Sahyadrica

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 gl...

  Returning to the roots, the book sits along one of the many rivers it journeys with, Banjar On February 1, 2025, Our Roots Run Wild, a book of the history of the highlands of Central India, was published by The Alcove Publishers of New Delhi. Released at a small non-event at the New Delhi World Book Fair where I felt too embarrassed to talk or sign the book, it marked the day the book became available as paperback and e-book, primarily on Amazon India. This is a short three-part series on the writing journey of this book that I let consume me. In 2016, I started writing a longform essay hoping to publish it as a booklet of my experiences working in Madhya Pradesh, particularly in the region of Balaghat, Mandla, and Seoni districts. Working on the issues deemed important for wildlife conservation – particularly of large wild mammals – had put me in touch with the grassroots quite intimately. I worked not only for but also with the local communities, the Baiga folk, in particular...

Snakes and ladders: the race to curb snakebite mortalities in Central India This longform article covers roughly 150 years of research into snakebite mortalities, snake envenomation, and the reasons of snakebite-related deaths in central Indian states of Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh – known to have among the highest death rate in India, majorly because of lack of effective medical care/availability of antivenom, treatment of resulting complications, time taken to reach healthcare centres, and beliefs in traditional antidotes. It also discusses the large gap in monitoring the mortalities and how researchers are innovating medical, ecological, and taxonomic studies of snakes and snakebite envenomation, tied in with my experiences of snake rescue and snake awareness in and around Kanha Tiger Reserve. This article is a part of a book on Central India, titled Our Roots Run Wild. It is available on Amazon India:  https://amzn.in/d/cvF8d60

This long-form article covers roughly 500 years of history of wild Asian elephants in the central Indian highlands – a history that is still being written. It is an excerpt of a larger piece on central India I am working on. Given the recent happenings on wild elephants in India – and particularly central India – it is time we revisited our history to see how far we have come and where we’re headed. No Country For Wild Elephants That is no country for old men. The young In one another's arms, birds in the trees – Those dying generations – at their song, The salmon‐falls, the mackerel‐crowded seas, Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. Caught in that sensual music all neglect Monuments of unageing intellect. -- Sailing to Byzantium (1928) by William Butler Yeats This article is a part of a book on Central India, titled Our Roots Run Wild. It is available on Amazon India:  https://amzn.in/d/cvF8d60

It does not take long for a murmuring river to turn into a raging cascade, yet it is no match to the prowess of the tall terraces of northern Western Ghats. The rapids are strong to make crossing the river difficult, but not enough to complete the journey to the foot of the mountain. It falls, only to rise in countless little fractions of its former self as mist, dancing to the tune of the winds orchestrated by the mountains themselves. It is only when the waters rage on, fueled by the south-west monsoons, do they spill down the amber facades of the Ghats, touching their feet as they reform their ancestral channels. Walking the leopard's path, with an inverted waterfall to the left, and other two forming Kalu river downhill The range officer pointed to a high precipice from where a river came crashing down, and he said, that’s where we’re headed. Under a shroud of torrential rains, we could glimpse at the full glory of the fall whenever the clouds dispersed. To the right of...