Forces of nature

Sumana Roy has chosen to title the introductory chapter of her book "Phloem" rather than Preface or Introduction.

- AK BHATTACHARYA

Choosing this noun instead of the more functional descriptors is unusual, but not if you are a botanist by training or an avid follower of Roy's writings, enriched as they are with the idea of celebrating plants as living beings. Phloem means the "material in a plant containing very small tubes that carry sugars produced in the leaves around the plant".

A preface helps convey to the reader the key elements of a book. Phloem plays a similar role for Plant Thinkers of Twentieth-Century Bengal. In effect, Roy's insightful choice of the title for the preface helps her lay the groundwork for effectively conveying to the readers the book's central theme — the role that plants play in human creativity.

As a poet and fiction writer, Roy is widely known for her empathy and deep connection with plants or non-living objects. In one of her recent interviews, she had confessed that she would often say "Thank You" to the automated teller machine after drawing cash from it or say "Sorry" to the laptop after accidentally slamming it shut.

This book is not about her intense relationship with plants or non-living objects but it is deeply influenced by that worldview. It builds on her spirit of empathizing with non-living objects to examine a trend noticeable among leading writers and intellectuals of Bengal in the twentieth century. In a period of just about one hundred years, Bengal saw the emergence of a group of powerful writers who delved into the world of plants and their impact on the lives of men and women.