Discover stories from the Archives at NCBS
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The Almirah – In Search of Jamal Ara’s Papers
“”Birds of Bihar… Birds of Bihar…” she would keep mumbling this over and over again in her last days. I am not sure why she kept repeating the phrase. Perhaps it was a draft of a book that she was writing, or a project she wanted to undertake. I do not really know. But as…
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Mani Ramaswami on Chasing Conotoxins and Bringing Biology to the Beach
This interview developed from initial conversations that took place in 2025, when Mani Ramaswami visited the Archives at NCBS exhibition, ‘Untitled, Undated’, and shared his thoughts on an exhibit displaying the cone snail/conotoxin project by biologist K S Krishnan. A few weeks later, the exhibition curator, Dhatri, sat down with Mani, who joined online from…
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Cranes, Ladakh, and Sálim Ali
At first glance, doesn’t it seem like a typical field image from the 1970s? Men with binoculars and cameras, an all-male group of researchers in the foreground of a barren landscape. Let’s zoom in now: there are soldiers in uniform, military jeeps, and also what appear to be barracks in the background. Now, for me,…
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A Wayanad Interlude
“Bahugana said – ‘Don’t eat the salt of anyone, you will be beholden for life.’” “Nature is diverse, of course we need to be too.” “They call us the B-team of the Forest Department.” With humour and passion, the members of the Wayanad Prakrithi Samrakshana Samithi (WPSS) shared the history of their decades-old participation in…
