Born and brought up in Kaliyapuram – a small village at the foothills of the western ghats closer to Topslip in Tamilnadu, a little boy spent most of his childhood with his grandparents in a small hut on their farm. The water that was produced from the Sarkarvari hydroelectric project passed through their field. Most of his time was spent along the stream and roaming in the forests, than in his conventional school. As Nammazhvar Ayya says ‘You just need one dedicated teacher in each school, for the whole school to change ‘. The boy was lucky enough to be in such a school with Loganathan Sir. Through his consistent efforts through petitions to the government, he started a library in their village, which changed the course of life for so many children, through the habit of book reading, including this little boy – Yashok Subramaniam.
The habit of reading books helped him understand and perceive the world differently. He eventually developed the habit of collecting books from different places. During his school days, while all the people in his house used to watch TV, he used to sneak into the blanket to read books using the light that disperses through the blanket. Once his uncle found this out and snatched the book away and tore it into pieces. Yashok cried uncontrollably that whole night, which made him love books even more. During high school, the half-baked knowledge from books about Che Guevara led him to join a student wing of the communist movement. He used to question everything and used to be an ardent follower of the communist ideology. Having the red card in his pocket gave him a lot of pride and courage. He was with the movement till his second year of college and used to work extensively for the native people of the mountains. This grew into intensity and while pursuing his degree from a college in Coimbatore, he got involved in social activism.
In 2012, he started an important movement in college called Kurethikodi (donation of blood) which majorly worked in Polachi, Tirupur, Coimbatore, and Udumalaipettai. The primary motto of the organisation is to organise volunteers for the donation of blood whenever necessary. During the same time, he got actively involved in the revolt of ‘Tamil Eezham’. He used to go and canvas people to join the revolution and in the process, he got introduced to one of the popular Tamil Nationalist political parties. His parents were not happy with him being in politics. But he used to wake up before dawn, make paste at his home and go around different places sticking posters on the wall, starting from his village first, so the people would not recognise him in the dark.
In one of the protests organised by the political party, a 20-year-old guy self-immolated himself suddenly and came running through the middle of the crowd. He fell down into ashes in front of Yashok. He was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance but passed away on his way. But in the rally organised by the political party the next morning, they announced on stage that the young guy was alive and doing good. And his immolation was churned out into a piece of political news the next morning. The party announced financial compensation to the family on stage, but Yashok came to realise that it was not fulfilled even after three months. The death of this young guy and many like Muthukumar due to their political ideology and the catalyst forces behind it left a deep impact on Yashok.
After this incident, he decided to go on a walk for 100 days to introspect more about himself and to cleanse all that he did during his time with the political party. The walk was intended to meet various people who are working on the ground for a greater cause without any identity and be inspired by their lives. He had walked across the landscape of India for more than three and a half years meeting people of various kinds and without having any pre-conceived agenda about the walk or the people. His walk made him look at life and himself from a completely new perspective which helped him develop an indispensable trust towards people.
After a few years, he visited a Gandhi ashram by chance near his village along with his aunt who gifted him Gandhi’s autobiography. Due to the political groups he was earlier part of, he was taught to hate Gandhi and he firmly believed in it. After he started reading his autobiography, his perspective towards Gandhi slowly changed and he started to self introspect himself. He slowly moved out of the political party he was an active part of and started going for a job in Coimbatore through which he was able to support his family and clear all his debts.
During such a journey, he arrived at the land of cuckoo during a peak summer season, to be welcomed by a forest fire. Yashok’s arrival was marked by one of the volunteers hurriedly running with a bucket of water to the fire and without a second thought Yashok started running behind him and tried everything possible to put off the fire. In spite of hurting himself, he continued to put off the fire and suddenly a huge bamboo cluster burst out and the fire spread even more. That is when he understood one cannot control a forest fire but can only surrender to it. He put away the bucket he had in hand and bowed himself down in the burning grey landscape of the forest, it started raining and the fire was controlled.
The next day morning when he visited the forest he saw a lot of dead animals in the forest fire. This incident left a tremendous transformative mark which changed the entire course of his life. Later he started researching the cause of the fire and was surprised to understand that 99% of forest fires are man-made due to a chain of linked events starting from afforestation to a lot of surface area getting exposed to the sun and so on. Once he had asked his mentor Peter Anna from Cuckoo, that he wanted a teacher to learn about different trees and Peter Anna pointed his finger at the forest.
With no formal education about the forest, all of his learning was through doing and he always felt that it was the best approach to learning about anything. Slowly he started learning and understanding the life of the forest intuitively and started spreading and sharing his learnings with various people, especially children from the neighbouring villages. He slowly started to understand that planting trees is not equivalent to growing forests as there is a symbiotic harmonious relationship that exists in the forest. Yashok strongly believes that everything is already present in nature and there is nothing that we can create afresh.
During his recent visit to Auroville to collect seeds, one of his friends had called saying that, they were cutting down trees in the Darkali forest. Trees that were more than 100 years old were cut down for the proposed crown ring road project. Yashok along with his friends rushed towards the forest. there were a lot of government officials who were present there and started to explain to them the importance of the trees and the need to preserve them. When all talks failed, Yashok ran towards the tree and hugged it. Soon there was a human chain that was formed around the trees, similar to the Chipko movement. Yashok stood as a silent testimony to more than 100 trees that were cut down that day and which continued every day to afforest more than 800 trees in the forest. Yashok says the trees could be replanted but not the time. He kept a small shell, a feather and a flower as a prayer in remembrance of a forest that does not exist anymore.
All these varied experiences and circumstances, made him take an oath upon himself to document the existing forest and the indigenous knowledge system of people in the forest. Yashok was inspired by Maram Thaatha Nagarajan – a silent revolutionary who planted thousands of trees along the highways of Tamilnadu. He would carry saplings, a bucket and a mug and keep wandering to varied places where trees were necessary, like between school to the bus stop where hundreds of children would walk barefoot every day in the hot sun. He rejected a prestigious award for his works from New Delhi, as he would utilise the time to plant a few more saplings.
Yashok plans to start a cycling journey to preserve critically endangered flora species across India, conserve the trees, and save the seeds. He plans to document the varied species of places through photography and video documentary. Apart from trees, this journey would also document many souls who have planted trees without having any identity of their own and beyond all that preserve the stories of these people. Yashok believes, that while there are a lot of contemporary talks of conserving forests, the aboriginal settlers of the forest have been doing this naturally as a part of their lifestyle for generations together.
Yashok also plans to document the ethnobotanical relationship between the people of the forest and the trees. While these are the preliminary ideas of the journey, he sincerely believes the journey will take its own path and the forest will guide him further. With the blessings of Krishnammal Jegannathan, who has walked across the entire landscape of India, Yashok started his journey on August 25th from Cuckoo Forest School, an incubator space for such idealist souls and ideas.He had visited a school in Arachalur, a village near Erode on September 23rd enroute. His interaction with children in the school through the stories of his journey so far was proof of this idealist journey, he is undertaking. “And who knows, perhaps one day the language of trees will eventually be deciphered, giving us the raw material for further amazing stories. Until then, when you take your next walk in the forest, give free rein to your imagination many cases, what you imagine is not so far removed from reality, after all!” in the words of Peter Wohlleben. Yashok is ready to surrender to the forest to learn the language of trees and be able to communicate with them.
You can extend your support to Yashok by sharing knowledge about forests, trees, herbs, mentors, native inhabitants, practices around trees, context-specific rituals, mentors who can guide him further, places to stay en route, monetarily or any other associated way you can think of.
If you happen to see him somewhere, gift him a seed of smile.
Yashok Subramaniam – 9080388398