8.10 Yuvan Aves: On Losing Nature and Learning to Care

What if the key to environmental action isn’t outrage, but observation? And what if the real climate crisis is a crisis of attention?

In this powerful conversation, nature writer and activist Yuvan Aves talks about his lyrical and politically urgent book Intertidal. Set along Chennai’s disappearing coasts and wetlands, the book prompts readers to notice, remember, and reconnect with the living world around them. 

Yuvan shares how he teaches children to fall in love with their local ecologies by example rather than instruction and how Indian nature writing cannot be separated from caste, class, and climate politics. 

This episode reminds us that nature is not a distant wilderness but something alive in our cities, streets, and schools, and to simply pay attention.

Books, shows, and films mentioned in this episode:

• Is a River Alive? by Robert Macfarlane
• Tiger Lessons by Sannapureddy Venkatarami Reddy
• Marginlands by Arati Kumar-Rao

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‘Books and Beyond with Bound’ is the podcast where Tara Khandelwal and Michelle D’costa uncover how their books reflect the realities of our lives and society today. Find out what drives India’s finest authors: from personal experiences to jugaad research methods, insecurities to publishing journeys. Created by Bound, a storytelling company that helps you grow through stories. Follow us @boundindia on all social media platforms.

Transcript

Unknown: 0:02

Un Welcome to Books and Beyond. With bound I'm Tara Khandelwal and I'm Michelle d'cota, in this podcast, we talk to India's finest authors and uncover the stories behind the best written book and dissect how these books shape our lives and worldviews today. So let's dive in.

Tara Khandelwal: 0:22

So today we're heading into the marshes of Chennai, but we're here not just to admire nature. We're here to question how we've been taught to see it, and the book that we going to be talking about is intertidal, which isn't about just wetlands or insects or the ocean. It's about how nature can be a refuge, a teacher and even a protest. The book shows us how deeply human survival is tied to the natural world, and that's something that we all know intuitively, but this really brings it to the forefront, and how much we can lose culturally, emotionally and even spiritually, when we ignore that. So really sort of, for me, brought that alive in a way. And this is a naturalist diary written by one Avis, who's here with me today. I picked up this book because it reminds me that nature isn't just a backdrop. Living in a city. Sometimes it can feel like it is, but it's alive. It speaks and it's under threat. So thank you, Ivan, and really looking forward to explore this moment.

Yuvan Aves: 1:21

Hey, Tara, thank you. Thank you for having

Tara Khandelwal: 1:23

you know, I really like the beginning of the book because it was a little bit personal as well. And your life has been anything but ordinary. And in the book, you chronicle some really tough times, like in the PROLOG of your book, you know, you talk about your abusive stepfather, some of the things that you went through, and then how you ran away from home at 16, and that's when you sort of made your way to nature, and you kept learning, and now you're doing such inspiring work, like leading the farm Environment and Society Program at abacus Montessori or and building Earth focused education, starting the valuer trust. So I just wanted to ask for you sort of, you know, how did that transition happen from that little boy who ran away to, you know, what you are now, and how does, how did that connection to nature help you in those tough times?

Yuvan Aves: 2:20

Yeah, I shared my personal story, not to ask the world to look at it, but as an example, among a lot of examples, of how our connection with a multi species world, which is how inherently we are as humans who have evolved in touch with all kinds of other beings can be very inwardly transformative, and to sort of track that arc for the reader, before going into the heart of the book, it's Not that you know perhaps in a middle class, upper class, socio economic sense, reading the PROLOG might be strange, disturbing, even some people have got back to me saying, You need to put a trigger warning there. I did not want to put a trigger warning there. Domestic violence is very, very common, uh, rural scenarios, obviously, I have, I've chosen to treat it something out of the ordinary in the way I write about it, perhaps, but it is, I think, inherently part of most Indian households. So, so in that sense, it's not special. And what, what I wanted to communicate was the sense that our suffering acquires certain kinds of meanings and pathways in in words, when we when our cell food occupies, let's say our landscape, rivers, trees, other species. I explore that briefly in one of the chapters, the detritive meditation, where looking at beings which turn the shit of life into something useful, offers a powerful metaphor. Metaphor, I think, is a survival need. We make meaning always through the meanings in terms of other things. So, so that was, that was the idea to look at, to look at suffering, look at how it it has completely transformed. I would say, connection with the living world has has healed or expanded, or, in fact, made me feel grateful for the suffering I have because of its transformative power, psychologically, spiritually, transformative power.

Tara Khandelwal: 4:47

I think nature does. He'll definitely, and they've been, it's scientific. They've been studies about the value of that for all human beings to go out and be nature. And something as simple as, you know, people say, Oh, why don't you? Go for a walk. And I think those kind of things really help, even for me in Bombay, you know, just going for a walk, observing the trees, the plants, I have a few plants in my house, something as small as that also feels is has a grounding factor. Okay? So I really liked how the structure of the book comes about, right? It's like a part journal. It's a part nature documentary. It's a love letter to Earth. And there's a lot of detailed observations, you know, like the bees nesting on your balcony and how they build homes without a hierarchy, to moments of deep reflection and even guided meditations. And then there are the stories from the field. So your visits to coastal communities, learning about the tribes in the Andaman Islands, and I found it really interesting that they have words to describe different textures of waves, because our language tells us so much about how we view the world. And you know, you said in the book, you know that they mentioned they moved uphill during the Indian Ocean tsunami, because they said, Oh, the ocean is angry with us. We must move up in repentance. And that, I thought that was really powerful. It gave me goosebumps. You know, such a unique way of listening to nature. So I'm curious, how did you land on this mix of memoir, research and reflection for the

Yuvan Aves: 6:23

book. This book has its genesis in a specific movement which has gathered momentum and has remained successful. It was protesting against a mega quote by the Adani group on the pulitz Lagoon, which is the second largest brackish water lagoon in India, and the fact that public mobilization was really, really difficult without stories. So when we started that movement, lots of people were involved. Significantly, my activist mentor, Nithyananda Raman, uh, Chennai Climate Action Group, the Fisher folk there, we needed to manipulate people's attention. I think our our practice, each of us have our specific practice of attention, and usually, uh, capitalist force tries to channel it, focus it, steal it in specific streams. And as activists, we try to create counter streams to that. So, you know, look at that advertisement, and we are saying, no, look, look at the ghost crap, because our attention is finite, and it matters to us and to the world, where as individuals and as groups where we put it. So as part of that campaign, we created field guides, ways of using the coast as a learning space. I wrote a children's book based on it, and that sort of emerged into an idea to evoke a beach, which was in, for instance, let's say the government of India released wasteland Atlas in 2018 19, which classified beaches as wastelands because you wanted Not economize it in the in the traditional sense, you couldn't cultivate it, couldn't do other things. But then we find that in North Chennai, which is the industrialized area of Chennai, the beach has eroded away, and therefore salt water is entering from beneath and up to 12 kilometers. So to sort of look, to sort of counter these narratives create a sort of public interest close to heart and something which is personal, that's the genesis of the book, I think,

Tara Khandelwal: 8:55

yeah. And then the book that you, you said that you know, you have the mentor, Nithyananda, who is your, who is your first exposure to standing up to corporate crime, because he also looked at the mercury poisoning in Cody. And we actually interviewed the author, who wrote a book called heavy metal, which is about that. So, yeah, I would love to know a little bit more about how you first came in contact with this gentleman, and you know, your first exposure to corporate crime, and then how sort of that led you to becoming an activist for this movement. And I think rehaja had called attention to this pulitz campaign, which is when I think people like me also hadn't gotten aware of it.

Yuvan Aves: 9:40

Rega is my partner. Oh, we live together now, and thanks to Mr. Adani, we got to meet. Wow. I studied in a Krishnamurthy school whose philosophical foundation was question, every answer when. Hurting nature, you're hurting yourself. Be a no path can lead you to the truth. You have to be a light onto yourself. This was the philosophical foundation. And when I was in grade five, Niti Nithyananda jaraman came to the school and he made a presentation about so you can imagine how long ago that was. And campaigns go on for decades. Communities fight for justice for very long times. And he showed this, what Hindustan Unilever had done to the pura Lake and mercury poisoning, what it can do to workers and human beings, and the fact that the corporate could legally fight, politically, manipulate, get out of trouble, and this and this sense of, you know, at The time we name isms. You know, we say capitalism socialism is and it was very useful for me to look at isms as emotions, because, because it's easy to taxonomize, usually isms are made to incarcerate. You know, in the current political regime, if I were to substitute capitalism with emotion, that would be greed. I don't know what else to you know, substitute that. So these were things I was exposed to through Niti and then later, maybe in grade seven, grade eight people from the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. I think it was maybe the 25th year, 30th year, women with deformed children, about 1520, of them came and sat in the assembly, and they spoke in Hindi. I did not understand a word of it. I was utterly moved and devastated and in tears. And of what can be done and what you can get away with. You know, after killing 20,000 people, mostly overnight, through through negligence and underfunding and all kinds of other violations of law and human rights, rich dudes can get away with what they do. So these were important early exposures, and they were facilitated by Niti and later after, after spending, you know, five years in Pakistan, educating myself, after I left home at 16, coming back, I sought them out again. I said, Listen, this is what I want to do. And he said, You know what? There's a port being built. Please help us. Let's do something.

Tara Khandelwal: 12:48

Wow. And I think that's very interesting, that your school also sort of exposed you to all of these things. I mean, I certainly never had this kind of exposure in my school. And I think it's so important, I think, for children to know about all of these things that are happening so that they can also affect change. I One of the things that really struck me, you know, because we live in cities and Chennai, and I have few friends, also very good friends, who live in Chennai. And you say how cities emerge around hydrologies and how things have changed in Chennai, which is, it's now from 80% wetland to now only 15% and that coincides with floods cyclones, and that just made me think as well about the reclamation in Mumbai, and all of these statistics that say that, you know, by 2035 A large area of Mumbai will be under flooding. And it just made me wonder, what will be the implication about that

Yuvan Aves: 13:47

there is a sort of really dangerous hydrological amnesia in a city like Chennai, which grew cities come around rivers and wetlands. Chennai, existence owes itself to the khostala River and the Adyar and the Koum, which is off shoot of the khosta Laya. And one can explain the coming up of cities as well as civilizations through the existence of rivers we could ever only live in a watershed and urbanization seems to cross a critical threshold of convenience, which then enables us to forget this and and it hits us back. And human history is full of this when rivers change their course, the Indus civilization, you know, other other Mesopotamia, or they had to move that to either migrate, or they had to vanish. And we've seen this in other kinds of cities, you know, whether it be, you know, parts of the Chola kingdom, let's say Kanchipuram thirupu. Sure it's sad that one can track human history as coming around water bodies, forgetting moving away or facing demise. And I think the quickest form of that is the current industrial urbanization paradigm. It's quite sad, because Tamil Nadu is known for its its hydro hydro wisdom, its hydro culture. We have only only second to Rajasthan. We have maximum number of water bodies. You take any map, it's a sort of scatter of half circles, and these structures are called Aries. Aries don't have a word in English. It's a U shaped bund opposing the gradient of water flow. And people knew that the only way to live here was to allow water to catch water and make it percolate and allow it to float. If you had any other way of living here, you would either starve or be flooded. Because, I mean, unlike Mumbai, which is facing the southwest monsoon, largely the Northeast monsoon, which comes to Chennai and much of the eastern coast, is a fickle, whimsical thing you will have suddenly one year which is 2000 plus mm of rainfall, another year will be 600 mm. Another year will be three years of consistent 800 mm. You don't know what kind of water you will get. And therefore the respect for water, especially in a place like Chennai, was extremely high, extremely conscious, and we are losing it, which means our future is quite bleak. I mean, another way of looking at that, however, is that floods come in. When 2015 the floods came, it was one of the biggest economic disasters. 12,000 crores worth of infrastructure was was destroyed and and then governments are waking up saying, you know, let's have flood irrigation channels, let's reclaim our lakes, let's move out encroachment. How that sort of environmental action is also discriminating five star hotel called Leela Palace is sitting on the Adi R estuary. Arihant or mayat hospital is sitting on the flood plains of the Arya river. They will not be moved all, even though they've been called out by the control Auditor General Report government will come move people living in sheds who are doing nothing to damage the river, to show some sort of optics. So this is the hydro politics we are dealing with,

Tara Khandelwal: 17:49

I think, as a teacher, you know, in the book, you speak about your work as a teacher. And I think you know you are that's so important, because you know it starts from there and molding young minds, I am always amazed, you know, when I see people throwing litter, and then I just wonder, okay, you know, they it was, it wasn't sort of taught to them at a young age like that, you know? And if everybody was just taught from a young age not to do that, then things will be so different. You wouldn't see all of this everywhere. And you talk about, you know, as part of your teaching practice, you talk about the concept of these toxic tours, and how you took your students on toxic tours where they meet. You know, displaced Fisher women, people whose families, you know, have passed away because of oil spills. And, you know, dead olive ridley turtles. I mean, it's quite heartbreaking. So as a teacher, sort of, I wanted to ask you, what kinds of things you know, do you put into practice, and what you know? What are the lessons and how, how you imparting them to your students?

Yuvan Aves: 18:57

I don't mind if children throw later. Actually, it's, I think it's totally fine, really. It's very important, because the market wants to push us into a corner where our only power is individualistic action of some form of consumption. Okay, buy this or buy that. You go pick up trash from the beach. I am interested in teaching children about structural action. How do you organize that? That is the only kind of Environmental Action somebody went and picked up little somebody did not use plastic their entire lives. Doesn't mean jack for the environment. Let us not profess to each other or teach other people about individualism, because, because that is the corner we must refuse to be pushed towards. Somebody throws a plastic outside. There's all, you know, I think, I think it's fine, whatever, as a sense of personal hygiene, as a sense of, you know, civic, civic duty. You do it. It. Don't do it. It's fine, but I it's important that children feel connection, because connection comes before care, and this is something I come upon time and again. You try to hammer down care into people before there is connection, they turn away from the cause. So if we do a very robust public engagement program through Pallavi trust, with the organization of Iran, we actually directly engage with almost 2000 people a year. We take them on walks and go on shore walks. We understand how the intertidal zone works. We understand the functions of the beach, the dolphins, the ghost crabs, the currents, how fisherfolks have been living there. I don't have to tell you not to throw garbage there, because there's love, there's concern, there's fascination, that that's what needs to be done. And then there's community building around, around this space. This is very important fact, there's some very interesting research by a you know, nature education researcher named David sober, where, if you hammer down climate crisis, you know climate action before children can feel connection. Because I think that is fundamentally what the interconnectedness of of an immediate local ecology allows for people turn away from the purpose. So, so, so, so that's that's it. That's an important nuance to register for us. Toxic tours, again, something I learned from Nithyananda Raman. He has been my greatest activist mentor. I've been grateful to have a long list of mentors, you know, through my life, and I think that's been life saving for me. What we do is we go cities, urbanized places have their sacrifice zones, and usually the sacrifice zones are placed where, not necessarily because they they are suitable for it, but it's because the people living there are do not have the political economic power to resist it. So for instance, just historically, this would be true of Mumbai. This would be true of Delhi, any Metropolis you take in Chennai. The South Chennai is where the upper caste, the Brahmins, the landlords, lived. And North, Chennai is where the Dalit fork, the Fisher folk, British, brought a whole bunch of labor from other states, put them there. And so ever since before independence. And after all, the red category industries, which means industries will produce lethal waste, kill life and human life oppose that. It's, in fact, highly populated area, and therefore to take children through this place and to say, Listen, this is our city functions. This is the sacrifice zone. This is where your electricity comes from. This is where your you know, whether it be fertilizer, pesticide, petrol, diesel. Here's refinery, and we look at the impact this has on on people, on ecologies, on on other landscapes. Very interestingly, this specific stretch of notch, and if it's called the kartupalli Island, it's a sand barrier island where there are major rivers, rivers which bring sediment for millennia and dump it in the ocean. Sand barrier islands form. It's our most important climate barrier, and we've been abusing it for centuries now, and that has a profound impact on children. In fact, for class 11 children, for many years, we would do something called a class campaign. We would take up an issue, study very deeply, and do something which causes has a real world impact. So in 2020, after lockdown opened up. During lockdown, I was struggling to connect with children over the Adani port issue, because it was, it was an abstract concept to them. And then as soon as things opened up, I took the children, put them in front of the official ladies, who've been evicted thrice in their lifetimes from erosion, from industrialization, twice, and then now for the fourth time. And they they shouted and cried and just told their life stories. And children came back so empowered. And they held a press conference, in fact, with the official ladies and the public hearing, which was scheduled that we got canceled. It had such a big rapport.

Tara Khandelwal: 24:43

Oh, that's quite profound. And I can just imagine the reaction, you know, of these children. And I mean, I obviously don't have as many frameworks as you from whatever little I've been exposed and read, but I just think also about how bails and I was reading a book about sort of like the land. And they are and how, you know, people living next to that really have a lot of issues where even and the doctors sometimes are even complicit, so they don't really do much to help, and they're just so sad when you pass by all of these things, because it's like, why is this happening? I mean, don't the people, sort of who you know, have the money to affect change, don't they also want to live in an earth which is beautiful and and lovely. But anyway, coming back to the book, you know, you've met so many fascinating people on your journey, like Maya favkatupali kupam, she's been fighting for years to protect her coastline, palaya Anna, who you call the greatest teacher of the coast and ocean, and of course, your mentor, who we've already spoken about, and each of them brings a different kind of wisdom, which you've put into the book. So can you tell our listeners, maybe a story from one of these people, or could you tell us about a moment from someone you met, or a conversation that has really stayed with you?

Yuvan Aves: 26:09

I speak about parliament, he's among the many, many fisherfolk. I mean, before this book, we were surveying about 200 kilometers, of course, to document biodiversity, Fisher livelihoods, practices, in order to be understood that. And we, I mean, you know, groups like Madras, nationalist society, Climate Action Group, we want to document this place because we're increasingly under threat. There is the Sagarmala plan, which is disastrous. Simultaneously, we were fighting multiple campaigns. I was appellant in the National Green Tribunal against a harbor which proposed in a place called Kali Valley, story 100 kilometers south of Chennai, the turtle nesting ground. You know, sperm whales come to breed just, you know, within a short distance in the sea where the harbor was proposed. And so multiple of these campaigns were going on, and we were trying to evoke these spaces differently, as I said earlier, and pale mana taught me other ways of sensing these landscapes. I'm quite shaken by his animal memory. You know, as somebody who goes out into the sea, you need to be extremely sensitive to the wind. So he'll be telling me stories like, you know, 30 years ago, when I took my khatamara with hook and line to with a plan to catch a sailfish, the wind was blowing southward. I'm like, why? I don't remember what the wind was blowing yesterday, man. And, you know, once we had this very interesting sort of educational discussion where he was teaching me wind directions, and it was like he was telling me the Tamil name. So when kachang, you know, Iran, in all these, you know, crucial words, and, you know, is asking me to tell it back, and I was making mistakes. Now I'm pretty good. And he said, listen, because you are a city guy, I'm leaving you, if it was my official guy, and I'm teaching him, I'll back you with a stick. I'm like, listen, is this how you teach? You know, have this sort of philosophical retort saying, you know, causing fear in a learning space, what it can do is where all that, all that is fine, you are a land teacher. Here you can talk all this philosophy. Once you come into the sea, you have to attach your fear to the right thing. Knowing the correct wind is the difference between life and death. So fear is very important in learning. He said, Just and he was like, You're a land teacher, I'm a sea teacher. So remember that difference? I said, Okay, thank you.

Tara Khandelwal: 29:08

Yeah, I like that part in the book. Also, he says that, you know, land teacher and sea teacher, and that fear is really important. And I don't think I ever think about the wind Russia. Maybe now I'll start noticing it, having learned so much from nature and people who are deeply attuned to it. What's the one teaching practice that you follow that might not be the most conventional, but you found it to be a really good way of teaching.

Yuvan Aves: 29:34

We have a pedagogy we follow in Pallavi trust. And I mean, this is not something special to us. I think all good teachers have come upon this. We were asking this question, we have two hours with children, sometimes two years. How do we create maximum impact? I mean, the deeper question is, how do we turn them into activists? By activism, I mean falling in love with the living. World, and being able to feel for, care, for, defend your home, you know. You know, having, having a feeling for the living world, is what I mean by activism, which is not necessarily an ism. It is just a very fundamental quality of being alive. You you defend who you are and your identity, your home, you know, and we came upon the fact that unless there is direct engagement, you know, there's a there's a tree, there's a forest, there's a wetland, there needs to be some form of direct engagement. I think direct engagement, we have found, time and again, is fundamental to creating connection. So we built this pedagogy in conversation with a wonderful educational theorist, Louis Chawla, who, for the past four decades has been asking, Okay, who becomes an environmental steward, you know, who becomes somebody will stand up for something, not just speak a whole bunch of trash and just walk away. They will not they will not put their body or effort on the line. And this kept coming up direct engagement, and some of her research is very interesting. She looks at students who have been taught a whole year of a course worth on climate science and impacts. And then another sample where people have just visited a wetland several times. You know, watch the birds. The second group stands up the first group, it's almost 00, impact. So the it's a extremely problematic thing that this John Holt said, the great educator said, Knowing does not mean anything. Just to know something. The intellect is given so much importance in education, it does not turn into any kind of action. So I think, I think that's the pedagogy which conventional education does not follow. And in our curriculum planning, whether it be engagement public, we work with a lot of schools. We work with the greatest Corporation schools. We have three pillars. One is all all learning should be direct engagement. I'm not going to sit inside and speak about an abstract concept. It needs to be locally relevant, because the locally local is the arena of action. And the third thing, and this very important, is that learning should always be social, socially, politically, ecologically intermingled, because one cannot be separated from the other, and when you separate it, you actually stifle action. It's like this. I was, I was actually called in for observation for a chemistry teacher's class, and she was teaching in a school I work with, and she was teaching fractional distillation, where crude oil is mined from the ocean or from other sources. And then she was making it seem all extremely sexy to the grade nine students, jet fuel is taken out from here, and then tar is taken out from here, from these, these products. Then I asked her later, is like, where is the violence of evicting Adivasi communities or trashing the ocean or siloing is not by chance. It's systemically planned. Because if you put these things together, our way of being in the world would be totally different. So we so we create cracks around topics in order to further a specific industrial agenda.

Tara Khandelwal: 33:35

I never thought about education like that. I don't think I had a very good education, and I look back at my schooling, but I think, yeah, because I love to read, maybe that makes up for a little bit of it. But I do agree with what you're saying. You know, once you experience something, that is when it really sticks. I think all human beings are made in that way, in the same way. And I really hope that you know what you're doing. Kind of reaches more and more schools. And I don't know is it? Is it in Mumbai as well, Mumbai has

Yuvan Aves: 34:07

some extra marine life of Mumbai group which have made tide pooling a culture in Mumbai, Abhishek, jamalabad, Sejal, Mehta, shanak, Modi, what they've been from.

Tara Khandelwal: 34:21

There are certain movements, okay, I'm not that aware. But after this, I think I probably

Yuvan Aves: 34:28

if, if you mixed David Attenborough with Eminem, you'd get a Saher Doshi from Mumbai. Oh, wow. Of course, he's amazing.

Tara Khandelwal: 34:37

Wow, I definitely would, uh, check him out. That's that's really cool. You've been an activist. You know, you've called out so many people. You've spoken out, you even raised your voice against them. What is the most difficult fight you've been a part of? What is the most difficult part of being an activist? It cannot be easy.

Yuvan Aves: 34:58

Calling out is. But I'm not sure activist work is to call out or to cancel. I think an activist work is to question and reimagine culture. You know, I think the heart of activism is questioning in, you know, Modi's India, being an activist. We know that from, you know, United Nations reports that being an environmental different. I think it's India comes only after Mexico is second or third most dangerous country for activists. And we've had, we are a country of lynchings, and, you know, murders of activists, whether it be Gauri Lankesh, Narendra bulkar, you know, those are just the big names. Um, I mean, there have been lot of big fights. There have been times where, you know, there have been threats. There have been, I think, a more fundamental challenge an activist face is not slipping into this location of moral superiority. And as a young activist, I had that a lot, and sometimes you see that, okay, you're doing this, there's a sense of I'm doing something much more morally credible than than all of you around me, and that's a very dangerous place to be, because that is also the location of the Brahmin priest or the location of the CEO and the billionaire. It's extremely important to question even one's own commitment constantly. TM Krishna put this the best here in a talk, he defines Goodness. Goodness is something which is constantly open to questioning. Nothing becomes edifice. Nothing is put permanently on a pedestal. I think, at a psychological and spiritual level, that is the fundamental challenge of activism is that we should not slip into this space of moral superiority and then it becomes a kind of moral capitalism which is then just another form of the rest of the things which is happening. Yeah,

Tara Khandelwal: 37:15

I've seen that a lot on social media, this kind of moral superiority, and I do feel I agree with that, because it's a little alienating, you know, maybe you have somebody that is a little bit interested and wants to know but doesn't quite know or is still participating. You know, I think conversation like this is very, very useful, because I myself have learned so much, you know. And I may have said certain things that, you know, the litter, example, certain things and the way that you've also sort of, you know, brought your point of view is not from a place of moral superiority. It's just your point of view that also makes somebody else learn. So I definitely think that that's very important. So I think,

Yuvan Aves: 37:57

you know, if I sat and looked at your work, I would, I would learn a whole deal. And you have been speaking to a whole bunch of writers, and definitely, you know, by runnings where you've read more than me, you know that that gives a insight, which is that, you know, movements are ecologies. You know different kinds of people need to come together. And we see this time and again. You take any successful movement in India, whether it be silent Valley, or the RTI movement, or even movements which have not found success, but which have shaped culture, find that they are ecologies, all kinds of strange and different people have put aside their differences and come together. An alienation is simply not on the cards. Is like, Oh, I'm a scientist. I'm, you know, I'm but oh, I'm a journalist. I've done no way like, Forget about all that we do not exist as individuals. So often in a campaign, we are trying to make these strange and new connections we are trying to. For instance, you know, school children and Fisher folk could be artists and writers, but you get the sense we are trying to, yeah, movements are successful when all kinds of unlikely people come together and put their strengths together, which, which is exactly how a forest functions, or real ecology

Tara Khandelwal: 39:24

functions. Yeah, I recently went to mukteswar, which is on the hills. And over there a friend of mine, he's kind of, you know, very into nature. He is a Cheese Company, and he took us into this forest, and we were just sort of lying down on the grass, and I was observing the grass itself. I was like, Oh, this is a forest within a forest. There's so much happening in just a little square of space. And then when you take that and you extrapolate to the larger forest, I mean, it is just so rich. And I think definitely. In India, city, people, everybody should experience this. What is the one thing that you hope you know because you presented a lot in the book? What is the one thing that you hope your readers will take away from your book?

Yuvan Aves: 40:12

The one thing I hope readers will take which you know from feedback, I think already the book has achieved to some sense is that people are reading a few pages and going out onto the beach or going out and looking at things. It's, you know, that was sort of like the subconscious, tacit intention of writing. Say, it's not that you read this, but you there's a shift in perception. There's a there's a change in one's practice of attention to things which actually matter. You know, there is this field of extraordinary field of called agnotology, which is the study of ignorance. And you know, they actually classify our attention in different ways. One is, you know, to simply put things which are important, say, for instance, bees as pollinators, millipedes as Detective was, trees as weather makers and soil makers, important, but we don't know of them. We don't, we don't really pay attention, and then absolutely unimportant. But everybody knows. You know, I sometimes ask students who is Kim Kardashian, ex husband, full hands up. Full hands up. I'm like, Man shameful, like, not, not of them specifically, but just of how culture is made, and usually forces are trying to warp our attention into, you know, matters which are not in a very material and alive sense, important to us, but but create, you know, spheres of ignorance, where things which we if we paid attention to, we would have more control over our own lives and lives which matter. So in that sense, I think people are reading it, going and watching outside. Teachers are using bits of it and rethinking how they'll do their own curriculum. That would be, that would be it. The idea is not to be obsessed by the book, even if people read five pages and and build a practice of seeing, walking, connecting with their local ecology. That's, that's the desire,

Tara Khandelwal: 42:29

yeah, I think, yeah. Because a book is so observant and it goes into the mind. You take it's, it's also hard to read it in one book. It's not one of those books, but it is one of those books that you can keep coming back to. And it does feel like a guided meditation, because it, you know, when you want to be reflective, this is something that you can definitely pick up. And it does give you that push to go into nature and to just observe. You know, even your own locality, I live in a very crowded area, like, I mean, I live in Mumbai, so my neighborhood is very, very crowded, but I do go on walk sometimes, you know, and just simple things, like, I've always managed just simple things like observing what are the trees or just looking up sometimes, you know, really helps to connect one as well. I think just the power of observation is very, very important. So what was the publishing process like? You know, the editing process with Bloomsbury. I saw that Shiva Priya is your editor, and she's a fantastic editor, and such a great fit for a book like this. So can you tell me what was your publishing process and the editing process of writing this book,

Yuvan Aves: 43:41

a lot of people to thank for the Supriya reached out to me, having sort of vaguely read me here and there, and just like, can you write something for us? And I told her, there's something I'm interested in, and it's, it's amazing. The kinds of books surpriya brings into being, quite recently, she works on a lot of translations. She works on a lot of politically courageous titles. Recently, the tiger lessons, translated from Telugu into English, is a fantastic book about shepherds in in going into the Nala Mala hills to graze their sheep, highly drought prone region, and the sort of intermixture of caste and politics and environment, wildlife conflict. So she's been it was amazing to work with her the kind of detail, and, you know, Undertows and sub currents of the book, she picks up and puts back to you for the for the slightly undisciplined. She can be challenging. She will make you do draft after draft. And that was that, that that built character, and I was willing to do it. But. And then my agent, Kanishka, who took the book, so right now, internal is doing really well in the UK. Also, also thanks to my my friend and very important mentor, Robert McFarlane, who who's written the forward to the UK

Tara Khandelwal: 45:22

version. Why do you think the book is doing really well in the UK? It's, that's quite interesting.

Yuvan Aves: 45:28

My publishers in the UK, thanks to Kanishka, and they shot the numbers. And it's, it's equal to India and the Allied reason is, right now there is this amazing action writing book which has come out called is a river alive, by Robert McFarlane. And the middle chapter is set in Chennai and our work. And I think people are reading that and also going into this, but it is a river alive just by itself. It it looks at complex Earth entities, rivers, forests, mountains and movements around it as complexly and differently alive and and the various campaigns which enliven them. You know, from New Zealand to India to Ecuador to Canada. So, so, yeah, these are three people who are extremely indebted to Supriya Kanishka and Rob to a very great extent, because Rob, I started reading when I was 16, and the sense of dreaming to want to be a nature writer when there's not a real market, you know, since m Krishna and Kenneth Anderson, Jim COVID, you know, nature writing right now, speaking up in India, there is Neha Sinha as wild and willful Arthi Kumaras margin lands, says Al Mehta superpowers on the shore, set in Mumbai. Indian Pitta books coming out with some wonderful titles.

Tara Khandelwal: 47:02

Yeah, yeah, I've been seeing a lot of lot more nature writing. I've been meaning to read margin lands as well. So coming to nature writing, that was actually a question of mine, because I think this book is a really like a master class in nature writing as well. Right? What are some tips that you have for writers who want to write about nature, to be

Yuvan Aves: 47:24

a nature writer in India, it's, it's, it's a very specific position. It's, and it's a unique position. You look at Europe, you look at America, its shelves are flooded with nature writing and and it allowed a certain kind of relation with nature, out of being a colonial force. So this having externalized the messiness and exploitation and complexity, you know, states have with nature out onto other countries, and then this really sort of romantic, or the grass is green, the sky is blue. Sort of writing, sort of marks, I think most of European nature writing, literature, of course, there are that's changing, and there's huge exceptions to that, including Robert McFarlane, trots, outran and much of others India, you you do not have that option of of romanticizing nature is messy. It's in the interstices. It's in your face. It's complicating your life, and it's utterly under threat, and you cannot separate it from the politics. Often, I've been told, Do nature, not politics? I'm like, tell me how to, you know, how do you, how do you situate yourself in any Indian landscape, and not talk about forms of political violence and it's or other forms of complexities, which which nature is intermingled with indigenous resistance. You know, Ambedkar puts it quite interestingly. He mentions that the caste system in India necessitates a specific kind of relation the Dalit has with water. Water is seen as an oppressor because I cannot touch it. I cannot drink from it. You see it as a water is sort of politically toxic to the lower caste person. This is what we are enmeshed in as nature writers in India and and I think it has something very important to offer the world from a nature writing perspective. And I hope lot of more people take take this up. It has a strange it's important to see nature writing in its historicity. You had the white men going out into the forest to shoot Tigers leopards and. Birds includes your Jim Cobb at Kenneth Anderson, Malcolm, McDonald, Vinh Hume, and then that being passed on to, for instance, and changed by Salim Ali Kailash, sankala m Krishnan, Tagore. Tagore is full of nature writing. I, I was researching butterflies recently, and just dozens of references to to the most obscure of creatures. And then now in in the current paradigm of climate crisis, biodiversity crisis, how do you how do you be a nature writer.

Tara Khandelwal: 50:42

I think even Amitabh Ghosh is a really great example

Yuvan Aves: 50:45

for those. Amitabh Ghosh, I would not put as a nature writer. His work is absolutely important in India. But Amitabh Ghosh, Ramachandra Guha has Yeah, Mahesh Rangarajan, all of these people who written a lot about nature are have done archival work and one, one way to define nature writing would be direct engagement. It is a form of action writing so that that distinction and produces a different kind of literature when it's not purely archival. Though archival work is extremely

Tara Khandelwal: 51:19

important, and in terms of technique, do you have any tips for nature writers?

Yuvan Aves: 51:25

The form of repeated direct engagement and action, allows for new language, allows for different articulations and meeting different kinds of people and and even writing in that landscape. Often my I seek my new language in of course, you know, reading other writers, but also in the landscape itself, because neuronally, the brain becomes differently connected in ways of direct engagement.

Tara Khandelwal: 52:02

I like that, that you seek language from the landscape. That's lovely. So what book are you? Are you working on another book

Yuvan Aves: 52:09

I'm working on, a book called incendance, and it's about Indian insects and how they how they are absolutely important for our ecologies, how they are ignored, vilified. Pesticide and also, it's also about the violence of the agrochemical industry. Pesticide making in India, it's about the decline of pollinators, and it also travels the entire geography of India and evokes different species in the specific places and practices.

Tara Khandelwal: 52:48

Sounds very, very fascinating. My cousin was telling me recently that the single most important solution to climate change is bees, and she's thinking of, you know, keeping a beehive. And I said, No, no, no, don't do that. Maybe it was a good idea, after

Yuvan Aves: 53:07

all. So one narrative which has not come out of you know, we had the largest ever farmers protest in the world in 2020 2021, it was around one part of it was around MSP, minimum support price, the fact that farmers are saying, Give us economic safety nets to grow all kinds of crops, because food security is not the real problem in India. It's nutritional security. And once you care about Nutritional Security, you care about bees, you care about pollinators, because you can't eat vegetables, you can't eat pulses. However, it's easy to just focus on rice for an agrochemical corporate because a grass is largely being pollinated. And you can control the market, control the capital investments farmers have to put in, as well as douse the soil in chemicals. It's a very specific politic of forcing Paddy and wheat. The Green Revolution just did this because we can't just eat rice, you know, we will be malnourished utterly so, I mean, those are connections, and which I'm trying to explore again, I don't think enough part in the public

Tara Khandelwal: 54:27

discourse. I very much look forward to reading that book, and thank you so much for this conversation. I've learned a lot, and I think it's such a great introduction to this very rich world, and also a reminder to us to observe very minutely and go out and engage. I think that's the one thing that I have learned from this book, is that as every individual, we can sort of go out and become more aware and experience so thank you so much. I really, really enjoyed this

Yuvan Aves: 54:56

conversation. Thank you. Thank you for inviting me. You.

Unknown: 55:00

Hope you enjoyed this episode of Books and Beyond with bound. This podcast is created by bound, a company that helps you grow through stories. Find us at bound India on all social media platforms. Tune in every Wednesday as we peek into the lives and minds of some brilliant authors from India and South Asia. You.