Welcome to Pint of View, Bangalore’s first-ever community where classroom-styled lectures meet drinks in relaxed spaces.

Ancient trees grew in Bangalore when the city was in the southern hemisphere. Those trees were fried crisp by streams of lava; this lava parfait cooled and lifted land 900m high. The ancient trees were replaced by rainforest trees, only to retreat as the climate dried out. The first trees of these dry forests, with the power to thrive in fire, shaded the first Bangaloreans thousands of years ago. Since then, humans have slowly settled this elevated land, this karu nadu, clearing the land of trees for agriculture but also bringing in trees from far off places. These foreign trees steadily grew familiar and our own, even as kingdoms, empire and the State kept bringing in new and interesting trees, all of which now call Bangalore home.

Trees of today's Bangalore encode the dazzling variety of ideas of this city. Trees like Jaali defy our cynicism and cling on, while some like Trema orientalis and Singapore cherry A/B test their way into niches we cannot yet comprehend. Some, like Madagascar almonds and Buttonwoods, define features of small manicured spaces amidst tall buildings whereas trees like Mango, Chickoo and Jackfruit complete our caricature of old Bangalore. And then there's the future of Bangalore’s trees: exciting and precarious in equal measure, not unlike our Bangalore.

Many of the trees from the talk will be around you, branches and all, engaging with you in a tactile, visual (and sometimes, culinary) experience. Oh, and you'll leave this edition with some seeds of trees (if you promise to give them some tough love).

About the Speaker

Dr. Akshay Surendra is an ecologist interested in how wild plants (and sometimes animals) interact with each other, and what those interactions mean for big questions around diversity, conservation and management of forests. He's had the good fortune to study trees and live amongst them in the rainforests of Sri Lanka, Andaman Islands and the Western Ghats.

Akshay is currently a visiting faculty, Environmental Studies, at Ashoka University and a data curator at Nature Conservation Foundation (NCF)-India. Akshay completed his Ph.D. from Yale University.

Event Details

- Sunday, 12 July | 1 PM to 3 PM

- Atta Galatta, Indiranagar (this is a sober venue)

What your ticket includes

- 1 complimentary sober drink from Local Ferment Co.

About Pint of View

Pint of View is India's Largest Lecture Community. We brought the lecture in bar format to India and are now expanding across the globe with chapters in 14 cities worldwide. Here, big ideas meet intimate spaces, and you walk in curious and walk out with a sharper lens on the world.

Book now and develop your own pint of view. 🍻