TLDR; A young Girl’s reading time is shortened with the setting sun. So, she grows up to change the world.

Anjali Joshi’s picture book biography tells the inspiring true story of Anna Mani, India’s pioneering weather scientist, who turned a childhood frustration into a lifelong quest to harness the clean energy of the sun and wind. In early 1900s India, with no electricity in her village, young Anna’s evenings were cut short by darkness; a small injustice that quietly planted the seeds of a remarkable scientific career.

The book carries two powerful ideas that work beautifully in tandem. The first is the familiar one:

But the second is subtler and more important, as highlighted by Anna’s father herself: the first solution is not always the best one.

When electricity finally arrived, it brought with it dark, smoky skies and vanishing stars. Anna Mani refused to accept that trade-off, dedicating herself instead to measuring and harnessing nature’s own abundant energy. It is a lesson that feels urgently relevant today.

What elevates this book beyond a simple biography, however, is the open question it leaves for young readers. We now know that solar panels and wind turbines — the very technologies Anna Mani championed — carry their own complications. Windmills across Rajasthan’s Thar Desert, including the region around Jaisalmer, pose serious threats to raptors like eagles, falcons, and vultures, whose migratory paths bring them directly into the path of spinning blades and power lines. Anna Mani’s story, then, is not just history, it is an ongoing challenge.

The book implicitly asks: what problem will you solve next?

Written by a science educator herself, every word celebrates a largely unsung Indian scientist while reminding us that innovation is never finished and that every solution opens the door to the next problem waiting to be solved.

A thoughtful and beautifully packaged tribute to one of India’s great scientific minds.

If you ask me what the book is about, I’ll tell simply that it’s about the everyday life in the Mussoorie hills as experienced by the writer Ruskin Bond.

And that’s the best part about this book. The book lives through moments and epiphanies, observing and noticing tiny parcels of life. No dramatic story arc, just mundane moments.

But there’s something which I couldn’t oversee. India’s most revered author Ruskin Bond always has something about the nature intertwined in his stories. I believe, it’s because he sees himself as one with the nature. That’s why calling this book merely a nature/mountain book would be to miss its deeper intention. This is a book about attention. About what happens when a person decides, daily and deliberately, to notice.

His superpower is that he moves through the natural world the way a river moves through a mountain— always moving, but never in too much of a hurry. When he writes about a bird, you feel he has spent time with it. When he describes the particular quality of monsoon light on a hillside, you trust that he has sat with that light long enough to become part of it.

Thank you Ruskin Bond sir, you have been doing something that only now we are beginning to fully appreciate. You have been teaching us to see. Not dramatically, not loudly, but with the same steady consistency as the hills themselves.

There is a particular kind of grief that has no name in most languages— the grief of losing something you loved before you knew you loved it.

‘Something’ is a tree.

And the ‘tree’ doesn’t have a name.

As a child I did not think of myself as someone who cared about trees. In my childhood home, the back entrance opened to a small rectangular park. To this day, this park is the landmark that I add whenever I’m ordering anything at home. Back in the 90’s, all corners of this New Layal Pur Park were adorned with trees. I don’t know which trees they were, but thick canopy and evergreen— that’s how I remember them. From our terrace, we had to squint our eyes to spot children playing so that we could plea our parents to let us go and play. The leaf shedding and growing happened throughout the year and that’s why they murdered them.

Those trees were cut because the residents felt that the falling leaves were a nuisance. I must have been 8-9 years old back then but I remember feeling confused and not very pleased with this reason. The green cover used to look very calming to my eyes as a child and I tried to reason with my grandfather to stop them from cutting the tree. He didn’t. Or couldn’t. It was the sort of argument that everybody avoids with neighbours.

After the tree was cut, I missed the stains of leaves on our staircase. Everything was clean and nobody had to clean the mess. But how foolish are we that we worry about such absurdities in the name of keeping things clean. No wonder, Delhi has not breathed better in the past two decades.

When I was a teenager, I missed the green cover even more. It could have prevented us from prying eyes from the rowdy boys who spent their entire day in the park. Even in the comfort of our home we couldn’t dress in shorts because the room on our terrace had a clear view from the park. It meant that every time we moved from ground floor to first or vice versa, we had to be ‘modest’ and ‘presentable’.

How ironic is it that I do not know the name of those trees yet still feel deeply about them. But I am wiser now after reading Neha Sinha’s Wild Capital. In the chapter Forgotten Trees- The Name Of This Tree Is My Tree, she writes-

There was also a mulberry tree (I know the name because of its fruit we devoured every summer- shehtoot) at the far end of the park. My sister and I used to hop onto that tree along with other boys to get our share of the fruit. Boys (and our parents) didn’t like it, but we didn’t bother.

The tree was cut as well, for no apparent reason. Birds loved the tree. After the trees were cut, a deafning silence prevailed and the park lost its charm.

As of today, no morning walks happen there. It does have an open air gym but it’s mostly a place where alcoholics and hooligans spend the night.

Year 2021, Roorkee, Uttarakhand

The second and third tree murdered before my eyes were the trees that I watched from my balcony daily in our Roorkee home. We were new in the city and COVID-19 had us locked inside. The balcony offered a respite. I would take my coffee mug and go outside where birdsongs gave me company.

One morning, after a major storm jolted and rattled our windows the entire night, I went to the balcony to see that my tree was gone. Cut through the heart. People from around were taking advantage of the situation and slicing open its branches and trunk, gathering wood for their chulha perhaps. Or to sell.

I stood there silently, watching the tree getting ripped off its organs, because why not? When a human dies, even if they are an orphan, we bid them goodbye respectfully. Why don’t trees get the respect they deserve? This was robbery. I said a heavy goodbye to my friend and promised I will take an action next time.

Year 2021, Roorkee, Uttarakhand

The next time came sooner than I expected. The apartment complex where I stayed had a wonderful old tree at the boundary where a family of rose-ringed parakeets often greeted me during my morning walks. This tree was also adjacent to the highway.

On one fateful morning, I saw the tree was gone. Only the stump remained. The parakeets were hovering in and around making noises that clearly resembled human loss of home and comfort. I was aghast. I clicked a picture and shared with my husband. He was posted at IIT-Roorkee as an Executive Engineer and it was their residential complex where we were living. I asked him if he knew anything about this. He said no. I asked him to find out why this tree was cut.

He prodded but got nothing concrete. I decided to take it in my hands. I messaged the photo on the ‘Society WhatsApp group’ and demanded an answer- Why was the tree cut? Did we take permission from the forest department?

A few people from the society group joined me in their disappointment. They acknowledged the loss of tree and loss of habitat of those parakeets. I was not alone, there were others who felt deeply about it. But we didn’t get any concrete answers. We demanded the official permission to be shared in the group.

When my husband got back from work, I asked him what he found out and he said that the department felt that the tree was very old and prone to felling in the storms. “It could have been fatal to human lives. Don’t worry, we are planting new trees to make up for it”, they said.

I was seething in anger but I knew it was a lost cause. Even as a noob at that time, I knew that was not a solution. There could have been reinforcements to prevent tree from falling. There could have been considerations made of the birds and bees dependent on that ecosystem of that tree.

The WhatsApp group went silent afterwards.

Year 2023, Jammu, J&K

On our next posting, we moved to Jammu. A nearby park became our usual for morning walks. We made friends with the bees, birds and trees. The park was not very green because it was new. We could see new saplings planted here and there and imagined how it would look a few years down the road. However, four huge Eucalyptus trees lined on one side of the boundary wall. The trees were on the road-side, overlooking kothis.

This was their mistake. They spoiled the look of the kothi. The fallen leaves made the homeowners do regular cleaning. Blasphemy!

This mistake cost its life.

One fine morning, we went to the park to find just one of the trees axed. I couldn’t comprehend why just one tree. I had to find out, so I went in search for anyone who could answer me. Luckily, I found the gardener that day working on his new rose bush. I asked him if he knew why that tree was cut. He said as plainly as he could- “It was spoiling the front view of that kothi. That’s a big man’s mansion so he got it cut.”

I couldn’t stand there. I was fuming and wanted to rush to the big man’s house to see how big his manliness is, but my husband held my hand.

After days of fuming, I finally took the plunge and complained to the forest department. It involved dealing with many sarkari conversations- “we don’t deal with this, call them. I am on leave, call my subordinate.” And so on! But I finally hit my luck when someone called me back and asked about my complaint. They reached my home and asked me to show them the crime site.

I went with them and showed how brutally they had murdered the tree. They heard me intently but with an expression that says “now nothing can be done because the tree is cut.” During that conversation, I see a member of that house roaming outside. I made sure I pointed enough fingers in that direction so that they knew that someone out there knew what they had done.

By then, I knew nothing would be done even by the forest officers. It will be settled, like all crimes are.

Moreover, there was no proof.

I went closer and found something that healed my heart. Someone had pasted a note on the fallen trunk and the remaining stump of the tree. It moved me. I was not alone, yet again.

I don’t know what happened to the rest of the trees, because we moved cities again.

Year 2026, Jodhpur, Rajasthan

We moved to Jodhpur in February 2025 and are still living here. We are currently living in the outskirts of the city and there is very less greenery around. It’s a desert, I understand.

Right next to our apartment, there is a sports complex. The owner had lined the boundary walls with what looks like wind-breaking trees that are very tall. I still don’t know the name of the trees but by this time I am okay with that.

A bulbul family resided on those trees. Or, maybe just visited. Every morning at 6am-ish I heard their beautiful, soulful call. It nudged me to leave my bed but I had spent the night soothing my twin toddlers so I let go of the pressure and just enjoy the music.

Last week, I woke up to the sour music of blades whirring. I went out to see what the commotion is about and saw that the trees are gone. I knew there was some construction going, but the trees were very kindly standing on a corner. I asked my husband, again, if he knew anything about it— he goes there to play tennis.

He said, he’ll check. And he sure did. The owner said that the trees cause severe pollen allergies and that several people from our apartment had been coaxing him to cut the trees. So when he started his hotel construction on-site, he thought he would let them go as well.

I later got to know that the name of this tree is Conocarpus and is highly invasive. It’s not a native and in selected states has been banned in India.

I am confused. I don’t know what to feel. Is it okay to cut a tree because they are a problem to us humans- with their fallen leaves or pollens, even just by their existence. How easy it is for us to overlook the many other ways a trees supports our existence on this planet? How easy is it to axe them because they have a something that doesn’t suit us? Aren’t we humans the same as well? We aren’t perfect either. But we accommodate each other’s temperament, flaws and what not! Why is our behaviour towards trees different?

I don’t have the answers. A deep sense of foreboding ails me and I don't know how can I prevent the future trees from being butchered at the whims of ignorant people of my country.

If you have answers, please guide me.

P.S. The title of the essay— The Name of This Tree is “My Tree”— is from Neha Sinha’s book Wild Capital.

Some landscapes quietly take root in our inner worlds. For me, the Himalayas hold that rare, sacred place. Perhaps it’s the god-like stillness of the towering peaks, the mystery of the creatures they shelter, or the way mist and myth seem to breathe together in those hills. But more than anything else, it is the oral traditions—the whispered folklore passed from one generation to another—that make the Himalayas feel truly magical. That is precisely why When Birds Talked – Folklore of the Hills instantly drew me in.

Written by Neha Negi @alternonnative this book is a tender, lyrical tribute to long-lost tales from the hills—stories from a time when humans and birds lived in deep harmony, bound by empathy, consequence, and mutual respect. These folktales don’t merely entertain; they gently remind us of a worldview where nature was not something to conquer, but something to listen to.

In Neha's stories, morality and transformation walk hand in hand. When humans falter, they are turned into birds—like the Blue Whistling Thrush—to atone and learn humility. When birds err, humans step in to offer them redemption, as in the tale of Hariya, the Wedge-Tailed Green Pigeon. In another story of the Green-Backed Tit, Birds are the carriers of memory and meaning, messengers of nature who scatter seeds across valleys and generations alike. Every tale reinforces the idea of interdependence: life survives not in isolation, but in balance. Adding to the book’s quiet charm are its delightful illustrations, which offer evocative snippets of the stories as they unfold. These visuals act like gentle invitations—small windows into the world of the hills.

As someone who grew up listening to folklore—though far from the mountains—this book stirred a deep nostalgia in me. Reading it felt like being wrapped in a warm shawl on a cold night, listening to my maternal grandfather weave stories, as we grandchildren hovered around him like fireflies drawn to light. There is a comforting intimacy to these tales.

These moments are whimsical, yes, but they also carry quiet lessons about kindness, restraint, and respect. I am now able to understand that when a bird speaks or a human transforms, it is not fantasy for fantasy’s sake, but a reminder that every being shares the same moral universe. Back in the time, these tales would have softened fear, explained the unexplainable, and passed down wisdom gently—ensuring that reverence for nature was learned through wonder rather than warning.

When Birds Talked is a gentle reminder of how closely imagination, ecology, and morality were once intertwined. It invites readers to slow down, to listen more closely to the natural world, and to rediscover the enchantment that modern life often forgets. If you’re looking for a read that feels soulful rather than hurried, magical rather than loud, and deeply rooted in culture and compassion, this book is a perfect companion.

We live in a world that has taught us a kind of othering when it comes to the animal world: treating them as something separate from us, something lesser, something to be observed from a safe distance.
These books refuse that distance. They look at how we grow our young, how we forage and provide, how we protect and sacrifice and they show that at the core, we do it the same way. We always have.

For me, this message is important. When a child understands that a bear mother's love is no different than a human mother's love, a sense of kinship takes root. And from kinship comes care. From care comes stewardship. A child who feels a sense of oneness with the natural world is a child who will grow up understanding that we belong to the same Earth and that belonging carries responsibility.

Only when children know we are one being will they truly understand why it matters to protect the world they share with all living things. These books plant that seed gently, beautifully, and with lasting grace.

About the books
Mammas in the Wild is a celebration of motherhood across species showing that in nature, mammas are every bit as caring, protective, and devoted to their babies as we humans are. Its companion, Papas in the Wild, is a tribute to fathers everywhere and shows that fatherhood, in all its forms, is a thriving beautiful norm, even in the wild.

See below some portions of the book.

Written by : @ammatoday
Illustrations by : @wildpaper_vaish

If there’s a fourth thing that we love after roti, kapda and makaan, it’s probably travel.

Especially as we see more people traveling around the globe and post their mesmerizing reels. If you’re wondering what’s a travel memoir doing in The Earth Book Club, please keep reading.

travels the remotest corners of the world not as a tourist but as a student learning the history, the ecology, the quiet conservation battles being fought, and the communities holding it all together. Every destination she visits, she lives in local homestays, eats their local vegan food, and through its people unfolds its layered, living history. To me it’s almost like becoming one with the world.
(See some of the snippets of her stories.)

To me, Rootless and Restless is the kind of travel writing that feels like conservation work.

If you travel to understand a place, its geography, its stories, its soul — this is your next read. Highly recommend.

Published by: @penguinindia
Written by: Shivya Nath @Shivya

There is something almost universal about the dream of life in the hills. For many of us, it borders on a quiet fetish—misty mornings, slow living, an escape from the city’s relentless pace. In Called by the Hills, Anuradha Roy (@foldedearth) gently unsettles it by stitching it with reality. Life in Ranikhet is not merely picturesque. It pauses in the monsoon, resists convenience, and asks for patience. And yet, it offers companionship in dogs that walk beside you, and strangers who slowly become more than family.

Her writing, as always, is deeply attentive to landscape and nature. There is a quiet honesty in her attempts to grow things from the earth—the small triumphs, the familiar failures. The lime tree, in particular, feels so deeply relatable having faced similar struggles with fruiting myself, except mine never bore fruit at all. That mix of hope, effort, and quiet resignation runs gently through her pages. The memoir expands beautifully: you meet her as a gardener, a writer reflecting on her craft, and someone who, after finishing a book, dreams of opening a little shop on the mall road—don’t we all?

More than a memoir of moving to the hills, this is her meditation on attention, belonging, and what it means to truly inhabit a place which is not one's own. But, then, what really is our own? Aren't we all merely nomads on the planet just getting through the whirlwind of life?

This book doesn't need our recommendation. I truly believe it will find its readers. 💗

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