 If you recollect Professor Raymond Williams in key words, he had talked about the fact that words are not stable. They keep changing through historical experience, although he did say that creativity is the only word with a consistently positive meaning. Very often words gain positive or negative meaning and also their meaning gains different kinds of associations. So the term culture according to him in its earlier formation in its modern form, it sort of had this connection of particular, it sort of let me read this actually as it is. The independent noun culture began its complicated modern history from the extension of particular processes to a general process. Now I sort of feel that this will give us an interesting lead in terms of some of the activities that I want to now add to the psychosocial dimension that we have talked about or the autotelic dimension that we talked earlier. So now let us see what I want to add to the discussion. Now this is of course based on my personal perception of what we need to do because very often you know when one interacts with young people there is a certain sense of you know their direction, their involvement and various other experiential things that one begins to notice. Because it is a very fortunate situation when you teach young people you are constantly in touch with changes that unfold in society because all of these are concentrated within these young people and their you know future directions. One thing that I feel is sometimes missing is a sense of some kind of active thriving relationship with nature and the term nature is with the capital N. So therefore, this particular exercise is actually meant to recover richer connections by interweaving language that is nature and culture related historical semantics and experience through what I have described as pastoral exercises. So I hope this idea is clear to you. So in order to extend our discussion further so far we have talked about psychosocial stages as stages that show the relationship between the individual and the social interrelationships or the social institutions which have been created in order to satisfy the needs of that particular stage. But we have actually perhaps not talked about everything, it is not possible also because after all you know actual life is amorphous and you know the social sciences like psychology or anthropology what they try to do is to extrapolate certain aspects concentrate on them and provide some key insights. But after all when you write none of these sort of ideas you know compartmentalized ideas will help you. So one thing that I feel is missing in those psychosocial insights or those psychosexual insights or the autotaric insights which also comes from developmental psychology where the whole purpose is to strengthen the sense of the self. So what is missing is this active exploration of our psychonatural interrelationship. Now this I am coining this term in order to draw your attention to the fact that we have actually a very sort of primordial kind of relationship with nature. Now the term nature itself is very complex but we will try to again use the sense of nature as Raymond Williams has evoked it in a certain definition that he has provided. So let us first of all see what this exercise is all about and I will also then dip into the sense of culture which Raymond Williams had evoked which was also related to interface with nature and that is how I view that earlier you know connotation of the word culture. The reason what it is you know interesting to go back to that definition is maybe perhaps nostalgic or it may be related to the fact that actually in childhood we inevitably have a very active relationship with nature. Now it is possible to conceive of childhood experience where this is really not so. In case you have not had a very active thriving relationship with nature I think the absence itself could be a subject matter of deliberation, discussion and introspection. So let us look at this exercise first the pastoral exercise number one is explore early connotations of the word culture overcome polarizations and alienation from the natural world I mean that is the purpose of the composition and so now this is the exercise and as I said the exercise is based on Raymond Williams and his statement in key words where he says that culture in early use was a noun of process basically of tending crops and animals. So this is the first question have a close look at it. Have a real or imaginary experience of tending a garden crop plant try and give as many details of the process as possible to refer to books that help you enjoy the process further remember reading is an important part of writing. So this is one activity but we also would like you to share your writing with other members of your group decide if individually or collectively you would like to give shape to this activity in any way that is creative for you. Now I do not want to prescribe anything but you can decide for yourself. So this is not this may be a composition activity but you can also redefine it in some other ways alright then there is a variation of an exercise from the writer's book that we would like you to again attempt in the middle of a blank page write down the list of plants you wish to focus on to the left of this list write a column of adjectives which describe the plants their texture special features memories they evoke to the right of this the list write a column of verbs which illuminate the objects at the process of tending the verb should be energetic and exact. Now this exercise we will also refine it further and give you some samples to in lecture 10 which will be the concluding lecture of this module. So right now I do not want to show you any samples I do not want to you know limit this activity I am opening it up for what I would sort of tend to consider as very vital very interesting fascinating area of our own being which I can perhaps use this newly coined label of psycho nature inside or psycho natural inside into oneself. So now after undertaking this particular activity and I am moving rapidly but you know you can undertake these activities at your own pace you can also go back and forth you may have to go back to earlier lectures to again make sure that you have understood the idea because these activities are built on activities and ideas that have been discussed earlier it is not possible to repeat them all the time. So this is an act of consolidation and also an act of moving forward with more discussion more possibilities more angles of vision in teaching one has to develop building blocks. So these are building blocks that are being shared with you. Now from plants you can shift your attention to animals and of course you notice that I am using plants and animals in relationship to the term nature and in terms of tending of plants and animals that Raymond Williams talked about earlier in his definition of culture. So now compare and contrast the experience of seeing animals in any setting such as a forest zoo an urban setup a rural setup wherever in the domestic framework you make your choice and write a brief description of your experience. Secondly refer to any book or magazine that enhances your understanding or dislike of animals discuss your write up and reading list with your group. So again you know this may reveal interesting facets of your own sensibility and also the kind of social and cultural framework you have been exposed to but again I suppose my subtext if you if I can use that word or my assumption here is that there is this natural relationship with everything around us you know then total environment the natural environment which sometimes we are not aware of so it is good to be able to think about it. For further knowledge building we have provided a list to you and the reading list is provided to overcome polarizations pertaining to knowledge of nature and alienation from the natural world. So this is a very you know you can say charged and personalized way of looking at convergences and divergences because I mean I feel that when we talk about our own sense of self there is much more to us than we realize there are richer relationships that we actually have we may have curbed them or we have not been exposed to this kind of discourse and discussion. So I have taken the liberty of interpreting convergences in terms of texts that are very accessible to you and also that also help us understand the world around us you know very sharply. So now these texts that I have chosen they have scientific and literary narratives intermixed and I find that very very interesting. I think when we talk about nature and study of nature now I am shifting my attention from your own personal experience and also these exercises we did in order to understand ramification of culture and how it refers to the relationship with nature. In its earlier formation it gave us some sense of that relationship in simpler societies otherwise it is a very complex economic and social order but nostalgically we can go back and forth and we can also then evoke certain possibilities within ourselves. So this particular you know discussion of nature inevitably leads to the discussion of systematic study of nature which often the term science is used for that purpose. And therefore we will also include the term science while we are trying to work out various relationships where we do not really promote polarizations between different systems of knowledge because actually in our being we have everything which is connected you know vitally connected and these systems of knowledge they of course advance our understanding of certain aspects of reality but for our own being we need to have a larger sense of human life or human experience. So now let us add this term here and very quickly I would refer to Raymond Williams definition where he says that the theoretical and methodical study of nature is now called the natural sciences and subjects such as physics chemistry and biology these are associated with the natural sciences. The reason you know this is chosen is because the term science also has undergone a lot of transformations in its original sense it was a synonym for knowledge but it has also undergone a lot of changes historically. So this is where our discourse is pitched in terms of polarization and we are trying to overcome polarizations. So the term natural science when we talk about nature is very relevant for us. This particular definition is very interesting and we will work on it in the next lecture because we will look at national discourse in terms of young people the sense of youth and many other related issues in the next lecture but definitely this particular definition has seeped our national discourse through Padit Nehru's interpretive statements, policy statements when India became independent. You know this sense of science as this you know the study of nature and the significance of the study of nature in order to understand the modern world. When used in the context of social or human sciences when the term science is used in these contexts it refers to methodological rigor it does not mean the same thing as it you know it evokes some different relationship when we talk about natural sciences and human sciences. So keep that in mind and if you want more explanation maybe we can find these interactive mechanisms through which this discussion can be advanced but keep the sense of nature natural science in mind while looking at the reading list. So now when you start reading from the reading list that is provided what I would like you like you to do now is to not only just read but also to summarize what you have read and in fact learn to paraphrase carefully because summarizing is a very very important academic skill and it cannot really you know be it cannot be developed automatically. You have to undertake this exercise frequently in order to develop the skill of summarizing meaningfully. So you can take up any summarizing notebook or a sort of language book which teaches you how to prepare summaries but I would like you to undertake this activity very regularly with anything that you read. The second thing is that your writing you should make sure is error free it is not enough to just want to write but you have to learn to write correctly and your expressive writing also needs to be grammatically correct and I say this because I have just finished evaluation work and on the one hand a lot of students in that particular group had zeal for creative writing for composition and yet you know the kind of care that is necessary for simple things like correct you know sentence construction spellings etc. Often I find people have become a little less careful about this so please make sure that your writing is error free. Also I like you to share your ideas your writing, your readings with a lot of other people and try and create a network of interested people because these are new ideas new ways of doing academic work and I think if you begin to share your ideas with people then may be there will be enough people for this idea to be institutionalized. So, now this is the suggested reading list and unfortunately I noticed that some of these books are really not very widely known I have always wondered as to why this is so but in any case very quickly I will give you some sense of these books and I use them as an example of what I describe as narratives where both scientific and literary narratives are intermixed this is what I had said earlier. So, how is it intermixed in Menaka Gandhi and Yasmin Singh's Brahma's hair in this kind of a book you get a balanced picture because it ends each chapter ends with the botanical description of the tree. So, now this is the kind of material which I feel in you know is very useful in case you have not been exposed to this kind of reading it is almost like training or field guide for looking at not only natural objects and natural entities around you but also to begin to see how these are seen by different kinds of people what kind of fantasy or what kind of mythological structure is created around them and how it seeps into the consciousness of the people there are lots of festivals lots of rituals associated with many trees. The second book that I have recommended here is a book of birds by Gribal of course Ali Mali's books are very well known I have of course chosen books where the pictorial quality is very good. So, Vikram Gribal's book Birds of India which is a field guide. So, again you can you look at these field guides which give you scientific information about the birds but they also from time to time dip into cultural information like variety of names or certain other cultural associations of some of these you know the birds and in order to add to the pastoral exercise I videotaped a bird which according to Vikram Gribal is a sun bird she sort of built a nest near my kitchen so I will be able to share it with you if time permits. My IIT home is located atop a rocky landscape garden close to the Pawai Lake. Video recordings have added to the pleasures of watching the beauty and the drama of the landscape. This particular nest building caught my attention because the net itself as you can see looks like a bird hanging upside down. It seemed precariously purged on the edge of the single branch of the red hibiscus or jaswant. The video helped me capture the nervous movements of the bird. She is right now gone to pick up flowers and insects and twigs. It also helped me capture its wearing twitters, flights back and forth. To use Salim Ali's words the flower bird was happy building its nest close to the bird flower. When it comes back to the nest can you see if it is a purple sun bird or a flower pecker? I think it's a purple rum sun bird found in peninsular India. Storing the observations in the video form is a mode of logging one's observations. I am uncertain about its immediate connection to my writing process. The nest and its precarious delicacy evoked in coherent feelings. I hope you will enjoy looking at it. There are couple of other things. I have started using video as a medium so that I can understand what it can do. It's a new medium and also how it can enhance what we already are familiar with in a more positive way. So we may be very observant about our surroundings but does it add to it in any way? Does it modify it in some ways? Well I still have not reached any conclusions but if I do I will share them with you. The next book which I recommend very strongly is Pradeep Kishan's Trees of Delhi although it's a book devoted to the absolutely wonderful astoundingly beautiful trees of Delhi but it is really a very lovingly written book with outstanding pictorial quality and I think both for scientific and cultural information and also horticultural information. It's a very, very useful book. You will enjoy that very much and finally Conrad Lorenz's King Solomon's Ring for Animals. My favorite chapter in that book is The Covenant which is about the man and dog relationship and I am also using the word man I should be saying human and dog relationship. So this book also I would recommend really very strongly and this Professor Lorenz wrote it for a common reader. So it's really not a book which is meant exclusively for the expert although I am sure zoologists, ethologists or mythologists all of them would enjoy this book by the great Austrian Nobel Prize winning naturalist and one can really learn to watch and communicate with birds like King Solomon after reading this book. So these are the other books that we had dived into and I hope you enjoyed this segment and even if there are these absences in your experiential framework, please don't feel ruffled by it. In fact these absences often give us very important insights and these are separated activities that is activities that draw your attention to certain aspect of your experience but the totality will be infinitely more beautiful, infinitely more mysterious and infinitely more challenging and that's where our creativity is tested. Thank you.