Earth_Island_Journal_-_Spring_2020

F

RO M THE TOP OF A HILL just
a short drive outside Ooty, a
small city nestled in southwest India’s
Nilgiri Mountains, grassland washes
over the landscape like a spilled can of
emerald paint. It pools around clusters
of stunted, broccoli-like evergreen trees
known as “shola” forests with which
it has struck an ecological balance
that has lasted for more than 20,000
years. The landscape’s bright and inky

greens seem to pop even more against

August’s relentless gray monsoon rains,

as though the grasses and trees know

they have to try a bit harder to splash

color across the rolling ground.

It is impossible for an untrained eye

to discern in the middle of a downpour,

but the Nilgiri Mountains contain a

unique variety of life. More than 3,000

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the region, including a shrub called

neelakurinji (Strobilanthes kunthiana) that

blooms every dozen years, bathing the

hillsides in bluish purple. According to

some accounts, these mountains are

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Leopards and tigers slink around trunks

of the evergreen sholas, while the few

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by Colin Daileda

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