Yashok Sivasubramaniam likens himself to the pitta, a shy and secretive bird.
On August 30 this year, the 30-year-old set out on an 18,000-kilometre-long expedition on a borrowed bicycle with a palm-sized doll fixed on the handlebar. “She is called Pitta, and is my companion on this journey,” says Yashok speaking over phone from Auroville where he has stopped to study the Auroville Botanical Gardens.
Yashok’s expedition may seem all-encompassing: to collect native seeds, document indigenous tribal wisdom and interview environmentalists, ecologists, entomologists, ornithologists, and researchers from across India. But he is in no hurry.
“I am simply a snail in search of people to learn from,” says Yashok, who started the journey from Singarapettai near Tiruvannamalai. He does not strive to cover several hundreds of kilometres a day. “Right now, I cycle 60 to 70 kilometres a day, stop by to rest at friends’ and well-wishers’ or pitch a tent where possible,” he explains. He takes notes on a scribble pad, and shoots footage on a hand-held camcorder along the way. “I hope to put the footage together to create short documentary films,” he says.
Yashok is armed with a backpack that holds an extra set of clothes, his tent, cloth bags for seeds, a cycle pump, a flute, and books. It is fast filling up with feathers, pebbles from various landscapes, a dried length of shed snake skin, and broken butterfly wings. He has a love for butterflies and has studied their migration patterns closely from his hometown in Pollachi, set by the Western Ghats.
Yashok thirst to study the environment deepened in 2021, when witnessed a forest fire at Jawadhu Hills in the Eastern Ghats. Joining the locals to put it out, and found himself grappling with a manmade disaster that wiped away vast stretches of forest. “99.9% of forest fires are created by man,” he says, adding: “This may be because of a small beedi cast carelessly on the forest floor or a broken piece of glass that acts as a lens when direct sunlight falls on it.” Yashok was deeply affected by the disaster and sought to understand its impacts on the environment.
“This led me on a new path,” he says. “I realised how little we know about even the most common native trees in our surroundings. Many of us suffer from a certain degree of plant blindness.” Yashok hoped to contribute to change this. “This journey is my attempt to condense knowledge on the environment for the sake of the younger generation,” he explains.
He has chalked out a route that will start and end at Tiruvannamalai, traversing Chengam, Javvadhu Hills, Tirukkovilur, Viluppuram, Puducherry, Dindigul, Coimbatore, Erode, Tenkasi, heading into Kerala, Karnataka, Goa, Maharashtra, and Madhya Pradesh.
There is something worth pausing to take note of or admire at every stretch. In Auroville, he recalls a conversation with a US-based entomologist who spotted in the region the southern birdwing, the second largest butterfly in India, found commonly in the Western Ghats. “This is a good sign, and can be attributed to the ecological restoration that has been carried out at Auroville,” he notes. He also spent time at Auroville’s Pebble Garden to document the seed conservation methods there by Deepika Kundaji, stopped by at ‘Panaiyeri‘ Pandiyan’s palm grove at Narasinganur where the palm climber is popularising palm-based products.
In Chennasamutharam near Chengam, he documented a 150 foot pond dug in the 17th century by Ammini Ammal, who is known to have built a gopuram in the Arunachaleswarar temple. “She is also said to have donated 80 acres of her land for animals and birds to thrive during her time,” says Yashok.
Yashok is interested in documenting not just tribal culture, but in ethnobotany as well. “This is a system of studying plants, butterflies, and insects using their traditional knowledge,” he says. When he is not taking notes or recording videos, Yashok is processing the seeds he collected. This involves drying them in the sun and packing them in air-tight containers to be saved as part of a growing seed library at Cuckoo Forest School at Singarapettai, Krishnagiri district.
Along the journey, Yashok hopes to not spend on any product. The cycle is not his, and neither is the camcorder. The road is his home for now, where friends offer kindness and food to power his journey. He says: “I am aware this task cannot be done by a single person. But I want to transfer our land’s ancient knowledge to more people, even if it is a miniscule drop.”
Yashok can be reached at yashoksivasubramaniam@gmail.com
