About

I can’t say for sure what it was that got me interested in nature. Sometimes I like to think that I was born with the blood of a wild animal coursing through me; I have always felt more at home by the sea or under a tree than in the company of a big crowd of people.

My childhood was full of little adventures with my cousin who always had (and still does have) the greatest ideas for adventures. We would search for bugs and beetles in the railway station near our grandparents’ house, store them carefully in matchboxes (we were careful to provide holes for breathing). We even looked for fossils and buried treasure (we only found an old spoon) when we were in Hampi– a town in South India home to the remains of historic dynasties. My parents added to my fascination for nature too– my mom pointed out constellations and the cycle of the moon, introduced me to birdwatching and still comes back from her morning walk to tell me happily of the colors and smells of trees and flowers. My dad would call me out into the garden to show me something interesting or tell me about all the natural life that was so close at hand during his childhood in Kerala.

Gerald Durrell tipped it for me. I was enthralled by his life in Corfu where he had spent countless hours lying on his tummy on the beach or under Olive trees and watching little dramas of nature unfold. But even then, I didn’t realize that I could be someone who studies nature for a living. It wasn’t a profession that was popular in India. When I did find out about it, I had completed a degree in engineering and started work at a software company. A chance meeting with some students studying ecology helped me make up my mind to veer off course and chart a path towards becoming an ecologist (more about my research here).

This blog is for my writing on nature, ecology, fieldwork and research. I write about nature to remind everyone— children especially— about how much fun there is to be had amidst it. A few of the posts on this blog have been published in websites/newspapers like The Deccan Herald, The Hindu and JLR Explore, to do just that.

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