Thursday, June 08, 2023

Where the crawdads sing

It’s a beautiful story which follows an abandoned yet defiant girl, Kya, who raises herself to adulthood in a North Carolina marshland, becoming a naturalist in the process. 

The storyline of Kya growing up in a marshland all on her own, observing birds & animals, noting and drawing them or collecting feathers, shells which line up her house in marshes echoed with my vision of learning. 

One of the main reasons for sending my children to Rishi Valley school was to be surrounded by nature - not as exotic as the marshlands of Carolina 🙂 but equally interesting with all kinds of birds & reptiles around them. 

What I liked is the power of observation and deep observation over a period of time which was the natural thing most of my earlier generations did and survived on. They could predict natural phenomena like rain or ripening of fruits or crop yield just by observing weather patterns. Our understanding of nature came from living with it. As we moved to the city we moved completely away from nature & got detached from the soil. 

The movie is also classified as a murder mystery which runs parallel to Kya’s journey - there is a beautiful twist which came as a surprise to many of us. After seeing one goes away thinking it’s a true story. But it is not a true story but an adaptation of a bestselling book by the same name. 

But these 300 year old marshlands are in danger, see the video here (https://www.pbsnc.org/blogs/science/vanishing-north-carolina-wetlands/

Very similar to the mangroves in Andaman where few islands have already disappeared and many more will go down under if the sea level rises. 

Read this beautiful article on migrating birds at the edge of Mumbai & the danger they are facing due to over development. https://mumbai.citizenmatters.in/chanakya-wetlands-in-the-pink-or-on-the-brink-50727

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