Present Tense: Suprabha's "Rainforest Etiquette in a World Gone Mad" lecture at Brockwood

Present Tense - A series of presentations by Former Students & Invited Guests
at Brockwood Park School
Saturday October 1st 2011

Brockwood Alumna, and award-winning ecologist, Suprabha Seshan kicked-off our series of guest speakers to present in the School during the academic year. Brockwood has always benefited from visiting alumni who have taken the time to share with students and staff something of their life's work and experience. These visits contribute immensely to the richness of the culture at Brockwood. For example, they assist students in thinking creatively about their "life after Brockwood" as well as staff in reflecting on the education we offer here and our ties with alumni.

Suprabha Seshan is ecologist and educator at the Gurukula Botanical Sanctuary (GBS), http://www.gbsanctuary.org, a forest garden in the Western Ghat mountains of Kerala, India, dedicated to the preservation of plant species, restoration ecology and environmental education. She was winner of the 2006 Whitley Award (UK's top environmental prize), and has travelled widely speaking about the ecological basis for a healthy planet: wild plants, wild animals and their wild environments.
Suprabha is touring through Europe and the United States on a speaking tour sponsored by writer Arundhati Roy and singer-songwriter KT Tunstall who both also graciously support the work of the Sanctuary.

"Rainforest Etiquette in a World Gone Mad" is based on two premises: that nature is primary and that the planet is in peril. Suprabha draws on stories from her 20 years of experience in the forests of southern India, and the lives of plants, animals and humans she shares her mountain home with, as well as the environmental biography of their locality, the Wayanad. She invites an exploration of a life in community with non-humans and the two contrasting aspects of nature that ecosystem gardeners work with: resilience and fragility. The whole forest and its myriad beings can indeed return, but only when certain conditions are met and only with the right kind of help. This is critical: with the right kind of help, the whole forest, and all its beings, grows outwards again.

The awful truth is that 93% of the Western Ghats are already destroyed. The remaining habitats are fragmented badly. Her talk will call attention to the vital beauty of these mountain forests and their precarious toehold in an India that annihilates the environment as its technocrats push for economic might. The questions that drive the Sanctuary's work echo through her presentation: What must we do to bring the forests back? What is it to listen to the natural world? What do the plants have to say? Whom do we love?

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If you feel you could offer something for Present Tense, our new series of presentations, please send us an email (alumni@brockwood.org.uk), or give a call. We may be able to help with travel costs (within Europe) if required, we can certainly ensure hospitality and a good meal.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Brockwood
• Education
• Krishnamurti
• Rainforest
• Lecture
• Suprabha
• Seshan
• ecologist
• Gurukula
• botanical
• sanctuary

[TheTomcook]

Hay Supi, just fantastic, thanks SO much :)