We rarely take much note of mushrooms that crop up in the dirt. Drawing on his locale, Abdul Basith shows how mushrooms, in fact, shape and reshape the relationships between people, property and nature.
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Tag: environment
The Ecology of Purushapretham (2023)
Purushapretham has been among this year’s most intriguing releases so far, seeming like a police procedural at the outset but revealing hidden depths. Deepti delves into how the director draws viewers into a complex ecology of human and nonhuman actors, marking an exciting addition to the emergent ‘cli-fi’ genre in Malayalam cinema.
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Fishers’ Rights and The Vizhinjam Protests: The Politics of Coastal Commons
Why are the state and the public unwilling to accept the hereditary rights of the protesting fisher community at Vizhinjam? In answer, the protests must be located within broader histories and discussions. Ala presents a translation of Sindhu and Robin’s article on the Vizhinjam protests first published in our September 2022 issue.
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Coexisting with Fruit Bats in The Shadow of Nipah Virus
Reflecting on over a decade of her own research on bats in the Western Ghats, Kadambari writes about how bats have contributed to the plantation economy and ecology in Kerala over the years, and how, despite the Nipah outbreak, films like Virus and Maheshinte Prathikaram have portrayed this human-animal relationship with care.
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Transforming Living Spaces, Transforming Lives: The Story of Municipal Colony’s Facelift
Even as Alappuzha won awards for cleanliness, a settlement of former sanitation workers themselves lived amid a sanitation crisis. A team of public sector institutions joined hands to develop community-centric solutions for them. Sruthi and Narayanan tell the story of this venture.
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കേരളവും ജൈവകൃഷിയും: ഒരു നിശ്ശബ്ദ വിപ്ലവം
കാർഷിക മേഖലയിലെ പ്രതിസന്ധി ഒരു ദേശീയ പ്രശ്നമായി നിലനിൽക്കവേ കേരളത്തിലെ ജൈവകൃഷിയിലെ മുന്നേറ്റങ്ങൾ പ്രതീക്ഷയ്ക്കു വകയുണ്ടാക്കുന്നുണ്ടോ? കഴിഞ്ഞ രണ്ടു ദശാബ്ദങ്ങളിലെ കണക്കുകളും കൃഷിനയവും പരിശോധിച്ച് ഈ മുന്നേറ്റങ്ങളെ അജിൽ വിലയിരുത്തുന്നു.
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When a Dam Proposal Turned Out to be a National Park: Revisiting the Silent Valley Movement
The Silent Valley Movement is widely considered a successful environmental movement, but what happened to the Adivasi communities that depended on those forests? Neeraja explores.
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Ala Podcast: Forgotten Greens and Where to Find Them
In our first podcast, Ala talks to Shruti Tharayil about her experience as a forager, and the importance of localizing[…]
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Companions and Co-actors: The Role of the Non-human in Malayalam Cinema
Lakshmi Pradeep analyses the human-non-human relationships in the 2017 film, Parava, to talk about an emerging genre of Malayalam cinema:[…]
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A Walk to the River: The Ecological Sensibilities of Kerala’s Kadar Tribe
Meera M. Panicker offers us a glimpse into Kadar ways of life, and how their everyday practices and their battles[…]
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