Sacred Trees and Indian Life

THE BOOK : 
This book is about the abiding bond that exists between trees and everyday life in India: especially between sacred trees and everyday life. The bond has always been there. As it subsists today, it may not be so easily visible, for one's attention is delivered by other things, and the air in any case is filled with too much noise, a surfeit of human greed. But the bond is there: this book is an attempt to draw attention to its embedded existence.
In the photographs in this book, and the epigraphs that accompany them, the reader will discover, behind seemingly simple sights and words, thoughts that move and ideas that invite us to reflect.

THE AUTHOR : 
Susanne Hawkes is a freelance photographer. As an old friend of India, she has travelled and photographed extensively in the country, and continues to return here, drawn by "the intensity", as she says, "with which this ancient land opens itself to me and captures all my senses". She lives, with her husband, in Heidelberg, Germany.
Karuna Goswamy is a historian, and was, till recently, Professor of History at the Panjab University, Chandigarh. She has written extensively, with her interest centered chiefly upon the social and cultural history of India. Among her principal publications are: Vaishnavism in the Punjab Hills, and Pahari Painting (doctoral dissertation, Chandigarh, 1968); The Glory of the Great Goddess: An Illustrated Manuscript from Kashmir in the Alice Boner Collection (Zurich, 1989); and Kashmiri Paintings: Assimilation and Diffusion; Production and Patronage (Shimla, 1998).