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Showing posts from July, 2017

Conservation Education : An exercise in planning

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A year since the fun time at Manas with friends and rains share of the planning workshop.  The paper presented at CEE Amdavad -  here .  Education for change - online version - here  and  print version - here .  The text here talks of the same event albeit using a different tone and lens.  Thanks are due to all the participants and Aaranyak.  Should we, should we not, we discussed, and then suddenly, one by one, in a file, most of the participants walked out. Out towards the gushing river, amidst the deafening rains, with water all around us, including in the paddy fields. Later during the evening they would return to the paddy fields to listen to the symphony played by frogs. Earlier during the day the participants had gone spotting birds and the list included the Bengal Florican! They had come together to deliberate on a plausible and realistic plan for conservation education (CE) in the Manas Landscape, Assam. A long-term plan that was sensitive to the complexiti

Soul and the City

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Exploring Green Patches in Urban Areas. Published in Spectrum – Deccan Herald on 4th July, 2017. Thanks are due to the team at Decccan Herald. The piece on their website here . Unedited text below. I listened to the sound of tyres caressing sand. The music as if changed tunes with the strength I put into my pedaling and thickness of the sand layer. In the silence of a winter afternoon these tunes went in sync with the gentle slopes the cycle manoeuvred and every once in a while, as the tyres hit a stone or a fallen branch, got happily disrupted. As I paused near a bend in the path I listen to undesigned and welcome sounds, of bamboo bending to touch another bamboo and a squirrel moving over leaves resting on ground. I was in the heart of one of our metros and savouring one of our larger University campuses. My exposure to the campus began with walks along the black roads and over the weeks I moved along the brown paths as well. Trees touched these roads and pat