Nature Stories
The Land of The
Setting Sun and Other Nature Tales
Arefa Tehsin and Raza
H Tehsin
TERI
2014
Stories and authors.
Last month a friend
shared of selecting books as gifts for younger ones. The month before an
acquaintance had mentioned reading being on the rise, especially those aged ten
and around. Books like The Land of The Setting Sun and Other Nature Tales
surely encourage reading and warrant gifting; not only for the younger ones but
also for their parents. It is of interest to those interested in wildlife and will
appeal to those not keen on wildlife as well; this proverbial ‘preaching beyond
the choir’ is much welcome today.
There is a need to
take us closer to wildlife especially today when perhaps more of us are
dis-connected from nature than previously in recorded history. Stories harbor
immense potential to re-connect us. All the more in a culture like ours where
story- telling transcends history and mythology! As Janet Litherland states ‘Stories
have power. They delight, enchant, touch, teach, recall, inspire, motivate,
challenge. They help us understand. They imprint a picture on our minds. Want
to make a point or raise an issue? Tell a story’.
This is the first
book I read by Arefa Tehsin
and it leaves me keen to read up others she has penned. Raza
H Tehsin I became a fan of – a while ago - after I laid my
hands on a bunch of old issues of Journal of Bombay Natural History Society.
His notes on wildlife in south Rajasthan I recall reading more than once. They
were far livelier and richer than others that gave them company in the, now
yellowed with age, pages.
Some observations
Fiction and natural
history show good team-work to entice the reader to move to the next page. They
are woven in a reader-friendly fashion and also leave her (or him) happily more aware at the end.
Species like ratel,
pangolin, hyena are discussed which makes the book all the more interesting in
a scenario of overdose of books on tigers and elephants. Increasingly less and
less of us have seen these species or even heard of them.
Two issues I have
with books on similar lines are that of the language not being simple enough
and text being cluttered with latin (or scientific)
names. Both help the reader disconnect. This book carries neither baggage.
In a milieu where
hope is a species not frequently sighted each of the eight stories ends on a
positive and hopeful note. Espousing hope is pertinent to encourage young ones,
and those not so young, to join the journey with nature.
Couple of lines each, on
four of the eight stories.
The Six Riddles
is a very touching story of a school going boy who has lost his father in
recent times. It also makes us aware to the ecology of scorpion. I am, in any
case, biased towards grand-mother stories.
The Owl-man Coin
tells of how we can teach the younger ones, to let them face the situation and
learn on their own – which is real and pertinent learning. And also enough
credit is given to the school going boy – ‘he
knows this is the best teacher he can get’. If we want to share learning
with or pass on messages to younger ones this is how we could do it best.
Preaching seldom works.
The One thousandth
Cheetah is a fascinating imagination of a cheetah living
from the times of Emperor Akbar, when he was one of those captured to help royal
hunts, to 1948 when he was shot - the last recorded cheetah in India. It also
paints a real picture of the school students by bringing out how two of them do
not get along well.
The Steeds of Witches
tells us of hyenas, their interactions with families and other species (dholes). I loved how a learning of life
seeped within the interactions: ‘all of
nature’s creatures are different, and that is the beauty of life’. Book is
as pertinent for the parents as it is for their children.
Why this line
A line in the
author’s note which states ‘one should
not try hitting monkeys with catapults as they would come chasing us’ had
me wondering. Isn’t the idea to NOT cause any harm to any species without any
rhyme or reason? In other words we should in no way hit wildlife species even
if they would not chase us.
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