A Day with the Shama

On a misty morning nearly half a century ago, Baskaran watched in awe as a skein of Bar-headed geese landed in Devarayan lake near Tiruchi. Their honking calls through the surrounding fog rendered the moment with a certain magic. That morning sparked the beginning of Baskarans nature writing. The articles he wrote over the years, published mostly in The Hindu, examined wildlife, ecology and conservation, reflecting his enduring concerns with environmental issues. His writing based on personal observation has a sense of immediacy that draws readers to the lived experiences of nature. The essays in this anthology range from an account of the stream-dwelling Brown dipper to a search for the lost orchid of courtallam. As Peter Matthiessen said, ” one way to grasp the main perspectives of biodiversity is to understand the precious nature of a single living form, a single manifestation of the miracle of existence; if one has to truly understand a crane- or a leaf or a cloud or a frog- one has understood everything.” The articles anthologised in this volume represent a lifetime’s pursuit of such an understanding.