A fresh take on Environment

Ped Ka Pata

Sushil Shukla 

Images: Taposhi Ghoshal 

Price: 100/-

Pages: 26

First Published: 2025

Published By: Jugnu / Ektara

ISBN: 9788197063831

Thanks to Sushil bhai / Ektara for creating this book, and, of course, for sending it across.

This is a book which made me stop, think and reread. A book that took me back to the days of engaging actively on Environment Education. 

It is with this lens of Environment Sensitivity, Sensibility that I jot these lines - random thoughts - on the book. I refrain from getting into semantics and use Environment Education for environment awareness or nature sensitisation or wildlife education or sustainability education or simply conversations and thoughts on the Environment.

A lot in Environment Education has been by way of telling others what not to do. This book turns the approach upside down. The pieces (for lack of a better word) in this book are tales of people (nameless, and placeless) talking about themselves. These non-didactic tales make us introspect. As I flipped the pages I came across lines that had me exclaim - how did I not think of this!

The Environment here is not about exotic species but what surrounds us, shadows, wind, dreams, night, neighbours and other people, and else. It is about us, our lives, and not about protection of a threatened species. The species mentioned are those a reader would encounter in course of day-to-day life. The book looks beyond statistics, glamour, headlines, comparisons, sloganeering, and moral preaching. It talks about milkman, cycle, letters; it focuses on that which is around and not what is aspirational or in vogue. 

While the pieces are laden with metaphors and the readers have a clear role to play in their interpretation, the book also suggests that we need to respect the intelligence of the children, listen to them, encourage them to question far more than we are doing. It is generously peppered with lines that defy convention; the ghost is sensitive while the snake is feared more when it is not around.

Let me walk you through a few of the pieces. 

I begin with the first piece. It ends with a question, “Why do we scold the one who paints the sun in green but not the one who cuts green trees to make furniture?” It questions the existing paradigm. It asks us to look at our lifestyles and the contradictions we carry within, with a critic’s lens. It reminds us that the world has undergone immense changes during the past few decades and questions whether Environment Education has kept pace with the changes to stay relevant!

The piece on cow took me to a conversation I was a part of, many moons ago. The question, then, was, “Which cow gives milk happily?”. Quickly followed by, “And, if no cow does, why do the textbooks, from a very young age, lie to us?” The piece also took me to a recent conversation with a friend, on, also the title of his recently released book, The Grammar of Greed. I wondered if there could be a better example befitting the title of his book or a more succinct way to convey how not to approach Environment Education? 

Seth Aur Uska Aadmi talks about class, and caste, it questions whether we are any different from the time when a poor person would ‘fan’ a rich person. Today, our fans rotate on the labour, sacrifices of the underprivileged, the unheard. Only, we have dressed it up. How many of us have wondered why electricity is generated far from where we live? How invigorating would it be to take this piece to the children - to engage with them, to challenge them, to listen to their views! The piece took me to another conversation, again from many moons ago, on the then ongoing debate focusing on the dams coming up in Arunachal Pradesh. “How our forests, homes and lives are destroyed so that people sitting in Dilli can enjoy electricity 24 * 7 in their homes and run their clean energy buses!” 

The piece on darkness talks about how sounds become prominent in the dark, how it is increasingly becoming uncommon for us to encounter darkness, our fear of night - a phenomenon which occurs each day! It reminds us that darkness is a part of our environment. It touches upon the aesthetics of darkness. It also took me to a book on darkness that I have recently enjoyed reading. 

The piece on mangoes very thoughtfully brings together fruits and neighbours (friends), crucial components of our environment. So many of us associate bombs with Pakistan, how may of us are aware that India imports mangoes from Pakistan? That the Chausas we savour could have come from Pakistan? Mangoes from Pakistan are compared to a friend’s letter. It questions our awareness of the people around us? Our neighbours, our neighbourhood? Our willingness to know more about them? It nudges us to tilt towards the positive. It also reminded me of Piyush Mishra’s Husna. 

Finally the piece bearing the same title as the book brings forth how far we have come from a world, a time, when trees dwarfed homes and, more importantly, were indispensable as landmarks. Then, we not only remembered the different species when we were on the move but also associated closely with the ones near our homes. We were in awe of them. Incidentally I write this a day after paying respects to the massive Banyan at the Hanuman temple on what was the Khirkiya Ghat (Banaras). It would then have helped people locate the temple, it majestically stands next to, as also the ghat itself. Today, with all the “development” around it, strangling it, and the ghat itself renamed, the Banyan, to put it politely, has taken a backseat. Not unlike Environment that has taken a backseat in our lives!

The author in a conversation, states that we need a new idiom to talk about the Environment. This appears to be his attempt, his walking the talk. Reading, and rereading, the pieces I wondered how the book would pan out for the adults? the children? and if they interpreted it together?