Welcome to the second issue of Journeys and Jottings. Spring is in the air and all the flowers are blooming. My balcony garden has also sprung to life and the jasmines are adding a dash of fragrance. I have always been a bit curious about words and their stories and I learnt today that the word “spring” has its roots in the German and Dutch word “springen.”
A beautiful article in Lithub.com tells you a little more about it and I quote from it. “In Proto Indo European, the word meant to hurry or to pounce, in Sanskrit to wish eagerly and to hurry towards. By old English, it could mean a welling up of water, as a wellspring, but mainly it meant to spurt, to burst forth, fly up, to arise, to gush, to spring out, to arch upward. Spring has taken on so many meanings that it requires six pages, three columns each, in the Oxford English Dictionary, to account for it…But along with these it has meant since the beginning the sprouting buds of trees.”
Spring as a season was referred to as “Lent” in the medieval era and it was later rechristened to spring with the “springing of flowers and plants.” If you are curious to know more about the origins of the seasons, you can read all about it here.
In this issue of the newsletter, we celebrate spring and the many festivals around it, visit Goa to celebrate Shigmo, and also look at some interesting books. We also speak to a wildlife conservationist and writer, Prerna Bindra as she inspires us with her stories.
The Indian Spring Festival
Spring or Vasanth Rtu as we celebrate in India is marked by the festival of Vasanth (Basant) Panchami, also referred to as Saraswati Puja. It is also celebrated as the rebirth of Kama, the God of Love. Kalidasa in his Rtusamhaara, says this of Spring or Vasanth Rtu. “O dear, the warrior Vasanta has arrived to pierce the hearts of lovers. The blooming mango flowers are his sharp arrows and the garland (swarm) of bumblebees is his shining bowstring.” While Holi is more popular, it’s Vasanth Panchami with its golden hues that heralds spring. I found this very interesting article on stories around the festival.
However what really fascinated me is this wall in a small arts and crafts village called Raghurajpur in Odisha, where every house is a studio. While India celebrates officially six festivals, this wall filled with sepia-tinted paintings depicts four of them as murals.
100 Stories of India
While there are many festivals that celebrate spring in different regions of India, one of my favourites is the Shigmo Festival in Goa. Shigmo is a spectacle, a colourful and vibrant pageant that is celebrated across the state with dances, parades, floats and performances.
Shigmo has its roots in the villages of Goa as the festival is usually celebrated in temples with the arrival of spring. Men and women dance in their fields, pray to the local deities, perform many folk dances, sing traditional songs, bring mythology alive with theatrical performances laced with trance and celebrate colour. However, the larger-than-life celebration is in the towns, where fantasy and folk form a fusion in the floats that parade through the streets.
The Top 3
When I think of spring, I think of trees and gardens, flowers and fruits. And here are some books dedicated to them and you can buy them online.
Cities and Canopies by Harini Nagendra and Seema Mundoli
Cities are shaped by their canopies. Every time I flip a page, I feel like I have imbibed the spirit of the woods.
Sacred Plants of India by Nandita Krishna and M Amrithalingam
We grew up listening to stories from Indian mythology and how trees and plants form a part of this sacred lore.
Discover Avenue Trees by S Karthikeyan
My go-to guide for Bangalore trees, covering 50 species, with nuggets of information, written by one of the best naturalists I have known.
People Make Places
She is a wildlife conservationist, a journalist, author, travel writer, and a dear friend. Prerna Bindra is a powerhouse of talent and an inspiration to me. The author of the critically acclaimed “The Vanishing - India’s Wildlife Crisis, she has written several articles on wildlife in mainstream media. A Ph.D. Candidate from Cambridge University, Prerna is a dog’s best friend, has a soft corner for elephants, and reveres trees. She says, “People should remember that when they are in the wild, they are in a place that is sacred and they should treat wildlife with respect .” I did a short interview with her and here are the excerpts.
1.How did your journey begin as a wildlife writer and conservationist?
My relationship with nature was personal. As I saw their world slowly being disintegrated, taken over by concrete jungles, I felt that wildlife never really had a voice. When a chunk of Narayan Sarovar Sanctuary in Gujarat , where I saw my first wolves , was chopped away to accommodate a cement plant, I realized that I wanted to represent them, be that voice. So I gave up a career in management and turned to media, to write about the stories that plagued wildlife. I got a break with Sanctuary Asia but then I realized that conservation stories need to find a place in all newspapers and magazines and I started my journey as a writer
2 Share a few wildlife stories that are very special to you
There are many conservation stories that have inspired me - putting an end to the slaughter of thousands of Amul Falcons in Arunachal Pradesh, the Mangalajodi story in Odisha where poachers have been trained to become naturalists but the one that really touched my heart is in Pilibhit Tiger Reserve in Uttar Pradesh. It’s the sugarcane belt and the fields have become like a nursery for the tigers. But there is so much human interference and yet there was a tigress that gave birth to cubs in these fields. Forest officials along with conservationists from WWF worked with the locals to spread awareness, to keep a watch on them, and to leave them alone. And locals actually felt that the tigress is like a daughter who has come home, to a safe place to give birth to her cubs, and that touched a chord.
3.People make places - Who have inspired you in your journey with wildlife conservation?
There are many people who have inspired me, especially forest guards, tiger trackers, people who are on the frontline, protecting wildlife, and who are risking their whole life for wildlife. It can be adventurous and exciting but it requires a lot of courage. I have met guards and trackers who track wolves in a very remote forest. There are many stories that I have written about them and you can read one of them here.
4. Battling endometriosis
And while Prerna is fighting the cause of wildlife in India, she is also fighting her own battle with endometriosis, a debilitating disease that is characterised by unbearable pain and is misdiagnosed and is often just labelled as “period pain”.
“It’s a struggle to be normal, to live a normal life. At one end, you are struggling with the trauma of chronic unbearable pain and at the other end you are overcome with fatigue, you are sapped off all energy, you are dealing with other health issues. You just don’t have a life. “
An excerpt from a personal essay that she wrote about her battle with endometriosis
It’s late. I am bumping along forest roads on an assignment (my vocation is wildlife conservation and writer) in the company of men-colleagues, officials, when the pain strikes — as though I was being repeatedly stabbed by a red-hot knife, in my lower stomach, the pelvic, up my thighs, down my lower back. I want to double up, I want to die, I want to howl and cry — but all I do is bite my lower lip, as the jeep hits yet another rock on the kutcha road.
Clutching my stomach, I mumble to my concerned colleagues that I have a sudden, severe headache. Stupid, I know, but how do I expect them to understand the agony of endometriosis when even my doctors won’t? And chances are, that even though it affects an estimated 176 million women around the globe, that’s one in 10 women in reproductive age, they wouldn’t know what endometriosis is….
March is when endo sisters around the world come together to create awareness for this debilitating disease. As Prerna says, this is a disability and not just a disease as it robs you of your life.
I have been suffering from endometriosis for a decade too and have written about it in media as well, trying to create awareness for it. There is also a podcast by Dr Manjul Kapadia, where I shared my story. Both Prerna and I along with a few more endo sisters have started a support group on Facebook as well. Join us and help create awareness for this disease.
Feedback please
So that brings us to the end of the second newsletter of Journeys and Jottings. And I would love your feedback. We are going to keep the flow of conversations going and I would like to feature more about you and your life as well. Please share your exciting stories and your travel plans as well. And I would really appreciate it if you will share my newsletter with your friends and family.
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