The Wild Heart of India

Book excerpt: Wild—untamed, hostile, remote. Yet, wild can be gentle, welcoming, and inspiring, too. This is the wild that preoccupies biologist Shankar Raman as he writes about trees and bamboos, hornbills and elephants, leopards and myriad other species. Species found not just out there in far wildernesses—from the Thar desert to the Kalakad rainforests, from Narcondam Island to Namdapha—but amid us, in gardens and cities, in farms, along roadsides. And he writes about the forces that gouge land and disfigure landscapes, rip trees and shred forests, pollute rivers and contaminate the air, slaughter animals along roads and rail tracks—impelling a motivation to care, and to conserve nature. Through this collection of essays, Shankar Raman attempts to blur, if not dispel, the sharp separation between humans and nature, to lead you to discover that the wild heart of India beats in your chest, too.