This novel brims with texts—books, academic articles, diary entries, social media posts—to which I am indebted for having opened doors to the plant world, the lives of colonial plant hunters, Goethean scientific ideas, Linneaus’s worldview, the Edwardian Age, and the complicated politics of the hills I call home.
In the Linnaeus section I use Tour in Lapland (1811) as a source text, a translation of the original Lachesis Lapponica by James Edward Smith. The poems “How to Be a True Botanist” and “Baptism,” however, are inspired by the lists in Linnaeus’s Philosophia Botanica.
The details of Goethe’s journey were sourced from the indispensable Flight to Italy: Diary and Selected Letters, translated by T. J. Reed, an authentic, unedited, day-to-day record of the first eight weeks of the poet’s travels. Many of Goethe’s “quotes” in the novel are taken directly from here. For the rest of Goethe’s time in Italy I referred to an 1881 translation by the Reverend A. J. W. Morrison, Letters from Switzerland and Travels in Italy, as well as Italian Journey: 1786-1788, famously translated by W. H. Auden and Elizabeth Mayer. Henri Bertoft’s excellent and accessible Goethe’s Scientific Consciousness allowed me an early glimpse into Goethe’s way of seeing, as did his The Wholeness of Nature: Goethe’s Way of Science. I learned much also from Dana Pauly’s thesis excerpt “Goethean Science: A Phenomenological Study of Plant Metamorphosis” and Agnes Arber’s The Natural Philosophy of Plant Form. The wall lettuce experiment that Goethe conducts with his friends in Rome, and his life-cycle-of-a-poppy conversation with Moritz are taken from Craig Holdrege’s outstanding Thinking Like a Plant: A Living Science for Life. Holdrege’s article “Doing Goethean Science” was imperative to my understanding of the actual experiential practice of Goethean Science in daily life.
My insights into Edwardian England, British women in India, and travel during the time were gained largely thanks to Anne de Courcy’s The Fishing Fleet: Husband Hunting in the Raj. Evie’s experience of journeying by ship to India and her time in Calcutta, was brought to life by the wealth of details in this book. Equally fascinating and especially useful was Jessica Douglas-Home’s A Glimpse of Empire, a recounting of her grandmother Lilah Wingfield’s travels through India in 1911. The description of traveling through the Suez Canal was inspired by her words. While most of the travel memoirs Evie reads actually exist, these three, William Griffiths’s Journals of Travels in Assam, Burma, Bootan, Afghanistan and the Neighbouring Countries; A Memoir of Some of the Natural Productions of the Angami Naga Hills, and Other Parts of Upper Assam by J. W. Masters Esq.; and Joseph Dalton Hooker’s Himalayan Journals, are said to mention the Diengiei—do note this is a fictional fabrication on my part. They contain many magical details but, alas, not this particular one!
Many details of Mr. Finlay’s life are taken from Francis Kingdon-Ward’s In the Land of the Blue Poppy, a collection of essays on his plant-hunting experiences across Asia.
I learned about the method or “stages” of conducting Goethean science from the very useful “Goethean Science as a Way to Read Landscape” by Isis Brook.
The conversation between Shai and Dajied about whether the resistance to uranium mining will continue in the West Khasi Hills quotes a Facebook post (December 30, 2019) by Tarun Bhartiya on land and belonging. The scene where they meet Kong Spelity Lyngdoh earlier in the day is also inspired by the same. The details about the mysterious package apprehended in Moreh and the suspicions that the UCIL and AMD were involved in stealth mining operations in the South West Khasi Hills were taken from a wealth of news articles—“Mystery Deepens over Recovery of Suspected Uranium in Moreh” by the Northeast Live Web Desk (May 19, 2019), “Manipur Recovery Proof of Uranium Mining: KSU” in The Shillong Times (May 20, 2019), “KSU Suspects Uranium Packets Seized from Manipur Are from Meghalaya” by The Northeast Today (May 19, 2019), “PDF Minister Demands Inquiry into Illegal Supply of Uranium” in Syllad: The Rising Meghalaya (May 20, 2019). To understand the uranium mining issue in greater detail, I turned to reportage by Dilnaz Boga for The Caravan and Ankita Anand for various publications including Beyond Headlines and minesandcommunities.org.
Shai’s fascination with the natural world, and geology and geological time, is inspired by my reading of Pranay Lal’s superb Indica: A Deep Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent, and watching, along with my father, a TV program on Discovery Science called, rather unpoetically, “Strip the Cosmos.”
Infused through the novel is the spirit of Robin Wall Kimmerer’s Braiding Sweetgrass: Indigenous Wisdom, Scientific Knowledge, and the Teachings of Plants. A book that serves as a wise and wonderful guide to life.