It’s a BIG book - 700+ pages & the first question you have after reading the book is the question, Is she a botanist? And the answer to that is No, which is more fascinating because I haven’t learnt so much about plants before reading this book.
2 large sections of the book are about Goethe & Linnaeus - both are philosophical botanists, and their way of looking at plants as a whole and not as a specimen or a classification. I got the philosophy but I found the whole thing a bit long and arduous to read. Yes, it brought out the 19th century poet's obsession with plants and how he looked at every individual plant or leaf as one leaf and not as a shrub. With drawings he explains that the same plants growing in 2 different places will grow differently. One growing under the shade of a tree and the other in the open.
I could relate to it especially my new connection to sustainability and visiting our farm in Solan. Also reading about cultivation & farming and talking about it in the climate challenge, hearing stories about people who have left their corporate job and then started farming and in the process how they connected to the earth / soil. How they are trying to lead a slow life which looks deeply & lives mindfully.
The central premise of the book is interdependence between beings - humans, forests, animals (biodiversity). How we existed so peacefully and in balance with nature and how that balance was disturbed by science, development & I guess by greed / desire to control everything and understand everything so we can use it to our advantage.
Growing up in the 70's / 80’s & even early 90’s we were still living in an Indian way - our food habits, thinking was balanced. I always referred to baba’s generation as a generation of scarcity and our current generation a generation of too many choices. While I also enjoyed the hyper choice & the blinkered view of ‘focusing on discount’ and less on the question ‘do we really need the t-shirt, in the last 5 years I stopped buying and kept only what I need and not what I can afford.
Reading the book also gives a small peak into Meghalaya culture / traditions and tribal life and their beautiful & musical connection to earth. Come to think of it - this may be the first book I have read on North East, the only other author I recollect is Anjum Hassan which was a decade back I think. There is so much less written about the North - Eastern part of India that it is an enigma to many of us.
I can also connect to my Assam days where solutions to all health ailments were found in plants, shrubs, seeds, fruits grown around. In fact just a few days back I was telling my cousin if she can send me some dried thankuni leaves which are very good for the stomach and she said they are not available & grown in our homes. We have migrated to artificial and manufactured medicines which have side effects. (Found this interesting article Thankuni - Health Benefits, Uses and Important Facts https://www.potsandpans.in/blogs/articles/thankuni-health-benefits-uses-and-important-facts - Was pleasantly surprised that someone wrote about this obscure plant)
Read the book to re-establish your trust in nature.
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