Becoming the Monsoon Forest–Emergence in the Breakdown of Categories

Abstract

How do we understand more-than-human vegetal emergence in/with/under monsoonal transformation. I often like to introduce the monsoon to people by telling them that it is the change in the direction of the wind that carries the ocean to the sky, blanketing the geological spatio-temporality of the Indian subcontinent, transforming its air and everything in its temporal wake with the possibility of life. This paper thinks through the invasive vilayati kikar which has overwhelmed native monsoon forests and arid ecologies. Drawing from fieldwork in the Delhi region conducted during monsoon 2018, 2019 and the winter of 2018, and by thinking with literature and reports from ecology, biology, politics, anthropology and natural science—I attempt a brief situated narrative that explores the vegetal emergence of the plant, its natureculture spirits and embodiment in/with the monsoon—finally, closing this work with an argument and discussion on the monsoon and its ontological stickiness.