Wild Heart of India

Wild-untamed, hostile, remote. Yet, wild can be gentle, welcoming, and inspiring too. This is the wild that preoccupies biologist Shankar Raman as he writes about trees and bamboos, hornbills and elephants, leopards and myriad other species. Species found not just out there in far wildernesses-from the Thar desert to the Kalakad rainforests, from Narcondam Island to Namdapha-but amid us in gardens and cities, in farms, along roadsides. And he writes about the forces that gouge land and disfigure landscapes, rip trees and shred forests, pollute rivers and contaminate the air, slaughter animals along roads and rail tracks-impelling a motivation to care, and to conserve nature. Through this collection of essays, Shankar Raman attempts to blur, if not dispel, the sharp separation between humans and nature, to lead you to discover that the wild heart of India beats in your chest too.

T.R. Shankar Raman (aka Sridhar) is a constant wanderer with a miserable sense of direction. And yet, having a sense of direction is only important if you have a destination in mind. Which is why, even though he rarely knows where he is, he is seldom lost. When he is not doing field research on forest ecology or mulling over environmental issues, you can find him walking in the rainforests watching birds and trees, or with his nose in a book. Living in the Anamalai Hills, he is part of a team stitching together fragmented rainforests-one sapling at a time, year upon year upon decade. After he is done plucking the leeches from his ankles and dusting the earth from his fingers, he writes. He writes from his varied experiences in natural history, in conservation practice, in directionless wandering. His reflective essays are born of a conviction that there remains a space for quiet yet insistent voices making a case for immersive and deeper perceptions of nature and our place in it. Shankar Raman works as a scientist with the Nature Conservation Foundation (www.ncf-india.org) and is the author of numerous academic papers, book chapters, blog posts, and creative nonfiction essays and articles for newspapers and magazines. His partner Divya Mudappa and he lead a long-term rainforest conservation and restoration programme from a field research station in the Anamalai Hills. Their home in the mountains is visited by neighbourly leopards and temperamental housecats.