On the Book of Central India – Part II: The Doubt

With my Northeastern buddy the Horay-bellied Himalayan Squirrel relishing Arunachali oranges.

On July 7, 2013, a week after moving to Kanha, I journaled my observation on nature and human-nature interactions in Central India. My first ever memory is of an effervescent girl gently smacking a cow about to feed on someone’s backyard garden. With her brother in one arm, dressed in old school uniform, the barefooted girl led a line of cattle into the forest for grazing. This memory is as fresh as if it occurred only yesterday. She compelled me to look at myself, insecure and closed to the world – her world – shoed, full-sleeved, afraid of ants and mosquitoes, whatnot. That year, malaria, a millennia-old scourge of Central India, especially the hill regions, was particularly bad. Amidst this, from my cocoon, I romanticized the forest village life to my unadjusted unaccustomed infant eyes, and I imprinted on her, whom I ultimately followed, like cattle in a line, to see without rose-tinted glasses.

This was the start of my journaling on Central India, without a thought of ever bringing the pieces together. It was a way to observe and learn and write about – to keep a log of experiences I could relive again, a way of remembering, a way of visiting back in time even. I had been doing this for some time now, and is something I recommend anyone who works in the field of ecology and sociology (or any field) – write for yourself. This habit helped keep a tab on memories, something to help a forgetful mind. While very little made it into the book, it helped set the narrative as crucial pieces of stories documented first-hand.

As a naturalist, I struggle with stopping my emotions flow into my writing. When I started writing the book during the monsoon of 2016, I realised that this peoples’ and a land’s story would also be personal, much like how I write my blogs. I aimed to achieve it by leaving in traces that I was discovering things at the same time as the reader, which is why most of the book is in present-tense, even the bits when I quote someone’s words from a century ago, and only those that are already in my past, like the way the story began, is in past-tense, to bring you up to speed with the journey.

All this came much later. As I brought the story together, it was without direction. I started because of the safe space I found at my workplace and home. It was through support, love, and passion, shared with family and friends and colleagues, but where it headed was beyond my capacity at the time. It was a time when I was preparing for PhD entrances, when my writing was full of doubts as I couldn’t clear one exam after another, creating hurdles and planting a seed of doubt in my mind: is this worth it?

It’s not like I was writing a new story. It was something that had been said before, some things – several of them – in a better way. Was it worth bringing so many stories together? It was overwhelming, and the imposter syndrome struck. As I read more and more, I figured that history is a curious subject. The lesser studied aspect, though not unknown, was the relationship of two narratives, the ecological and the cultural. Many of central India’s works fit into the two narratives. This was best demonstrated by Verrier Elwin and Dunbar Brander, both speak of the same landscape just 16 years apart in vastly different narratives – one blames the British for destroying the hunting culture of the indigenous peoples and the other blames the poisoned arrows for the decimation of wildlife. The post-independence narratives continued like this, with many anthropological and ecological (mostly pertaining to large mammals or feats of elite conservationists) accounts being published on Central India. The other learning was that while history is cast in stone, it is easily forgotten, it sometimes repeats, and every perspective of it is different. As I started writing, I believed that in bringing two narratives together, I had a perspective that is not commonly combined, at least non-academically.

Writing, doing odd projects to keep an income coming, failing to secure a PhD, and second-thoughting – reconsidering – this decision, was haunting. Writer’s block, imposter syndrome, and laziness, all lashed as irregular irrational waves, but letting emotions flow into the narrative helped sooth the nerves. I intentionally keep this aspect raw as the old colonial writers like Forsyth did, but what helped me keep the focus off the I – as the first-person narrator – was to rely on the influences around me. The chapter entirely dedicated to the past and present of hunting in Central India, for example, was carried forward by Sarah Schachner’s score for the movie Prey (2022). The rhythm, the instruments, the story, all reminded me of the Baiga, to whom I owe this book. The chapter on seasons in the wilderness was inspired by sitting under a tree for a year (not all the time, of course), which I had the pleasure of reimagining. After failing a PhD interview, I was even more determined to write. Making the trees talk to me helped me sail through.

All of these features may seem extra. Do they carry the story forward, or do they slow it down? That depends on the reader. When I saw the book in hand for the first time, just a week before it was released, I realised that I should have done my homework about the length of a book. The first draft ran at 500,000 words. A few publishers who took an initial interest in the proposal refrained from considering it – discussed in the third part. I was completely oblivious to the length of the book, but going by the way I used to write, usually longform articles on Sahyadrica, I did not heed the count till I faced the publishers. While it comes down to the author to present a story – a history, no less – in crisp words, I took the route of quoting most of the historic and contemporary writers verbatim, wherever copyright permitted, so as to preserve not only their voice (or style of writing) but also their thoughts laying bare the context to the history I speak of in the present.

This was especially important, I believed, in presenting a history of a people and their land, where most of a peoples’ own record was scribed by others, usually the British and mostly Indian academics. These words needed to be presented as is because it is through these words that we hear about the historic life of central India’s first peoples. This, I think, justifies the reason for quoting the writers, and interacting with what they observed in our past with what we observe in our present. I wanted to present how Forsyth saw a group of Gond men dabbing vermillion on coal as they ventured into the coalmine to hammer the rock. I wanted to present how Elwin saw a band of hunters disappear into the deep sal forest of Maikal hills. Turning their expressions into my own words would have been an injustice not to the writers but the people and their land, the main focus of the history.

I decided to make-do with the size of the story solely on this term, that it needs to be told in the words of the respective people who were and are a part of Central India, but not without criticism. Far too long has the history of Central India been against criticism. Literaty Central India has always had its focus on its grandeur – its forests, its forest villages, its royal lineages, its shikar stories. In the modern times, people romance these things, mostly by staying at resorts mimicking the erstwhile princely palaces, only that a camera has now replaced a gun, many books have romanced Central India without its historic context. Forsyth is perhaps the most romanced, because of his book introducing this piece of land to the world, but in doing so he has, including many others, also shown the stereotypical racist and bigoted outlook the British held for the indigenous peoples. To call them out was one of the reasons why I wanted to write this book.

That Central India is romantic, but not without its deep history of blood, sweat, and tears of its tribal and other forest-dwelling folks, is the reason why this book exists, as much as I myself romance the natural heritage of this peoples’ land.

Even as I elaborate on my writing experience and ideas, I realise that the very size of the book may discourage many from reading it. And why I put this in writing is simply to get these thoughts documented so that I reflect upon it, whether or not I write another book.

The manuscript ready, I began the most dreaded and long process of editing. If you are a reader of Sahyadrica, you probably know that I’m bad at rereading and editing. This manuscript was no different. It was full of repeating quotes, circular narratives, abrupt beginnings and endings, whatnot. Much of the editing nightmare I discuss in the third part, but to address the self-doubt that I worked with, it has stayed on as restlessness. They say to suffer the doubt is probably more normal than to be content with the finished product but it’s not a pleasant feeling.

The book is available on the publisher’s website: https://thealcovepublishers.com/product/our-roots-run-wild/

It is available on Amazon India: https://amzn.in/d/7FZNOEs