The Healing Plate
Haru's Paper Garden: An Imagined History of India's Botanical Art
Smit Zaveri
Dear Haru,
Perhaps you wonder why I love my work enough to stay away from you? It isn’t about running a paintbrush across paper, nor simply capturing what someone wants me to. I’ve learnt that by documenting the world around us, we make it more knowable.
Haru’s father hasn’t been home in years. He’s been tasked with creating lifelike paintings of plants in faraway places like Nepal and Burma instead. So Haru writes him a letter. Thus begins a correspondence that opens Haru’s eyes to the world of botanical illustrations and what it means to really see something. Told as a series of imagined conversations between father and son in the 1800s, Haru’s Paper Garden pays homage to the life and work of master artist Vishnuprasad, who, like many other artists of his time, is lost between the pages of history. Within this book lies a garden of the subcontinent’s finest botanical art, a portrait of the natural world we inhabit, and a tender story of kinship.
Smit Zaveri is a children’s book editor, baker, and reluctant writer. She loves eating, playing Dungeons & Dragons, and people-watching. She lives in Hyderabad with her husband and a cat named Bear.
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