RECREATING THE ROEE: THE SHRUBLAND OF THAR DESERT
By Pradip Krishen | 6:15 PM IST | 21 August 2020
In the January of 2016, Pradip Krishen was shown a barren tract of ‘marooned dunes’ in the north-east of Jaipur city by the Jaipur Development Authority (JDA) and asked if he was willing to shape it into a public park.
Building on the work he had done in Jodhpur where he created the Rao Jodha Desert Rock Park on 70 hectares of rocky hillside, he was excited by the prospect of trying to restore a very different (sandy) desert landscape.
In this talk, Pradip Krishen will walk you through different facets of his work in creating ‘Kishan Bagh’ as a place that invites visitors to get to know the desert intimately, its rocks and plants, but most specially, a native Thar shrubland called ‘Roee’. The ‘central ambition’ of Kishan Bagh is to introduce the word ‘Roee’ into the vocabulary that people use when they think or talk about the Thar desert. That could be a first step towards visiting, photographing and hopefully, conserving this relict landscape.
The talk will be followed by a discussion with our Academic Advisors at 7:30 pm. Register for the discussion.
About the Speaker
Pradip Krishen writes about trees and plants and works as an ecological gardener in Western India and the desert where he has re-wilded spoiled landscapes with native vegetation. He is the author of Trees of Delhi (2006) and Jungle Trees of Central India (2015). He is working now on a journal-style book about Delhi’s degraded Central Ridge forest. He made 3 films in the 20th century and regards that as a career he has moved away from. His films were: Massey Sahib (1986), In Which Annie Gives it Those Ones (1989) and Electric Moon (1991).
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