We’ve become pretty good at thinking of nature as something around us.

The neem tree outside your window. The squirrel that visits it. The soil beneath your feet. The lake a few streets away. None of these exist on their own. They are part of the living world we inhabit too.

Somewhere in Ahmedabad, a botanist has notes on a tree she’s watched for fifteen years. A resident has noticed a plant slowly disappearing from their street. A student knows where a particular bird still comes to nest. Together, they hold pieces of a much bigger picture of Ahmedabad’s ecology.

Ekatra brings these pieces together. It is an evolving, crowdsourced repository of species that make Ahmedabad what it is and the stories, knowledge and relationships that surround them.

Ekatra won’t just tell you a plant’s name. It will help you understand why it is here, what depends on it, and what it depends on.

Because sometimes, getting to know the tree outside your window is a roundabout way of getting to know yourself: how you belong here, what you’re connected to, and what kind of life becomes possible when we begin to understand the place we call home.

Ekatra means together, in one place; all of it, all of us, all along.