Category: Comment

Historical fiction? Fictional history?

~ millennialmatriarchs ~ Leave a comment

I am game for anything historical—books, novels, movies, TV shows. I
have no education in history and so with all the books I read, the
past is a confused place for me, where I cannot begin to separate fact
from fantasy and fiction.

On the whole, I don’t have a problem with that. But last week, I
started reading a novel in the historical fiction genre, and maybe
because if was set in India, it jarred me terribly. And I now know
that I must be even more careful in what I think I know about the
past!

I did some little research into the genre itself, so that I could
understand what the parameters were:

Historical fiction is a literary genre in which the plot takes place
in a setting located in the past. It can be used in the context of
various types of narrative– including theatre, opera, cinema, and
television, as well as video games and graphic novels.

The definition of the ‘past’ is that it is set 50 or more years before
the author wrote the piece. Basically, the author should not have
first-hand experience of the period, and should rely on research for
an understanding of the time and events. Such works may tell stories
about actual historical people and events—or not.

They are however supposed to ‘capture the details of the time period
as accurately as possible for authenticity, including social norms,
manners, customs, and traditions.’

It is generally agreed that there are over 10 subgenres of Historical
Fiction. But there is not quite the same level of agreement on what
these are! One categorization goes:

·         Traditional Historical Fiction, characterized by a historically accurate plot

·         Multi-Period Epics, Series, and Sagas

·         Historical Romantic Fiction

·         Historical Western Fiction

·         Mysteries, Thrillers, and Adventure Novels set in the past

·         Time-Travel

·         Alternate Histories

·         Fantasy

·         Literary and Christian Novels
6F85A9DC-7D96-4917-A0A5-2E81E6F583FA

Ok, so what is all this a lead-up to? Well, my latest library read— ‘The Last Queen of India’, by well-known author Michelle Moran. I have read a few other works by her—‘Madam Tussaud’ and ‘Cleopatra’s
Daughter’.

This is NOT a review. It may even be a very unfair piece. Because I
stopped at page 50. It was really irritating. I know that Ms. Moran is
a conscientious writer, and moreover one who is married to a person of
Indian origin, and through that, does know India. And that the
publisher is a very reputed one. So it intrigues me more than ever why
the flavor just didn’t come out right.

Just a few things about the book about Rani Laxmibai, and hence
essentially set before 1857:

1.       A reference to yellow and orange carnations decking a local
temple: Very unlikely in MP of the mid-1800s. Maybe they meant
marigolds?

2.       A reference to a priest wearing a crown of neem leaves. I
have not met any priest ever wearing a crown of any leaves, and
definitely not neem leaves.

3.       A Kshatriya father runs a carpentry shop and does the
wood-working himself. Again, not sure how common that would be.

4.       The grandmother from a poor but seemingly once-upon-a-time
middle class family decides that they are very poor and
cannot afford to get the grand-daughter married. Her immediate
solution is to try to sell the girl to a temple to become a devadasi.
I don’t think that would have at all been the reaction!

5.       It would seem as if every little temple in every little town
had devadasis. The grandmother is bargaining with a temple priest of
an Annapoorna temple and says that if he does not agree to her terms,
she will take the girl down the street to another one which will offer
a better price.

6.       The price they agree on for the girl is Rs. 13,000. In today’s terms,
compounding at the rate of 4%, that would be Rs 1 crore. Does not
sound right (and yes, one of the things to be taken care of in
historical fiction is the time-value of money).

7.       The grandmother and the grand-daughters go to the mother’s
funeral pyre. I am pretty sure that it could not have been so. Up
until recently, women did not go to the ghats.

8.       The daughters, in mourning wore white for 13 days. I am not
aware of any such custom.

Quibbling? Nit-picking? Hair-splitting? When I should have focused on
the spirit of the book, the heroism of the principals, the writing,
the overall sense?

Maybe. But I find I cannot read if the little details intrude and
don’t ring true. And they didn’t!

–Meena

A Requiem for Lost Libraries

~ millennialmatriarchs ~ Leave a comment

Right through the last three months of lockdown the one ‘unlocking’ that I was looking forward to, was that of my local British library. The once-a-month visit to the library was an outing that I enjoyed, with its comfortable ritual of collecting the books to return; the short trip to reach the library; the leisurely browsing of shelves to select the next batch to issue, and the spending of some quiet time among fellow readers perusing the newspapers and magazines.

A couple of weeks ago I got a mail that this library was shutting down it physical space and transactions, and turning completely digital. Among the many changes that the world is seeing, and will see, in the age of Corona, this was one of the most upsetting changes for me.

As I have often shared in these columns (lately A Browser Laments) libraries and bookshops have sustained the bibliophile in me all through my life. These have been integral parts of my learning and becoming, and much more than a collection of books. As E B White, described much more eloquently than I can:

library shelves.jpg

“A library is many things. It’s a place to go, to get in out of the rain. It’s a place to go if you want to sit and think. But particularly it is a place where books live, and where you can get in touch with other people, and other thoughts, through books… A library is a good place to go when you feel bewildered or undecided, for there, in a book, you may have your questions answered. Books are good company, in sad times and happy times, for books are people — people who have managed to stay alive by hiding between the covers of a book.”

A library is not only a sanctuary, it is also an invitation to explorations that lead to serendipitous discoveries of new authors and titles. It is a place where the solid physicality of books creates the intellectual space to freely roam across historical ages, geographical boundaries, and labels of colour, language and identity.

The library has been the mainstay, the beacon, the support, and the sustenance for readers through history. Yet today, libraries themselves are in danger of becoming history. We are told that the library is being reinvented in the face of budget cuts, new technology, and changing needs. The age of internet has brought unimagined sources of information and knowledge at our fingertips. There is an increasing transformation to digital libraries.  To ‘browse’ has taken on an entirely new connotation.  The voyage of discovery is now marked by keywords–we reach for what we know to reach for. More than anything else this has transformed the library experience which was marked by a special sense of community into an individual and isolated exercise.

I mourn for these losses, as I apprehensively search for replacements.

–Mamata

Just Deserts

~ millennialmatriarchs ~ 1 Comment

I love deserts. Of all the ecosystems and landscapes, I have always felt the closest affinity to the desert. While I have trekked among hills and mountains, and have enjoyed the sea and seashore, it is the desert that makes me feel at once ‘at home’ as it were.

My introduction to the desert dates back many decades.

IMG_20200618_110730
Illustration CEE’s NatureScope India  Discovering Deserts 

As a young trekker I was a member of a group called the Delhi Mountaineering Association. One year, the mountaineers decide to descend from the mountains and explore a new terrain and undertake something that was hitherto unexplored. The result was the Desert Expedition—the first-ever attempt (then) to cross the Thar desert in Rajasthan on foot. Eight strangers (5 men and 3 women, including yours truly), sharing a common urge to explore and discover, came together to embark on a two-week journey that touched each of us in so many different ways, and left behind indelible memories.

The walk commenced from the little village of Sam, about 44 km from Jaisalmer. This is where I had my first sight of the dunes rising from a sea of sand in the morning sunlight–a curious composite of the ripples of the ocean with the majesty of the mountains. And from here walked, our motley band of adventurers; day after sunny day, dusty winds, clinging bhurats (prickly thorns). From the sand, through the unending vista of flat arid miles stretching to the horizon, stopping to quench our parched throats with mathira the juicy wild melons, and communing with our accompanying camels. The utterly comforting feel of sleeping on the sand, under the canopy of the Milky Way, lulled by the unbroken sounds of silence. A unique bonding over seven days and 190 km (every inch traversed on blistered feet!), that left me deeply in love with the desert.

While I have not been able to go the desert as often as I would like to, serendipitously the desert has made its way into my life from time to time.

I am often reminded by my erstwhile boss that the only credentials that started me on my career as an environmental educator, was the fact that I had been on that desert expedition! My work in environment led me to study and understand (rather than only experience) the different ecosystems. When I had the opportunity to develop a teaching-learning manual on Deserts, I plumbed the depths of literature on the subject and was awestruck by the fascinating facets, incredible adaptations, and the innumerable strands that weave together create a vibrant ecosystem in a seemingly lifeless terrain. What was once intuitive was bolstered with intellect.

More serendipity! A collaborative project with Abu Dhabi, and an equally ardent desert lover transported me (after so many years) into a desert again—the Arabian Desert, also known as the Empty Quarter (Rub Al Khali in Arabic). Being amid the immense dunes and endless stretches of sand, was like homecoming. I would never have imagined this, all those years ago in the Thar.

And then, a trip to Ladakh to experience the cold desert—that I had only written about till then. So different–the starkness, the skies, the silence, and the sheer scale, and yet similar.  Nowhere but in the desert have I felt this with such intensity.

My heart lies in the desert. Sadly I may not be able to recreate these experiences if I tried now. The once remote sand dunes of Sam are now a tourist hot spot. The dunes and dune life of Rub al Khali are being decimated by the sport craze for off-road vehicles zooming across the sand. The fragile cold desert ecosystem of Ladakh is being snowed under with overtourism. Deserts are disappearing, and no ‘development’ scheme can ever recreate them.

–Mamata

Ironically while the real deserts are under threat, human activity is leading to transforming non-desert areas into arid lifeless regions through the process of desertification.  June 17 is observed as The World Day to Combat Desertification and Drought to promote public awareness of international efforts to combat desertification.

 

Online Nature?

~ millennialmatriarchs ~ 1 Comment

As the global pandemic continues to keep children indoors in many parts of the world, there is a continuing barrage of information on how to keep them ‘meaningfully engaged’. And heading the list is online activities–the one-size-fits-all solution. It started with online classes and assignments to help complete the academic year and requirements. This grew to include online ‘activities’ with students following virtual instructions to make and do things. And then, on to stories being told through a face and voice on a one-way screen.  And now, invitations to discover Nature online.

This in itself seems to be a contradiction in terms. EspeciallIMG_20200611_093510y for an environmental educator whose work and mantra for over three decades had been ‘connecting children with nature’. Environmental education as we believed was learning in the environment, learning through the environment, and for the environment. More than anything else, this was true for nature education. Based on this conviction we worked with passion and imagination to create hands-on teaching-learning experiences–from stepping outside the classroom to observe a single tree, to a camping experience of immersion in natural surroundings. These were experiences that engaged not just the head, but all the five senses—seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and feeling—and thence the heart. We believed that it was the heart and not the head which would create a new generation of sensitive, informed and able champions of the environment.

As Rachel Carson beautifully put it, “For a child…, it is not half so important to know as to feel. If facts are the seeds that later produce knowledge and wisdom, then the emotions and impressions of the senses are the fertile soil in which the seeds must grow”.

But this was a Sisyphean task. Even while people like us were advocating the ‘take children outdoors’ experience, children everywhere were beginning to stay indoors more and more, due to a variety of reasons. The seriousness of the situation was highlighted in a book titled Last Child in the Woods: Saving Our Children From Nature-Deficit Disorder. Published in 2005, the author Richard Louv expressed his apprehension at the growing phenomenon of alienation from Nature, and coined the term Nature-Deficit Disorder.

NDD was then an unwanted side-effect of the electronic age and a plugged-in-culture. Today, this is threatening to be a major fallout of an unfamiliar and unprecedented global pandemic. As our children remain cloistered in what we hope is a safe environment, our lives are slowly been taken over by technology.

Much can be taught and learnt online. But Nature? Will the most beautiful pictures and inspiring speakers be able to match the intangibles of a personal experience? Will a set of neatly-framed images on a flat screen be able to create an experience that engages all the senses? Will it have any room for the magic of “feeling”? Will it create the child-nature connection that is a fundamental element of a children’s cognitive development, as well as its psychological and physical health.

What will be the psychological, physical and cognitive costs of this technology-supported human alienation from nature, particularly for children in their vulnerable developing years?

When some day in the not too distant future we emerge from our sanitised cocoons, blinking our eyes in the sunshine, let us remember again that real and not virtual Nature is the best teacher.

“It is a wholesome and necessary thing for us to turn again to the earth in the contemplation of her beauties to know of wonder and humility.” Rachel Carson

–Mamata

 

 

A Browser Laments

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Browser

*a person who looks casually through publications or at goods for sale

*a software application used to locate, retrieve and display content on the World Wide Web, including web pages, images, video and other files

*an animal which feeds mainly on high-growing vegetation

I fall firmly in the first category. I am an old-fashioned browser of books. For me, the two pleasures greater than actually buying a book are the delicious anticipation of a visit to a bookstore or library, and the time spent there browsing the books on display before making a selection.

Fortunately, as I see it now, I grew up in a time when physical books, and places where books were kept were an integral part of life. Birthday and other presents for oneself and others were always books. Going to a bookstore was the most pleasurable pastime, initially accompanied by parents and later, with friends or by oneself. A library membership card was a precious possession. And having the time to spend just wandering around and looking through the books on the shelves was the ultimate indulgence.

This has remained true for me through all the phases of my life. The childhood summer vacation treat of visiting the small bookshop in our hometown to choose from the few English language books, or the hole-in-the-wall neighbourhood lending library which provided a selection of well-thumbed Mills and Boons. The membership of the Children’s Book Trust library with its colourful colours and cool interior where one discovered Shankar and Children’s World (that I later wrote for myself); and later that of the American Library where one was introduced to contemporary authors and literature. My years as a high school and college student in Delhi were highlighted by long stopovers at the legendary Galgotia and Sons in Connaught Place with its high ceilings, dusty tomes and old-fashioned shelves (replaced in the last decade by the brightly lit steel and glass façade of H&M). And later, by the just-must-go-to bookstores in Khan Market and South Extension which exuded a comforting familiarity even as stores on both sides became more and more glitzy.

One did not go walk in and out of these shops, or librarIMG_20200609_102020ies, just to pick up a book. One went to feast on the shelves lined with books, to run one’s eye across and up and down, pulling out a familiar name, or a new unfamiliar one; to peruse the blurbs on the cover to get a taste of what was within. One went in, sometimes with the certainty of coming out with a specific title, but equally the expectation of discovering new authors, or new works by familiar authors. It was the exploration that was the real fun, not so much the final selection.

And then, there were the book fairs and book sales. A veritable paradise for a bibliophile like me. The joys of wandering in Pragati Maidan in the mild winter sun, rubbing shoulders with hundreds of fellow book browsers created a sense of community like no other. Here the excitement of exploration and discovery was multiplied many times. Even today, in another time and place, I get the same frisson of excitement when I read of a bumper book sale. It is hard work, sorting through literally mounds of pre-owned books, sweating in the airless hall; but worth it all to stagger out with a sackful of bargain books. And the ultimate thrill of uncovering some classic authors and titles at a throwaway price. The right rewards of patient browsing.

Sadly over the last decade bookstores are closing everywhere. People now ‘browse’ the internet, and order books online. Why, they no longer need physical books as they can store a thousand on a slim Kindle. Now the last straw—social distancing. No crowds, no touch, no wander—no browse. Read what you get on your Smart phone. What a loss; what we are missing! What will a future without book browsing be like? What will it mean for humankind?

“And if anyone wants to try to enclose in a small space, in a single house or a single room, the history of the human spirit and to make it his own, he can only do this in the form of a collection of books.” Herman Hesse

–Mamata

Family Foibles

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‘Family’ has been a keyword that has defined the last two months which have been unusual and unprecedented in so many ways. Everyone seems to have rediscovered the joys of family. Celebs have shared how they are spending quality time with ‘loved ones’. Noble thoughts have been expressed on the comfort and warmth of family. Wise sayings on the value of family have been mined and brought to light.

Coincidentally even two international days that celebrate family, both proclaimed by the UN General Assembly, have fallen within this period. May 15 was International Family Day, marked every year to stress the importance of family. 1 June is designated as the Global Day of Parents, to recognize that the family has the primary responsibility for the nurturing and protection of children and emphasizing the critical role of parents in the rearing of children.

As they say, you can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family. Which means, whether you like it or not, you are stuck with them!  And truth be told, today families in close confinement and forced proximity are perhaps somewhat at the end of the tethers of togetherness.

As the lockdown across the world begin to ease, I can’t resist being a bit irreverent and sharing some random ‘alternate’ thoughts on family from some of my favourite authors.

Fifty years ago Erma Bombeck described what seems to be uncannily accurate today: “No one, not even a man and woman, can endure two weeks of complete togetherness—especially when they are married. Thus being confined with two or three children in an area no larger than a sandbox often has the appeal of being locked in a bus-station rest room over the weekend.”

And the fall out of family in lockdown can have many dimensions!

“Family is just accident…They don’t mean to get on your nerves. They don’t even mean to be your family, they just are”.  Marsha Norman

“A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold”.  Ogden Nash

“Children aren’t happy without something to ignore, and that’s what parents were created for”. Ogden Nash

“Families are like fudge – mostly sweet, with a few nuts”.  Les Dawson

“The reason grandparents and grandchildren get along so well is that they have a common enemy.” Sam Levenson

“Mothers are the necessity of invention.” Bill Watterson

“When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them.” George Bernard Shaw

“The family. We are a strange little band of characters trudging through life sharing diseases and toothpaste, coveting one another’s deserts, hiding shampoo, borrowing money, locking each other out of our rooms, …and trying to figure out the common thread that bound us all together”. Erma Bombeck

Love them or hate them, we can’t do without them!

“Mma Ramotswe found it difficult to imagine what it would be like to have no people. There were, she knew, those who had no others in this life, who had no uncles, or aunts, or distant cousins of any degree; people who were just themselves. Many white people were like that, for some unfathomable reason; they did not seem to want to have people and were happy to be just themselves. How lonely they must be — like spacemen deep in space, floating in darkness, but without even that silver, unfurling cord that linked the astronauts to their little metal womb of oxygen and warmth”. Alexander McCall Smith

A family is like an orange, a ball composed of distinct segments, separable yet held together by some intangible but universal bonds.  Savour the flavour!

–Mamata

 

Virtually Missing

~ millennialmatriarchs ~ 2 Comments

Six years ago, what now seems to be another time and another place, I transitioned from full-time paid employment to ‘independent freelance worker from home’. Today WFH is the new buzzword! For someone who had gotten up and out to go to work for over three decades this was a big change. The most obvious was the change in the mental and physical routine. Rushing back and forth between work and home, often hugely stressful, one developed the skills of keeping the domestic and professional arenas distinct, while still maintaining a suitable balance between the two. My new phase of WFH demanded equal skills to keep the two domains separate within the same physical setting. Over time, with some practical planning, some experimentation, some creativity, and a sense of mission I got myself into a suitable groove. Today when I see a barrage of ‘tips and hacks’ on WFH, I cannot help but be amused, with a sense of ‘been there, done that.’

What is new for me however, is the technological take-over. And here I feel “Haven’t been there, don’t want to do that.” Neither my long professional Work From Office life nor my WFH years have been entirely ‘remote working’ experiences in any way. They were not marked by day after day of zoom rooms and virtual meetings. My teaching-learning experiences have not been ‘online’ through artificial screens. My conferences have not been video-linked. My DIY instructions have not been over YouTube. My news has not come from the mobile phone, and my entertainment has not been watching plays, films and concerts on my laptop. I have (barring the last two months) regularly browsed for books in a physical library or bookstore.

For this I am so very grateful; and about this I am now greatly concerned. What is life going to be like in the days to come?IMG_20200526_112241 How much will be lost in terms of simple human contact? When I see members of zoom rooms, each with their own coffee mugs in their own physical rooms; when I see news anchors casually sipping from teacups as they analyse another day of gloom and doom, I can almost taste the consistently  undrinkable tea that I sipped with my colleagues, rubbing shoulders across a small office table. This is what I most acutely missed, and continue to do, in my WFH life.

Two years ago in this space, I described this simple but invaluable ritual thus:

‘Twice a day, as the footsteps heralded the bearer of the teas, it was literally and (later) figuratively ‘pens down’. Time to cluster around, a time for sharing—news and views, happenings and unhappenings (propah English not mandatory, and language khichdi quite delicious!), cribbings and crabbings–and above all, energising. There were snacks too—“hey taste what I baked yesterday,” “oh great, banana chips all the way from home state”, “guess what, I discovered this new naasta shop with 50 flavours of khakhra….”

Tea table became the venue for easing in the newcomers; teasing and ribbing the old-timers; there were no hierarchies and no bosses. The agenda was whatever the mood of the table—sharing, admonishing, admiring, agonising and venting, and yes, laughing a lot.

It was an important support system in so many ways. After just 15 minutes, one returned to one’s desk feeling much better. You weren’t the only one who struggled to keep going as you juggled work and home; your child’s behaviour was not as worrisome as you imagined it was; and yes, in-laws happened to the best of us!’

The world going the way it is, such memories will remain just that—ancient history of another era. This is only one of the many simple joys of physical interaction with fellow humans that we took for granted. Others included the delicious anticipation of meeting friends for coffee; choosing the restaurant for the next birthday lunch; dressing up for an evening of theatre or music; wandering and jostling in a crowded market, and walking amidst fellow human beings on a busy street.

For many like me, the new normal is sadly so abnormal. To live in a virtual world is bereft of meaning, of everything that makes us what we are and what keeps us going. They say that people will get used to this. They say that we must adapt or perish. I am not sure how much I can adapt, so perish I must!

–Mamata

 

Earth Spring

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22 April 1970 saw what, at the time, was perhaps the planet’s largest civic event. Millions of American citizens took to the streets, college campuses and hundreds of cities to protest environmental ignorance and demand a new way forward for our planet.
“Earth Day” as this event was dubbed, was a unified response to the numerous environmental crises that engulfed the world in the 1960s—oil spills, smog, polluted rivers, and newly exposed dangers of pesticides.

2020 marks 50 years since what was considered to be the trigger that launched the modern environmental movement. In the five decades since, much has transpired and much has changed for, and on, planet earth. Despite all the noble intentions, movements and efforts (which I have also been a part of for three decades), the planet seems to have been damaged beyond limits, plummeting in recent times into an uncontrollable downward spiral. Poisoned waters, toxic air, melting ice, disappearing forests and vanishing wildlife have become so much a part of the daily news that we have become inured. Worst still, we continue to pretend that all will be well—after all man is the master of technology, and we will find the answers.

It has taken 50 years for Earth to have gotten a respite from human interference. Ironically, this has been given by an invisible, seemingly indestructible microbe.

Almost a hundred years ago, pioneering environmental philosopher John Muir wrote “The universe would be incomplete without man; but it would also be incomplete without the smallest transmicroscopic creature that dwells beyond our conceitful eyes and knowledge…”

In the three months since this ‘creature’ has sent us scurrying for shelter, and changed the world as we know it, the earth is changing too. It is coming back to life.

The theme for this year’s Earth Day was Climate Action and events were planned to draw attention to the critical need to take action to combat climate change. Ironically, what a hundred conferences did not do for climate change, is happening today simply without human activity.

When I read about the revised suggested activities for a house-bound Earth Day it made me wonder though! All the activities were digital– webinars, online learning, nature videos, teach-ins and make-ins, and more. Everything that called for virtual interaction through digital media. What a paradox! What a missed opportunity to open windows and minds to the world outside. Some thoughts on this.

A lot is being written and shared about windows and balconies. WIMG_20200306_071238550 (1).jpghile these are great to reach out to other humans, they are also a wonderful opportunity to be inside looking out, at nature. One does not have to be in the countryside to see Nature. Even in the midst of the urban jungle, look from the same balcony or window, and you will discover—a bird, a butterfly a bumblebee, a spider. A patch of sky and a puff of cloud. The branches of a tree with fresh green leaves, a bird call, a shaft of sunlight on a wall, or the stars on a clear night.

One doesn’t have to be outdoors to do one’s bit for Earth day. Just making time to stop and stare is as much a contribution as a ‘run for earth marathon’.

And why make Earth Day just a one-day celebration? Even in 1970, the entire month was marked by events and it came to be called Earth Spring.

In these unusual times, let us be grateful for Nature which is never in ‘shutdown’! Come let us celebrate every moment, every day of our Earth Spring.

–Mamata

 

The Kardashian of Trees

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Heroing and highlighting individual trees is a great way of drawing attention to trees in general, and to reinforce the value of nature, wildlife and biodiversity.

An example of a successful initiative in this direction is the  European Tree of the Year contest started in 2011, inspired by an older competition which originated in the Czech Republic in the late nineties. According to the Czech Environmental Partnership Foundation which started it all: ‘Tree of the Year is a contest looking for a tree with a story. The aim of the contest is to empower people and get local communities involved in the environmental and local heritage protection. We believe that by gathering around a tree, people are more likely to take action again in the future for other environmental causes and for the wellbeing of the community.’

The process of selecting the European Tree of the Year starts with a well set-out voting process at the national level of the participating countries (16 this year), and ends with a finale consisting of online voting to select from among the national winners.

Now the competition is moving to other parts of the world: In 2016, Sri Lanka started the Asian Tree of the Year, with India, Nepal, Malaysia and Singapore joining in soon after. Canada, Australia and Russia have also held national competitions, though not on an annual basis.

Beautiful old trees, with history and cultural connections to the community have found their spot under the sun through this process, and also generated a lot of public interest, involvement and learning.

Sounds good! But what has all this to do with the title?

CF37A480-1747-49E9-9F79-48FCA5BAC580The connection is a tree that is reputed to be the most instagrammed tree in New Zealand, almost a symbol of NZ tourism. On a recent trip there, we were urged to set aside time to see the tree, specifically around sunset. So we worked around our program to ensure we got to the spot—a stretch of a beach—well ahead. We drove past a few times, keenly looking at the beach. We could see some people, but nothing special in the way of trees. We asked natives and tourists alike, and they all pointed us to the same area which our GPS had shown us, and which we had passed, looking in vain for a landmark. We decided to make our way down to the beach anyway. Lo and behold, there were many, many people there, jostling for some spot (we could not figure out what the spot was for), all setting up professional looking camera equipment. It came to a pass when we had to ask a friendly-looking lady what everyone was waiting to photograph, where the famous tree was, and what it was about. She kindly pointed to this spindly willow tree, standing a few feet into the waters of the beautiful Wanaka Lake, against a beautiful background of majestic mountains. But the tree itself? In my mind, this will forever define and exemplify ‘under-whelming’. ‘Why is the tree famous’, we asked many around us in bewilderment. While there was some story of how it was part of a fence and had survived in the water for several years, the general consensus was that it was famous because it was famous! So famous , it even has its own insta handle #ThatWanakaTree.

Does the title begin to make sense?

But yes, surely is a lesson to countries like ours, where we have such unimaginable treasures of cultural and natural heritage, but simply are not able to create anywhere near a proportionate buzz!

–Meena