Write the Drop

Why write about nature? This seems like a rhetorical question but it’s not; actually, it’s one that us writers need to eyeball very carefully in this day and age, when Jane Goodall, no less, has said that she has “enormous fear for the future of the planet. We are hurtling on a downward path towards the kind of planet that will no longer support human life — and maybe no life. Eventually the planet will recover — we won’t.” She goes on to remind us that there is still a window of time, which is the good news we must grab and run with. Because time is short, and the water rises.

But there’s another, more selfish, side to this. Writing about nature takes us into the incredibly beautiful and interesting world of birds, animals, and their habitats and we learn, for instance, about the crazy hunting strategy of the trapdoor spider, head-banging and waltzing birds of paradise out to impress the girls, frogs that have taken to dancing rather than calling, for good reason (which you can find out for yourself!). Every now and then, I do a little homework project, choosing a species or topic I know nothing about. That’s how dancing frogs came on to my radar, as well as debris spiders, which camouflage their webs with dry leaves and other detritus to escape the attention of predators.

For many of us “environmental writers”, the entry point into nature has been birds, a good perch for the flight into this amazing world. This was my experience, mainly because I was surrounded by birder family and friends (and a few enemies, like a cousin who insisted our birding trips should start at 6am when all good people should be asleep). At age ten or eleven, I began writing about birds and nature. Luckily my father, a conservationist, edited two newsletters and encouraged my “career” by printing my pieces. Not printing really but cyclostyling, that archaic, inky activity which involved typing on a stencil which then rotated around a barrel smeared with ink, slamming into sheets of paper with varying pressure so that some words were very dark, some too light to read, and some disguised in ink blots. What fun it was! Since I was writing for “grown-ups”, I found and used long, unsuitable words I’d heard in parental conversations. It amuses me that in childhood I wrote for adults, and in adulthood, for children.

My move to Madras/Chennai in 1974, meant a switch from birds to reptiles because I worked at the Snake Park, and later the Crocodile Bank, and reptiles ruled at both. I jumped onto the snake conservation bandwagon, horrified at the numbers being killed, not only for the skins but because “all snakes are venomous” and various other myths about them. I wrote and wrote and wrote about snakes with a missionary zeal… talks for visitors at the Snake Park, articles, film scripts, and then one fine day, a story. Its popularity underlined how effective this medium was for children, this combo of facts and fiction. Later ones were Kali and the Rat Snake, What Happened to the Reptiles, Andamans Boy, The Poo Story, Adventures of the Humongoose Family and others, the latest being Termite Fry, a novel about an Irular family based on the community’s culture and history, with quite a few known people thrown in. So, when asked whether it’s fiction or non-fiction, I don’t know what to say. Does it matter? Aren’t they often intertwined?

Living in the sphere of environmental work and mitigation, there has always been plenty of exciting non-fiction possibilities as well, as seen in The Rumbling Island, the collection of thirteen essays I edited, and which has just been republished. There’s Ashish Chandola, the wildlife photographer, inadvertently sharing a cave with a tigress and her cubs; Manish Chandi’s adventures in the Nicobar Islands; Salim Ali marking birds with rings to study their migration routes and more. Who needs fiction anyway, when there’s so much magical stuff going on around us all the time?

Apart from the crying need and nature’s magic, writing on the environment for children brings another gift: they really appreciate it and, more importantly, say it! I have been made so happy at talks, zooms, workshops, by their enthusiasm. The Learning Centre in Goa sent me a lovely parcel recently, with letters about Andamans Boy, which is one of their class readers. One of these, a one-liner thankfully, said they didn’t like the book much (I put this letter at the bottom of the pile), but most were complimentary. These are moments that propel you onwards on this journey, however empty your bank account may remain. Assuming that we all want to be in the world of writing, which you hopefully do, what angle could be more rewarding than writing for youngsters about the environment?

So, sharpen your pencil/dust your keyboard, and don’t listen to people who say what’s the use, it’s just a drop in the ocean. Yours could be one of those drops that makes a vital change. Let me tell you a (true) story. Many years ago, I wrote an article about opportunities for young people to volunteer at organisations like the Croc Bank and WWF. A sweet lamb, still in school then, read it, followed this path, and is today a lion in the conservation world. Let’s not underestimate the effect, as well as the joy, of being in this space of green children’s literature.

People often ask for some “practical tips”. I keep an Ideas Notebook in which green facts, words and perspectives are jotted down. I skim these now and then, to push the inspiration buttons. A smaller version lives in my handbag, for quick jotting because my memory is now seventy years old. Another one: keep your green radar on at all times, because you never know when the next idea may pop up. This has happened to me at the most unlikely moments and circumstances!