Sahyadrica

“Everyone who has been into space and looked back at Earth have noted a sense of wonder and awe, unity with nature, transcendence, and universal brotherhood”, says the book Psychology of Space Exploration: Contemporary Research in Historical Perspective . This level of consciousness is termed the Overview Effect, coined by Frank White in 1987. Not many have looked back at earth as an isolated, vulnerable, negligible, closed ecosystem, but everyone has, at least once in their lifetime, looked into the blackness that lies beyond – into space – and the universe, through the eyes it has created – your eyes – has looked back upon itself. As Carl Sagan has rightly put it, “we are a way for the cosmos to know itself”. Yet back on Earth – we defile nature – consciously or subconsciously – and to attain the level of consciousness, to understand the scale of destruction of this only place where we can live, one has just to sit in one place, imagine this planet as your own, your neighbou...

On a planet whose treasure lie not in the precious stones and metals, but in life, you will find that life fills all the possible – and impossible – niches carved by the action of wind and water, fire and earth, and sun and moon. This life has evolved to adopt the pace of nature. But the pace of nature is not always patient and calm. Although life evolved to the rhythm of the passing seasons, many animals and plants adapted to the changes on the planet – changes that are brought about daily by the celestial bodies. The mud forest of Konkan These ecosystems are called the intertidal zones, a place between the high-tide and the low-tide mark. In this harsh environment – harsh for it is rapidly changing from being completely aquatic to being roasted under the tropical sun – life has evolved many special adaptations which allow it to thrive, and amongst the many intertidal ecosystems lay the mud forests – mangroves. The tangle of mud forest Nagla Block, SGNP The mangrove for...