Lal Bagh walk to introduce biodiversity through Ramayana and Mahabharata
The story goes that...Bheema, wanting to prank his beloved wife – Draupadi – chopped up a shalmali tree’s trunk, placed it on his bed and hid it under some blankets. Oblivious to this, Draupadi came by and as she did often, began massaging what she believed were her husband’s legs. But ‘his’ unnatural quietness and stillness slowly made her suspicious and when she starts to hear the distant sounds of laughter, those suspicions are confirmed. “She flies into a rage and curses the shalmali tree to grow thorns, so that no woman will mistake it for a man’s leg again,” Anupriy Kanti tells the story with a laugh, as he does on his curated walks through Lal Bagh, encouraging participants to feel and engage with the trees, plants, and natural formations in the garden while learning all about the myths and folk tales that have been told about them.
For Kanti, who has taken part in and been part of organising walks in Delhi and Bengaluru, this approach to combining nature with mythology emerged from the history walks that the city sees plenty of. He says, “There are some amazing walks happening in the city, in Lal Bagh too, but I noticed that a lot of them just covered colonial history despite the fact that the park has huge botanical variety that have cultural significance across civilisations.” With this in mind, he started Before and Beyond History Walks, combining botanical information about the plants in the park and their prehistoric roots while telling stories across cultures from Greek myths to Filipino folktales.
The walk set to happen this weekend focuses specifically on the Indian Epics – the Mahabharata and Ramayana. “Right now, mythology has become a little bit of a polarised term – with people either trying to prove that mythology is history or completely dismissing mythology. I’m not trying to say that they are real or not, I’m saying that they mean something to us as a civilisation. Through the walk, your relationship with the stories, the garden and your way of seeing nature will also change,” he says.
To encourage people to look at the epics with fresh eyes, as they are doing so with the park, Kanti has curated stories that may have slipped through familiar mainstream narratives. “I have gone into local Kannada folklore and even stories from foreign countries that people may not be familiar with,” he says, adding, “We’ll also be talking about how the tradition has evolved – for example, with the Ramayana, you have Valmiki’s Sanskrit version, but also versions around the globe and modern adaptations that change the story.”
This weekend, roll out of bed and escape into nature and the world of stories our ancestors made with it – after all, unlike the heroes of these epics who had to brave the natural world for years in exile, we can come back to city life anytime.
(On Saturday, the ‘Ramayana Quest’ will be held at 7.30am and ‘Mahabharata Quest’ at 3pm.Vice-versa on Sunday. To book, visit @prihistorica on Instagram. Prices range from `599 to `999)