Stories with Books

I started reading The Living Planet towards the second half of 2020, or even later. At my High School, I have Geography as one of my subjects so this was perfectly relevant. I managed to attain a physical copy and began reading very casually. Those days, I was on a project that required some Geographical knowledge. Otherwise too, there was something appealing about the book which contains as many pictures as words.

It was little later that I learned that the book had been written specifically as a kind of script for a BBC documentary about the selfsame themes of life and diversity in it.

The book contains numerous memorable paragraphs. I always had in my hands a pen and found myself underlining things frequently. There are chapters devoted to all types of biospheres: seas and oceans, deserts, grasslands, mountains, coasts, volcanoes, cities etc. Mental pictures keep forming themselves in one’s mind as one sails from word to word, pictures that stick there forever and come as references whenever you have to imagine any of such biospheres.

There are feelings of grandness attached to The Living Planet. Reading about myriad life-forms, you not only gape at the concept of diversity and respect for diversity in nature but also get to pinpoint where in the spectrum of life do you lie, and how you are both similar to and different than the other creatures.

Whether it I a little toad you read about or a massive polar bear, whether big trees of jungles or the little grass of Savannas, whether the birds in the upper reaches of troposphere or the planktons in the deepest of the deep oceans, there is so much great detailing and yet explained so simply and beautifully that even a novice in Geography goes with grand pictures on the other end of his retina. The book introduces not many complex terminologies, less technical concepts of Geography or Biology, but gives a knowledge of both to the reader: knowledge that is not theoretical but applied, not a little technical here and there, but beautiful.

The final message of the book is very subtle, very relevant, then and now, and very perfect, giving the reader goosebumps:

“As far as we can tell, our planet is the only place in all the black immensities of the universe where life exists. We are alone in space. And the continued existence of life now rests in our hands.”