Book Review: Hasuru Honnu, by B.G.L. Swamy

When my parents gifted the English translation of this book to my parents-in-law, I thought I should read the book in Kannada. Dr. B.G.L Swamy is a well known writer and botanist in my state, Karnataka. After obtaining his PhD from the University of Mysore in 1947, he worked as a postdoc in the lab of Prof. Irving Bailey at Harvard. He then went on to become a botany professor at Presidency College in Madras (now Chennai). Hasuru Honnu - Green Gold - narrates some of his extraordinary experiences taking his masters students on field trips into the forests of South India.

The excursions described in the book take place in the 1960s. For context, at this time India, newly independent, was trying to implement modern practices, such as encouraging women to study, vaccination, improving agriculture (green revolution led by M.S Swaminathan) while coming to terms with the devastations of colonialism. Forests that had not been destroyed for timber were largely uncharted scientifically. Many of these are in South India along mountain ranges called the Western and Eastern Ghats, with the forests on the west being denser. The mountainous terrain means that uniquely distinct forest ecosystems are sustained at different altitudes. These forests are phenomenally diverse, with several thousand endemic plants. It is to these forests that Dr. Swamy took his students on field trips.

The excursions are humorous. We meet students who get into all kinds of trouble - falling into elephant pits, literally getting leeched, jumping into a pit of scorpions, mistaking fresh elephant dung for fruits and snakes for ropes and so on. Then there are annoying bureaucrats: an overarching story is the fight between Dr. Swamy and the principal of his college to obtain funds for the field trips. The stingy principal is outraged at the daily wages to be paid to laborers for carrying the specimens collected in the forests. A donkey is suggested instead in all seriousness. A surreal months-long exchange of letters, replies and rejoinders ensues. A lone donkey? No way, it needs a companion. Where will it stay? A shed needs to be built. What will it eat? In the meantime the donkey couple has a baby. Now three donkeys need to be housed. Wasn’t it cheaper to pay daily wages after all…? And so forth. The pinnacle of obstructive bureaucracy.

The forests themselves are described beautifully. Unlike these days, there were no real safeguards against wild animals. As a reader, we can feel the closeness to the wild, particularly in encounters with poisonous snakes and elephants. There are also no proper guides or maps, as many of the forest offices in place now were in their infancy. The group has to resort to finding and convincing members of local tribes to show them around, often without knowing the local language, leading to amusing conversations.

The highlight of the book is of course the descriptions of the plants. With beautiful hand drawn and biologically accurate sketches, unusual plants are beautifully described in detail. I have visited many of the forests described here and I wished I had read this book before I visited. These days one only looks for wild animals in these forests. But reading this book, I realized that the flora is equally, if not more, diverse, unique and mindblowing. Among the several dozens of picturesque and graphic descriptions of the plant life are an unusually pretty orchid, Platanthera susannae, a rare mushroom Dictyophora, the unique river-rock-growing Podostemons and the eccentric Gnetum - they are so beautifully described and illustrated that I could almost see the plants myself.

Dr. Swamy’s interest in encouraging his students to observe and learn are evident in the book. He helps his students translate the knowledge learnt from textbooks to the real world. For example, he offers a monetary award to the first person to find a particularly peculiar plant. After an enthusiastic and competitive search, his students manage to find the plant. Apart from the monetary award, they are exhilarated to discover that it had so far been misclassified. Based on their find, Dr. Swamy eventually names it after his supervisor at Harvard, Sarcandra irvingbaileyi.

One critique I have about the book is the portrayal of the female students. While Dr. Swamy is all for educating them, the description of their behaviour is, frankly, unbelievable. Simply put, they are portrayed as silly people incapable of following basic instructions. In one case, all students are told to wear dull colored clothes for the next day because they would be going into forests with wild animals. What happens next morning? The men are wearing dull colors, but the women are all wearing bright reds and blues! When questioned, they don’t answer. In another instance, the group is preparing to leave from Madras by train. There are two train stations. The teachers repeatedly drill into the students to arrive an hour early at the right train station because they need to deal with their unusual luggage (for sample collection and storage) with the station master. What happens? The men are on time at the right train station. The women saunter in 15 min before departure, having sent off their luggage to the wrong train station! Now, I cannot believe someone can be that airheaded. So either Dr. Swamy exaggerated the stories for humour at the expense of the ladies, or he was cursed with unusually fatuous female students.

A last point - I read about 80% of the book in Kannada, and the last bit in the newly released English translation. I like the original better, perhaps unsurprisingly. While the translation is good, I believe some references might fall flat to those unfamiliar with Indian culture, literature and myths. For those familiar with these, of course it is a wonder to see how ancient poems and texts in Sanskrit, Kannada and Tamil described the beauty of the plants in question. Some sentences don’t translate well either. For example, when the students are teasing each other, the student being teased threatens “I will take care of you.” This may sound strange. It is a literal translation of the Kannada sentence, which means something like “Just you wait!” or “Watch out!” or “I’ll get back at you for this!”

Despite this, it is still definitely worth reading this book. You get a sense of the richness of the forests of South India and what motivated teaching looks like. You also get unfiltered insights into bureaucracy (and how driven people get around it), and South Indian culture. But mainly you will be fascinated by extraordinary plants in South Indian forests. You will be transported into these forests, immersed in the students’ excitement, and thrilled with the finds and experiences. It’s the next best thing to actually being there!