An ode to the hills: Sky Islands, a digital platform featuring stories from the Western Ghats, set to be launched

Sky Islands, a digital media platform amplifying voices of the Western Ghats, launches with a fund-raiser concert and storytelling event.

When Rajni George came back to her hometown of Kodaikanal after spending several years in Delhi and abroad, she was dismayed to see how much the hills had changed. “It really hit home how bad things were in our hill stations,” she says. “The older generation had done a lot to preserve our environment,” she feels, adding that this changed somewhere along the way. The Western Ghats, her home, was constantly in the news for the wrong reasons: landslides, over development, carrying capacity debate. Rajni realised that one way to contribute to the betterment of the hills was by putting together a reliable resource that would create an impact.

“We started out as a fun community project four years ago,” says Rajni, speaking about their WhatsApp group during the second wave of Covid-19, which developed into the Kodai Chronicle that published stories specific to, but not restricted to Kodaikanal. “We brought out bi-monthly issues, each of which carried ten stories,” recalls Rajni, the founding editor and publisher, adding that the idea was to connect other hill stations as well, offering resources for people living there, apart from acting on stories from the region.

While Kodai Chronicle is not active anymore, it has evolved into Sky Islands, a digital media platform administered by the Kodai Chronicle Trust, that will carry stories, as well as audio and video content on the Western Ghats and the lived experiences of its people, told by its indigenous voices. Set to be launched on April 17, the digital platform will initially feature a story a month. The first piece will be by Murugeshwari, a reporter from the Paliyar community. “She is doing a series on the Paliyar lifestyle,” points out Rajni. “They are the first settlers of these hills,” adding that Sky Islands will “amplify voices of the Western Ghats that are not heard often.”

Murugeshwari, who writes in Tamil, is being mentored by Kamakshi Narayanan, an editor from their team, who is also translating her stories into English. Murugeshwari recently received funding from Shared Ecologies by the Shyama Foundation to support her work.

Sky Islands is set to be launched with a fund-raiser concert featuring vocalists Suman Sridhar and Seema Ramchandani and musicians from the Dindigul Mavattam Kodaikanal Poombarai Grama Kalai Kuzhu. This will be followed by the event The Power of Collaborative Storytelling in collaboration with Kodaikanal International School’s Centre for Environment and Humanity, featuring talks by Murugeshwari and Suman Sridhar. A highlight is dinner made with fresh produce from the hills and indigenous rice varieties.

The fund-raiser concert is on April 17, 5pm, at Mountain Retreat Kodai; while The Power of Collaborative Storytelling is on April 18. For passes and details, visit www.thekodaichronicle.com.