#63 The Thing About Rituals and Coexistence (English+Tamil)

This week I’m in conversation with the thoughtful and deeply grounded partnership of Devaki Nair and Manikandan R, part of the 2023 cohort of the Coexistence Fellowship.

Manikandan, or Mani, is from Gudalur in Tamil Nadu, and brings with him a rich, lived understanding of the landscape—its people, histories, and more-than-human worlds. Having worked closely with local communities over the years, his knowledge is rooted in relationships, shaped by everyday engagements with forests, livelihoods, and shifting ecological realities.

Devaki, on the other hand, is trained in the social sciences, with a keen interest in people-nature relationships and the ways in which knowledge, culture, and ecology intersect. Her work brings a reflective and analytical lens to the lived experiences of coexistence, grounding them in broader questions of conservation and community.

Together, their work centres on the Paniya community in Gudalur, tracing how coexistence is practiced through everyday life—through mapping villages, documenting sacred spaces, and engaging with traditional livelihoods like basket weaving.

Their project moved beyond conventional conservation narratives, drawing attention to the nuanced, often overlooked ways in which people and forests are entangled in relationships of care, memory, and mutual shaping.

In this episode, they opened up a space to listen more closely to stories that challenge, complicate, and ultimately enrich our understanding of what it means to coexist.