CHENNAI : The late M Krishnan, naturalist and conservationist, was the kind of person who would take you along and try to teach you everything about the good things about nature. He believed that education would be made more holistic if the natural world was included in it. It’s to honour this spirit of learning and discovery, and do their part in that pursuit, that the Madras Naturalists Society is hosting their M Krishnan Memorial Award for Nature Writing for the ninth year. The organisation hopes to hear from spirited individuals and their narratives. And this time around, the theme for the essays is The Ocean Home.
After all, India is a peninsula and we can’t ignore the geography of our existence, points out Vijay Kumar, secretary of MNS. Besides, this was also an extension of their coastal biodiversity project that began earlier this year. “We launched a project to survey and record the coastal biodiversity of Tamil Nadu. On Ocean’s Day this year, we launched some of the work that we had done. There’s also a lot of focus on saving the oceans around the world, the coasts, the people who are dependent on them and their livelihood. All of it put together, this year we felt we can ask our young writers to write about the ocean home,” he explains.
As usual, there’s much to look forward to with this exercise. “We look forward to receiving as many entries as possible. We keep getting entries from across the country. We look forward to knowing that there are a lot of young writers today who write about the environment, who are aware and wish to engage with wildlife and conservation. The kind of submissions we get is phenomenal. All these things energise us; the whole exercise is invigorating,” he reminisces.
The kind of people who have written for this award over the years has also been quite reassuring for the people of MNS. Especially given that the idea is to engage young people (hence the age limit of 18-30). “Last year’s winner is doing a Master’s in Literature. One of the two commendable entries is a surgeon. That’s the beauty of this exercise. It doesn’t mean that only if you’re doing Biology or Botany that you engage with this. What this brings out is the fact that everyone can engage with nature,” he shares.
It’s towards that end that organisations like MNS are working towards bringing in people like you and me into the fold. For 43 years now, MNS has contributed in terms of educating children — the results of the coastal biodiversity project will be taken to schools for their benefit; hosting nature walks, bird walks and butterfly walks (especially during Madras Day celebrations); organising the HSBC India Bird Race — this has been very popular for 13-14 years now with the participation of children, youngsters and elderly people too.
“Lately, we’ve started this exercise called Urban Wilderness Walks. We are training students to take people on urban walks so they understand the biodiversity that’s there in urban spaces. If you just look at leaf litter as a subject, there’s a whole lot of life right under it. So these are things we are trying to do to create awareness about what we have around us and the importance of conserving it for the future,” he elaborates.
For this nature writing contest, Vijay has a word of advice for participants. “Seventy per cent of the world is covered with oceans. There’s a whole lot of life in the oceans and millions of people whose life depends upon it. We need to appreciate this. Highlight all this in the message. I hope there will be more awareness created about life in our oceans,” he concludes.
The contest is open till November 30. For application form and rules, write to madrasnaturalistssociety@gmail.com