From ancient tree groves and hidden forests to the crumbling walls of historic forts, acclaimed nature writer and conservation biologist Neha Sinha uncovers the wild side of Delhi in her latest book, ‘My Wild City: Finding Nature, Meaning, and Hope in India’s Capital’.
Speaking to Asian Voice, Neha shared what inspired her to explore Delhi’s overlooked natural treasures and why the capital’s wild spaces matter more than ever.
What inspired you to write My Wild City, and when did you begin to see Delhi not just as a city but as a living ecological landscape?
For years, I have been hearing how degrading and tiring life in the city is. As a city girl who also likes the outdoors, I wondered if there was a way to make this bewildering place more fully “mine”, and to find belonging in the crowd. I searched through my memories and that of my community, from childhood. We had offline childhoods, finding blister beetles walking over roses, snails passing like silent ships over grassy lawns, vultures wheeling overhead. I realised a lot of those things are gone in modern times. Our screens are busier, and the natural world is quieter. My Wild City started as a quest to find some of this ‘wildness’ again, the ecological memories, and the animals. Let’s just say what I found surprised me!
You write about centuries-old trees, forgotten rivers, birds and mammals. What does their survival tell us about Delhi’s ecological history?
Delhi is a city that has seen multiple dynasties. It’s the political capital. But it’s also an extraordinary ecological place - it has the Aravalli hill range, considered one of the oldest fold mountains on earth. It has the second highest bird diversity in any capital. It has city forests and people thronging these forests. Delhi refuses to be classified. People come here to make their fortunes; and desert trees survive despite the heatwaves and poor air quality. There is environmental degradation, but people and nature both live here, and both are survivors.
The book combines natural history with memories and stories of people. Why was it important for you to bring human lives and personal experiences into a book about nature?
The wonderful thing about nature is that it allows us to immerse in it. You can walk on a heath in London and forget the city outside, you can stroll through Central Park in New York and look for owls, so different from what we do in our office cubicles. Nature in cities offers an experience that is never too far from the road, a getaway you can reach quickly. In Delhi, we have hundreds of people running, cycling and birdwatching. They tell us that nature shapes their lives. My Wild City features my experiences, but also theirs - many voices telling us exactly how uplifting seeing a wild bird in a busy colony can be.
Delhi is often associated with pollution, congestion and rapid urbanisation. What do people overlook about the city’s natural richness?
In summer this year, a pied hornbill, a large, black and white bird from the Himalayan foothills settled in the iconic Lodhi Garden of Delhi, and began feeding the chicks of grey hornbills nesting in the garden. Lodhi Garden itself has just turned 90 years old this year. This unusual behaviour may have happened many times over in the history of this place, this city. The pied hornbill was a surrogate mother/ aunt who was also a migrant. Like Flaco, New York’s famous eagle-owl, this brought the birdwatching community together and proved there’s nothing like a great city bird to teach us new things.
Your work suggests that nature is not something we need to travel far to find. Can reconnecting with everyday urban nature change how people think about conservation?
I have found in my work and life that nature is one of the few non-commercial aspects in life that asks for little more than our own attention. We are taught that buying things is happiness. But nature asks for immersion, not extraction. Your first ‘wildlife’ encounter can happen in a city, where you live, and it can be a gateway to a life full of exploration and adventure. Policy makers live in cities too, and so I believe cities need nature if we are to value conservation as a society. I write about how we can start by planting local, native plants in our gardens. Imagine a hundred thousand gardens, balconies, hedges if we all do so – that is a serious corridor and habitat for nature, a lovely constellation of stars!
What role do stories and literature play in making people care about ecological issues in a way that facts and statistics sometimes cannot?
The things we tend to remember most are a great line from a film, a song, a book. A great line or lyric is a story, one that tugs our hearts. Good nature writing can make sense of the statistic. It can also help illuminate overlooked aspects of the world around us.
We often overlook the vibrancy and deep bonds of wild animals and their families around us. In My Wild City, you will find creatures of the night – solitary civets, owls that bark, fireflies that light the way, birds that raised chicks during the covid pandemic, surviving despite heat, pollution and threats. I hope they are able to touch you with how wild, but also how tender, their lives and bonds are.
Many members of the Indian diaspora carry memories of trees, gardens, rivers, birds and neighbourhoods from their childhood. How important is nature in shaping our sense of home and belonging?
I think nature is in almost every aspect of memory. You remember the food of your home country—the crushed leaves for a chutney, the roti made from wheat from a familiar farm. And then there are the smells: the smell of the earth when it rains, different from every country, special to you for where your roots are. Many people hailing from India have told me they miss the sounds of life around them - the sweet voice of the Indian koel or cuckoo, the cheeping of a house sparrow, the sound of someone singing. In so many ways, what we miss the most is a blend of nature and culture.
Finally, if you could take a reader to just one place in Delhi to experience the city’s hidden wildness, where would you take them and why?
I would take them to Sanjay Van, in the Aravallis in South Delhi, which has layers of history. It has jackals, and Delhi’s oldest fort, Lal Kot. It has fireflies in the monsoon and owls calling all night. It’s thrilling and wild and Nilgai antelopes lope through it, as they must have done decades and millennia before. You can see the Qutub Minar monument from it, which is 800 years old. It is so nice to see something which is so old, and in many ways a place where nature has recolonised and is standing strong.
