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Recreating the Roee
Making of Kishenbagh by Pradip Krishen
Speakers
A talk on the making of Kishan Bagh by environmentalist Pradip Krishen followed by a discussion between Pradip Krishen, ecologist Harini Nagendra, chemical ecologist Shannon Olsen, and independent scholar Sita Reddy.
In January of 2016, Pradip Krishen was shown a barren tract of ‘marooned dunes’ in the north-east of Jaipur city by the Jaipur Development Authority (JDA) and asked if he was willing to shape it into a public park.
Building on the work he has done in Jodhpur where he created the Rao Jodha Desert Rock Park on 70 hectares of rocky hillside, he was excited by the prospect of trying to restore a very different (sandy) desert landscape.
In this special Talk for Bengaluru Science Gallery, Pradip Krishen walks us through different facets of his work in creating ‘Kishan Bagh’ (no allusion to his name!) as a place that invites visitors to get to know the desert intimately, its rocks and plants, but most specially, a native Thar shrubland called ‘Roee’. He says the ‘central ambition’ of Kishan Bagh is to introduce the word ‘Roee’ into the vocabulary that people use when they think or talk about the Thar desert. That could be a first step towards visiting, photographing and hopefully, conserving this relict landscape.
Part of PHYTOPIA, in collaboration with Science Gallery Bengaluru
Speakers
Pradip Krishen
Pradip Krishen writes about trees and plants and works as an ecological gardener (mostly) in Western India and the desert where he has re-wilded spoiled landscapes with native vegetation. He is the author of Trees of Delhi (2006) and Jungle Trees of Central India (2015). He is working now on a journal-style book about Delhi’s degraded Central Ridge forest.
He made 3 films in the 20th century (that’s supposed to sound far away) and regards that as a career he has moved away from. His films were: Massey Sahib (1986), In Which Annie Gave It Those Ones (1989) and Electric Moon (1991).
He lives in New Delhi with his daughters and dogs.
Shannon Olsson
Shannon Olsson has been interested in chemical ecology since she first synthesized a pheromone mimic in her college organic chemistry class. She was trained as a chemist who then fell in love with nature and secretly wants to be an engineer. This combination creates a mix of chemistry, evolutionary biology, ethology, and neuroengineering in her projects. Shannon completed her Ph.D. at Cornell University in Neurobiology and Behavior and Chemical Ecology. She then worked at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany, as a Project Leader where she collaborated with engineers to develop an artificial chemical communication system based on insect chemical communication. A Fulbright Scholar and Ramanujan Fellow, Dr. Olsson is part of a large effort to promote chemical ecology in India.
Harini Nagendra
Harini Nagendra is a Professor at the School of Development, Azim Premji University. Her research focuses on social-ecological transformations in south Asia. Prof. Nagendra received a 2013 Elinor Ostrom Senior Scholar award for research and practice on urban commons. Her 2016 book “Nature in the City: Bengaluru in the Past, Present, and Future” examines the implications of environmental change for cities of the global South. She currently coordinates the Centre for Urban Ecological Sustainability at Azim Premji University
Sita Reddy
Sita Reddy is an independent scholar and museum curator based in Hyderabad who writes on a range of topics at the intersection of art and science ranging from the history of natural medicine to the decolonization of museums and archival justice. Most recently, she guest-edited Marg magazine’s first-ever special issue on botanical art: The Weight of a Petal: Ars Botanica. She has been Fellow at the Smithsonian Institution and Wellcome Library, and visiting professor at the University of Hyderabad (Dept of Fine Arts), and her curatorial experience includes exhibitions on Yoga, Ayurveda, forensic medicine, criminal photography and contemporary art. She is currently working on a book on the Indian medicinal herbal archive, provisionally titled The Jangala Books. She blogs occasionally at ajeebghar.com and runs the online portal arsbotanica.net.
