Why It's Time to Reconnect With the Power of Plants

As plant-based wellness grows in popularity, Vasudha Rai's Sacred makes a case for bridging myths with science

- Sanjukta Sharma

When author Vasudha Rai, one of India's leading beauty and wellness writers, wanted to plant a peepul tree in a community garden she shared with her neighbours, the neighbours were dead against it. "They said it was unlucky, which made me think, how can a plant be unlucky?" Rai recalls. This sent her down an investigative path which led to many discoveries. Divine Botany came alive for her. "I was also tired of seeing trees being cut down all over India so I wanted to write something to remind people about the relationship we had with plants," Rai says. This is exactly what her new book, Sacred, does.

In the cornucopia of Instagram-led wellness, where plant, fungi and everything "herbal" or "natural" make for soft-lit reels promising wonders for brain, nerves and gut, Sacred, a crisply-written, detailed catalogue of medicinal plants—fruits, seeds, leaves, flowers—goes to the root of plant-fuelled wellness. Much of the benefits of turmeric, neem, lotus, aparajita, jujube, paan, saffron and cannabis (the book covers more than 50 plants) are based largely on a revived interest in traditional medicine, often dating back to thousands of years, and not medically-conclusive clinical studies.