Nurture Nature: Review of Neha Sinha's 'Wild Capital'

Rocks formed over millions of years, ecosystems of old, grand trees, jackals, nilgai and fireflies. This is not a scene at a national park or a biosphere reserve but in bustling Delhi. Neha Sinha’s Wild Capital (HarperCollins India) is a book about discovering nature in Delhi but what it achieves in the process is a great deal more. Sinha writes scientifically erudite non-fiction in a well-crafted manner. The book begins with the ‘Forgotten’ series. Forgotten here refers to forests, trees, sounds and people as well. Sinha starts off with nostalgic tales of her childhood, seamlessly woven into a story about nature in India's capital city. 

Her descriptions of natural wonders and anecdotes that draw parallels are some of the most readable nuggets in the book. For example, there is a description of her being in personal turmoil during a parent’s heart surgery and finding solace and comfort by looking at a Semal tree, specifically at the heart of it, which carries a nest.

Sinha's observations about trees like the Semal, Aak, Vajradanti and Ronjh are brilliant. If the reader has observed the same trees, the prose can be even more touching. For instance, about the Ronjh, a hardy native tree of the Aravallis, Sinha writes, “That Ronjh was a sniff of the outdoors, a feeling of vastness, and a sense of the entire earth being contained in a single tree.” 

The same is true for her descriptions of animals and birds such as the Nilgai, parrots, hornbills, butterflies, bats and the Coppersmith Barbet, about whom she says: “a sweet high sound rises in the air. If a child made a drawing of her favourite kind of car, green and red and with odd knobs and a candy-coloured horn, and then she pressed the horn to demonstrate she was happy, this is how the car would sound”.

Wild Capital is also about loss: the loss of perfectly blue waters, of patches of green, of what used to be, and what could be. Sinha talks of the deterioration of the Najafgarh Lake, the Basai wetland, storm water channels turning dead, and the Yamuna becoming a naala (drain). She speaks of how invasive species such as Neltuma juliflora are wreaking havoc in wild spaces by hijacking native species.

The book also has accounts of the author's and other women’s challenges in navigating the city– narrated through the characters of Shakuntala and Vallari.

The book is peppered with quotes, and some chapters are dedicated to distinguished Delhi natives, which enriches the narrative and gives it a more holistic perspective. It is then, an ode to great naturalists such as Vallari Sheel, Colonel Pankaj Sharma, Sunil Harsana, Verhaen Khanna, Sohail Madan and Pradip Krishen, among others. It is also an ode to Delhi. A city that often gets a bad reputation for its pollution, brashness and weather extremities. It is a reminder to anyone who is interested in the city that Delhi contains many worlds, and that for all its flaws, it still has a vivid natural playground left for flora and fauna to flourish in. In doing so, the book becomes a clarion call to protect, conserve and frequent these paradises of green. Especially in this age of extreme weather events, unbearable heat, decreasing shade and vanishing bird calls. This makes Wild Capital a timely book, as Indian cities find themselves in the middle of a great ecological purge, with trees being cut ruthlessly in the name of 'development'. 

Sinha's writing is fluid. However, due to the density of information, a reader who is not previously acquainted with the subject matter may have to read it in parts over the course of some days, and not soak it up at one go.

A flowering chart appendix appears like a cherry on top, completing the book’s journey for the reader, and offering a ready reference. 

What makes Wild Capital unique is that it contains rich lyrical writing on nature in Delhi. There are other books in this genre; Pradip Krishen’s Trees of Delhi is a great reference book, but it is not a book of stories. Harini Nagendra and Seema Mundoli’s Cities and Canopies is wonderfully informative in its account of Indian trees, but it only talks of trees and is not specific to Delhi. 

Wild Capital piques the interest of the layman to step outside, to search for more details about the species mentioned, and to generally be more observant of the earth we walk on, the trees deepening their roots, the birds chirping all around us. This is a book for nature lovers, birders, enthusiasts, experts and anyone with a whimsy for the wild. Students who are keen to expand their knowledge and vocabulary as well as the corporate employee wanting to look beyond balance sheets and computer screens would find it useful. It is also a book for anyone who is in a strange love-hate relationship with the many-layered city that is Delhi. 

At Wild Capital's core is tenderness; in its messaging, in its nudges for us to be more observant, in its attempt to explain both science and nature to everyone simply. Sinha says in the book, “the name of this tree is my tree”, and perhaps that is all it takes to build an association with a thing of natural wonderment. 

(Siddhant Vashistha is an independent journalist based in Delhi)