Through her art, Subramaniam encourages more people to stop and notice the surrounding flora and fauna—like the folded petals of a thunbergia or the bright orange of a flame-throated bulbul—so they can develop a better connection with the natural world. The artist is among a growing community of nature lovers seeking to deepen society’s connection with the environment, to remind us that we exist in nature, not above it. Sadly, it’s a truth that many of us seem to have forgotten. Despite an unusually dry June, Mumbai’s reservoirs filled up within days when the monsoon arrived belatedly. However, with fewer trees and less topsoil to absorb and redirect the rain that reaches households, our water problems have persisted. The unprecedented wave of floods in Assam that ravaged more than 2600 and killed 101 people so far is the result of climate change made worse by wanton deforestation and mining in the region.
Scrolling on Instagram, I am heartened by the volume of “looking for a forever home for this furry kitten: spayed and snuggly” and “Bruno barks ‘thank you’ for rescuing him” posts. But I wonder why this empathy dissipates into thin air when it comes to plants. There’s a term for it: plant awareness disparity (PAD), the tendency to overlook, ignore and underestimate our friendly greens. This cognitive bias exists, in part, because plants are static and lack faces, so we tend to filter them, notice them less and ultimately develop a less compassionate attitude towards them.
To reverse this troubling trend, researchers are finding novel ways of fighting PAD. Last year, an article titled ‘Dance with plants: Taylor Swift’s music videos as advance organizers for meaningful learning in botany’ in Annals of Botany, a monthly peer-reviewed scientific journal, talked about how elements of popular culture can be introduced in classrooms to make learning about plants more exciting and accessible. It details a case study in which students were asked to look at Taylor Swift’s music videos. At first, they noticed the props, the set, the singer’s hair, her clothes. Then, the teacher prodded them to notice the natural world: the vines on the mansion and the apple trees in ‘Blank Space,’ the moss-covered piano and forest in ‘Cardigan’, the massive tree with drooping branches in ‘Willow’. Who better than the biggest pop star in the world to teach young children that plants are actually everywhere?