T.R. Shankar Raman - The Wild Heart of India

One of the penalties of an ecological education is that one lives alone in a world of wounds. Much of the damage inflicted on land is quite invisible to laymen. An ecologist must either harden his shell and make believe that the consequences of science are none of his business, or he must be the doctor who sees the marks of death in a community that believes itself well and does not want to be told otherwise.

Nature, some people believe, is something out there, in forests or far wildernesses, separate from the dwelling or presence of humans. The book you hold in your hand is an attempt to dispel, or at least blur, such a sharp separation between people and nature. From city park to savanna, roadside to rainforest, and ocean bed to mountaintop, nature thrives and throbs around you, inseparable, omnipresent. It both envelops you and forms a part of who you are. You only have to open your senses to nature to perceive its eternal dance of life, death, and renewal, and participate in its shimmering wonder.

Such perception and participation carries both risk and responsibility. The risk, as Aldo Leopold noted presciently, comes when an ecological education opens your eyes to a wounded world: A world whose forests are stripped for timber and commodity plantations, whose earth is submerged by dams and gouged by mines. A world paved and polluted, increasingly defined and defiled by metal, mortar, and money. The sense of responsibility emerges from the awareness that the science of ecology (a word originating from the Greek oikos, dwelling place) concerns the science of home. As befitting a science of home, ecologys core concerns are relationships: life in relation to the environment, people in relation to planet. It is a science that traces connections, from one living organism to another, from sunlight through plant to predator, from humans to earth and landscape. Ecology, perhaps the most important science of the present century, also impels a curative response. It elicits a creative mission to retain the integrity of home, to heal the world of wounds, and restore relationships between people and place.

This collection of essays describes experiences and perspectives gained in wildly varied landscapes and waterscapes, from city and countryside to ocean and deep forest. Written over a period of 25 years, more than half my lifetime, these essays trace my own trajectory of learning about, engaging with, and reflecting on nature. They chart my journey from young student and naturalist in Chennai, through my training in wildlife science and ecology in Dehradun and Bengaluru, to my present life as a conservation scientist and writer working out of my home and field research station in the Anamalai Hills in southern India. Most of these essays emerged from journeys and field experiences with Divya Mudappa, wildlife biologist and fellow traveller into the wild heart of India. Journeying with Divya has always been an enriching experience of witnessing, photographing, and forming impressions, images, and ideas that finally found expression in these words. I co-authored 10 essays (or their earlier versions) with her, but most of the others, too, are from our time in the field together: out of a memorable encounter, an extended conversation, a close observation, a shared silence.

The essays in this collection are divided into three parts; each may appeal to readers whose inclinations and interests in nature take different shapes: those captivated by the lure and challenge of field observation and experience; those driven by a passion to conserve nature and wildness; and those trying to understand our place and role in nature in a rapidly changing world. I hope that these essays will resonate with you, reader, irrespective of where you live or why nature interests you.

The first part, , recounts things that I learnt or impressions I gained in the field that travellers, students of ecology, or observers of natural history may perhaps experience themselves. This part conveys varied experiences in the field that lasted a few hours or days to nearly three full years of research in forested mountains.