‘Biopeculiar’: Speculative short stories about nature tell what is at stake to those who will listen

The rhythmic murmuration of cicadas on a mango tree continues in the hottest afternoons of this record-breaking summer; cicadas are the loudest insects. But this continuity does not mean they are fine. Koels are calling out at nights too; their night cycles are getting disrupted. Auto drivers in Delhi forego livelihood because of intense heat during the day. A large section of our economic workforce lives under tin-roofed structures in these raging temperatures. This coupled with a water crisis takes the shape of water fights and chaos daily. The political world is not interested in declaring this as a climate emergency. But it seems like the literary world has already declared one.

In such odd times, what happens when you encounter stranger stories – stories that deflect from realities but are still as real as the water queues; stories that yearn for a different emotion of what we are presently feeling but don’t know what to do with it? Also, what do such stories really do? Are stories helping us respond to the crisis better?

“We hear the ears. Everything in forest. Don’t need to speak. Can hear what here.” This dialogue spoken by another human-like species in one of the stories of Biopeculiar stopped me in the middle of reading. The sentence made me wonder about the intricacy with which playfulness is tied to the most disturbing and apocalyptic reality. Plants communicate with the nonhuman world differently than us, but what can we do with this information as creative thinkers and storytellers?

Such is Gigi Ganguly’s collection of short stories, Biopeculiar: Stories of an Uncertain World, which expands curiosities about our present natural world through imagination and speculation. Here you meet a cloud herder, listen to dolphins as they undertake meaning-making by watching humans delve into their own narcissism, visit planets harbouring life, visualise life on a spaceship, reimagine forests as more than just living beings, and much more.

What if

This collection of speculative fiction poses the question of “what if” towards the most ordinary instances in our lives. Even though the stories were spaced at a different time and places, it did not feel like I was reading about an alternate universe. The strangeness here makes you reflect: a moss communicates with residents of a house by growing and developing assemblages that make it do human-like actions; a tree asks a human explorer to stay on; polar bears get on a vessel even as humans look on in disbelief.

But it is really the loss that stays with you as you move from one story to another. The loss attaches you to characters and places. Many times what felt bittersweet also felt strange and many times what felt odd in the beginning felt like a relief at the end.

If we know that birds are not meant to be caged, can we also say the same thing about clouds? But who would even think about caging clouds? What would happen if clouds could be cultivated like farmers tending to their crops, or led for grazing like a herder leading their flock of sheep in the mountains? Possibilities like these abound in this book. But these possibilities also help in adopting the perspectives of otters, dolphins, silkworms, clouds, and seas in Biopeculiar.

In the story “Polarspeak”, when a mother polar bear asked her child what was of utmost importance in their lives, I expected the answer to be something around joy and love for the earth. But what we get from the mother polar bear is survival. The struggle to survive is not a joy. Yet, it is what many spectacular species have been reduced to in these years of crisis.

People and their memories of nature

In Biopeculiar, one also notices the relationships of people with the memories of nature.

In a story titled “Head in the Clouds”, there are references to cloud kidnappings. This title, like some others in the book, is a clever take on a popular phrase that is often heard in classroom rebukes. It is usually used to refer to a person whose mind is elsewhere or is impractical. Titles like these also hint at a need for alternative vocabulary. This requires paying attention to the language of ecology, especially when it comes to using nature in everyday life. In a bittersweet ending to the story, the final moments of an old cloud herder are depicted as:

“He closes his eyes one last time, and the clouds above begin to shower him with snow, entombing him with their love. Memories merge and flash across his mind: the first snow he witnessed as a child, the cool shock of opening the main door on a winter morning, the clink of ice in a swiftly cooling beverage, the joy of dipping his head under blankets on an especially chilly night and feeling safe and protected. He holds on to that memory for as long as he can.”

A desire for alternative communication

One of my favourite stories was “A Year (Not Quite) Alone in an Alien Wilderness”. The story is about a human explorer crashing on a sentient colony of a moon. This moon consists of earth-like flora and fauna; the connection with the surroundings is telepathically generated.

In another story titled, “Crown Shyness”, it is the trees on another planet that decide if the explorer can be kept or crushed down like a bulldozer mowing buildings down.

“Solastalgiac” is a story about two “partners” on a planet called Farearth. The complex feelings of environmental grief run parallel with the technical details of how a planet like that would function.

Biopeculiar raises questions about not just what we consider as weird but also what we consider as communication. Even to protest, our voices need to be of a certain kind, speak a certain accent, and language, appeal to the ideas of certain power-wielding conglomerates, and fit certain checkboxes, only to be heard by the people who are responsible for hushing us up in the first place.

The stories in Biopeculiar ask us to think beyond the conventional meanings of such a voice. People from disadvantaged communities in South Asian countries like India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, are facing the brunt of air pollution, heat waves, water scarcity, hunger, even though their contribution to the climate crisis is close to negligible. If at all, these societies have been teaching the rest of the world how to have an earth-friendly lifestyle.

This makes us think about alternatives. The text mentions some interesting occupations: "Head in the Clouds” refers to cloud herding as something like farming where “a person takes the clouds out to places that need a spell of rain, and let them graze the required time”. There is a person studying cloud dynamics in “Whirlwind”. A singer who can summon rain through her voice is looking for a successor in “Losing”. “Sort Sol” brings us to another perception of birding where a person is able to perceive signs made by birds during their flight.

Gigi Ganguly’s short stories tile the language of humans and make us ponder over what is at stake. The book makes you realise that the way to a just future is by paying attention to the nonhuman world while ignoring it will hurtle us to our doom.

Biopeculiar: Stories of an Uncertain World, Gigi Ganguly, If/Westland.