How green was my Facebook

Posted on March 30, 2012 by admin

I read the book ‘How green was my valley’ three times. The first time, I was in school in Santiniketan. I was mesmerized by the warm hearted and bittersweet story about a Welsh coal mining village of the 1930s by Richard Llewellyn. I was not as familiar with English then. I did my schooling in my mother tongue. And yet, I liked that book a lot because it had made me think. I remember talking about it with my elder sister, who had not read it at the time. After I spoke about it, she too read it. I remember that I was impressed by the Welsh names in that book.

: How green was my valley – the movie

I remember how the main character of the book, Huw, would go to his sister in law Bronwen for advise. He loved the gentle character of Bronwen. I used to play around with that name, rolling it in my tongue and imagining how the Welsh pronounced that name, so it would sound feminine instead of masculine. She vaguely even reminded me of the relationship between Rabindranath Tagore, and his sister-in-law Kadambari devi. I was just catching up those days, about the early years of Rabi, in JoraSanko, and often drew parallels between sets of information that floated my way. So, I tried drawing a comparison, however absurd it might seem, between Bronwen of the novel, from a welsh coal mining village, and the real life character of Kadambari Devi of Jorasanko, Kolkata, before she committed suicide.

: How green was my valley – the book

Apart from the Welsh names, I got a glimpse of the now vanished life and times in a coal mining village in the western hemisphere. As I grew up, I came to associate that atmosphere in rotation with other regions of the world. It related to the mining towns in Soviet Russia and then to China and on to Africa, particularly southern Africa. And, in the name of progress, a version of it has come to India, with typical Indian versions of the political, social and ecological nastiness.
But, do we have a writer of the same caliber as Richard Llewelyn – someone that can write a book that can be the ‘How green was my valley’ equivalent in India?

I remember reading ‘Gone with the wind’ in school, with its social upheaval relating to a civil war and end of slavery in the US, and immediately connecting it with “Saheb Bibi Golam’ of the vanishing days of Zamindary in eastern India, on the last decade of the 19th century. The Indian story lacked the civil war and the social upheaval. The transition did not perhaps affect the common man too much. But the lazy and oppulent, wasteful life of the fading Zamindars reminded me somehow, with the fast vanishing life of the vain and pompous Southern Plantation owners of the American south. In India, the old lifestyle of people being born into wealth because they agreed to tax the residents for the benefit of the Raja, the Nawab or the British, were soon to disappear. They were to be replaced by a new breed to people that got license to do business by greasing the right palms. Ultimately, the coin was replacing the sword. But then, the coin had always employed the sword.

: Saheb Bibi Golam – by Bimal Mitra

But – I did not find a book comparable to ‘How green was my valley’ with regard to the life and times of miners in India and their families, and expanding that, the general degradation of the land that such mining invariably involved. Even Llewellyn’s book did not touch that issue. Ecological degradation of the landscape was not in people’s radar in the 1930s. It should have been. Had they been conscious about it then, we might not be in the state we are in now. But, I am digressing.

My time in Facebook is going to taper down. The first thing that came to mind while writing about it – was How green was my Facebook. Somehow, I subconsciously connected my departure from Facebook with the main character’s departure from his mining village in that book I read first in my childhood days. And just like the valley, Facebook turned out to be full of fond memories as well as wasteful and sad. That similarity resulted in me rambling for a few pages about that book, about Welsh names, and about mining. And now, I have finally arrived at the root – Facebook and the fact that I need to move on.
Facebook had been a wonderful place when I first got used to it. It was novel, it was like a virtual Kalor Dokan, or a virtual tea stall. Folks from different parts of the world would sit down and yap a little, exchange views and even show off a bit. Every one has a laugh, and then we go home to deal with real life.
And what is real life ?

I have pondered that question, but have not found a reasonable definition. Some would think my real life should be the time spent in the working hours of weekdays, when I am an engineer working for my employer. But I don’t think of that as my real life at all.
Some might consider the time they spend at home with their family as real life. I am tempted to agree with them, but am not sure.
To some, real life is the weekends when they can go and do things that they really love to – such as skiing, or watching soccer, or playing badminton, or, for me, wandering about the foothills of mountains nearby, just watching the scenery, or focusing on birds and clicking their pictures. I just realized I take approximately five hundred times more pictures of landscapes, birds and animals, than I do of humans. This has been the case ever since I got my first good camera, thirty years ago.

So, what is real life? Is it about humans, or birds, or mountains and rivers, or what ?
Whatever it is – it is not Facebook. But, for a long time, it provided an interesting parallel. Man is after all, a social animal Thats what sets us apart. We socialize, we communicate, we exchange views – because we are human.

It was nice to get back in touch with long lost acquaintances. Those were the heady days. At the back of my mind, there was also the wish that we needed to do something with our spare time that related to some form of community work – to give back to the system from which we have taken so much. This ‘system’ could be the school we studied in, the region or the people that we develop an attachment for, or the neighborhood where we live, the wider world, the nature, wildlife – whatever we feel obligated to for making us what we are. Its a token of appreciation and an effort to see that the ‘system’ will survive and thrive after we ourselves are gone. Humans developed not only communication skills, but also the notion of altruism. No?

It came from the general and fundamental understanding that systems need support, and the best support is one that comes from bottom up, rather than top down from the Government or politicians. It may be a wrong perception – but that was my perception and it stayed with me over the years.

Anyhow, Facebook, along with bulletin boards, blogs and such, became also an avenue to see if we could do something to support the vision of Tagore. Subconsciously, FB became a vehicle of sorts. But that was then, and I was more hopeful than wise.
It also became a vehicle of creative outlet. I doubt I would have penned as many cranky verses, “ছড়া”, as I eventually wrote, had it not been for Facebook. But, that was then, too.
Somewhere down the line, Facebook became just a thing one gets used to, and perhaps a bit hooked too as well – like a cup of coffee in the morning. It gets addictive.
We made many good friends through FB. But, along with that, we also accumulated junk. We saw more junk, we processed more junk, and we created more junk. By junk, I mean instantaneous flash in the pan that lasts a day, two days, or a week, but after that becomes part of the rising tide of background noise. This background tide of noise can, eventually, become deafening. I needed to get away, and look at it from another perspective. I needed to turn the volume down. I needed social ear plugs.

I had too many acquaintances on Facebook – way more than my brain or my time could reasonably deal with on a personal one to one level. So the question came, do I need the notion of having so many friends that I shall perhaps never exchange anything personal with? Do I need five or six people to like what I write so much, that I must advertise my thoughts and deeds to hundreds of people?
Our past is a great thing to remember. But there is one thing about the past – it is in the past. Not all things from the past will survive. I shall always have close and dear ones from the past – but, I should not need five hundred silent friends on Facebook just to keep in touch with a half dozen. There surely should be a better way.

Facebook is less green today. It is turning brown at the edges. Its details are beginning to fade. Also, as I get older, I find this platform more for the youngsters that have the time in their hand, and the interest in small items of their daily life. For them, it is perhaps the essence of catching up with the community. For me, it increasingly looks like a barrage of trivia that I do not want to know.

But, I cannot leave Facebook completely, just like Richard Llewellyn the writer could not quite leave his Welsh homeland, even as the main character prepared to leave that land for good.
Facebook, like the google forum on Santiniketan, like the “Santiniketaner Khata” blog I used to run, or the Uttarayan bulletin board, just like the podcast – they will remain fond memories and we shall retain contact with it, albeit from a distance. Distance is not bad per se. It shows us perspective. Distance is three dimensional.

I am not leaving it completely also because there are folks on this platform that I value, and who I would like to continue interacting with in future.

Somnath Mukherjee – for his sheer dedication and selflessness in community service towards the downtrodden Indians, and for being such an inspirational person.
Madhusree Mukherjee – for reminding me that taking up science as a profession should not make one uncaring about civic society and ecology.
Felix Padel – for reminding me that even trained economists can be caring ecologists.
Tathagata Sengupta – for being a smaller version of Somnath and growing up to equal him.

Edward Lee Durgan – for joining up with us for “Free Binayak Sen” March, after listening to me just for a half hour about Sen, and for his world view and firm commitment to principles that are so rare to find these days.

Ashley Zarbatany of Social Justice Group of the University of British Columbia – the second person that joined up on the Free Binayak Sen March in Vancvouer, who took the mike and spoke to the crowd. Although I have not had much interaction with her, I have watched her involvement with more issues of social justice. Folks like her help keep my faith in humanity alive.

Susan Bibbs of downtown Vancouver. She showed me what it meant to be a bleeding heart liberal of British Columbia – ha ha.

Ashie Hirji, the Ismaili rebel that read the Veda and practiced yoga, the entrepreneur, feminist, social reformer, secular and whacky, of downtown Vancouver of the past and of Europe of present – for just being herself.

Subin Das – because I was once with him in college, because he know and spent time with my father when I was half a world away, and because of his perception of the world.

Pradip Malhotra – as the only person I know and spoke with on phone while he spent months on the Antarctic, not to mention being a great guy.

Lokendranath Roychowdhury – for being so intelligent, articulate and observant.
Chira, Barsan, Sujoy, Sandeep and others who, like Madhusree, live in the west, are from cutting edge Science and yet do such a wonderful job of maintaining social awareness, and compassion for the world. You may not know it, but you all have influenced my views on the balance between technological progression and regression, and the balancing acts between new versus old and good versus bad. I hope to find some of you in google + too.

Bhaiya, Kukul, Tukul, Moni and so many others – for being my relatives and friends – who I shared my past with, and hope to share part of my future with too.
Tapas da, Tukul, Piyali – the trio that, along with me, formed at one time the quadrangle of Santiniketan ex-students that existed on conference calls, on Facebook, on Uttarayan, and physically in Santiniketan as well as even here in Canada when some of them would come to visit. I shall always remember the great time we had, speaking with each other and rattling off. I even have recordings of most of it.

Then there are my many friends from Santiniketan – that I share a great memory with.
Ravi Dwivedi – because of the size of the lens on his avatar – ha ha.

And then there is Debal Deb, one of the few that stand tall in my view for wanting to buck the trend of globalized and corporatist food industry where indigenous strains of food are to be destroyed and replaced by genetically modified and patented food that will feed those that can afford to pay, and same time enrich the patent holder, and where the hungry will no more have the choice in selecting what kind of food he likes to eat. He, Vandana Shiva and others like them that defy the corporate Goliath and their cohorts in the Governments and decide to preserve indigenous seeds when no one else will – so a small slice of our biodiversity may still survive the onslaught of “economic progress”. But, he is moving out of Facebook and on to google+. So he did not really deserve a mention here. But then, I am a human and not a computer. I make mistakes.

All my local friends from Greater Vancouver area.
And many many others that I came across.
My thanks to you all .. You will see me here, but not that often.

I shall be more present in google+ as a social network site. Its easier for me to find folks and events that I like to keep track of. But even there, my presence may not be high. Any of you that have a gmail account can find me there. I am not even sure if it requires a gmail address. Anyhow, mine is tony.mitra@gmail.com

Other than that, any important message that is just for me – pls send an email. I tend to ignore mass emails since there are so many that come my way. An interesting statistics of the quality of our communication against quantity – out of 100 emails in my inbox, usually there are only two that are directly addressed to me by someone I know. The rest – are just floating debris.

Those that have an interest in catching up on my random thoughts and musings and creative writings, – well, there used to be bulletin boards, multiple blogs as well as podcasts, each carrying volumes of stuff written and talked over the past so many years. But I am winding them all down.

I shall only concentrate on one site, and write only what pleases me, irrespective of if it pleases readers. I do not aim to make money out of it and so I do not need to follow convention and formula. You can find that in www.tonu.org.

And so, here I am, starting with how I first read the book ‘How green was my valley’ and ending here, on a blog, writing how green my Facebook was.

Be good, everyone.

It was nice.

At the waters edge

Posted on March 26, 2012 by admin

Saturday and Sunday were bright and sunny, and glorious in the color spectrum of the landscape around my home in Delta, British Columbia, about ten miles north of the US border.
Coming from India, I do not recollect being overly concerned about the presence of absence of clouds in the sky. Nature had been spectacular throughout the year and in all seasons. But that was then. I remember asking permission from my mother, as a young kid, to take a shower in the shower – meaning, go out bare bodied and bare feet out into the field behind our home, wearing only a pair of shorts, in the middle of a rain shower, and get thoroughly drenched. This allowed me to roll in the grass and generally have a great time while rain splattered on my face. I am not sure if it washed all the dirt off, since I was maintaining a sort of balance – letting the rain wash old dirt off, while accumulating new dirt by rolling on the grass.
I even remember stray dogs coming up and joining the fun with me – howling into the rain and rolling around, all in good fun.
But that was then. Today, the area were I grew up has no open field behind – it is chock full of cramped houses with serpentine narrow lanes, plastic and garbage collected at every corner. The area has a bleak apeparance, and has gotten dangerous because of petty crime, which I have no doubt, will mature into more serious crime down the line.
The grass, the sky, and the roll in the rain – is a distant memory.
But here, in British Columbia, the temperature is usually a lot lower than in India of my childhood. If I went out to bathe in the rain when the water is at 4 degree Celsius, I am likely to shiver and catch pneumonia. Besides, I am no more an 8 year old kid, not yet spoiled by the act of growing up and getting civilized.
Here in British Columbia, weather is a big thing. It rains a lot and the sky is often overcast. A cloudy day is warmer, in winter, but the gloomy appearance and the rain in the urban areas appear depressing, mainly because it is no fun going out in the rain when it is also cold and damp.
Clear sunny days are spectacularly bright, and also a lot colder. Temperature often drops many degrees when the sky clears up. This is a proof that moisture or water vapor is a greenhouse gas too. While the total amount of water remains the same with climate change, less ice and more liquid water on the oceans, and higher temperatures usually means more evaporation, more clouds and more green-house effect.
But, meanwhile, I spent the weekend roaming the country side around my home, carrying a heavy camera/lens/tripod over my shoulders, wearing a sort of hiking boot that was also thermally insulated, and wearing a parka and a pair of woolen gloves.
I walked and I walked. I stood still at some places, with the tripod on the ground, for long stretches, watching and counting birds at times, and looking for some bird that is rare in these areas. I have stamped my foot and watched as the tide runs out of the shallow ocean front at Boundary Bay, overlooking the coast of Washington state in USA.
And then I have walked through marshes, reed beds, sandy or pebbled land, through bushes and over dust patches and mud banks, just soaking in the atmosphere and marveling at the fantastic variations of nature.

Here I stopped for a moment, watching the near sights of trees. They sported different shades of color as spring came upon us. The northern snow tolerant trees that have needle shaped leaves, that do not shed all their leaves at the same time in the winter, and can be called evergreen, stand up as green outlines.
The tall leafy trees that went bare in winter, are showing signs of small buds sprouting all over their high branches. Some of these would be new leaves, and some would be flowers.
And then there are the low bushes, still bare of leaves. They show up as reddish brown. They are still waiting for a trigger. It would be a while before they too become leafy and green.
But beyond the tree line, there were the mountains. Vancouver and surround area are on a river estuary, which is land created by silt deposits of a large river. It is therefore flat and almost at the sea level. But the river itself broke out of a long and wide range of mountains. As a result, all around us, there are mountains and more mountains. Some would shed their snow completely in the summer, while some would retain a snow cap throughout summer.

I might have walked twenty or thirty miles in these two days, carrying heavy camera and most of the time by myself. Sometimes a guy or a small group would join up and we would cover a track together. But mostly, it was my own interaction, with the planet as I see it.
Yes, my aging body aches after two days of walking about morning to evening. Yes I would feel hungry at the end of the day since I had not stopped to find lunch at noon. Yes, my legs would feel tired. And yes, I would have deep sleeps at night when I hit the bed.
But, this was my way of interacting with the rest of the world.
I did not really feel lonely at all.
Given a choice, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Is it always someone else’s fault ?

Posted on March 24, 2012 by admin

The date was November 8, 2009.
I had written on the then maintained blog on Santiniketaner Khata, about my feelings and frustrations about the continued decline of Santiniketan. It got off to a flying start to from a world beating institution way ahead of its time and geared to spearhead creative as well as social movements on multiple fronts for the nation, and for the region and for the world of the future. But from that, it has now come to a sorry state of irrelevance so deep and pathetic that it defies logic.
And yet, there seem to be no serious soul searching by anybody. I find the bizarre situation not an act of God, and not a machination of the Delhi Government. I see the people of Santiniketan, the Bengali group and the exstudents of Santiniketan as directly responsible for the deterioration of the institution. Out of them, the ex-students have been the biggest failures. They failed to live up to any single expectation of its founder.
This has been a cause of a major heartburn for me, I have tried to shake the apparently lethargic and drugged group of ex-students into some form of recognition that the ball stops at our court and to contribute into some serious thinking and joining hands and doing something more than lip service towards reviving the institution.
My failure, along with every other person before me and after me, has made writings such as the one I did in November 2009 so heart wrenchingly bitter. It is like admitting that we, ourselves, are the greatest failures as social humans.
We are in fact the reason india will struggle to get out of its difficulties. Those of us that have migrated to the west, we ourselves are responsible again for overseeing the slow deterioration of the west and devaluation of its great institutions and philosophies.
Its like a virus. We go everywhere to suck out what benefit we can for ourselves. But instead of contributing to its growth and giving something back in return, we have only learned to take and take and never give anything back.
Welcome to the new diaspora of educated Indians – the techno-maggots of the new millennium. We have mastered the art of training, and yet have not understood the meaning of the word ‘education’.

And for those that worry about the decline of Visva-Bharati, look no further than the ex-students to find one of the main root causes of its decline.
The decease lies within.

————————————–

Is it always someone else’s fault ?

We spend a lot of time, thinking and talking of Visva-Bharati and who and what has been the reason for its decline.
It is my belief, that the ball is in our court, and the biggest fault lies on the shoulders of the ex-students. Of course, I do not expect the ex-students to agree. Admitting fault is not in anybody’s nature.
Sunday, November 8, 2009

WHOSE FAULT IS IT ?

No one in sane mind would dispute the fact that Visva-Bharati has fallen from grace and is not living upto expectation of any kind, past or future.

There are long stories, doing back fifty or more years, on who did what and when, and how this or that factor contributed to the future malady of the University. Looking through all that, it is not difficult to get mired in it and end up with a headache, and a feeling of disillusionment, a defeatist view that nothing can really turn the clock, or bring a change for the better.

While most of the pessimism might be placed on some ground reality, it still might be worth thinking outside the box, and trying to see whose fault it might be. This is not necessarily for the purpose of pointing fingers, but rather, to see if change can be brought, for the better, even at this late stage.

First, who are, or should have been, the stake holders? We know a few – those that are inside Visva-Bharati. The list starts with the VC. But his is a temporary job – lasts for five years. Then there are the Students – who might stay for 2 or three years, and in some cases, if we include the school, as much as ten or fifteen, depending on where one starts and ends. Then comes the workers and their multiple unions, albeit politicized.

Next comes the Government, which is the custodian, and the financier, of the University.
Lastly, there is the vast diaspora of Alumni, literally spread around the Globe.

There is a sixth party – the citizens of India, whose tax money the Govt doles out so generously to the University. But I shall for now discount the 6th group – they have many items on their plate, and the University might be virtually invisible in their list, when they go to vote.

So, taking the five groups : VC, Students, Workers, Govt, and Alumni, it is this last group, the Alumni that shows up as the oddest one. This is one entity that is wholly divorced from the affairs of the University – and yet, it is this group that Rabindranath liked to most depend on, in order to protect the University. There is a reason – this is the only group that does not, or should not, have any vested, selfish, interest.

And, this is the group, in my eyes, that has failed Rabindranath, and the University, most spectacularly.

Mind it, it is not that the Alumni are all insignificant people, barely eking out an existence, too busy keeping body and soul together, and in no position to think of grander issues like their alma mater. Quite the contrary. A vast number of them are highly educated and professionally successful. They are spread around India and around the world. Many have acquired foreign passports, as citizens of nations in Europe, North America, Australia, Japan, etc. Some are well known locally and even globally.

Tagore and Gandhi - Wikipedia

And yet, this is the most disorganized, disunited and disinterested group among the five stake holders of the University.

Why is it so ?

Frankly, I do not know. A lot of them maintain a cursory interest in Santiniketan, and the University. Many of them attend to cultural functions here and there, listen to renditions of Tagore songs and dance drama. Some make a career out of it. And in spite of that, in the last fifty odd years, there has never been a ground swell, a movement, to get the Alumni diaspora under a single umbrella, with a specific agenda, to try to give something back to their Alma Mater, to repay a part of their debt, and, most importantly, be a serious stake holder for Visva-Bharati.

So, today, among thousands of news reports, analysis, and endless rounds of discussions on what is the matter with Visva Bharati, and how and why it has become what it is today – the Alumni shows solidarity with the Union leaders of the University in one critical sphere – its refusal to analyze itself, before judging others.

Its not that effort has not been made a few times to appeal to the Alumni to join hands, and decide what we can do, or give, instead of passing judgment and comment on others. But, typically, while such appeals might stir an unconnected third party – the diaspora of Alumni, 99 out of 100, would shun such appeals.

Why ?
It is high time when this critical group that has thus escapes scrutiny, be placed under the microscope.
This group is the biggest failure, the biggest shame, in the history of the University. And it happily remains invisible – while willingly passing high judgments on all others.
It is perhaps just as well that Tagore was cremated and not buried. He would have had a restless stay, having to turn in his grave so often, for the misguided faith he had placed on the ex-students of the University.
For the last 25 years, being involved as I have been with ISO 9000 Quality Assurance system, and with developing tools for self-analysis systems based on searching for the root-causes of problems in order that a firm might be able to self-regulate itself for perpetual and incremental improvement in its function and its operating process, so that the ultimate product can stand the competition and be counted as a quality product – I have tried to think things through for the past two years, about Visva-Bharati. And hundred times out of hundred, I come back to the same issue in the root-cause analysis, and in thinking through a road map for the betterment of the University, from the stand point of us, those that are not working for the University. Every time, without fail, the ball ends up in our court – and the Alumni are identified as the first and most critical group that should have, from our perspective, been engaged, been unified, and been proactive. And we have not.
The first step in all this would have been to get the Alumni together under one umbrella, and instill the first lesson in the process of self-assessment – learning what this group as a stake holder could potentially do, and what is has so far done.

One does not need to be certified as a lead auditor for ISO 9000, or for that matter, to have high level of experience in root-cause analysis. After all, these systems were thought through by ordinary people, using nothing more than a bit of common sense, and unbiased analytical thought. It was astute of Rabindranath, that he had come to the same conclusion, long before ISO 9000 was born, that the most important stake holder for the Asram should be the ex-students.
And we failed him. And we continue to fail him. And we continue to waste time, judging others.
Sure, we engage in some token activity, in a path of continuously diminishing returns, where more and more effort produces less and less significant return, and bring no appreciable change for the better. We all know, that the path so far pursued is a slippery slope going downhill.
And still – the ex-students continue to fail, and continue to feel good about themselves.   Sorry, Gurudev – I am truly, genuinely, sorry.
Tonu

November 8, 2009

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I wrote than more than two years ago on the Khata blog. Now that I am planning to close down every other site, more or less, except this one. I thought I shall bring over some of my musings from there, to here.

Nothing much has changed in these two years, except that Santiniketan has faded further into the backwaters of the world, slowing decaying, along with the rotting vegetation of a dying forest.

Tonu – March 24, 2012

Autobiographic blues

Posted on March 24, 2012 by admin

If nagged at Neil that he had not mentioned Karen, to Mabel. In all practical purpose, he and Mabel were sort of going steady. They were not living together, just yet. But, other than that technicality, there were an item, he supposed.
And yet, he was, on occasion, meeting up Karen, the single mother from his neighborhood, time to time. Today was one such occasion. Sure, he had not planned it. He had a long day walking around in the bushes by the dyke, looking for warblers, kinglets, larks and buntings. His legs felt tired and his throat felt thirsty. He had quenched his thirst with a bottled lemonade in a gas station. And now, he was heading towards the book store, hoping to pick up a magazine or something to read, and then sit down at the attached coffee shop. But who would he see on the road if not Karen? She too was heading the same way. Apparently, she needed to pick up something at the store next door to the book store, and was otherwise free. Her daughter was not with her. Neil had stopped his car and was talking with her. She ended up getting in his car so he could drop her off at her store while he walked into the book store next door.
She joined him there, and, as Neil could guess, they were going to spend the next hour, or two, together. Sure, it was a chance encounter, and in a public place.
But, it nagged him. Karen had a matured calmness and yet a refreshingly feminine and compassionate way about her that was rather attractive. She was a bleeding heart liberal and often joined protest marches for this or that.
Neil decided he would call Mabel up and tell her about the three occasions where he ended up spending time with Karen, two of them now without her daughter present. He hoped Mabel would take it for what it was, and not make too much of it. Neil, meanwhile, was not sure himself what exactly it was, if anything, between himself and Karen. Its not lime they were secret lovers or something!
Inside the book store, they ended up at the biography section, instead of the magazine corner. The biography section was at the back of the large book store, diametrically opposite to the coffee shop and the adjacent magazine racks.
Karen flipped through a few books. She had picked up a box that carried the picture of Queen Elisabeth II, opened it and flipped through the large and glossy book. This book, and some of the others, were displayed prominently on a table in front of the racks. A prominent spot on the table was occupied by a recent biography of Steve Jobs.
Neil glanced at the book racks of biographies. They appeared to be arranged alphabetically. Aristotle was placed next to Mohammad Ali, Louis Armstrong, Jennifer Anniston and Pamela Anderson. He almost picked up Aristotle, but then thought better of it and let his glance sweep across the racks. He remembered Aristotle as a Greek philosopher that had thinning hair and a good looking beard. A contemplative man, his writings perhaps laid the foundation of western philosophy and covered issues such as morality, science, and even metaphysics. He remembered Armstrong as a great jazz musician with a very interesting face with bulging eyes.
He was not in the right frame, to read biographies of any of them.
After ‘A’ there was ‘B’. Alexander Graham Bell squeezed in with Lucille Ball. Neil thought how it might have been if Graham bell used Lucille Ball as a model for advertising his telephones. The thought made him smile. He could think of a few more names with ‘B’, such as Babcock, Babbit, and Baber. But there were no books on them.
For ‘C’, Cleopatra, Bill Clinton, Winston Churchill, Fidel Castro, Tom Cruise and Christopher Columbus shared the same biographical pigeon hole. Perhaps an imaginary Clinton of the present could have an affair with Cleopatra of the past, for the sake of world peace. The couple could have been blessed by Castro, overlooked by Columbus, and acted on by Tom Cruise ?
He wondered if he might ask Karen for famous last names she remembered that started with ‘B’, and hint at Cabot, Cardigan, or even Caesar. But he thought better of it.
Karen put down the box on the queen and picked up another, on Elisabeth Taylor. Neil’s thoughts drifted to the time when he had seen the movie “Cleopatra” with Liz Taylor in the lead role and Richard Burton playing Mark Anthony. Charlton Heston was Caesar. Nice movie. He was young those days, and did not know that Cleopatra was not really an Egyptian princess as much as she was a princess ruling Egypt.
But Karen was a bleeding heart liberal and a feminist more than she was a woman in awe of glamor, Neil suspected. Soon enough, she had picked up another book on Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the contribution of women in the abolition movement as well as an early women’s rights activist.
Neil knew a bit about her, but not too much. He looked over her shoulder at the book too. There was a picture of Ms Stanton. Karen noted Neil too was looking at the book. “She was one of my early heroines”.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton - Wikipedia

“Hmm.. Am not surprised. I haven’t read too much about her, or about the women’s right activism of the nineteenth century America, you know.”
“Would you like to read it ?” Karen asked, turning the book over to see how much it costed. It was not cheap.
Neil shook his head. “Nope. I do not like paying big money for books. I read a lot, and am not a rich man, so I have to be careful. I guess I shall catch up on them through articles or free press through the Gutenberg project or something.”
“Gutenberg project ? You mean free electronic books?”
“Yes. I got a lot. Lately I started using my iPad for these books, and already have over two hundred of them.”
“Two hundred ? Wow, you gotta show me how it works. Its amazing !”
Neil nodded. “I have the iPad in my car, can get it when we go to the coffee shop. Its quite easy, but I guess one needs to open an account with the Apple book store first, unless you have a similar account with Amazon kindle or something.”
Karen shook her head. “I don’t know anything. Is it costly?”
“Not really. Opening an account does not cost anything, but you might have to link a credit card with the account. Then, if you buy something, like an eBook, and if it is free, you can download it straight away. But if it is not free, you have to agree to pay for it, and it will be charged to your credit card. There are a lot of good but old books that are free, or where the charges are very small, such as a few cents, or less than a dollar.”
“Really ? Wow”
“Yes, sure. I can show you. If you like reading books, this channel has its own advantage. Of course, you can also go to a library, but I find that a bit of a hassle.”
Karen nodded, looking at him. She put the book back in its place and nodded at him. “You know, you are quite a smart chap and know quite a lot. I guess all folks from India are genetically smart.”
“Thats a croak of shit, Karen. Nothing special about Indians, except that they suck up to the west a lot and ignore their own downtrodden. Pretty disgusting if you look at it from another angle.”
Karen stopped in her track and observed him somberly.
“You know Neil, I need to learn a bit more about India and whats going on there. Perhaps you need to tell me about it sometime ? I am a member of some social justice groups and women’s right groups and such that also work with immigrant communities, and even support causes in the countries of origin of some of the immigrants. I think I’d like your input in some issues. I really do not understand much of it, and have not been personally involved in those as a result”
Neil frowned. “Well, I am not a social worker or an activist per se, you know. But, I can tell you what I know. I am a curious person and like to figure out why things happen the way they do. I am alarmed about the way India is going and what is going to happen there, just as I am alarmed at where the west is taking the planet and what is in store for the future of mankind.”
“Future of mankind ?” There was a twinkle in her eyes. “Is there a conclusion, Neil ? Anything I should be aware of?” She asked, only half in jest.
Neil nodded. Well, for one thing, good old Canada is going to disappear in another generation. We can talk about it sometime, sure.
Neil watched the books on the shelf. Walt Disney, Salvador Dali and Charles Dickens appeared to suppressed by the towering presence of Charles Darwin. To Neil, Darwin was one of the all time greats in his list. He was very impressed at a time as much by Dali’s paintings as by his famous mustache. He had read many of Darwin’s voluminous writing and still loved going back to them to re-read. But he did not feel interested to read a biography of him written by a third party.
Karen moved with him. She had her bag over her shoulder. He supposed the bag contained whatever she bought in the store, which was obviously not anything big.
“Do you know anything about the Rohinga people?” She suddenly asked Neil.
“Rohinga?”
“Yes.”
“I know some, but not too much. I know they are ethnic minorities in Myanmar, or earlier Burma. They are muslim by faith and Arab by decent. They arrived there in multiple waves, starting from I think around the 7th or 8th century all the way till during the British Raj. They are not recognized by Burma’s military junta to be citizens of the nation. They claim these people came from India. Hence they are essentially stateless and without rights. The group is recognized as one of the most persecuted people of the world. Now that the junta is moving out of power, and perhaps parliamentary democracy is on the way, with some important role played by Ms Aung San Suu Kyi, may be they will finally see some reprieve.”
Karen listened. “What language do they speak?”
“Honestly, I don’t know. I don’t believe I have met any of them yet.”
“Hmm, interesting. I know some Rohinga community people that came to Canada as politican refugees. I was thinking about them. Perhaps you’d like to come with me sometime to see a few of them ?” She asked.
“Is that allowed ? Sure, I’d like to meet them if possible”
“It would be fine, since you’ll come with me. We sometimes organize social events, like taking some of the elderly to a day’s picnic. Perhaps you’d like to come to one of the nature parks. As it is you like to go there to chase birds, right ?”
“Well, not exactly chase them, but yes, I’d like that.”
Karen nodded, pleased with the understanding.
Neil glanced at the ‘E’ section. It had Eastman of the Kodak fame. It had Einstein, Eisenhower and Thomas Edison. Einstein, just like Darwin and Newton, were among the greatest of modern thinkers in their respective fields, Neil considered. But he was not going to be reading a biography yet.
The F section sported Sigmund Freud, Ben Franklin and Douglas Fairbanks. Neil did not have strong conviction about either, so he moved on.
Gandhi was next to them, with Greta Garbo, Judi Garland, Clark Gable and Ulysses Grant. Gandhi loomed larger than life here.
Karen picked up the book on Gandhi. It was a thick hard cover book. She flipped through the pages and glanced at the pictures. She shook her head in wonder. “Amazing man”.
Neil smiled in agreement.
There seemed to be no biographies for ‘I’. This made him stop and think. Did he know any famous man whose last name started with an I? He could not think of any other than a singer by the name of Iglesias, and the business guru Lee Iacocca. But he found no books on them. Iacocca used to be an important corporate guru a few decades ago. He even read an interesting audio book written by Iacocca recently, named “Where have all the leaders gone?”
“Find anything interesting?”
That was a question from Karen.
Neil shook his head. “I am not much of a biography reader. But I can see you like picking up books of glamourous women?”
Karen used her elbow to lightly dig into his side, in a sign of familiarity he did not expect. He was holding in her hand a book on Angelina Jolie.
“I love her movies. Do you see movies much ?”
Neil shook his head. “Not much. But if its a nice movie and I have good company, I’d drop in time to time, you know?”
Karen smiled at him. “Are you asking me out to see a movie?”
She was kidding, but Neil did not pick that up initially. He felt flustered, and was groping for something to say, till he noticed her eyes. He laughed. “I thought for a moment, you were serious. Ha ha. I don’t even know what movies are running in the halls right now.”
“Ohh I can tell you whats running. There is a movie called Windfall. I think its a documentary on wind energy. You might like it.”
Neil listened, nodding. He had his doubts about the viability of wind power as a serious alternative. He looked up at Karen, hoping to hear some more.
“Or you could ask me to come with you for another recent movie – The vow.”
“Th Vow ? Whats it about ?”
“Its a typical romantic comedy tear jerker. Girls will love you for it, you know ?”
Neil laughed. He was tempted to ask, but thought he really should ask Mabel rather than Karen.
Looking at Karen, he cleared his throat. “Karen, do you know Mabel ? Mabel Jacobsen ?”
Karen frowned. “Cannot recollect that name. Should I know her?”
“Well, she is a friend. She works in the construction business with her uncle. Anyhow, would you mind coming along for the movie if I also asked Mabel ?”
Recognition, and understanding, came into the large and liquid eyes of Karen. Her face softened but did not lose the mischievous smile. She touched his cheek lightly.
“I was kidding. You need to take your girl friend without a third party. But you might introduce me sometime. Let me check her out for you and check you out for her, you know ?”
Neil watched her, already beginning to feel a lot lighter. Things were, thankfully, not going to get more complicated than what he could handle.
“Ohh ok. But lets plan for a picnic of something, some time.”
Karen nodded, winked at him, moving past the next few books and picked up one.

Marilyn Monroe looked back at him from the cover.
He had had enough of biographies.
He tapped on Karen’s shoulder and indicated he was moving along to the coffee shop section. He left Douglas MacArthur, Jawaharlal Nehru and Paul Newman at their shelf space and walked on to the coffee section.

Things were OK, with or without biographies.
He went out to his car and retrieved the iPad. He met her again at the coffee shop and sat down at one of the smaller round tables. He stretched his legs and leaned back on the chair, taking a sip of the Caramel macchiato.
She took out her phone and called someone. He could hear her talking to her daughter, and checking on what she had been doing. Karen smiled at him while speaking with her daughter, and told her that she was sitting and having a coffee with Neil uncle, the same one that took their picture at the Bog a few weeks ago. She listened to her daughter and whispered back to him “She remembers you, and says hi”
Neil smiled and nodded. “Hi to her too.”
Karen finished her call and settled down with her coffee, looking around the coffee shop and checking on the other customers.
Neil played with his iPad, logging on to the free wifi provided by the shop. He then checked the book store on line and typed “Stanton” to check what comes up. He leaned over towards Karen to show the process. Karen watched, as the screen refreshed itself with the search results.
“Hmm.. The Women’s Bible is one book she obviously wrote. Its free of charge completely.”
Karen watched. “Amazing. I wonder whats in it.”
“You could check that out. I can download it for you here and loan you the iPad for a few days.”
Karen shook her head and pulled his shirt collar. “Cute, but no thanks. You need this iPad more than I do. But I shall consider getting hold of one. There is someone who might sell hers second hand, as she wishes to upgrade.”
Neil nodded and checked the other books.
“Here is another – Eighty Years and More : Reminiscences 1815-1897, by Elizabeth Cady Stanton.”
“Wow”
“This one too is free of charge. You see what I meant?”
“Yes. I see it, indeed.” Karen was impressed already.
“And here is another intriguing book. Collection of various writings, including Stanton. The name of the book tells it all – History of Woman Suffrage, Volume III”. It is 1033 pages long. And it is not free of charge, but costs only one dollar and ninety nine cents.”
Karen was amazed. “I’d like to get that book. But over a thousand pages ! Jesus Christ.”
“Yeah. But read the description. It has collection of contributors, edited by Anthony, Gage and Stanton, that come from England, USA, France and Canada, giving personal experience and the progress of the movement to grant equal voting rights to women. A monumental book I might say, though I have not read it. And its less than two dollars.”
Karen read through the lengthy description of the book and watched the picture of the cover page.

“You know Neil. You just sold me the idea of buying that second hand iPad. You are a sweetheart.”

Neil smiled, and scratched his ear. He decided to download that book himself, and read it by and by. It was rather too thick, but, perhaps should be informative.

They finished their coffee and got up. Neil dropped Karen at her friends place, where her daughter had spend the day. She leaned across and kissed him on his cheek. “You are a good guy. Stay that way Neil. We shall stay in touch, about the Rohinga, the book, and things.”
Neil nodded.
“And say hi to Mabel for me. We should go out sometime for a meal or something. She is welcome to join up when and if we go with the Rohinga and others, you know!”
“OK, thank Karen. I shall tell her.”
Karen turned and walked up the front door of the house.
Neil turned his car and prepared to head out.

A northern flicker, pecking at the side of a trunk got a sudden flash of his cars headlight as he turned his car around. With a small call of surprise, it launched itself in the air and flew almost directly over his car. Neil craned his neck to watch it disappear, and smiled.
It had been a good day.

Rice in the Vedas

Posted on March 23, 2012 by admin

“Come to think of it, this is a complicated question.” Neil finally observed.
They were stretched out on a flat rock by the water’s edge. Neil thought of taking his shoe off and dipping his feet in the water, but decided against it. It was still quite cold, and the water might be near freezing. Besides, he could not remember when he last changed his sock, and was conscious that his socks might smell. It had happened to him before.
Mabel was sitting next, and she had taken her shoes off. She had feet that, to Neil, looked as it they had been encased in shoes all her life. Her toes were sort of clustered tightly together, each crowding onto the other and all trying to join up with each other at a point in front of the feet. That’s how painters often drew buildings and roads – where things further would look smaller, and all parallel lines would be inclined so that they join up at some point further up. This brings the perception of depth, of distance. In that sense, Mabel’s toes were three dimensional and followed the European renaissance painter’s preferences.
Neil’s own toes came from a different theory. Not being encased in shoes early in his life, the toes propagated, or tried to, like branches on a tree – each striving to enter into uncharted territory and get much of the space around it as its own. His toes were independent, and not necessarily democratic. Her toes where, he thought, more like groups of elderly Japanese tourists – always clustered together, never venturing too far out where he or she could get separated, and always wearing a sign that identifies him or her as belonging to the group.

Mabel shook her feet and curled her toes a bit, and looked across at him. Sun was still bright and it fell on them sideways, casting a longish shadow over the grass.
“I thought you liked complicated questions”. She teased.

Neil remembered finally. He had changed his sock yesterday. He took his shoe off and peeled off his socks. Then he extended his feet and compared his against hers. His were brown. His toe nails were less pedicured. Some of the toe nails looked as it thy might benefit from a bit of clipping. And, his toes were free. He could even flex then and fan them out, like a Japanese hand fan. They were almost diametrically opposite, from her toes.
Mabel watched and laughed, seeing his toes fanned out as it it were the fingers on a hand. “That’s funny.”
“Yeah. I could always do that, from my childhood days.”
Neil contemplated the question again.
“You see, there are some unknown issues here. I do not know when folks identifiable as Aryans, first arrived in different parts of India. I am not at all sure that they were invaders or visitors and not from the indigenous crowd. So, the date of their emergence would be important. Next, we also need to pin them on a map, along with dates. Then we need to know when each of those regions started farming of rice, if ever. I know rice was more wild than cultivated in their early days. It is possible that some folks just collected the wild rice seeds for eating, while some also attempted to farm it. They might have had a mixed diet of wild and farmed rice. They might have boiled them, or might have roasted them, or might even have eaten it raw, grinding the seeds down to a powder in their molars.”
Neil closed his eyes and tried to imagine a bunch of early semi-nomadic folks at the edge of a jungle, couching in the open by a small seasonal stream of water, washing early rice seeds in the water and attempting to eat them. He tried to imagine that crowd having one of two distinct people that got to be known as Aryans. The picture did not evolve properly in his minds eye. He ended up opening his eyes and squinting at the clear blue sky above, and the small flock of trumpeter swans that crossed his vision, long necks extended and in single file, each riding the wake of the slip stream of bird in front, honking loudly in their passage.
Mabel watched him, wearing a bemused smile.
“So, what do you think? He ate rice or not?”
Neil turned away and looked her in the eye. He had an urge to give her a smooch. It was nice, spending the last two nights together. He was beginning to get used to her habits including the fact that she liked sleeping on her belly – a very odd way of sleeping, he thought.
“I am tempted to guess in the negative. But am not sure. It is possible that folks that lived in the forest environment ate a mixed diet of home grown as well as wild food. I know some of them hunted anything that had fur on it, and would cook and eat it. They were not fussy those days. But – rice – I don’t know. I have never read about anyone that might have investigated this issue. And I have not read the Vedas in their original Sanskrit, and don’t even know if rice in mentioned as a cultivated crop in those verses.”
Mabel snaked closer. She was not feeling particularly cold. She had taken off her parka and set it aside. She snaked an around around his head, and pulled him closer. “Perhaps you know someone that can answer that ?”

Neil thought of two persons who might just do that. One was a woman he knew from his school days, who studied Sanskrit and the Vedas. She was a professor in a University in India. She might be able to help. The other person was someone involved with preservation of indigenous strains of rice, since many of the original strains were already lost through disuse and neglect. He might know something about it.

“Yes, I know some folks. We can consider asking them, though not sure if the question will be considered important by those folks.
I meanwhile have in my iPad a pdf document on the subject of preservation of varieties of rice in the eastern part of India. Let me show you.”
He took it out from their backpack and played with it for a few moments. The screen came to life. He opened the application iBooks and finally opened the item he was looking for. The screen got filled with a picture of various strains of rice, the stock of each having some kind of an identifying tag. They were of varying shades of a warm color – from beige to almost red. The article heading below the picture said “Valuing Folk Crop Varieties for Agroecology and Food Security.” It was dated October 2009.
He showed it to Mabel.

Mabel took the iPad. She was interested in its capacity to hold so much of interesting documents which would need multiple book racks and likely would overflow a house. She had been toying with the idea of getting one herself. She did not read as much as Neil did, but still, she did like to read stuff. She had gotten used to navigating through the gadget, because Neil often gave it to her.

She read through the article, nodded at Neil, and then closed the article, going back to the book shelf for eBooks instead of pdf files. There, she found books that were of her interest. One was about the geology of British Columbia. Before she knew Neil, this was not an interesting subject. But that was then. Now, we was very keen on it.
There were other books of interest too. Backwoods of Canada was one. She had read part of it one day. She remembered reading about the Strickland Trail, written by one of the early pioneering women. The article was written in the 1830s, almost 180 years ago. She liked reading books like this, and she found in incredible that Neil had this book too. After all, he was born in India and had come to Canada relatively recently.
She was also interested to read about Annie Wood Bessant, a very interesting woman, and elected member of parliament in the UK and among the first to agitate for equality of rights and pay for women in the workforce. She was among the earliest of the true feminists and spiritual independents that broke from the Judea-Christian mold and carved a niche for herself and all free thinkers of the future. Mabel did not know anything about her before she met Neil. But Neil knew a lot about her, since she eventually left Europe and settled in India, and was among the earliest of the leaders for India’s independence from British rule.
She did not know about a lot of things before she met Neil. Neil thought that her fascination with him was more because she was impressed by what he had read, rather than because she liked him as a person. Mabel would laugh at that. Neil might know things about the external world, but he knew nothing much about women.
He had a lot to learn, and she intended to broaden his horizon there.

She looked into his eyes, up close, and kissed his nose. “Thank you. Yes, I agree that folk rice varieties are the best. In fact, I’d even add that the folk human varieties are not bad themselves.
I have one right here reclining on a stone next to me.”

Neil ignored the comment about himself, feeling a bit flustered. “You know, the saline resistant strains of rice that had … “
He did not get a chance to complete the sentence.
Mabel had rolled herself on top of him and smothered him with kisses.

The Vedas, the Aryans and issues of early rice cultivation in eastern India would have to wait.

When you are right and wrong at the same time

Posted on March 20, 2012 by admin

“That is the greatest tragedy of today. Brilliant people are pulling us in different directions with regard to how to save the world, the economy, the environment, whatever. And you know what is the tragedy?” Neil asked.

Mabel looked through her binocular. The black crowned night heron remained perched on the tree branch, its neck bent in a U-turn and face tucked inside the feathers on her belly. It offered a compact curled up indistinct image to the viewer. Mabel wished it would look up, so she could see if the bird really had red eyes.
“Whats the tragedy?” She asked.
Neil was standing nearby with the tripod mounted camera on his right shoulder, its lens several times larger than the camera. He held a second camera in his left hand. He had a baseball cap on his head. Over that, he had drawn the hood of is parka and tied it with the string under his chin. The wind was strong, coming in gusts. It was cold. Neil was trying to keep himself warm. He had a pair of blue woolen gloves on his hand, but he would often pull off the right hand glove with his teeth, and take a picture using bare fingers, still holding the glove in his teeth.

He was unlike anyone else Mabel knew personally, with or without his camera gear.
“The tragedy is”, Neil shuffled his feet, attempting to stamp out the cold from his toes. He wanted to get moving. The night herons were unlikely to budge. They had curled themselves into a ball to preserve body heat. They might not know solid state geometry, but they would instinctively curl into a ball when it was too cold, because a sphere offered the least surface area through which a body could lose heat. It did not make sense for them to look up and watch the world when they were not threatened by eagles. They were perched in branches with sufficient cover over and around them. This made it difficult for a hawk or an eagle to try something funny. They were surrounded by smaller perching birds who would raise alarm calls if a hawk ventured near. Long stay in this general area, in proximity of a lot of raptors, has helped them to learn what was safe and what was not.
Even Saw-whet owls dozed in day time in view of people, because they searched a well protected niche where bigger owls or hawks just cold not get in.
“The tragedy is”, Neil repeated, “that these guys are mostly correct – but they do not speak the whole truth. And since they are proposing things that are sometimes contradictory to one another, the public can be thoroughly confused. What is the truth about climate change and what is the right course of action ? People need simple, straight forward solutions. Unfortunately, the experts are not fond of simplifying anything. They merely add more and more noodles into the the soup.”
Mabel smiled. “Noodle soup of climate change ?”
Neil smiled, straightened and tugged her hand. “Lets move on to the fresh water pond ahead. I want to see if there are Mergansers preening like before.”
A year ago, Mabel did not know of the name merganser. She called it a sea-duck, and did not know there were many kinds. But, a year ago, she had not started hanging out with Neil.
Now she knew three kinds – the common merganser, the red breasted one, and the hooded one. And each of them had distinctly different males and females. That made six visually different mergansers one could see around Vancouver, at different times of the year.
She hung the binocular from her neck and took his hand, walking along the wooden rail towards the fresh water pond. There were large fish there that hanged around at the shallows, their tails and upper body visible at times. They were most likely carps. But Neil was interested to check if he could catch any preening merganser. He was in the mood of capturing some of these scenes in HD movies. His recently acquired cameras could take reasonably good movie clips along with still shots. Considering the time he spent looking at birds and nature, it was perhaps natural for him to record as much of it as possible.
It was not convenient to carry separate cameras for still and movies, if you are going to be the only one filming the scene. Besides, the movie cameras did not have the range of high telephoto that his digital SLR and SLT cameras did.
“So what are the main contradictions?” Mabel asked, to keep the conversation going. Its not that she was not interested in the topic. She was. But she had an interest in keeping Neil engaged in issues he liked to ponder on. Neil was a well read man, covering a range of subjects that she found almost mind boggling. In fact, that was one of the reasons she had a crush on him so long ago. The very first time she saw him, at her uncle’s place, he was talking about the Toba super-volcanic explosion that nearly succeeded in causing a total extinction of the human race, at a time when the anatomically modern man was just beginning to step out of east Africa, say seventy odd thousand years ago. Mabel was hooked from that point on.
Neil was the only person he knew, that had actually sent his tissue samples for lab analysis to trace his genetic ancestry, independently through his father’s side and his mothers side. Mabel did not know anybody else who did things like this.
“Well, take folks such as Charles Darwin, Richard Dawkins, Bertrand Russel, Isaac Asimov, Gandhi, Tagore, Copernicus, Galileo, Michael Faraday, Benjamin Franklin, Aryabhatta, James Lovelock, Vandana Shiva, Dalai Lama – take your pick and read these great people. They all are declaring facts of life, and its ebbs and flows, some in stark language, others philosophically – it would appear. And yet, they all are not unified in their thinking or voice, as to what is the best way to deal with difficult issues facing us. Not all of them even identify man as the main agent of climatic deterioration. Take Dalai Lama. He seems to indicate to us that the answer to all ills of the planet as perceptible to man lies within us. We should calm down and contemplate. Then we shall not only find the answer, but also find ourselves to be a lot more at peace with it.”
Mabel watching his frowning face and almost giggled. He looked so engrossed and concentrated. “Anything wrong with that?”
They had reached the side of a longish fresh water pond. Neil put down his tripod on the ground and watched the scene in front of them through the viewfinder of this camera.
“There are external changes coming to this planet earth which is going to be devastating to a lot of living creatures. Closing eyes and lowering out metabolism can help us stay calm, but it is not expected to out trillions of tons of carbon back underground and refreeze the ice caps and recreate the glaciers.“
Neil scanned the water and the bushes at the edge of the water. With some luck, her might get to see a muskrat or a mink. Once he had even seen a family of river otters, though that was at a different pond.
“Hmm, well, God is supposed to have created Man after his own image.” Mabel said, half jokingly. “But of course, you do not believe in that, and most feminists of today might even dispute that God was strictly a male.”
Neil chuckled. “Yes I am a non-believer. But I can borrow God time to time, if it makes a good slogan. For example : God created man. Man created junk. How do you like that ?” He chuckled.
Mabel widened her eyes in mock horror. “Its like saying God created junk indirectly. I think my grandma would have been very disappointed in you.”
“Well, I would perhaps had managed to win her over somehow, except for one thing though. My skin is not white.” Neil laughed.
Mabel laughed too. It was a kind of a joke with them. Her Grandma, all those years ago, had apparently almost fallen in love with an Italian helper who reportedly had a darker or burnished skin. She was not allowed to marry him, or even see him, once her distant romance got to me known. The reason for the disapproval had less to do with the man’s standing in society, and more to do with the fact that he was a bit too dark to be purely European. They suspected him to have Arab or African or some other contaminated blood. She did not care, but her folks did, and that was that.
“My grandmother would have approved of your skin, but not your lack of religion, I think.”
Neil smiled. His eyes went back to the mallards that were flying fast overhead heading out to the far field across the pond. A pair of wood ducks floated lazily on the water far from them. He wished they’d swim closer.
Canada was far to the north, and also had a lot of land and a lot of water. Canada was likely to be relatively less affected by a hotter climate. He wondered if there still would be wood ducks and mergansers around in these areas, if the earth temperature rose by several degrees and the ocean currents carried a lot less nutrient along the seabed between the mainland and Vancouver island.
“What are you meditating about?” Mabel nudged him. “Don’t worry, I am not going to tell Grandma that you are an atheist. I wont even tell you are a Hindu by berth.”
“Ohh I am not worried about that. I was thinking if I meet up with Dalai Lama some day, I should be able to have a good chat with him. He is quite a clever chap, you know?”
“I can guess, though I haven’t read his books”.
“Well, even so, there are things we just cannot solve by merely meditating. However, it is possible that deep introspection helps find the answer to difficult problems. Those answers, I am afraid, are all rather ugly. I might tell Dalai Lama that evading unpleasant answers is same as telling a lie, indirectly. The world has crossed the threshold on climate change. We are past the point were answers could be pretty. And yet, we are in denial of the crisis at hand. We only wish to paint a rosy picture and a market oriented solution to everyting. Americans like to call that a win-win situation.”
There were a pair of hooded mergansers. No, there were two pairs. But they were a bit far away, swimming in their general direction though.
“Its not going to be a win-win, right ?”
“Uhh huhh. I feel pretty certain it will look more like a lose-lose, no matter how one looks at it. But the world hates lose-lose solutions. It ranks of defeatism.”
Mabel picked her binocular up. There were a handful of Canada geese honking like crazy in the distance. She cold also see a few common merganser in the distance. And then there were at least a pair of wood ducks in the water. Neil had seen them too, and was clicking off a shot or two using his camera with the long lens.
“I don’t like defeatism either.”
Neil smiled. “Nobody likes it. Thats one of the problems though. A very major problem. The world remains in denial. As a result, instead of taking steps to soften the damage and prepare ourselves so the survivors can better face the challenges of the future, we are still engaged in day dreams that the threat of damage can be eliminated completely, or that there is no threat in the first place.”
Mabel nodded. Whatever the fate of the planet might come to in a generation or two, she felt happy to be with Neil. Hopefully, that would last long enough for them.
Neil pointed up. High up on a spruce tree, a solitary adult bald eagle was surveying his domain. It was at the top most branch, with an unobstructed view all around. It was typical of bald eagles to sit high up and in plain view. They had no natural enemy up there.
The wind was strong, and cold. Mabel focussed her binocular on the bird. The wind was parting the feathers at the back of its neck. It still looked so regal, with its snow white head and deep yellow large hooked beak.

And as she watched, the bird turned its head skyward, opened up its beak and let out a series of high pitch trills. It was distinctly different from the low frequency and louder quacks of the ducks in the water. The bird repeated the act, turning its head in all directions, and letting out its shrill call.
Mabel was mesmerized. She had seen bald eagles before, but had not ever heard it call out.
“Did you hear that ?” She hushed excitedly.
“Shhhh” Neil whispered back “I am filming it”

They stood side by side, she looking at the bird through her binocular, and he looking at it through his camera. He had a swinging head Gimbal to connect the camera to the tripod. This allowed him to swing the camera around in all directions rapidly and still have the camera more or less balanced through the centre of the tripod. This allowed the camera to hold its position at any angle without the need for tightening screws to lock the camera at each setting. Neil was happy with it, and was taking a video of the eagle.
Seconds passed by, then minutes. Apart from the quack of the ducks and the occasional shrill call of the eagle, the only other noise was of the wind buffeting them and swaying the tree branches around.
It was a few minutes before they decided that would be enough, and turned their attention elsewhere. The eagle maintained its tree top vigil.
“You know, I looked up Dyer’s Climate Wars. I might end up buying it.”
Neil looked her her. She seemed serious. “Its a very good book. Its also quite stark in its prediction. Gwynne Dyer does not mince words. Thats one reason I like his analysis. Not everyone had stomach to read what appears unpleasant. Thats the reason some folks avoid James Lovelock too. You should read that book. I can loan you my iPad so you can read it there without having to buy a copy. He is good.”
“I know. I read a few pages from your iPad that day. In that scenario, Dyer was talking about what happens to Russia, in 2019.”
Neil nodded, walking on.
“I mean, it was a hypothetical scene, I think. Was it not ?”
“Of course. Any prediction of the future has to be hypothetical. There are any number of things that could happen and alter the course of history.”
“Yes. Anyhow, I found those pages really worrisome. A little scary even. I mean, 2019 is only seven years into the future. Do you think the polar ice cap is going to disappear by then?”
Neil frowned as he considered the question. “I don’t know. There are some that predict the arctic ice cap to vanish in five years, at least in summer. Five or ten years – whats the difference? The damage is done. It took 35 million years for the polar ice cap to reach its pre-industrial maximum size. It took us a few hundred years to kill it. But the arctic sea ice is not the only worry. The same thing is happening to the Antarctic ice sheet too, though not as rapidly as the arctic one. This is a hard fact that is not being told properly to the masses.”
Mabel remembered Green Peace activists that were based in british Columbia. The movement had started from Vancouver. It was a pity, she felt, that Canada was rejecting ideas of carbon emission control, merely to promote the relatively dirty industry of extracting oil from the tar sands of Alberta.
“It makes you skeptical of our leaders, no?” She asked
Neil nodded and snaked his arms around her waist. Mabel was not exactly skinny. He liked her fleshy hips and the way his palm could rest on her curves. He liked the muscle and tissue mass of her upper torso, the curve of her breasts and the arc of her neck. He had come to like her slightly roundish face that appeared full of blood. She is not a freckled red head, but close to one. He wondered if she had any Irish blood in her.
He leaned over and kissed her cheek, then got conscious of being in the open, though there was nobody around other than a bunch of birds. If the birds noticed their display of affection, they showed no sign of it.
“This is one reason I tend to be skeptical of most leaders as well as most climate scientists and sustainable living gurus. Some of them just don’t know enough and yet chose to talk. Some have sold themselves to the devil, and hence talk through forked tongue. But there are some scientists that know the truth, and yet will not talk about it because it is too bitter a pill. I particularly dislike them. They are afraid to call a spade a spade because it might upset the crowd and shake the public out of its complacency.” Neil spread his hands in frustration.
They had walking along the agricultural field, a vast stretch of land plowed in parallel lines, circle by rows of trees and their periphery. They could see groups of Canada Geese flying over the trees to settle on a field half a mile away from them.
A small group of trumpeter swans went flying across their view, in single file, their long necks stretched forward, their nosy calls alerting the world about their passage.
Neil stopped, put his tripod on the ground, turned his camera, focussed and clicked a few stills of the group of swans in against the grey sky.
“These are all adults, I think. I have seen them with juveniles before. The young ones have a shade of grey on them.”
Mabel too watched them through her binocular, till they disappeared over the tree tops.
The walkway came to a fork. To the left were miles of reeds leading to the pacific ocean. To the right was a wooden shed that served as a blind for watching water birds.
They turned left and headed towards the edge of the reeds overlooking the ocean. They could hear faint calls of the snow geese. A female northern harrier went on its rounds circling low over the reeds, the ponds and the fields, often banking this way or that, swooping low and then rising back up. It passed over head. Neil turned his camera up and followed the bird, clicking a few successful shots of the bird and then exclaimed in frustration as it ventured too close and its rapid movement cause Neil to lose the bird from his high power telephoto lens. He had to take his eyes off the camera and search the sky to locate the bird, and train his camera again.
Mabel watched him, and the bird, by naked eyes. She too had a problem following this bird with a binocular, especially when it gets close.
The bird, apparently oblivious to the pair of humans, eventually swerved further and further away at the edge of the ocean. Neil shut off the camera for now, and lifted the contraption again on his shoulder. His second camera hung off his neck.
Mabel joined him, pulling his hands back on her waist, and walking hip to hip. It might be a bit childish, but she still had it in her, and he was, perhaps belatedly, enjoying a bit of it.
“My brothers are in denial about the change of climate” Mabel commented. “They know it is happening, but do not believe it will be something we need to worry about for many centuries. They both like the idea of developing oil and gas industries in Canada. More jobs, you know ?”
Neil nodded. He knew. Perception of more jobs was one of the root causes of the trouble, in his mind. But then, he did not have any easy solution either. No solution appeared easy to him. This was in fact part of the reason the issue was left untouched by leaders.
“I know. Even pundits are biased.”
“Pundits?”
“Sure. Pundits are no better than you and me.” Neil retorted, only half in jest.

They noticed the coot and stopped. An American coot cut across their path and headed for the shallow fresh water pond on the other side, its head bobbing as it stepped its way purposefully over the short grass, its roundish black body surprisingly agile. It even let out a few clicking sounds, perhaps to tell Mabel and Neil that it was keeping an eye on them, so better not get any closer.

The sun dipped another notch over the western sky, towards the low hills sticking out of the ocean, and the layers of clouds overing around the mountain tops – those famous low clouds of March that hung around the horizon to turn an average sunset into a spectacular one.

Eocene thermal maximum in a bowl of soup.

Posted on March 18, 2012 by admin

“How much time?”
Neil was looking at the clips of movies he had taken recently, mostly of wild ducks. In one clip, a couple of hooded mergansers were bathing and cleaning themselves vigorously, one in the water and the other standing on a floating log. Neil loved it. He decided to use it later, to make a home movie. That was one of his hobbies.
Mabel sat next to him, watching. She was not there when he took the video, but religiously saw all the still shots, of which there were a few hundred, as well as all the video clips, some half a dozen.
The conversation had moved on to the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock. Neil had just finished his latest book – The Vanishing Face of Gaia. Some of the points raised by Lovelock went against even his own earlier belief, and that of many of his environmentally conscious friends, he could not brush them off. A large part of what Lovelock said, made sense.
It was in that context that Neil had mentioned that the planet had crossed a significant threshold – a point of no return. Earth was almost certainly going to heat up to a level where large swaths of its landmass would be unsuitable for human habitation as we know it today. In that sense, the planet to a large extent is doomed, and modern industrial man was largely responsible for it – except for one wild card in the game, Gaia. The question was no more if, but when the planet was going to deteriorate rapidly and what Gaia might do in response.
Neil turned to Mabel.
She had been working today. They were not supposed to meet. He himself had just gotten home from work. Tomorrow was also a working day.
But, it felt good to spend time together. He had often thought of asking Mabel to move in with him, but could not bring himself to do that just yet. Mabel, meanwhile, would usually call him up once a day or so, and drop in at his place every few days after work. Neil had only been to her place once, for a few minutes. She had a small one room apartment on a multi-story building. He felt a bit out of place there. Mabel never asked him to spend the night there. Perhaps she sensed he was not comfortable. It was she that usually spend the night at his place, whenever that happened. Her white jeep parked in front of his house was a sort of familiar feature in the neighborhood by now.
He was still adjusting to the fact that Mabel might be a bit young for him, and could not shake off the thought that she might eventually tire of him and move on to someone closer to her age. He was aware that although Mabel was an adult now, she nourished a six year long teenage crush on him ever since she first saw him as a sixteen year old high school girl. He was already twenty eight at the time, and was not even aware that she liked him. That was a long time ago. Today, he was a bachelor of thirty four and she was a mere twenty two. Apart from years, he also felt a generation apart both culturally and mentally. And yet, they seemed to gel well. She brought warmth and a freshness into his life, apart from being in totally in synch with his interests and hobbies and thoughts. She was good for his ego, Neil decided. But perhaps he was not the best thing for her life. This was one thought he could not rid himself off. Being a somewhat private person, he found it difficult to discuss these issues with her face to face. He was also worried that he might hurt her by questioning their affair.
It was a mess, but hopefully, would end in a good outcome for both of them.
“How long?” She asked. She had such a fresh face and a calming appearance – it tugged at Neil’s heart.
He held her face and kissed her on her mouth. She closed her eyes. Her mouth softened. She had full, pliant lips. It can be addictive – Neil thought.
Mabel opened her eyes at the end of it, and gave him a small peck on his lips in return. “How long?”
“How long do we have on this planet ?”
She nodded.
“Well, I hope it would be longer than it takes for us to kiss a little.” He chuckled, teasing her.
She cuffed him. “No, seriously.”
“Well, opinion is divided on it. If you ask many of the western Governments, including Canada and USA, global warming is a myth or at best an unproven theory. Therefore, these Governments do not any more feel the need to do anything significant singly or collectively, to address this issue. Some are blaming China of today or India of the near future, for being responsible for the mess. China of course is blaming the west for adding all the carbon di-oxide for the last few centuries through dirty industrialization in the first place. So, we are in a blame game right now.”
“Never mind China, Canada or USA and the blame game. How much time does a man in Tahiti have?”
“Man in Tahiti ?” Neil scratched his head. “I don’t believe I know that man, in tahiti.” He said in mock seriousness.
She cuffed him again.
“Well, if you ask me, we have crossed the point of no return already. How long the earth will take to make it hell for humans, is something no one can correctly predict. But a few decades to a century is the time span when the serious deterioration begins to hit us. So, you and I are likely to see the beginning of it. In fact we are already seeing the beginning of it for a long time, just did not wish to acknowledge it for what it is. But more than you and me, it is the next generation kids, and the next, that will really see the crap hit the fan, so to speak.”
Mabel contemplated the issue. “Why is it that so many scientists cannot tell us when this will begin to get nasty and how to prevent a catastrophe? We are an advanced technology civilization, are we not?”
“Are we?” he asked back.
Mabel did not answer but widened her eyes at him. She did that, whenever confronted with a question that could have multiple answers.
“There are not too many independent pure scientists left in the world, Mabel.” Neil opined. “What we have is truck-loads of quasi-scientists that are funded by selfish organizations that pollute science and destroy neutral analysis. They want theories to come out protecting the business as usual model. Everything must relate to making a profit. Even curbing green house gas emission must be designed such that folks would trade on carbon credits and make money. Its disgusting to even think how little the world really cares of the future. We have bankers, politicians, corporate moguls and media pundits, animal right activists, sustainable living advocates, bleeding heart liberals and right wing conservatives – all pushing their own partial agenda on the table and making everything bewilderingly complex. Any debate on the issue stops being rational and scientific and descends into a cacophony of noise.”
“Hmm.. We need some clear thinking persons that can talk – right ?”
“Right. Dalai Lama is one clear thinking person. I do not know if he has read James Lovelock though. I know he is technically savvy and quite aware of many things. I read a book by him titled The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality”. He is certainly wiser and more balanced than any other living religious guru that I know of. He is aware of global warming, but he is not the right person to think outside the box on this particular issue. It needs a scientists that is unfettered by interest groups.”
“James Lovelock is that person?”
“Well, he is among a handful that are not speaking on behalf of a lobby. Also, he has a clearer way to seeing things that I admire. This includes his views on nuclear energy, which he supports. Many environmentalist I know vehemently opposes nuclear power plants. That is an important issue, but not the main one any more. The train has left the station when it comes to preventing global warming, you know? Developping emission free energy is going to be important, but a far more challenging necessity is facing us – that of turning our idea of modern civilization as well as man’s place on this planet on its head. But it is too late to think we can prevent catastrophic global warming.”
“You are saying it is too late to do anything, therefore do nothing ? That sounds defeatist. Not like you.” She looked at him.
“Thats not what Lovelock is saying. As to me, I have a more resigned view at it – perhaps similar to Dalai Lama. I have decided not to get excited and accept a few hard facts.”
Mabel contemplated that. “What are those hard facts?”
Neil counted them in his finger – “A) a human being is an accidental evolutionary outcome that is neither chosen by god, nor permanent, and therefore, if man survives or not is not so interesting for the planet”
Mabel nodded. “And B)?”
Neil cleared his throat. “B) whatever happens, was perhaps going to happen anyway. If man was destined to damage its own environment and cause mass extinction of species including his own, well that was perhaps how things were to happen anyway.”
“Thats all?”
“There is more. C) man is not unique in changing the earth biosphere. Other creatures have been doing it a long time before man came. In fact, if other organisms did not alter the atmosphere, higher oxygen breathing mammals, birds, fish and reptiles would not even have evolved. So, nothing particularly earth shattering to know that man is responsible for bringing massive change to the planets atmosphere, and gaia will react to it like it has done in the past. The only difference is, Man did what he did so fast, that Gaia is likely to kick back equally fast, and many of the living creatures may not have enough time to adjust to it.”
“And that includes man, right?”
“Yes. It particularly affects man.”
“So is Lovelock saying there is no need to do anything?”
“Thats not what he is saying. I think his point is – stop trying to engage in superficial efforts and lip service to climate change issues. Stop promoting bogus technologies just to make money, in the name of alternative energy source. Stop pretending the planet can sustain eight billion people and their pets and domestic animals without damaging the environment irreversibly. And finally, accept that damage is irreversible, and instead of attempting to stop it, change your civilization, redraw it from scratch, and take steps now, so that even a smaller number of humans at least have a chance to survive the climatic onslaught that is facing us.”
“Thats sounds like a doomsday warning.”
Neil nodded. “Lovelock is a scientist that worked in the Jet Propulsion Lab in California many years ago. He is a known scientist, albeit long retired, with a theory that the planet earth is not a passive element, where all changes in its climate is a response to external conditions. It is a dynamic entity, Gaia, which also triggers internal reorganization as a response to external stimuli. Scientists almost always miss-calculate earths degrading climate because its computer models are flawed and because it cannot understand that the planet is not passive, but active. According to Lovelock, man has damaged this bio-system enough to prevent the planet from self-controlling its atmosphere, and we have entered a phase of runaway climate change, like it happened 55 million years ago. But this time, it is expected to happen much more rapidly.”
Neil got up and moved to the kitchen. He was going to warm up some soup and vegetables. Mabel joined him, taking out cutlery and setting the small table inside the kitchen. Sometimes they sit down there and finish a meal. It feel more cozy than the large dining table in the next room.
“How fast or slow did the warming happen 55 million years ago. Since humans were not there, what caused it? What kind of creatures lived there at the time?”
“Too many questions. I don’t know all the answer. It happened at the onset of the Eocene era.”
“Whats Eocene ?”
“Well, you know about the age of the dinosaurs, right ?”
“Right.”
“They died out, in a phase of rapid mass extinction of many kinds of living creatures. That was the end of the Cretaceous period, about 65 million years ago. That opened up the field for diminutive mammals that were unable to gain stature under competition of the dinosaurs. So the next phase is often called the age of mammals. That started around 65 million years ago and continues till today. This phase has been broken into some segments. The first segment immediately after the dinosaurs is called Paleocene. That era ended at around 55 million years ago, and the next era started – Eocene. It is the boundary between Paleocene and Eocene when the earth suddenly warmed up with very high concentration of atmospheric carbon di-oxide comparable to today. Scientists think that the warming happened over a period of say twenty thousand years or so. That was slow enough for many of the animals and plants to move to relatively cooler regions and evolve to adopt the new environment. The planet would take almost twenty million years to come to a stage where ice sheets can again form on Antarctica, the land mass at South pole.”
Mabel tried to absorb that news and relate to it. She had never been outside of Canada. Antarctica was just a name. She could not remember any friend or relative ever talk about Antarctica seriously. Except perhaps Neil.
Neil continued, “But today, Lovelock believes the same sudden warming is likely to happen within a century or so, which will not be enough for most of the living creatures to adjust. Humans will have to take a very big hit.”
“Jesus”
“Yeah. I am not a very religious man. But a religious Hindu might say ‘Hai Ram’ which would be his way of expressing the same thing, in the name of a different God.”
Mabel smiled ruefully. “Its terrible. Does that warming up have a name, what happened at Paleocene-Eocene boundary?”
Neil tried cocking an eyebrow, and failed. Mabel was picking up terminology fast enough. She had a keen interest, which pleased as well as tickled him.
“I think it is called Paleocene-Eocene thermal maximus or something. In short – PETM. You can see it in the chart in Wikipedia – a sudden sharp spike in Atmospheric Co2 content and a long warming of the planet.”

PETM spike - Wikipedia

The microwave let out of small chime, indicating it had finished heating the food, having delivered the desired thermal maximum in their bowl of soup.

Storm Warning

Posted on March 18, 2012 by admin

It was early Saturday morning when power went off. There was no sound, no indication of a storm, and no bang. But, the sudden silence woke him up. The brain perhaps gets used to tiny levels of continuous drone or repetitive low level noise, so that folks can sleep through them. The brain might even work like a noise canceling device that allows folks to sleep on a moving train, for example. They become part of the background noise.
But when the noise stops, there is a dead silence. Somehow this triggers the brain to recognize a change of status as an event of sufficient importance to wake one up.
He could sense that the entire neighborhood had gone silent, and rightly guessed it was a regional power cut. Calling up the local power supply company proved his suspicion. Several thousand homes were without power. There was a storm at night. Folks had identified the location where the trouble was. It was expected that power would be restored in about two hours.
He got up and looked at the time on his mobile phone. It was just after six in the morning. He had been planning to spend the weekend north of Vancouver into the mountains, if weather permitted. Weather was always a big thing in this season. It rained often in winter. It was not convenient to go hiking through the countryside if it was raining. But, the flip side of the argument was, it was perhaps better than it rained, instead of snowed, in winter. Iced up roads in a hilly land can be difficult for vehicular traffic. Accidents can be frequent.
He did not have an all-wheel drive vehicle. IT did not snow in the lower mainlands around Vancouver except of a few days in a year. And he did not take his own car for long trips into the mountains much. He preferred to rent a newer all wheel drive vehicle on his trips. A front wheel drive vehicle like his can get bogged in snow or mud. It had happened to him a few times already.
Mountain roads were often steep and with hairpin bends. Also, remote highways and roads were not plowed as regularly as roads with heavier traffic.
He had gotten himself a new SLT digital camera. SLT stood for single lens translucent – a new term. He loved the camera, partly because of its ability to shoot many still frames in a second, or high definition movies, though not both at the same time.
He had recently gotten a swinging Gimbal for his tripod mount, to handle heavy cameras. He loved it so far, though did not get enough chance to use it yet.
He was planning to go either to Boundary Bay area or to Westham Island or to the serpentine fen region early Sunday morning, if it did not rain. Miguel was going with him.
But meanwhile, this power cut made his work a bit difficult. He brushed his teeth. The tooth brush was powered, but with batteries. Same for his electric shaver. He used up what hot water was in the boiler, which was sufficient for him for now.
He dressed up using his flashlight to search for clothes in the closet. He woke Miguel up and explained the situation. Miguel took it with his customary sense of humor. Apparently this was common in his home country in Ecuador. While Miguel got himself ready, he got down and opened the garage door manually and took his car out into the drive way and closed the garage door down by hand again.
The roads appeared littered with small branches of conifers, indicating there had been a storm at night, which he apparently slept through.
He drove to the local Starbucks and sat down with a hot chocolate and a sandwich. Miguel duplicated the order. They had internet and a wall socket. He checked on the status of power supply and the local weather forecast. The overnight storm had abated, but the rain was there for the next several hours. He might find a dry sky with scattered clouds later in the afternoon.
Atmospheric storms were different than those caused by seismic activity at the seabed and below, that causes tsunami. The Asian tsunami of 2009 caused death of a quarter million people.
In contrast, the recent tsunami in Japan killed a few thousand. And the damage to Fukushima nuclear power plant as a result, has not killed a single Japanese, and is unlikely to kill anyone outside of Japan either.
“We are going to have a bigger meal a bit later Miguel, either at home or in a restaurant. I needed my morning coffee, and without power, I could not make it in our kitchen.”
Miguel nodded. “No problem. I enjoy myself any way. They have Starbucks here too!”
Neil nodded. They had that here too. Soon, there may be no significant difference between one country and another, wherever you go.
They sat down at a table at the back end of the place.
The coffee was hot and good. The sandwich was hot and tasty. Miguel went into it right away.
Neil sat back and contemplated the news coverage of the Asian Tsunami of 2009, Hurricane Aila a year later, and the smaller Tsunami of Japan the next year followed by the damage to the nuclear power plant there.
There is a lot more talk of the Fukushima plant and the dangers of accident at nuclear power plants, than deaths and destruction caused by the tsunami, and the danger of global warming, sea level rise and sinking of various islands and coastlines.
Bangladesh is one example of a densely populated low elevation country that is threatened by rising sea level. Flat island nations around the world are threatened. Countries like India are going to lose a lot of coastal land with rising sea.
Even in Canada, the cities of Delta, where he lived, and Richmond, where barely above sea level, and are prone to tsunami on one side, and also earth quake prone.
But nations such as India and China are in grave threat of their own. While China might battle with scarcity of water and deterioration of agricultural land, India too will lose a lot of coastal land as well as great reduction of water in their rivers. India’s population density was already approaching 400 per square km. That was over 120 times that of Canada. Canada had room to move internal climate refugees. India did not.
Africa, on the other hand, was going to be cooked.
China might be tempted to invade Siberia, which would get increasingly habitable and fertile as the planet warms up.
There would be an unprecedented rush to colonize Antarctica, the last continent to be taken over by man.

He sipped a coffee and looked around. Through the glass wall facing the street, he saw Karen park her car and get out with her daughter.
She was a neighbor, though they don’t meet often. The last time he saw her was at the bog two weeks ago. That was when he clicked the barred owl.
They were walking towards Starbucks too. It was very likely that their home too was without power.
Karen swung the door open and let her daughter in. Neil was sitting at the back end of the coffee shop. Karen did not see him first. They stood in line at the counter. Mother and daughter discussed what they wanted to have. Karen moved up the line and placed her order. Then they moved to the near end of the counter to collect their choice of drink and a sandwich. That was when the little girl saw him. She stopped and pouted, then pointed at him with her finger.
Karen glanced at him, and smiled.
“Hello there, stranger. How are you?”
Neil smiled and nodded. “Good morning. Power cut at home for you too ?”
“Yep. No light. Decided to drop in for a coffee and a cookie”
“Join us?”
They had a small table, but there were four chairs to it. Karen nodded and looked down at her daughter. “We shall join Neil and his friend for our cookie and milk. Okay Kate?”
The little girl nodded, watching Miguel.
Neil remembered her name – it was Kate.

Neil introduced everyone, referring to Miguel as a friend from Miami, and Kate as his friend from the neighborhood, and Karen as Kate’s mother. The little girl liked it, smiled, and shook hands with Miguel formally.
As Miguel engaged Kate, Neil and Karen caught up with each other. Karen was what Neil thought of as a bleeding heart liberal. She spent a lot of her spare time on efforts geared towards getting the liberal party back in power. She had invited Neil once to protest the Harper Government in Ottawa on some issue perceived to be not too parliamentary. Neil did not understand the issue too well, but had joined the protest on a Sunday just to see and get a flavor of things. It was a good experience.
She had asked to be Neil’s friend on Facebook, and often sent her invitations to various events related to social justice. She had borrowed a book from Neil almost a year ago, and had not yet returned it. It was ‘Shock doctrine’ by Naomi Kline.
“So, how far have you gone with Shock Doctrine?”
Karen shook her head and smiled energetically. “I have read about half of it Neil. Its so true about the way disaster is used by corporations and governments to make money.”
Neil nodded. “There were two Naomis he had read. One is American – Naomi Wolf. The other is Naomi Kline. Both wrote interesting books.”
Karen shook his head at Neil. “You are such a well read person. I am not a fast reader. You should tell me something about her books too.”
“Well”, Neil finished his sandwich. “I have read her ‘Give me Liberty’. It was a reminder that encroachment into personal freedom and liberty by a Government in the name of national security can be a dangerous path for the people. She draws a lot of examples from Germany of the 1930s, and slowly, almost imperceptibly, the German democratic Government was turning into a monster, and the public went along with it, in a fever of excess nationalism.”
Karen nodded. “People cannot take democracy for granted. I have always felt one has to fight to keep their Governments from moving to a war mongering military industrial complex.”

Miguel was listening to all this, without comment. But he was watching Kate use her colored pencil on the picture of a bird, painting her wings blue.

Neil watched Kate and Miguel. “Did you like the picture I sent of the owl” he asked Kate. Kate looked up and nodded vigorously.
Karen piped in. “She loved the picture of the owl. The other picture was also so good, of Kate and her mother. Did you not like that one too, Kate baby “?
Kate nodded again. “I have them on my wall.”
Karen clapped her hands to show her support. “Yes. We printed the pictures and put up on the wall in her bedroom. They are so good. Thank Neil, Kate, for the pictures.”
Kate smiled back at Neil. “Thank you”.

Volcanic hotspots, from Geology of British Columbia, by Greystone Books

They finished their mini breakfast. Someone commented that power was going to come back in another hour.
“I have another book in my sight, of Naomi Wolf. Its called End of America. It was a best seller and a kind of indictment of the Bush presidency, more or less in the same line as her first book, I think. Thats why I haven’t bought it yet.”
Karen shook her head. “You are amazing.”
Neil smiled and flipped open his iPad. He had carried it with him. He had hoped to show Miguel some of the maps that explained British Columbian geography and geology. Karen watched as he brought the device to life and opened a page on a book. It showed colored picture of the Canadian west coast with lots of black circles on them.
“What is that ?”

“Its a map showing the seismic hot spots. As you can see the hottest region is at the end of the continental plate to the immediate west of Vancouver island. And then there are more on the shore line and a few more just inside the shore line. The various plates and sub-plates are grinding, colliding, or pulling away from each other there.”
“Wow. Where did you find this ?”
“Well, its available as an eBook free of charge online. I bought it to learn about British Columbian geology. It is very good. For example, look at this map of the early Devonian period. Can you identify future Canada here?”
Karen peered at the map, as did Miguel. Even Kate looked in and pointed her finger at a patch of grey on the map.
“Uh huhh, thats Gondwana. Thats not what will turn into North America.” Neil smiled and watched Karen as she scrutinized the map.
“I dont know. I can see Siberia mentioned as a ball. I cannot recognize the other names.”
“Well, yes, Siberia is there. But the clue is not so much in the names as in the shape or the contours of the fragmenting landmass. If you look closely, you can identify north America, with the future Husdon bay somewhere.” Neil said, giving a clue. He smiled and watched as Karen went over the pieces on the map again.
He flipped the page. A new map came up, from late Devonian – Mississippian phase, 350 million years ago. Karen’s eyes lit up. She had seen a name attached to a lump of land separated from the fragmenting chunks of Gondwana. That lump was south of the Siberian landmass, separated by an Uralian sea. This lump of land had a new name – Euamerica. She pointed at it – “There it is.”
Neil smiled back and nodded. “If you have a kindle or an iPad, you might consider getting this book. Wont cost you nothing.”
Karen nodded, continuing to look at the maps, as she flipped more pages. “Its amazing. You are an amazing person, Neil. You know so much.”
Neil felt embarrassed. It was not about him. It was about the geology of British Columbia that was so interesting, and same time so alarming with regard to chances of earth quakes and tsunami.
Karen stopped at a page showing the map of Pangaea. One could clearly make out Africa and South America fitting each other like a jig saw puzzle, and north America hovering nearby. She could even make out the Hudson bay, along with Green land floating above and some of the Canadian arctic islands. She felt like a school girl and clapped her hands.
Neil flipped the pages, and stage by stage, maps showed how the planet began to gradually looked identifiable with todays landmasses. Karen could see the breach between Africa and South America widen up, along with the gap between North America and Europe, thus widening the newborn Atlantic ocean, a that essentially continues till date.
Neil pointed out a small piece drifting in the ocean to the west of Africa. “Thats India. It travels on its own for a long while, moving north by north east for tens of millions of years, till it collides with Eurasia some forty million years ago.
“Wow” came the response.
Neil grinned and leaned back in his chair. Miguel too appeared interested. He had a way of widening his eyes in wonder.
“Let me ask you a trick question. This is a hint already – its a trick question. Which kind of dinosaurs drank water from the Ganges in India?”
Karen smiled and frowned in mock concentration. “Trick question ? There were no dinosaurs in India at all ?”
Neil shook his head. “Close, but not close enough. There surely were dinosaurs when India split from Africa. So, some of those dinosaurs separated from their African brothers, and evolved independently on India. Fossil evidence of that has been found.”
“Then whats the answer, and where is the trick?”
“The trick is not in the dinosaurs, but in the birth of river Ganges.”
“How ?”
“Well, India the island subcontinent had its own river system, but Ganges was not one of them. Ganges and a few other rivers of India was born as a result of the rising Himalayan mountain range. Himalaya rose only as a result of India’s collision with Eurasia. That collision happened 40 million years ago. But the dinosaurs all across the planet, including in India, went extinct at around 65 million years ago, a good 25 million years before India collided and more million of years before Ganges was born and became a big river. So, the dinosaurs were long extinct before Ganges had water for anybody to drink from.”
Karen clapped her hands. “Thats so cute. I must remember that trick question. Do you have any such for Canada?”
Neil’s face widened up in a broad smile. “Canada is full of geological tricks. Some day I might tell you about them. Do you know anything about Burgess Shale ?”
“Umm not much” Karen said.
“Then there is the issue of the moving hot spot that is currently under Yellowstone. And why Canada has so many fresh water lakes. Some day, we can talk about them.”
Kate listened to it and finally make a comment. “I have seen Pitt Lake”.
“There you go Kate. Some day, you can ask mom to show you Slave Lake and Mackenzie river. A bit cold at this time. But if you make it by April, you can also see the northern lights in Yellowknife”
Kate clapped her hands although she perhaps did not understand all of that.
“I have seen Northern lights, in in Kelowna, but that was sometime ago.”
Neil looked at his watch. “Well, the Easter holidays are coming. I was contemplating going somewhere. One idea is Winnipeg and on to Churchill, but I think that takes longer time. The other is only Winnipeg. The third is Yellowknife, for a second time. The fourth is White Horse, also a second time. Cannot figure out where, yet. Visiting WInnipeg or Whitehorse might be the cheapest, far as airfare goes. Whitehorse is unique in its own way. Winnipeg and Manitoba is a province I have never been to, so I guess I owe it to myself to go there, even if just for three days.”
“Wow. Are you going alone?”
“Well, yes. I often end up doing that. Involving friends can be tricky. Not everyone wishes to hang around in remote locations just to watch the sky or the river, rodents building a dam or a bird catching another bird”, Neil smiled.
Karen nodded. “I’d have loved to go with you some time. But with Kate, I cannot plan these things on the spur of the moment.”

“Of course. But you might consider widening her horizon. Not that you need to come with me, per se. Just visiting places and telling her about them is a good way to help a kid in her growing years, I’d guess. Thats education of a kind that one cannot duplicate in a class room. I am not particularly impressed by the school system in North America as such, you know. This is not to say that I am impressed by the school system anywhere. But I do not know much about it except that I have seen in India, Hong Kong, Singapore, USA and Canada, with a bit of indirect exposure to the system used in the old Soviet Union and in Great Britain.”
“Ohh wow. Neil, you know way too much already”. Karen widened her arms to emphasize how much she thought Neil knew. “What is wrong with the school education system, you think?”
Neil considered the question.
“I am not too articulate when it comes to this subject. I just feel that the curriculum based education system of today, like much else about our civilization, is heading down the wrong path. It is blinding the people from some aspects of knowledge and it is inundating the pupils on specifics that might prove counter productive down the line. Also, the schools are turning out to be mostly a bad influence in a child’s cognitive development and ability to think outside the box. Education, like most other things, is a business venture today, to make money. It tries to create mass produced zombies.”
Neil stopped. Perhaps she spoke a bit much. It can be annoying, or depressing, to someone like Karen, with a young child about to enter school age.
Karen nodded somberly. She too looked at her watch. It was getting time to leave. “You are right, Neil. It is so hard to get the right exposure for a child these days. And for a single mother like me, it is more difficult. We are always fighting for time. I know the best thing for her is to have more time with me and with close relatives. As it is, she does not have the company of her father.”
Neil did not comment. As such, he had no idea who the father of the kid was, and if Karen was married to the guy, or if she was till married or what.
Life, for single mothers in Canada, was a lot tougher than his own, Neil concluded. But then, just being a mother of a young child should be so much rewarding at a different plane. Neil could easily appreciate that fact.

Life was complex. That was for sure!

Miguel, the Everglades, and Lovelock’s warning

Posted on March 17, 2012 by admin

“Everglades is one place I shall not forget. Miguel meanwhile might be my last human link with the place” Neil said. They were walking out of the car park towards the arrival gate in Vancouver international airport, to receive Miguel. Neil explained how unique the everglades were in Florida, as a river that lost its way and meandered through a vast swamp of sawgrass. The water slowed down so much that it would travel a few miles every month, till it eventually reached the ocean. That vast swampland created an unique eco-system not to be duplicated anywhere.

“I have never been to Florida. I hear much about it though, as a vacation spots, and some friends who have been there in the winter.” Mabel commented ruefully.
“I know. Florida is a popular destination for folks living in the colder parts of USA and Canada and even Europe. It is also a hub for the cruise ship industry. I am not particularly fond of the tourist industry though. To me Florida is unique for the eco-system.”
Mabel snaked her arm around his waste. She was as tall as Neil and liked holding him while they walked. She apparently liked being seen in public with him. Neil was not too fond of public display of personal affection. He did not relish the thought of kissing, or being kissed, by anybody in a public place. He was more orthodox than Mabel, he guessed.
“What makes Florida special in your eyes ?” Mabel asked.
They crossed the street and walked into the airport building. A giant electronic screen flashed information on which aircraft had landed and which had not – in english and french. Neil glanced at it. It would be another five minutes before Miguel would land. It might take another half hour, depending on traffic lines at the customs, for him to collect his bags and walk out.
“Lets take a coffee while we wait”
They sat at the coffee shop adjacent to the passenger arrival gate, with two paper cups of coffee.
“It was corals that started it” he said, stretching his legs.
“Corals ? What ?”
“Corals that were the works of dying micro-organisms that deposited their skeleton on top of each other in the warm oceans of the US gulf. This process built slabs of coral from the shallow seabed up to the surface, and then spread sideways like a table top of white porous slab of soft rock composed mostly of calcium and dirt, going miles and miles in all directions. That was the platform over which the mangrove trees with their unique root system created massive filters in the shallow ocean. Passage of the moon around the planet and the resulting tides and ocean currents brought floating debris that would be caught by the sieve of the mangrove roots. Slowly, a thin layer of soil would form. As hundreds of thousands of years pass, the process allows local trees to find ways to encroach into this oceanside swampland, and miniature versions of the tree that could withstand brackish water begin to form a kind of watery forest.” Neil took a sip of coffee. Mabel was listening. She nodded but did not interrupt.
“Fish, birds and animals adopt this specialized land. High rainfall and depressions in this newly created land makes for gigantic fresh water lakes. Resulting rivers that would drain the land and lead the run off to the sea gets trapped by high growth sawgrass. Over time the dense sawgrass slows the flow of fresh water and turned it all into a gigantic fresh water marsh that grew like a long slice of land that connected up with the continental north America, and was once claimed by Spain and is today known as Florida, one of the states of USA.”
Neil said that in one breath, and with a touch of drama. This brought the customary smile in Mabel. She liked Neil explaining things, and was same time amused as the way he explained, almost like a school teacher. She should have known that Florida or many of the southern states were claimed by Spain, or France of Mexico, at some point or another. She did not know how Florida came to be a landmass though.
“Let’s go there sometime together. Forget the cruise ships, and lets spend time at the Everglades.” Mabel suggested. She had a way of tugging his shirt sleeve to emphasize her point.
Neil had not known much about Florida’s geologic or geographic history, when he first landed there as an immigrant. He considered himself to be a reasonably well read person with a reasonable curiosity about the planet. But he had no idea how curiously unique the state of Florida was, and how much of that uniqueness was already gone, thanks to modern human civilization. He had fallen in love with the Florida Everglades the first time he visited the place, within a week of his arrival at Miami. He remembered sitting amazed at a quiet spot by the water, watching the fallen logs and the shadow cast by the overhanging low branches, and fish occasionally leaping out of the water surface. The splash of its fall back would break the tranquility, alerting him that this was a living eco-system. He saw alligators catching fish and get their heads off the water, to eat the fish with relish. He could hear the crunch of their teeth crushing the bones of the fish.
He saw darters sunning themselves on low branches by the water and herons standing still like a statue. He saw nesting Ospreys. This was a world he would return to, again and again, during his seven year long stay in Florida.
He would see the great blue heron even here British Columbia, as well as white crowned night herons. He would see sandhill cranes. He would see plenty of Ospreys and a hundred times as many bald eagles as he saw in Florida.
But there were no alligators here in BC. Neither any ibis or darter. He did not see blue jays in Vancouver, although there were Steller’s jays, equally colorful. He even saw many hummingbirds, something he had a hard time spotting in Florida. He remembered the beautiful scissor-tailed flycatchers that he found even in Dade county within site of the urban developments.
Mabel tugged her hand. “You are lost in thought.” she said.
“Yes. Was thinking about scissor-tailed Flycatchers of Flroida.”
Mabel did not know what a Flycatcher was, but could guess it was a bird and that it had a tail like scissors. In time, he would tell her about them, she was sure.
He looked at his Timex watch. It was sort of old fashioned and an inexpensive model. It had a conventional dial but with numbers for the hours, instead of the original style of writing them in Roman letters. The main reason he liked this watch, was that it showed day of week and date of month side by side. Most other watches, he had been presented with, some of them quite expensive, showed either only the date, or nothing more than the time. He liked to see the day of week. It had gotten to be a sort of habit for him. So, he preferred the inexpensive but functional watch more than the more fancy ones in his drawer. In fact, his other watches were all dysfunctional since he never even changed their battery, in the last two decades. Perhaps he should try selling them off in eBay or Craigslist.
It may be another fifteen minutes before Miguel emerged. They had a good view of the area and could see the trickle of travelers coming out, either meeting with loved ones or heading out for a taxi.
“I want to see them too, some day, and you are going to show me. Yes ?” Mabel responded, finishing her coffee.
“What?”
“Florida, and the Flycatchers”
“Ohh, OK. We can take a vacation sometime, say for two weeks. Its a long drive from here, so it’d be better to fly there and rent a car. The place is full of history – geologic, geographic, as well as in paleoanthropology, not to mention of recent human interactions of the post-Columbian era.”
Mabel looked at him with mock wide eyes and grinned. She had a wide mouth which opened up when she grinned.
“Yes, sir, professor Dusty.”
Neil laughed. “Did you know some of the terror birds of South America had actually crossed the land bridge and ended up in the southerns states including in Florida ? That was before the better evolved mammalian feline predators could push them back and enter the south American continent. South America did not have a killer cat till rather recent times, you know.”
“I did not know. Whats a terror bird?”
They got up, put the used cups into the trash and sauntered down to the arrival area. Soon, Miguel should arrive through the gate. He did have a cell phone but was not going to use it here because of roaming charges. So he would not be to announce his arrival to Neil. He had said so before leaving. Besides, he was a simple man and did not know how to send text messages through phones. He was also a poor man, relatively speaking. Apparently, his mobile phone was a gift from his grown up daughter, who wished to be able to check up on her dad time to time. The charges for the phone was being paid by his daughter.
How Neil came to know Miguel and befriend him, was itself a strange story. But, come to think of it, perhaps it was not that strange. Florida had been a melting pot of different kinds of people coming across each other for a long time. Everybody was a sort of visitor to the place. No one really was a native there. Neil came through legal and high end channels of immigration. Miguel came differently. Neil moved on. Miguel did not, or could not. Somehow, fate made them unlikely friends. And the friendship endured, even through the decade since Neil left Florida, never to return there again.
“A terror bird was a giant flightless bird in similar lines to the Rhea of south America, Ostrich of Africa or a Cassowary of Australia of today, or the now extinct Moa of New Zealand. The only difference is, that giant bird was a fast running ground hunter that liked chasing down early pigs and horses and swallow them limb by limb. It had a massive head and even more massive beak designed to tear limbs from animals. A terrifying creature. It became extinct as the ancestors of leopards and others of the killer cat family evolved and crossed the land bridge, and entered south America. It could not survive the feline competition.”

————————————-
I wrote this much, and stopped. It was Friday late evening. I had been checking on a few old VHS tapes that was converted to digital. Average rate of success was around 80%. This meant, out of every five tapes of home video I had shot twenty years ago, four were salvageable and one would be deteriorated beyond recovery. I had been peering at the latest batch, scene upon scene.
I remembered the large eared male African elephant standing tall in Ngorongoro crater, in Tanzania, back in January of 1991. I had not seen that scene on screen for so long. And now, it was there before me. I remember the night spent at Tree Tops, the famous spot in Kenya were you can see wild animals up close from the wooden house on top of a tree, while elephants, buffalo and even rhinoceros came to drink at the waterhole.
Tomorrow I had planned to go outdoors to photograph nature and wildlife as one can find in these parts of southern British Columbia. I had a new gimbal head for the long lenses for my camera. It was made by Manfrotto of Italy. It should help keep the heavy lens and camera assembly centered on my tripod as I swung the camera rapidly to follow a moving object, such as a bird in flight.
I wished to write about Miguel. But then, I wished to write about so many other things too. Miguel was an immigrant from Ecuador that worked as a caretaker in the office building where I worked in Miami so many years ago. He had been in Miami for almost twenty years when I first arrived. And yet, his world was small and he almost never went outside of town. He did not know about the existence of The Everglades. I found it hard to believe.
Okay, I too did not know much about it myself before I arrived. But my curiosity made me aware of the place within a few days. I realized that I enjoyed some privileges Miguel did not have. I had computer, and access to internet although internet itself was just a handful of years old in the public space. I had money in my pocket and interest enough to walk into book stores to look up travel books on Florida. I had a car and a driving license. I could go where I wanted. Miguel did not have any of that. Also, he was not very literate in English, although he could speak a little.
Finally, he did not have friends or associates that were excited about the Everglades, till he met me. So he did not learn about it from his usual friends. In that, we had a common theme. I too did not have a friend that was interested about the Everglades. I had lots of friends through my work, and I met more folks through them. My circle of friends and associates were wide and very different from that of Miguel. And yet, we both shared one theme – we did not learn about the Everglades from our friends.
But I had virtual friends already through internet bulletin boards. I was advised to check a few things as I went to Florida. The Everglades was one of them. I was privileged to have these sources available where Miguel was not.
And about British Columbia, are things much different?
Well, I know folks that have been here for thirty years and did not know about Reifel migratory bird sanctuary, or what makes British Columbia geographically unique. They did not know of the contribution of glaciation in carving the landscape of British Columbia, nor the phenomenal work that simple animals like beavers did to transform this landscape. They did not know how the salmon evolved itself to take advantage of a new niche as the glaciers retreated over newly exposed land. Nor did they know about the evolution of polar bears to take advantage of winter sea ice to hunt a protein rich diet – the thick blubber of fat on marine mammals out in the open arctic ocean. Many had never been into the arctic circle in Canada or knew about the issues of the warming oceans there. Most of my compatriots did not know about the snow geese arriving here from Siberia at the onset of each winter.
In some ways, Miguel in Miami and myself in Vancouver lived in compatible parallel worlds. We were surrounded by global villagers and residents of nowhere. It did not matter which continent or geographic region you lived in. There was a Pizza hut round the corner, a department store that sold the latest fashion imitation, a pub, a night club and MTV channel. What did it matter where you lived. It was all standardized by the globalized economy, did it not?

James Lovelock's portrait

But there are also other issues on my mind.
Take James Lovelock, the scientist that once worked in California’s Jet Propulsion Lab. Still alive at 90, he was one of the last free spirits of science, one that pursued the subject without being a representative or any institution, unlike the hordes of quasi-scientists of today that only work to bias public view towards whatever or whoever was paying them. The world today had a decreasing number of real politicians, real social reformers, real anthropologists, free thinkers or real scientists. Every one worked to promote either a their employers or their doctrine. Few were willing to think through issues from outside their proverbial box.
The issue of increasing population was one pet peeve. More I asked famous people, more I got disenchanted with their vague and evasive response.
Well, at least James Lovelock looked at issues straight on and without a tinted glass, except a few isolated issues of his nationality. He is a British. In his latest book he takes example of Winston Churchill as a great person worth quoting. I, on the other hand was born in India. I read through his by now well documented dislike of the Indian people. I knew of his derogatory comments regarding India and Indian people, as well as his actions and inactions during the Bengal famine that happened in his watch, killing about four million people. I knew how much of Indian national output and wealth Britain was sucking out of India right through the war years while it watched millions of Indians die out of a man made famine. All this was reasonably well documented today. To me, most all politicians are double faced, and Churchill is merely a great example of his class. But I forgive James Lovelock to be biased towards CHurchill. I guess I am biased a bit towards Gandhi and Tagore. Perhaps more than a bit.
Anyhow, I had read James Lovelock a few times and thought a lot about the Gaia hypotheses. I was aware of the fact that his notions were partially supported by different groups, while some of his notions were vehemently opposed by others. I found the notion very very intriguing and quite believable in a thoughtful way.
I had also read Gwynne Dyer a few times. It was interesting to note that Dyer mentioned Lovelock in one of his later books named “Climate Wars”. I found an electronic version of the book and bought it. I have gotten a bit wary of buying printed books which fill up my shelf and become a burden after I have read it once. Nobody else has an interest to read them anyway. Its such a waste of paper and resources. An audio book is my first preference. If that is not available, then an eBook that I can read through a reader such as iPad is the second choice. And so, I was reading “Climate Wars” by Dyer on my iPad. I was tickled to note Dyer mention James Lovelock and his books on the Gaia theory. I myself had read The Revenge of Gaia by Lovelock. Besides, his most recent book, as a final warning to mankind, had come out. It was called The Vanishing Face of Gaia – A final warning. I had that book too, in audio format. I was simultaneously reading both, sort of. I read Dyer at lunch time and time to time at home. I listened to Lovelock while driving to work or returning from work. It was normal for me to pursue two or three different books side by side in parallel rather than in series, through the course of a few weeks.
Thoughts covered in those books engaged me. In fact I bought those books because I share a common interest in those themes. So it was nice to find noted journalists such as Dyer mention James Lovelock and the notion of the earth acting as an organism. I too considered the planet in those terms, like a colony of mutually reactive organisms – like a Portuguese man-of-war, the famous poisonous colony of self cohabiting organisms that unsuspecting humans are known to mistake as a benign jelly fish. It is neither jelly, nor fish, nor jelly fish. It is not even an “it”. It is a colony of many creatures, and deadly for any human wanting to play with it.
Anyhow, I had a wish to write about this thing too. No, not about jelly fish or a Portuguese man-of-war, but about Gaia and how humans are spoiling the planet at a breakneck speed. Lovelock had written his previous book, Revenge of Gaiga, where Gaiga, the living planet, takes revenge against humans for spoiling the planet. It makes human life miserable, and forces humans to die in large numbers or change their living habits totally. One way or another, Gaia was not the passive environment merely responding to changes imposed on it. Gaia was able to trigger unexpected reversals of climate and accelerate the process of change that fell outside of all the human engineered climate models on computers. Gaia was going to kick humans in the rear.
And then he wrote the next one, the most recent, which I was now reading. It was not inconsequential that a slowly growing number of scientists were beginning to look at Lovelock more seriously.
I was taken by his clear sightedness when he compared climate change through carbon emission, and the issue of generating power through alternative means. He cuts through a lot of bull – especially about the so called renewable energy debate, of bio-fuel coming from food crops, and wind farms. His views on nuclear energy is fundamentally different from proponents of green peace and sustainable living.
These issues deserved great deal of thinking and debate. The problem is, there were not many that I knew, who were even remotely concerned about the future which went past their individual lives.
Also, very few experts wished to look towards a solution to the climate crisis that did not provide a financial benefit to the promoter of the solution. Everything had to be profit oriented. Save the world and become a millionaire. Thats the only motto that the Governments, corporations, economists and the media understand.
I might write about my general frustration at people around me for being nonplussed, and for providing a lip service to various causes, and for being so disappointingly trivial and uncaring.
My dilemma was, like in this blog, to decide if I should write all this as a personal journal or as part of a series of short stories, or as a novel, or what. But, having a bit of a stubborn streak in me, I am also tempted to write in ways that breaks conventional wisdom and challenge the reason why one should write anything.
Could it be a rant ?
Anyhow, I decided to keep the title of this blog unchanged – Miguel, the Everglades, and Lovelock’s warning.
The title had no place for Mabel.
But then, it had no place for me either.

Wish I could write like them

Posted on March 11, 2012 by admin

It has been only about two months since I started this blog. So, I am only two months old as a writer here. Not a writer of fame. Not even a writer with published books. Just a guy that wrote a blog or two.
Yes, some of these blogs are musings, like a diary. This is one such. Then there are some postings that attempt to write about writing a novel. Still others seem to be part of a novel. Some are my perspective of the world around me.
I am essentially trying out my hand, playing a few practice games as it were. These trial runs may help make me a better writer in the eyes of the readers. Or perhaps I shall decide to write as a creative outlet, and not necessarily to please others.
But what should I write about? This is the sixty four thousand dollar question.
I have thought of writing a novel. I have actually done more than that. I have dabbled with it for a few months, going as far as two hundred pages, before tossing half of it out, and finally putting it in temporary cold storage.
The thing is – one could write a novel covering issues far removed from one’s own life. For example, I could write a science fiction, or a satirical comic book.
But then, I could also write a novel that borrows from my own life experience about the world as I see it. This choice is attractive to me because I already have certain lifetime exposures an developed an opinion about things. I am an opinionated person, did I mention that before?
But hang on – is my own life experience interesting enough to the reader? I have no blooming idea, but would guess in the negative. A reader would likely find my outrageous views and endless rambling quite a bellyful.
So, back to square one. Do I write for others, or do I write for myself? Most folks write or paint or create music such that others will not only enjoy it, but also hopefully pay for it. So, there is an economic prime mover hiding behind some of the creative outlets.
But, there must be exceptions. Vincent Van Gogh, I am told, never sold a painting in his lifetime, and died a poor man. In fact, the world is littered by painters, writers and musicians that died poor, but whose creations became famous after their death, enriching a group of middleman in the process. This probably goes to show that, if the meek fail to inherit the earth, the middlemen might.
So, if I wished, I could write on whatever took my fancy. I could write about my worries about the future of the planet through climate change and human encroachment into every niche and ecosystem. There are many that have already written on this. Perhaps I would merely add some noise in an already noisy field.
But then there is this habit of pundits of selectively focussing on only certain sections of the problem, while avoiding mention of the others. Very few in fact address the whole package.
Few, for example, blame it our on our perception of ourselves. Man has not evolved enough to question man’s own core belief about being a superior species who enjoys the right to let other species live of die, at whim. The mainstream thinking supports the notion that destroying a tiger, a whale, a forest, or even an entire species, is alright if it can save just a single human. Life of a single human is more sacrosanct than an entire species, or even a family of creatures. Our faith and our system dictates that we are the chosen people, by no less than God himself.
This, to me, is a laughable humbug and at the root of most injustices perpetrated by man – against another man, another creature or against nature. Religious leaders, Ethnic groups, Racial groups, Cultural groups, Economic groups, Politician, Social reformer, Writers and especially the foreign college educated smart Alec of the world lose their tongue and shy away from addressing this main question – why should man be more valuable than the rest of the planet?

Creation of Adam - Michelangelo

So, with all due respect, the writers of this world have perhaps not done enough in this field either.
Sure, there are a few that did question this conventional wisdom. But the subject is basically under the radar for the masses – masses that are still intoxicated about God having created man after his own image, or about the importance of having a so called modern civilization, even if it destroys everybody’s habitat.
On websites dedicated to the environment, one can these days find new information, or “revised” assessment, of effect of an increasing human population on ecology. Folks are tiptoeing around the topic – too scared to call a spade a spade.
My thoughts would often stand at the edge of these dark and ominous issues that just would not go away. The state of the planet, the state of our society, the degenerating state of Santiniketan and the mindlessness of the Tagore chanting diaspora, the apathy of fellow humans, especially the selfish class that come to take advantage of the trappings of an advanced society, but refuse to give anything in return – these were depressing turns of events. They depress me. Yet I find myself unable to shut them out completely from my thinking. Thus, writing about it too provides an outlet.
I remember, three years ago, I was in Santiniketan during the annual fair in December, called Poush Mela. Originally this was conceptualized by Devendranath Tagore as a fair to let folks of different faith systems to exchange views and understand each other. This was later modified by his son Rabindranath Tagore to play a key role in revitalization of Bengal’s degenerating rural environment. This village fair was fine tuned to bring village goods, both material and cultural, to the urban clientele, and to raise awareness and appreciation of rural products, thus creating a market for it. This was supposed to provide a source of income for the craftsmen and artisans, and help sustain the lifestyle and creative vitality of the village, which would not just feed the cities with agricultural products, but also provide the source of its spiritual and artistic refinement.
Today’s December fair of Santiniketan, the so called Poush mela, is such a grotesque caricature that it may deserve a blog of its own – or rather, a book of its own. Urban products and services take precedence over rural products. Products from far off lands gets preference over local products. Rural craftsmanship and its support gets nothing more than lip service. Urbanized folks prepare “ethnic” looking goods, to sell to a new breed of ethno-conscious buying class. Babus come from afar, have a lot of fun, song and dance, take pictures, clap hands and cause a media blitz. The villager and his welfare, the original goal of the mela, is all but forgotten.
And the middle class Bengali crowd as well as the ex-student body, cannot get enough of this hideous caricature. There is no one, either in Santiniketan or outside it, to even think about the reason these events were designed. The decay of the original ideal is complete.
Anyhow, three years ago I was there. I remember being rather involved with a handful of friends in opening and running a stall at the Mela grounds, but one that did not sell anything. The stall provided quiet space ambience, free of charge, to help older generation ex-students to get to know the younger generation, as well as the locals of the area, both urban and rural. It broke from tradition and tried to do something different to facilitate human to human contact, hopefully removing cultural, generational and class barriers based on ignorance. That was to be our small contribution. We did not beg for donation and bore the cost ourselves.
But as it happened – there was another stall, in another location in the fair, that was promoted by ex-students. It presented attractive cultural items, music, speech and sold some books, paintings and such.
I was asked to take the microphone and speak something for ten minutes to the listening crowd. I started out, talking about our efforts to do something worthwhile and addressing some of the problems facing Santiniketan.
I was stopped in mid sentence, and was advised not to talk of any controversial issue. Either speak good and positive, or do not speak at all.
I stopped and stepped back.
I have never again gone to speak at that venue, and likely never shall. If self-criticism is undesirable in a society, that society is for sure going down the tube. That is how I see it.
So, on a personal level, it has been rather frustrating and disheartening for me to face the fact that my own kind almost never stands up for anything worthwhile. I got several painful lessons on this. There were effort to do something on the ground in and around Santiniketan, just to pay back for what it gave us, which was more than just education. It gave me my humanity and my world view. The effort required support and volunteers, to start a few good measures that were taken for granted in the times of Tagore, and were all but forgotten today. There were a few that were willing to spearhead the effort. But, such efforts thing fail, repeatedly, due to lack of sufficient conviction among those that benefitted from Santiniketan.
Back in Vancouver, I was once heavily involved in garnering support for a gathering in front of the library and a March to Indian Consul, protesting the imprisonment of Binayak Sen in Raipur India on framed up charges of sedition. We wanted to create pressure on the Government of India through a coordinated work in several cities across north America and Europe. I tried to energize my known friends to participate in that protest.
On both occasions, I was highly disappointed and frustrated by the apathy of most of the people I approached. Some even ridiculed us for our wasted efforts. A few Canadians, and even Americans that did not know much about Binayak Sen, still came forward and joined in the protest once told about the situation. But our fat brothers and sisters stayed home with their crackers and chai, and perhaps watched hindi soap opera or stayed at couch potato with a can of beer.
My disappointment in people around me has been long standing, steady, and by now, quite predictable.
But there are always exceptions – thank goodness for that. It is those exceptions that makes life worth living. Through that protest in Vancouver, I came to know folks I might not otherwise meet, and these have enriched my life. Through efforts in Santiniketan I have come to appreciate a handful for their dedication and integrity, and that too has been a source of nourishment for our psyche.
So, going back to those whose writings I admired, I could name a few.
One is Gwynne Dyer.

Gwynne Dyer

He is a Canadian born journalist and author. As far as I know, he had moved to UK and lives there. I came across one of his books, named Future Tense. It talked about the changing scene in the pecking order of the world of humans, and liked it. That prompted me to seek out and read another book – The Mess They Made. The second book dealt with the war in Iraq and the mess it created. Dyer influenced me in his journalism.
At the back of my consciousness, I suspect the influence of Rabindranath Tagore still remained rather strong. Tagore, born a century and half ago and who wrote mostly in a different language and followed a different linguistic style of the time, did write a lot and they influenced me – not just by the content of the writing, but because I could step past the writings and try to enter his own mind, and try to imagine what made him feel the way he did, so that he could write the way he wrote.
I am not talking about the music he created, or the dance drama he composed, or the novels he wrote. I am talking about the essays he wrote and speeches he prepared, and discussions he had, covering socio cultural issues, issues of race, culture, class, caste, race and religious differences, issues of poverty, and issue of social and economic exploitation and the role of creativity in opening up of the mind.
I could see that he was a thinking man and did not stop at conventional wisdom. Challenging conventional doctrine and orthodoxy was as innate to Tagore in his time as it is to me in mine.

Rabindranath Tagore

He had observed how Indian urban class exploited the rural landscape in the new westernized model of economy. He recognized how rural humanity had historically been the lifeblood of India and the source of all of India’s creative excellence, the fountainhead of its spirituality, music, literature, philosophy, and world view. He noted how this urban exploitation of villages follows an economic model that was counter-productive for India and also unsustainable. These realization was, in my book, very profound for a person that was known merely as a poet and a mystic.
He realized India would lose her unique power of independent thought and creativity unless the rural landscape reached an equitable and complimentary economic relationship with the consumer class of the cities. As long as the village was exploited by the city, like a babu and his servant, the general degradation of Indian society would continue, even if it appeared to be doing well superficially in the cities.
I find observations like this to be exceptionally profound for that time and place. This indicates a penetrating and contemplative sharp mind that was, compared to what he was surrounded by, mind boggling and generations ahead his time. Till date I am yet to find another person speak of it quite as penetratingly or eloquently, especially among the politicians of India or any other land anywhere.
He did not just rest on his laurels having written about all that observation. He made real effort, without Government backing and without him being rich any more, in the villages around Santiniketan. He tried to attract brilliant socially conscious people from around the world, to join him and study the details of the rural lifestyle and find ways to improve it – socially, economically, culturally, and find a formula, a software, that india could use in the future, to lay the foundation of a just society and an equitable human race at peace with itself and in harmony with its surroundings. India was to be a pathfinder for the rest of the world. This had been India’s historical contribution in the past, and was also India’s destiny in the future, Tagore felt. In this vision and his efforts at this field, he stood alone. Very few others could see thing this penetratingly. He was also among the very few, even today, to rate humanism higher than even nationalism.
His efforts to find means to redress the economic imbalance between the village and the city was, in my book, among his most profound gift to mankind. He created cultural functions, to influence the babu class of Bengali bhadraloks to open its eyes and to learn to recognize the villager as his equal, and as one that provides him with food and sustenance. He tried to teach the middle class that folk culture was source of all finer and world beating philosophies and arts of India. He tried to make the city dwelling babus to develop a degree of respect for the village, and to rally in its revival. He tried to get the urban self absorbed class to learn to value the produce of the rural artisans instead of hankering for goods made in European factories. He tried to have the so called educated class realize the weak foundation of their society and endeavor to address them at their root, and not just make symbolic gestures like denouncing the Union Jack. He tried to point out that exploitation by the British was only possible because India was exploited by Indians to start with.
He promoted an internationalism that allowed for free thoughts and cultural exchanges to percolate through and enrich mankind without having to deal with national barriers. His efforts were not restricted to India alone – but covered the east and the west. He did not condone either a hardcore nationalistic view that everything of India was great and foreign goods and ideas should be rejected outright, nor did he support a blind faith in western civilization to be the answer to everything, or that the east had no skeletons in the cupboard of its own.
Its unfortunate that these realizations, thoughts, views and efforts of Tagore are mostly forgotten by the chanting masses of Tagore worshippers as well as the media and the punditry. These were not properly understood even by folks that lived around him while he was alive. Today the Tagorean banyan tree provides shade for all. Hordes of pundits enjoy the shade and are making a career living off it and are still as blind as a bat.
So, there are original thinkers that wrote like Tagore did in his time and a few others that do so today. Then there are people that dirty their hands with real social work like Tagore, Gandhi and others did in their day, and others are doing today.
I wish I could be a little like them.

Tony Mitra

Exploring citizens duty on food security, environmental sustainability, covid and freedom issues.

Monthly Archives: March 2012

How green was my Facebook

At the waters edge

Is it always someone else’s fault ?

Autobiographic blues

Rice in the Vedas

When you are right and wrong at the same time

Eocene thermal maximum in a bowl of soup.

Storm Warning

Miguel, the Everglades, and Lovelock’s warning

Wish I could write like them