivid expressiveness of all the characters’ faces in the book - and especially, of the anger that an abused child feels. HUSH does its close-ups superbly; in fact, in many places, it feels uncomfortable, as though one is personally part of a system that has failed this child - such is the anger in her eyes that glare at you.

Which can only be a good thing - it’s time more of us took responsibility for looking out for children we come in contact with, and not necessarily only one’s own kids.

apu Other Social issues in India, The Literary life

Since moving to Chennai, we have had an abundance of bird-sighting. The area that we are living in is on the fringes of the city; there are still open lands here and coconut and banana groves. There is a lake fairly close by, plus marshlands, which support over a 100 species of birds. Standing on the terrace of our house or on our little street, I have in the last 15 days already sighted chestnut-headed bee-eaters, white-breasted kingfishers, a rufous treepie, purple sunbirds, ashy prinias, the Indian pond heron and a few other species that I haven’t identified yet - besides mynas, doves, bulbuls and of course, crows!

A large plot of land next to our house is lying vacant and this is is a haven for many of the smaller species. It has already been identified for building by a flat developer. I can’t help feeling sad about this, and indeed, many of us love to wax eloquent about the forests being destroyed for development, ecosystems being wiped out and so on - but what we do not realise is that the ecosystem does not exist in a remote forest comfortably away from us. Our backyards and cities are also part of an ecosystem and we are all complicit in driving away every other species from it except - homo sapiens.

We are the ones who buy the flats - for which the land is cleared.

We are the ones who use mobile phones - and their towers that drive birds away.

We are the ones that want a ‘lakeside’ property - where access is denied to fishermen who have used the lake for generations because we don’t want ‘outsiders’, especially poorly dressed ones, in ‘our’ neighbourhood.

And we are the ones breeding in numbers our country cannot sustain. Yes, you and me, netizens may protest that we don’t have more than 2 kids each, but even then, ours will be the kids that eat more processed food, use and throw electronic items every year, want larger houses with more privacy for everyone and 24 hour ACs to shut out the heat - in short, consume energy and resources like an American does today.

Those metals and minerals have to come from somewhere, don’t they? And while we protest the jungles being cleared for the bauxite mining and the coal plant, we can’t live without the things they make! We protest the process, but clamour for its results. Most politicians know this, which is why no one (ok, make that few, out of some respect for Jairam Ramesh) takes environmental objections seriously.

I don’t know really what the solution is. Live more simply, yes - but easier said than done? Honestly, it is difficult to weigh the consequences of each and every small decision. Should I gift this friend’s child yet another cheap plastic china-made toy made probably with toxic materials? Or an ‘authentic’ wooden toy that still needed some part of a tree? Or is there something more sustainable? Do I need one more outfit? If I were to be absolutely honest, I ‘need’ very little of what I have. Yet, it is all very exhausting and rarely do I continue this chain of thought to any logical end.

I did buy recently Ramachandra Guha’s ‘How much should a person consume‘, and I’m hoping that it will set me thinking a little more deeply on the subject and perhaps act on it, even if in my own small way.

What do you think? How much should a person really consume?

apu Other Social issues in India

Shouldn’t the planners of a syllabus think of what ought to be done to ensure that a student who passes the 10^th grade knows the basics of a subject that he/she opts for in college? Why not make teachers accountable? No one questions a child’s right to education but is our education translating into knowledge of the right kind?

Over a Women’s Web, a lovely post on our educational system and what it is doing for students. Thank you, Hip Grandma!

apu Other Social issues in India