Like all things in our capitalist society, there's a new genre of nature writing which is nothing about natural history and getting to know and understand other species and ecosystems but all about self-indulgent how nature as a commodity is for me me me.

Nature *can* exist without healing us. It *can* not remind us of our grandmother's idlis or thaatha's death or my ethnicity. It's OK to focus on beings other than us and understand them for themselves without a use.

Of course how we access nature, is entirely shaped by political processes and privileges. Why marginalised people are evicted and prevented access to the natural world more and more while it becomes a luxury commodity for the privileged.

But imho once that opportunity becomes available, I feel for once, that is one place we can cease being all the layers tacked on to us by an artificial society, and enter a state that's not about humans and truly becoming aware of other forms.

At least, maybe that's why a Ruskin Bond makes us happy. He makes it about the bird at hand, the marigold in the cement crack, the mountains unchanging. For once, it takes the burden off us about being painfully aware of ourselves or the dissonances within ourselves.

I may be frightfully ignorant here and missing pieces. I am still forming my opinion/ understanding here. I do see how much our identities shape how we gain opportunities to engage with the natural world safely without being attacked or hurt for existing in the landscape.

The aspect that we have no voices from indigenous folks who live in the forests, but an upper class/caste English speaking group that reports these interactions is a drawback.

But maybe that *is* the problem. That bulk of our nature writing is by privileged folks who have had the education, financial support, and leisure. Maybe we have no other ways of seeing another world besides ourselves *in* it.

But I want to read about a bird, or a brook, or a mountain without hearing about turmeric and discovering oneself. Maybe that's another book for another audience. Maybe I want to hear about what the bird and brook *are* about without *use* to me.

I want to read of what you saw. Not that you were at the centre of seeing something. I have been a birder for half of my life and faced many obstacles and much harassment/bullying on the field. Nature was denied and birding made complicated by cis-het men.

But when one finally fights back through all of this and is standing in front of a tree or a sweet singing magpie robin, it was all worth it, not for me. But for the tree and the bird in their glory.