There’s something magical about holding a leaf in your hand.
You look at it—its veins, its texture, the chlorophyll-stained fingerprint it leaves on your skin—and you realize it’s not just alive, it’s intelligent. It knows when to fold, when to conserve, when to flower.
It has evolved through droughts and deluges, through fire and famine, not because it’s loud or forceful, but because it listens. It remembers.
That was my first love: the silence of plants, their deep, wordless wisdom.
I remember sitting in my first botany class as an undergrad at Miranda House, wide-eyed, trying to memorize the names of alkaloids and pigments, thinking this is what science is—naming what we don’t yet understand.
But what caught me wasn’t just the mechanisms. It was the metaphors.
The way stress responses in plants echoed human resilience.
The way stomata closed during heatwaves like people withdrawing in fear.
The way roots would reroute when they sensed danger.
I saw life not as isolated systems, but as soft revolutions—happening beneath the soil, beyond the syllabus.
And for a while, I thought that’s where I would stay: in the lab, close to chloroplasts and microscopes, chasing tiny truths one data point at a time.
But then, something shifted.
It wasn’t dramatic—there was no single "aha" moment, no lightning bolt clarity. It was quieter than that.
It came in pieces:
In the Delhi heatwave that cracked the roads and left taps dry in half the city.
In a policy document I stumbled upon, where water scarcity was reduced to three bullet points.
In a conversation with a woman in my neighborhood who said, “What’s the point of all this science if no one is listening to us?”
And just like that, the petri dish started to feel too small.
I realized I didn’t just want to know how plants responded to climate stress.
I wanted to ask why our systems didn’t.
I didn’t just want to model gene expression under drought.
I wanted to understand why the farmers in drought-prone regions still weren’t being heard.
Slowly, my curiosity grew outward—toward systems, toward governance, toward the messy spaces where science meets policy and forgets to speak human.
It wasn’t an easy shift.
There’s a strange guilt that comes with changing directions in science—as if curiosity must always be linear, or that caring about politics makes you less “pure” as a researcher.
But I’ve come to believe that science is only as powerful as the lives it transforms.
And for that to happen, it needs translation.
It needs bridges—between disciplines, between sectors, between the leaf and the law.
So now, when people ask me what I "do," I smile a little.
I tell them I study environmental transitions—but really, I study stories.
The story of a plant trying to survive in warming soil.
The story of a city choking on its own growth.
The story of a girl who fell in love with molecules and found herself chasing mandates.
Environmental policy wasn’t a detour.
It was a continuation.
Because molecules matter. But so do mandates.
Because research saves lives—but only when it’s allowed to leave the lab.
And maybe someday, someone else will hold a leaf and feel the same quiet wonder I did.
But instead of stopping there, maybe they’ll ask:
“Who gets to breathe in this system?”
“Who is still waiting for clean water, safe housing, or a voice at the table?”
If they do, I hope they find the courage to trace the line from biology to justice.
From photosynthesis to public policy.
From roots—to horizons.
— Sneha 🌾