Book Review: Braiding Sweetgrass

“As a botanist, Robin Wall Kimmerer has been trained to ask questions of nature with the tools of science. As a member of the Citizen Potawatomi Nation, she embraces the notion that plants and animals are our oldest teachers. In Braiding Sweetgrass, Kimmerer brings these two ways of knowledge together”, says the blurb of Braiding Sweetgrass, which is enough for me to want to read the book. There are three main strands in the book- the author’s exploration of Native American wisdom, her musings as a mother and the need to take action now- all three of which are braided together in much the same way as Sweetgrass.

According to Native American legend, Sweetgrass was the first plant to grow on earth. “Breathe in its scent and you start to remember things you didn’t know you had forgotten.” Sweetgrass is a powerful ceremonial plant and it is also used to weave baskets. Like Sweetgrass, the book describes indigenous wisdom and a world where each species lives in balance with the other. It is also extremely practical and draws attention to how urgently we need to heal the world.

The book is divided into five sections-

Planting Sweetgrass, where we are told stories from Native American folklore and of how it relates to us today. We learn about the gift of reciprocity and of how to communicate with the natural world. Tending Sweetgrass draws on the author’s experience as a mother and connects human mothers to Mother Nature. In Picking Sweetgrass, we learn about the Honourable Harvest- never take the first or the last, never take more than half, always seek permission before taking, take only as much as you need, take in a way that causes no harm, offer thanks for what you have been given, leave a gift of reciprocity. Braiding Sweetgrass talks of rediscovering nature, of learning to love the land instead of merely seeking to understand it. The last section, Burning Sweetgrass, is perhaps the darkest. It speaks of how human beings have destroyed nature and made it toxic for all living beings- but even here there is hope. Hope that someday soon, we will learn, and we will help nature heal.

At the core of the book is the difference in two ways of living, each described perfectly through their respective creation myths. The way of the Native Americans is the way of Skywoman, who fell to the earth, and with the help of all the creatures (including a few who sacrificed their life for her), planted the seeds she had brought with her, and created a world where all lived in harmony. The Western way is described by the story of Eve who was banished from Paradise and had to make her way in the world by fighting for what she needed- the consumeristic way. How much better is the way of giving with gratitude, where there is reciprocity between the giver and the receiver and each is responsible for the survival of the other. When Western colonisers first encountered Native Americans, they thought that they were lazy, but in reality the difference is simply that one set of people is driven by greed and the other by need.

The book is full of human and non-human teachers who have much to teach us- lessons on reciprocity, on giving, on helping each other and on living in harmony. The story of the Three Sisters in particular stands out. Corn, Beans and Squash are the Three Sisters who grow together, each providing what the other two need. Corn provides support for the beans, squash prevents attacks on the corn and the bean, bean fixes nitrogen for the corn and squash. Yellow, green and orange- the three plants have adapted so they grow together in a symbiotic relationship- together, each of them produces more than any of them would individually. But, adds the author, there is also a fourth sister- human beings. It is the human being who collects the seeds, protects them through winter and plants them at the right time. The human being benefits from the abundance of the Three Sisters, but the Three Sisters may not exist without the human being. This story tells so much, not only about the adaptations in nature, but also about the role of humans in the ecosystem. A role no more or no less than that played by any of the other species.

We tend to think of human beings as the apex of the evolutionary chain. We place our species on a special place in the ecosystem. In reality, though, we are just one more species among countless others. This realisation should make us feel insignificant, but it makes us feel magnificent to be an intrinsic part of such a complex whole.

We live in a consumeristic world. We think everything the earth has is ours for the taking. Some of us worry about the future of our species and advocate for reversing some of the damage we have done. This book is revolutionary. It urges us to put aside everything we have learnt and to understand that another world is possible- one where we respectfully take only as much as we need, and do so in a manner that doesn’t cause harm. It would call for a drastic rethinking of everything we know before such a world becomes possible, but it is something worth aiming for.

I summarise with an extract that shows how human intervention is often not just beneficial but necessary to the well being of other species. In a scientific experiment to determine which method of harvesting Sweetgrass was most beneficial, plots of land were monitored over several months. A few plots were left unharvested as a control-

“The surprise was that the failing plots were not the harvested ones, as predicted, but the unharvested controls. The sweetgrass that hadn’t been picked or disturbed in any way was choked with dead stems while the harvested plots were thriving. Even though half of all stems had been harvested each year, they quickly grew back, completely replacing everything that had been gathered. In fact producing more shoots than were present before harvest. Picking sweetgrass seemed to actually stimulate growth. In the first year’s harvest, the plants that grew the very best were the ones that had been yanked up in a handful. But, whether it was pinched singly or pulled in a clump, the end result was nearly the same: it didn’t seem to matter how the grass was harvested, only that it was.”

We speak of Climate Justice and Environmental Justice. While both are important, neither is sufficient. Till we understand the fundamental truth that each species is bound to the other with strands of reciprocity, and occupy our allotted place in the world knowing that truth, things look bleak for us as a species.

Can we stop romanticising women in the kitchen?

 [First published in Women’s Web]

“Instead of purchasing food from restaurants through ‘swiggy’ and ‘zomato’, let the children taste the delicious food made by their mother and let the children play at play grounds at that time and come back home to the mesmerizing smell of mother’s food. I leave it there to the wisdom of parents of minor children.”

This observation was not made, as might be supposed, by a group of women gossiping about how their daughters-in-law didn’t feed their grandchildren the way they fed their children. This observation was made by Justice P.V.Kunhikrishnan of the Kerala High Court, while giving a ruling on something that had nothing to do with children or their nutrition.

In a case where he was required to rule on whether or not watching pornographic videos on one’s own phone could constitute an offence of obscenity under IPC, the High Court Judge chose to take the opportunity to offer unsolicited advice to parents of minor children. While one could argue that cautioning parents (and guardians) about giving their children (or wards) unrestricted access to the internet could come under the broad ambit of the judgement, offering advice on how children should spend their time and what they should eat was certainly way beyond his brief. Yet, he did so, because motherhood is so romanticised in India, that nobody thinks there is anything wrong in expecting mothers to conform to the stereotype.

There are primarily two things that are wrong in the comments made by Judge Kunhikrishnan- the fact that “fresh, homecooked meals” are a basic requirement in every household, and the expectation that it is the mother who should provide it.

Indian women spend more time in the kitchen than anyone else
In a global survey where over 27,000 respondents from 22 countries were interviewed to learn more about their cooking habits, it was found that Indians spend 13.2 hours in the kitchen every week- which was the highest among all the countries on the list (While the report did not specify, we know that, unlike in other coutries, that figure is entirely female labour).

These findings are not unsurprising, because the basic expectation in most Indian households is that all three meals should be prepared from scratch everyday. Unlike in other countries, the emphasis on “fresh” food is so great that Indians rarely cook and freeze in large batches.

Unlike in Western countries, the concept of “ready to eat” food is also largely absent in India. While you can find precooked food on supermarket shelves, it is an extremely niche market- one that most families avoid. Over the last two decades, cooking pastes (ginger-garlic paste and tomato puree) and blended masalas have finally taken over our pantry, thereby reducing the time spent in the kitchen, but even now, you will find men and women romanticising grinding masalas and pastes by hand, and bemoaning how packaged masalas never taste as good freshly ground ones.

While nobody denies the fact that food prepared at home is likely to be more healthy than food that is ordered from restaurants, it is time society stopped passing a moral judgement on people who “order from Swiggy and Zomato”. Once families start ordering meals on a regular basis (instead of as a treat, or as a top up to an existing meal), there will automatically be a spurt in the number of people supplying nutritious meals cooked in hygienic conditions which simulate those of a home kitchen. It is because of insufficient demand that there are not as many such suppliers as there could be.

Cooking is a gender agnostic skill, then why do we assign it to women
The second issue is the expectation that it is the mother who is responsible for creating the “mesmerizing smell” of home cooked food. Cooking, like most other household skills should be gender agnostic. If a household decides to cook most of the meals at home, the responsibility of preparing the meals should be a shared responsibility.

Sadly, this is rarely the case.

Even young men in their 20s and early 30s take immense pride in stating that they cannot even boil an egg. While the existence of cheap labour in our cities ensures that even the occupants of bachelor (or other all male) establishments enjoy home cooked food, it also ensures that men grow up thinking that there is no need for them to learn to cook. Once they get married, these men assume that their wives take over the responsibility of ensuring there is food on the table, and the vicious cycle continues.

A substantial portion of an Indian woman’s life is spent in ensuring that the family is fed, and this responsibility restricts her opportunity to do something more productive and meaningful with her time. This can only be changed gradually by teaching the next generation that cooking is gender agnostic and that it is not essential that all meals should be “fresh” or “homecooked”.

Most importantly, it is essential that society stops passing a moral judgement on women who choose not to spend a disproportionate amount of time in the kitchen; statements like the ones uttered by Justice Kunhikrishnan neutralise any small gains that we may have made.

Are ‘Good Grades’ The Only Thing That Matters?

[First published in Youth Ki Awaaz]

 The other day, Sanjeev Bikchandani, a successful serial entrepreneur and a co-founder of Ashoka University posted:

Grades Matter
These two photographs are from the 1978–79 issue of my school magazine The Columban.
In that era grades were not private and they were published in our school magazine.
In 1978 around 200 students in my batch wrote the Class 10 Board exam.
The list in the picture shows the academic performance of the top seventy students.
The cohort is now averaging approximately sixty years of age. A good time to take stock of the career trajectories of people.
If I look at the top fifty students by academic standing and try and piece together their careers here is what I see.
Two have passed away and I have no news of another six.
Out of the remaining forty two eleven studied Economics at St. Stephens. Thirteen went to IIT. Seven went to IIM Ahmedabad. Another six went to other business schools including Harvard, Wharton, Kellogg and Carnegie Mellon. I see seven PhDs from the leading universities of the world (Berkeley, University of Michigan, Harvard, Stanford, Yale among them). I see a gold medallist and a distinguished alumnus from IIT Delhi. I see a Delhi University record holder in mathematics. I see that almost all the others went to other excellent colleges — SRCC, AIIMS, MAMC, BITS and others.
I see people working as professors at Princeton, University of Texas and Cornell. I see entrepreneurs and senior executives and bankers. I see a former President of SoftBank, a former India head of BCG, a former partner of McKinsey, a two term Lok Sabha MP and former Minister of State for Finance and a former Minister of State for Civil Aviation, a founder of Everstone Capital, a former India CEO of Coca Cola, three medical doctors, a photographer and a musician and a nationally ranked squash player.
Almost all of these fifty have had stellar careers in their chosen field and all of them got to where they did by dint of their effort and their academic accomplishments.
To the best of my knowledge none of them did drugs and nobody did politics and aandolans in college.
The point I am making is that good grades open doors. Unless you are from an already wealthy family and can look forward to an inheritance or if being financially successful is not one of your aims and you don’t really want to get into the next good institution of learning or get a job in a leading organisation you should be focusing on academics as your most important priority.
Good grades open doors. The effort you put in to achieve these grades adds intrinsic value to you. This is old fashioned advice but it is true.
However you will need to be patient and toil diligently and consistently for a longish period of time for the payoff’s to come. You will need to attend every class, read every reading, prepare for every exam and work hard on every assignment. You will need to focus and be committed.
Having said this I acknowledge that there are different yardsticks to measure success and the type that my class has demonstrated could be dismissed by some people as blinkered and so so middle class and conventional.
Your call

In the post, he analysed the career trajectory of the top 50 students of the batch of 200 students who took the Class 10 Board exams from St. Columba’s School in 1978, and used the fact that most of them would be considered “successful” to conclude that “grades matter”.

He says, “Eleven studied Economics at St. Stephens. Thirteen went to IIT. Seven went to IIM Ahmedabad. Another six went to other business schools including Harvard, Wharton, Kellogg and Carnegie Mellon. I see that almost all the others went to other excellent colleges — SRCC, AIIMS, MAMC, BITS and others.” While everybody will agree with him when he says, “almost all of these fifty have had stellar careers in their chosen field”, one cannot conclude, as he does, that “all of them got to where they did by dint of their effort and their academic accomplishments.”

St. Columba’s was one of the most elite schools in the country in the 1970s. While the students may not have been the children of millionaires or of royalty, they were certainly from families that male up the intellectual elite. Their parents were IAS and IPS officers, senior officers in the Armed Forces, pilots, lawyers, doctors and other educated professionals. While these families liked to think of themselves as “upper middle class” (and not “rich”), they were the people who ran the nation.

The students of St. Columba’s were at the apex of an inequitable pyramid, and every advantage was stacked in their favour. They grew up in families that prioritised education. They had the best teachers. If they struggled with a subject, they could get tutors to provide one on one coaching. They could access to books and libraries.

When they graduated, they had ready-made professional networks which they could tap into to get good jobs. They were fluent in English, which in itself guarantees a large measure of success. They had financial and emotional safety nets which enabled them to take calculated risks. While one does not discount the good grades that the students got, the odds are stacked so much in their favour that it would be hard for any student from St. Columba’s to fail spectacularly in their professional life.

Statistics only make sense when compared with other data sets

Statistics should never be viewed in isolation. In order to draw any conclusions on whether or not grades matter, either of two comparisons should have been made.

The top 50 in a batch of 200 represents the top quartile of students graduating from St. Columba’s in 1978. Comparing the career trajectory of the top 50 students with the career trajectory of the students with ranks 101 to 150, would have given an indication of whether “good grades” led to a significantly better professional career or not. If ‘only’ grades matter, most of the students in the third quartile should (at best) be working in low paying jobs which barely qualify as white collar. Though we do not have any details of what these people are doing, given the family background of the students and the fact that they are fluent in English, it is unlikely that any of them are in similar jobs (unless it is out of choice).

The other comparison could have been with the career trajectory of the toppers from 50 government schools in Delhi in 1978. If ‘only’ grades matter, the 50 toppers from government schools should have enjoyed much greater professional success than the students from the top quartile of one particular school. After all, each of them is the best in their school, not just one of the top 50! Again, we do not have details, but it is safe to assume that most of the toppers from government schools would not have enjoyed even a fraction of the professional success that the students of St. Columba’s did.

Even talking about these comparisons would seem ludicrous. How can anyone even think of comparting students from a elite English medium school with the students of a government school? Yet, when we talk about how “grades matter” and we say “good grades open doors. The effort you put in to achieve these grades adds intrinsic value to you”, aren’t we presupposing that the only thing that differentiates one who does well professionally from one who doesn’t is the amount of effort put into getting good grades”?

Though we believe otherwise, there is more at play than just ‘hard work’

When I was younger, I too believed that it was my hard work that got me where I was. But I was comparing myself to others with the same advantages as I had. Yes, I certainly had good brains, and I worked extremely hard, but it wasn’t just “my” brains and “my” hard work that got me where I was. I had privilege that I chose to be blind to, because I was comparing myself to others like me.

However behind my professional success was the fact that I had access to the best education my parents could afford- yes, they made personal sacrifices to pay for my education, but that they valued the education enough for them to do so itself is a privilege. Nobody questioned me when I aspired to occupy a place of excellence. My family supported me and my ambitions at every stage, and without that support, I doubt if I would have achieved what I did.

Though I chose not to think about it, I was born and brought up at the apex of an inequitable system. A system that empowered and enabled me to compete on what I thought was a level field, but actually was one that was stacked in my favour. There are many who are as intelligent as me. And are willing to work as hard as I did. But at every stage they are denied opportunity.

The vast majority of students in India, struggle to find teaches able and willing to teach. They do not have access to libraries. They do not have a family that can sustain their curiosity. They are constantly derided by the education system. Even after they get admission into good educational institutions, they are often not accepted as equals by the faculty and other students. Their competence is questioned, even though there is no reason to presume they are in any way not equal to the rest.

When they are ready to graduate, recruiters look at fluency in English as much (if not more) than they do at grades. Personal and professional networks play a key role in career progression. Not everyone has the financial and emotional safety net to take professional risks. In short, the field is stacked against the vast majority of people in the country.

Till those inequities are removed, the elite should not make blanket statements like-

“However you will need to be patient and toil diligently and consistently for a longish period of time for the payoff’s to come. You will need to attend every class, read every reading, prepare for every exam and work hard on every assignment. You will need to focus and be committed.”

While there is nothing wrong with the statement, what we should be more worried about is trying to ensure universal access to quality education, healthcare, livelihoods and social acceptance. Yes, good grades open doors, but they do so only for the elite. To not recognise your own privilege is to choose to moral blindness.