Bengaluru needs a tunnel and 1,128 trees must make way. The proposed solution to congestion is a 2.2km tunnel for which a thousand trees are to be felled. Residents have taken to hugging trees in protest.

In Udaipur, once upon a time, hyenas came to feast on Dadi jaan ’s pots of vinegar and Daddy just went to the perennial stream by our home to catch fish if there were guests at home. Foxes lived in graveyards, peacocks danced in the rain. Now the Aravalli range are turning arid.

For the last two decades, I have lived in Colombo, a Ramsar wetland city, where the wild Sri Lankan nationals drop in uninvited. The city is densely plural. Marshes, waterways and patches of woodland are woven between skyscrapers, pubs and politicians. A bewildering variety of life co-exists with the bipedal apes. I cannot name a single metropolis in India where a firefly lands on your spoon as you are about to serve aloo-gobhi.…