It is an absolute honor to be a part of this collaboration!

“What we save, saves us.”

My inspiration for this collaboration has been ‘The Chipko movement’ ; the first act of green that I came to know of while I was in school and was greatly impacted by.
The word ‘Chipko’ means ‘embracing’.

On May 30, 1968 in India, a large number of tribal men and women resisted the affluent contractors and the industrialists in their act of plundering the forests. Historic marches against the indiscriminate looting of forests were organized. When there was an attempt to fell the trees on a dark night, the tribal women resisted by embracing the trees ‘like their own children’. Women spent sleepless nights in guarding the trees. It is so gratifying to note that it was the so-called illiterate tribal women who first came forward to demand conservation of the environment. Soon the movement gained pace and more and more people joined to protest. An unusually popular slogan was coined; “what do the forests bear? Soil, water and pure air”.
Gradually the intensity of the Chipko movement drew the attention of the Central Goverment of India. The Prime Mnister observed, ’not a single tree in the Himalayan ranges in Uttar Pradesh should be touched for the next fifteen years. The message of this movement spread out from the Himalayan forests to the rest of the world.

Drawing inspiration from this phenomenal movement I have tried to replicate the ‘embrace’ around the trees. The cake topper is my humble attempt at replicating a geode; which in Greek means ‘earth like’.
After all; “what we save, saves us”.

Sent from my iPad