yet again ... getting lost ... then enjoying self-discovery ...

Livelihoods for Conservation: Some Questions This piece was published on The Citizen on 8 th March here. Thanks are due to The Citizen, Gayeti and Aishwarya. The initial session brought out the need for data collection from and patrolling in the landscape. As the participants ( stakeholders to sustainable action in the landscape ) opened up, significant proportion of the discussions focused on livelihoods. This was in course of a workshop organized to help put in place a long-term plan for wildlife conservation in the landscape ; a conservation priority area located in the seven sisters region. The workshop provided the much needed platform for stakeholders ( from diverse social, economical and professional backgrounds ) to not only put forth their views but also engage on the topic with others. As the deliberations began one was left wondering why all livelihood enhancing activities were taken to be of help to conservation; in other words as strengthening conserva...

This article finds place in Teacher Plus’ March 2017 issue here . It first appeared in Firstpost on October 18, 2016 here . Thanks are due to Teacher Plus and First Post. Reimagining Environment One of the plenary speakers at a recently held conference on Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) in Ahmedabad highlighted the need for Environment Education (EE) to be political. EE had been away from politics for long, and this she said had rendered it weak. Participants were quick to raise questions on the risks this could pose of complicating the issue further, especially given the ability of the facilitators to deliberate on such topics. The speaker’s response was unambiguous. On the one hand, students today have access to a lot of information – from the Internet and other sources. On the other, the onus lies on the facilitators to upgrade their skills and communicate issues responsibly. In other words, not talking about the topics is neither an opt...

The wild is in us not them Thanks are due to The Citizen, Gayeti and Aishwarya. This piece finds place on The Citizen here . At the Hyderabad Zoo with friends recently one was shocked to hear them introducing mammals to their kids; each reference was from characters in animated Disney films. Films made in another continent, speaking a language different from that which the kids spoke at home and presumably not made with Indian kids as the primary audience. There was neither a single mention of species that find place in our ever alive mythologies nor of those mentioned in their school text books or story books. No mammal, except the lion, was identified as being part of the state. Eavesdropping on conversations of other families during the trip, and speaking to others after the trip, confirmed the fears. This was possibly how a majority of our urban house-holds perceive forests and wildlife. Sheer disconnect of the urban population from a part of its cultural herita...

This finds place in Teacher Plus’ February 2017 edition. The piece on their website here and the unedited post on the blog here . Thanks are due to the teams at Teacher Plus and Centre for Experiential Education and co-participants. Co-creating Experiences Experiential Education Conclave is an annual gathering that provides opportunity to learn of the topic and interact with others exploring it. During the recent weeks as I saw fliers and then images of the 3rd edition at Gurugram I recalled with fondness the event I had attended a year ago. Going down memory lane During his session, ‘Pains in Practice of Experiential Education’, it was interesting to observe how Vishwas Parchure noticed a frame on the wall depicting multiple knots and used that observation effectively. We were asked to select a knot from the frame we identified most with. I was confused as all knots appeared the same to me. We then discussed the proverbial knots in our li...

Matchless Years ago, in school, the English teacher had asked us to give an example of perseverance. The idea was to determine if we understood the term correctly. After some confusion, taking cue from the history class of the previous week, I had said Ghazni; it was a while before I realized why she had declared the answer incorrect. Today, to the same question, I would in a flash say Federer and, I understand, there is little chance that a teacher would disagree. How has he been able to come back after being written off? After not playing for few months at 35 when winning a few matches is tough task, forget winning a major? A lot about Federer cannot be easily explained. This includes support and love of fans. The support he got during 2014 and 2015 losses to Djokovic in the Wimbledon finals, for example, would have few parallels, especially for someone who is not a local. To Australia and Nadal’s credit the support was not as tilted in Federer’s favour during the A...

Jashn E Deccan, festive indeed Mumi asked if this December too the music festival we had been to, during the previous year, at the outskirts of town was being organized. Some days later we came across the flier for the 2 nd edition of the Jashn E Deccan and, as they say, blocked the dates.   During the previous edition Pandit Biswajit Roy Choudhury, one of the artists, had beautifully described event as, ‘ Everything here is so beautifully unconventional ’. Ustad Abdul Rashid Khan’s performance at the event unfortunately turned out to be his final performance; that evening at the age of 108 he had stunned all present and for me redefined few terms.   This year’s edition, held at the same venue, Sreenidhi International School , had performances by 6 artists spread across 2 evenings. Pandit Uday Bhawalkar began the proceedings with Raag Yaman and moved on to Raag Shivranjani. Seeing him perform I recalled Piyush Mishra state that an artist had to enjoy his perfo...

After my first experience at the Jaipur Literature Festival ( 2017 edition ) a friend called and asked if it was about fun ( read food ), glamour ( read wardrobe ) or books ( read buying, reading, knowing, listening to and interacting with authors ). It is about all of this and more, you need to savour the experience once, get a feel of the scale and fervour, and develop your own understanding of the festival. A friend says we are a nation of melas, and this is a wonderful one! Not very easy to choose favourites in such scenario but if I had to pick two threads it would be the books on history and one liners. It was story-telling at its finest and changed the way I understood history could be discussed. Suzannah Lipscomb talked of ‘The lovers who changed history’ and Giles Milton of ‘The spice trader who changed history’. The later, to quote William Dalrymple, “a master class in history”. What I share (and discuss) below are one-liners that I came across and that stayed...