☀️Dispatch: 📚Book Club, 🍃3Fs of Sustainability, 📷Power of Photographs, ✨Wonder Words on Figs, and 🔪The C(oo)king pledge
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We want to read with you in 2024. How? By inviting you to dhoop’s monthly book club
(#1) Why a book club?
To gather people in the same room/screen and have conversations about topics that they find exciting. And to use this space for asking questions, learning, deep-diving and wondering.
What does the annual membership include?
One especially selected book each month
Exploring books as artefacts - pondering, meandering and unpacking words, together
Thoughtfully curated 60-minute interactive sessions with like-minded peers
Why are we charging for a book club?
To cover the cost of the software and the personnel involved in curating and bringing this book club to life.
For curating a specific collection of books around different subject matters and facilitating a space for discussion with like-minded people.
We want this book club to have a longer shelf life - and paying for it will make it a sustainable proposition for us.
Dates - Last Sunday of every month (Jan’24-Dec’24)
Times - 7 pm IST/ 8:30 EST
Note: You can sign up for all 12 months or just a single month. We will keep dropping monthly book selection on dhoop’s instagram.
(#2) 3Fs of Sustainability
The idea of sustainability can feel large, almost impossible to comprehend because the term is used often loosely by brands, corporations and initiatives. Their aim is not to explain but to sell their version of its meaning. In this case, looking at the west for a reasonable explanation is more or less redundant. The answer is closer to home.
Harini Nagendra, who leads Azim Premji University’s Centre for Climate Change and Sustainability defines sustainability through the connection between communities, ecosystem and social justice. In the online course called ‘Exploring Sustainability in an Indian Context’ she talks about using the 3Fs framework i.e. Finitude, Fragility and, Fairness to unpack the three big pillars one needs to look at to evaluate sustainability. Finitude (or limit) brings forth the fact that resources are limited, Fragility is how much shock a system can take and Fairness is really a function of the previous 2Fs - if resources are limited and they can only be extracted upto the level tolerated by the system, then, WHO get access to these (limited) resources.
For example, the ambitious plan of building Fatehgarh Ultra Mega Solar Park in Jaisalmer district of Rajasthan to generate electricity from a renewable resource and minimise dependence on fossil fuels is a step in the right direction. But, this agreement to use land for Solar plants installation didn’t take into consideration the communities or the fauna in and around the area which uses the land as residence and a source of livelihood.
In the first set of cases, local residents and khatedar tenants alleged that irregularities had occurred in the allotment of land to the company, and that their rights and entitlements had been violated.The second clutch of cases concern protection of the Great Indian Bustard (Ardeotis nigriceps), a critically endangered bird that inhabits the desert region earmarked for solar-power development. The GIB is a species close to extinction. Only around 150 remain – all of them in India and Pakistan – and it is the subject of a conservation program by the Indian government.
In this case, the project is built on energy security and environmental concerns but social justice takes a back seat. We know that generating energy from a solar power plant means consistent green power supply to the grid. And less reliability on non-renewable resources whose incessant extraction is anyway overexploitation of resources. We can almost tick off the finitude and fragility boxes but fairness is a big question mark here because the communities (they will use the electricity generated) and species attached to the land are not given equal weight.To balance all three pillars is tough, but a necessary condition to move towards a sustainable future.
You can also watch Harini Nagendra’s lecture ‘Is Sustainability Universal? The influence of place and context on sustainability’ that I organised in 2021.
(#3) Power of Photographs
Vision of the Future, Recovering Nature, Keeping 1.5 Alive, and Adapting for Tomorrow were some of the categories under Environmental Photographer of the Year 2023 competition.A photo speaks a thousand words, right? But for EPOTY it was also the idea, execution and impact that mattered ( so many close to a thousand words indeed). If the photo“sparks an immediate reaction? Does it make you want to find out more? Does it linger in your mind’s eye? Do you want to tell others about this photo and its story? Does the photo hook the viewer into the story?,” were some of the criteria.
Environmental Photographer of the Year 2023 is organised by The Chartered Institution of Water and Environmental Management (CIWEM) and WaterBear (a free streaming platform that focuses on award-winning, nature-inspired films and documentaries) in partnership with Nikon and MPB (largest global platform to buy, sell and trade used photo and video kit)
(#4) Wonder words
Imagine someone telling you that biting into a fig, breaking its voluptuous skin, savouring the sweet nectar, and the tingling of small beads on your palate — means that you are eating a thousand flowers. That’s what Aimee Nezhukumathil’s words did. As you will read below, you’ll understand that sometimes words, the right words one after the other just make you wonder. Now, I cannot eat a fig and not think about the wasp who’s only mission in life was to pollinate it.
Figs are actually inside-out flowers—hundreds of flowers trapped inside a casing. The female fig wasp, still dusted with pollen from her own birth fig, enters an unripe fig through what is known as the ostiole, or the round base, stripping off her wings in the process. The wasp is so small, just two millimetres—about the size of the tip of a crayon— and only lives for two days, during which she must safely penetrate the fig and lay her eggs among the tiny flowers, while also pollinating the flowers. She dies shortly after.
-Aimee Nezhukumathil
Another beautiful fig-related story is Uchida’s story of growing Toyomitsuhime in Japan.
(#5) The Cooking Pledge
Best cookbooks of 2023 list, NYT cookie week, the innumerable Christmas recipes, and the unending reels on Instagram— all of them want YOU to cook or buy from them. There is no dearth of recipes on the internet. The fast, smooth cuts in videos make the process of cooking look seamless, as if one doesn’t need to prep or clean up afterward. However, these small blobs on the internet extend one's imagination, open up the possibility of unlearning and learning, and maybe even inspire you to go to the kitchen and cook.
Sharing some winter favourites that I found on the internet.
Gajar ka halwa by Keeritda
Coriander/Dhaniye ki chuntey by Sangeeta Khanna
And that’s everything for this week.
dhoop is an independently published magazine, so producing and selling the print versions of the magazine is the only way to share our work. However, through this series of ‘Some dhoop for you!’ newsletters, we want to come to your inbox and share some insightful, fun, and meandering thoughts on the discourse around the different elements that make dhoop. If you learned anything new, the best way to support us and this newsletter is to share it far and wide.
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