Eocene thermal maximum in a bowl of soup.

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“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

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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

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“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

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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.

India’s greedy social climbing brainy youths

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Debal Deb (https://www.facebook.com/debaldeb01) is a fantastic character. I can say that, although I never me the man. I came to know of him through Madhusree Mukherjee, who herself is no pushover.

I have been trying to find an opportunity to interview him on the phone for a podcast, but he is a busy man, and I am a working man and we are half a world apart in our clocks. So we have not managed it yet.

Meanwhile, I come to know of his posts as I befriended him in Facebook. One of the reasons I have not quit Facebook completely, is that people like Debal are not around, as far as I know, on google + or other places.

Anyhow, I find I share many of his views about the root of some of the social evils of our time, and share some of his frustration about the general apathy of India’s upwardly mobile youth. Living abroad for so long, I have also come to be frustrated by the same apathy that afflicts the earlier generation of expatriate Indians that have succeeded in finding a cozier niche for themselves in the west. At a professional level, they are all mostly successful and able to compete with the rest. But on the level of humanism, their apathy has been made glaringly clear to me in the past few years. I too was part of the scene myself. But, like all thinking people, we are apt to evolve with time, and be influenced occasionally by chance encounters that force us to peek outside of our comfort bubble.

I was influenced by a chance encounter with the daughter of a dead cousin brother. The cousin was from India. The wife was American. The daughter lived in a permaculture commune in California. She, her mother, and her baby came to spend a few days with us in Vancouver. That triggered a cascade of events. She linked me up with other Indians that were trying to do something meaningful in their spare time in helping out India through more sustainable projects as well as participating in many events that related not just to India, but to all people everywhere. She had a personality that was so different from the run of the mill Yuppy that it was like a breath of fresh air going through my house and my life. Anyhow, that link she provided helped me connect with a wider world of people. And so the story goes.

Now, back to Debal Deb – He wrote something that I found very apt and worth sharing, within Facebook. It attracted some good feedback, which resulted in more observations from people within my Facebook circle of friends. Debal Deb, in his busy life, managed to notice some of these points, and came back to respond.

The thread became important enough, in my mind, to deserve a more permanent spot.

I am going to copy it here, as a special blog post – including comments from others. I shall inform them of this decision within that thread itself.

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I wish our bloated Indian greedy youth, drunk with their corporate jobs, satisfied with their high salaries and perks, stop once to think about what their employer does to the farmers and the natural world, and consider doing something like this! That would be genuine patriotic act – more than watching Amir Khan on “Mangal Pandey” and “Lagaan”.
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Worth sharing.

Chirajyoti Deb, Chaitali Mitra and Nabanita Banerjee like this.

Ravi Dwivedi shared Debal Deb‘s status update.

Basu Tapas Very true indeed, they do not have the intelligence or far visions…

Sandeep Shukla One question: those Europeans who declined job offers from Dow etc..why did they. Even interview with those companies? The companies can’t be offering jobs unless they applied! Does that mean that they would have taken these job had better alternatives not come up?

Priyadarshi Datta It is not that. Sure money is great and making it is even better. Balance comes with old money. The next generation and so will the next. Hope it is not too late by then. Dwarakanath made money, son Debendranath spent it grandson, Rabindranath was the product of old money. So with the grandons of Rockefella. Hemendranath Datta lost it in one generation and the rest was struggle.

Tony Mitra

You have your unique way of looking at the world, Priyadarshi.
I might opine that the old money of Dwarkanath, or rather, of the early generations of the “Thakur” clan of Jorasanko area, were “new money” of the time when the British were establishing a permanent base in Bengal.
I would also suspect that this new money came at the expense of the poor Indians – in short, the new rich Indian class emerged as collaborators of the British, helping them establish a stronger foothold on the subcontinent.
Along with all that, came education and eventually, a sense of social justice. Thence, the generation of Dwarkanath Tagore, having been born into affluence and not having to spend all waking hours in a struggle to feed his family, those who were born in progressive families and with the right questioning mind could engage in issues of social relevance, and a sense of Bengali-ness – expanded as a part of Indian-ness, came up. Folks got engaged in raising awareness of the fact that they were not independent, and the British were, ultimately, unfair to the average Indian so that an Englishman on average to enjoy a higher lifestyle. It took a while to filter all this in, and eventually different people of the next generation addressed it in different ways – Meghnad Saha, or Surya Sen, or Gandhi, Tagore, or Aurobindo, Annie Bessant, Charles Andrews, or Subhash Bose – each of them addressed it in his own way, and not all of them were born Indians.
But, if you go further back – those that were rich and powerful even before the British arrived, themselves were collaborators of the ruling Mughal emperor, and were in turn selling the country for the benefit of the ruler, thus enriching himself in commission. The main difference might be that under the Mughal rule, a social mass consciousness of Indian-ness did not arise, perhaps because the Mughals were not filtering money out of India to enrich a foreign nation, which the British did. Or perhaps the reason was something else.Anyhow, Rabindranath Tagore was partly the genes and intellect he inherited, partly the influence he was under as a growing child in Jorasanko under intense nationalistic flavor of thetime and efforts at nation and society building efforts. Also, his world view was influenced by the extensive personal exchanges he had in his tours across the world in all continents, and his personal contact with the famous folks of the time, from writers and intellectuals, to politicians, religious heads, scientists and social reformers.
Rabindranath Tagore was influenced by many many factors.Todays upwardly mobile social climbers that came out of good colleges and, for example, work for exploitative corporations – are just a new version of the old “collaborator” class.The difference is – these kids grew up mostly in todays middle class families. These families, at least in India, got into the middle class slot only in the last two generations, more or less.
Goes to show – our middle class is probably an uncaring, selfish and blind class that helps nurture selfish individuals that will collaborate with institutions that hurt his nation – and yet live to brag about it.This topic is way too complex – but its good to air out views and think about it. I feel thankful that, just like lotus grows in filthy ponds, the earlier affluent generations did create Gandhi and Tagore and the rest of the reformers, same as this generation has created the Vandana Shiva, the Ravi Kuchimanchi and so many others, including Debal Deb.Whoops – long post.
Cheers.
Subin Das

Tonu, do you think you are going to influence present generation with your talks? If done; they are just going to turn around and say,” What about you all?” How and why did you do what you have done to achieve your goals? Now that all of you have settled to a comfortable life style with lots to spare, why ask us to sacrifice and rally for a cause which does not harm their means and ways to glory? Isn’t it we who should take some blame for such deplorable state which our younger generation have come to? Actually; it’s high time that we look back and think seriously what damages we have done to them, by our own activities.
Tony Mitra Subin.. I fault it not just to ourselves – but at our Bengali middle class mentality that started about a century ago.
Tony Mitra

A century ago, this was not perhaps a hot topic, but today, with awareness rising, there is not enough excuse for ignoring these issues. As to my generation – they are the biggest disappointment. There is one thing to say about the younger generation though – the older generation is going to die. The younger one will be left holding the basket. So, they will not have the luxury that their forefathers had, of kicking the can down the line. The shit is going to be falling on them.
Debal Deb

Tonu, you have very precisely painted the broad difference between the early middle class youth and today’s middle class. A significant section of the early middle-class youth was socially conscious, introspective, and participated, even took a lead role in, social reforms. In contrast, today’s “educated” and “enlightened” middle class don’t give a dam for the development refugees/ farmers’ suicides/ dowry deaths/ global warming/ industrial crimes … as long as their comfort level is not affected, and are only interested in new models of cell phones with 12 functions, of SUVs, of AC fittings in the flat, … and yes, skin creams to look fairer and fairer!
In response to Subin Das’s very apt point: Bribes and corruption were all the time – from the age of Mahabharata. But do we remember anyone of our generation who considered taking or giving bribes to ethically neutral? Those who gave or received bribes wanted to conceal the fact, in shame. Today, it’s a fact of life. I (and surely all of us) have seen many young men pressuring their parents to gather money in order to pay “facilitation money” to ensure his employment in a govt. job, and then preparing for “recovering” that money (and more) from the “clients” of the office, soon after getting the placement. “Kickbacks” and “facilitation money” are simple steps to one’s career building, and nobody cares to waste time in compunction or guilt. [Bribing is not confined to money alone, and may include renting out one’s girl friend, too, to please “the boss”.] In our generation people hated to marry their daughters to a policeman. Today matrimonial columns advertise “extra income” over salaries of the suitor.
In 2001, I was in California when 9/11 happened. I witnessed how thousands of American youth organised public seminars, rallies, demonstrations, street lectures, street shows etc. to denounce the Iraq war and accused the US govt for waging unjust wars in different parts of the world. University campuses at Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, and Davis became hot with students’ protests, and many professors participated too. In 2009, I witnessed, in Berkeley and other campuses of UC, massive student protests against privatisation of education and fee hike. The govt had to back out. In both these years, there was hardly any noticeable protest on those (and other) issues from the youth in India – especially eastern India. Rather, a majority of the middle-class youth accepted the moral superiority of the US to attack Iraq. Coke and Monsanto, to them are angel saviours of Indian uncivilsation.
One of my good friend, Saptarshi Biswas once served in Monsanto Co., (left some 4 years back), but never cared to know about the company’s crimes in India and other countries. He immersed himself rather in poetry (which I am not belittling, of course) thoughout his tenure with the company. He represents a highly intelligent young man, well versed in literature and information technology, but why did he not feel interested to know the company’s deeds, while the anti-Monsanto movement was simmering all over the world, and posted regularly on the Net? That’s Zeitgeist.
Debal Deb

‎@Sandeep Shukla: The individuals I cited – all are very well accomplished biotechnologists. Three of them were offered job by Syngenta and Monsanto Co. Two more, from Italy, were interviewed and offered jobs, but when they discovered the company’s profile, relinquished the offer (with no “better alternatives” in sight). I also cited a technologist from USA who got placement at Strategic Defence Intiative (SDI) = “Star War” project, but quit soon after she leafrned the objective of the project.
I understand quitting job for Indians always implies shifting for a better opportunity – unrelated to ethics or ideals. When I myself did the same in 1996, most people believed (some still do) that I got a better job in terms of higher emoluments & perks. This is the mindset I was referring to, in contrast with the youth in the West, who stormed in Genoa, Seattle and Cancun; who rose against Monsanto in Germany and France; who demanded closure of all nuke plants in France and Italy; who gathered in Barcelona to demand economic DeGrowth; who have abandoned techno-urban comforts and built sustainable communities in US west coast, Italy, Spain, Greece, Mexico… And I am a first-hand witness to all these movements led primarily by the youth. As a concerned Indian citizen, I always wonder: When will WE ever learn?
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Tony Mitra ‎Debal Deb – reading posts like this makes my day.

Reflections on an old Alumni meeting of my school

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Originally posted on Thurseday, February 12th, 2009

I decided to bring over some of my old posts sprinkled over the net here and there. One source is the iWeb blog site with Apple’s software and web space called শান্তিনিকেতনের খাতা (Santiniketaner Khata), which means diary from Santiniketan. Santiniketan, is my birth place. That is were I went to school. But the place is more than just that. It was where Rabindranath Tagore tried to make his dream come true, and leave his creative software. It was software that was designed to help future mankind – not just in and around Santiniketan, but around the world, along a path that would have been more creative, congenial, and harmonious for the people and the planet. Tagore had created a lot of poetry and literature, for which he was recognized. But the software was his best creation, and his best gift to mankind.

Unfortunately, the software today is virus afflicted and dying.

Some of my writings on Santiniketan, my birth place where I had five generations of exchange, starting with Tagore himself bringing one of my ancestors to the place to help in its inception and construction.

Its a sad story.

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Bubla has an expressive face, I came to the conclusion, after having seen a number of his pictures in my collection from the last Poush Mela. Faces float across our screen as I flip through my photo folder labelled “Santiniketan 08-12”.

I sometimes go back to a handful of these pictures and look at them again. They bring a smile. That expression of Uma di, intently listening to Somenda speak at the Asramik Sangha, or Baka da, with his sun glasses, that remind me of the movie “of all the President’s men”.

Then there is Bubla with his wiinter cap, and the wild haired Benuda. They all represent faces, and bring back the flavor, of Santiniketan. Benuda, at certain angles, remind me of his father, Bodo Daktar babu. I remember running about on our bed at Ratan Palli, and bodo Daktar babu trying to catch me. The issue was some vaccination, which I was unwilling to take, and he was determined to administer.

It was mid morning in Amra Kunja. The sun filtered through the canopy and struck the ground at a slant, coming from the north east. There were gigantic looking box shape speakers erected all around us.

They looked odd and intrusive, loud and somehow faintly offensive. They tried to pull me away from the Amra Kunja, back into the mechanical and noisy world that I had hoped to leave behind, to attend the Asramik Sabha. as the congregation was small, and every one was close to each other,

I wondered if there was a need for those massive speakers.

I remember Alo di and a few others mention that some of the seniors had a hearing problem, and wondered if some

kind of speaker system could also be used during the general discussion. It did occur to me that, instead of speakers, one might consider providing some of the new generation hearing aid devices, where the microphone is a small hand held piece of plastic the size of a box of matches, with matching radio operated speakers that fit the ears of individual listeners that need them.

This would make them unobtrusive, and same time spare the others from feeling an oppressive presence of huge speakers and the corresponding noise. In the adjacent ground, more loud speakers boomed, and we were forced to hear the preparations for the Alumni Association meeting. Somehow, I could not bring myself to appreciate the loud speakers.

Well, I should write up some more in the next few days… even include some of the topics of discussion. But then, I already put all that up, from the recording, on a Podcast. But, as they say, a picture is worth a thousand words.

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Well, that was what I had written in Fab 2009 about a meeting in December 2008. But, in this case neither a picture is worth a thousand words, not any number of words is worth anything.
The slow decline of Tagore’s influence can be seen from observing the effectiveness of meetings such as these.
The Alumni of the University, that are alive today, should perhaps go over a hundred thousand individuals. But the number of people that attended were barely thirty. Even the number of ex-students living or present in Santiniketan would have been several times larger than the attendees.
So, first of all – the group hardly represents the ex-students. More importantly, it does not seem to hold much of an attraction in the minds of the ex-students. It might be here that its greatest failure lies.
But that is not all. This meeting is supposed to be serious, to chalk out discuss what the alumni did in the previous year and what it might do in the year ahead. NO serious analysis was made of what was to be the original purpose of this Alumni association, and if that purpose was being fulfilled. There was no serious discussion of what should now be the real charter of the group. The name of the group was Asramik Sangha, or an association of people that are Asramiks, meaning people who had spent time in the Asram – i.e. exstudents. It could, in essence also include teachers and others that spent time in the Asram – but I shall not get into such finer points.
There were discussions of parallel association, called in fact the Alumni Association – an English name for basically the same thing. This was required by the Government of India where it funded any University. The University was to have this association and it was to elect members annually. And the executive board of the University, should have two elected members from this Alumni Association. The original “Asramik Sangha” created by Tagore himself at a time when the country was ruled by the British and there was no funding by any Government. The new “Alumni Association” was a requirement by the Government when it decided to fund the University, a few years after India got independence and a decade after Tagore’s death.
The two parallel bodies where to be merged into one. That did not happen.
Its a long story.
But, the main thing is – whatever was discussed in this miniature meeting of the Asramik Sangha, nothing much came out of it. Most of the participants were old folks. Some have passed away. The rest mostly do not remember what was discussed. There is no follow up of any kind. We do not receive any notice or a request or any other kind of information regarding any kind of follow up.
These meetings are self contained cocoons that, like fossilized bones, exist only as a reminder of a past existence, but otherwise having no influence on the present or the future.
Asramik Sangha has become an annual get together place for a few old folks reminiscing about the good old days that are fast vanishing.
It already behaves like a fossil.

Whose fault is it – (Tagore’s fading influence)

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(Moved from an older blog of the past)

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.

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

Living in a ten percent world

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News should be a lot easier to get today from mass communication, multiple channels on the TV and endless sources on the internet. Right? Wrong.
It has never been more difficult.
TV is the last place I can find meaningful news these days. News channels are not exactly news channels – they are corporate owned TV channels designed to get a generation of potential couch potatoes hooked to it so the channel gets higher ratings, and therefore, higher revenue through advertisements of insignificant junk. The economic driving force – the prime mover – is junk goods that the industry aims to dump on the drugged public. That is what drives most channels including the news channels. They do not search out news that should be relevant for humans, or the planet. They manufacture news when needed, only to fuel “hot topics” of useless trivia.

The selfish gene – by Richard Dawkins

I stopped watching TV a long time ago. A movie, of whichever country, could be somewhat better. It does not pretend to give you news and it does not contain the irritating insertion of unwanted advertisements, and it provides a make belief feel good story.

But that is only for entertainment and not for acquiring news. Why do I need news in the first place? I need it because, at least to me, it feels important to be aware of what is going on around me in this universe. I feel connected when I can relate to the events that happens around, which may affect not just my life, but even the life of other humans, other vertebrates, other multi-cellular organisms, or the landscape or the biosphere. I am part of the whole. Therefore, I wish to know about the whole.

So, if one does not watch TV any more, what then?
Newspapers ? Forget it.
The days of independent newspapers are over. All the major papers across the nation and across the continents are owned by a handful of corporations. News through the newspaper is centrally controlled by profit generating market oriented thinking. News is not doled out to educate the reader. It is a commodity sold to make profit. If the news sells, it is printable. If it does not sell, it is not news.

Therefore, in Canada, the disenfranchisement of the African bushman tribe, and their decline, starvation and possible extinction is not a salable news. But, how fat an average American junk food eating woman is, is a salable news.

Or, how Israel is being threatened by Iranian designs of possibly wanting to develop a nuclear deterrent of their own, and therefore why Iran is asking to be bombed – is salable news.

Why Canadians continue to go to Mexico for vacation, while there is so much of violence and illegal drug dealing, is salable news.

Try to find out an analysis of the plight of the blackfeet Indians straddling USA and Canada, or the rate at which first nation young women are being lured into substance abuse – you will have a hard time finding this news on local papers. More importantly, you will not find average Canadians getting excited and raising this topic to a major national level debate. A first nation teenage mother selling its baby in order to buy the next round of drug is not popular news. Therefore, this news does not sell. Therefore, it is absent from newspapers.

Take the current crop of news on the mainstream media. The list may go like this:

More hiring in USA but unemployed rate remains unchanged. This is typical junk news and irrelevant. There is no economic recovery. The root cause of the economic meltdown is never discussed seriously. Therefore, what constitutes a meaningful step towards correcting the economic downturn is left vague. And then this kind of snippet news is fed like daily snacks to a group of fish in an aquarium.
A to Z guide to March madness – all about college basketball. Hardly an earth shattering news – but the news outlet decides to call it March madness

A documentary detailing the brutality of Ugandan warlord Joseph Kony has gone viral on social media (independent or alternative news circles). It has 50 million hits in a few days. It has increased groundswell of public awareness and possible pressure for Government involvement in his capture. A month ago, nobody knew of Joseph Kony. Today, he may be among the most wanted man. This is a good example of news coming to mainstream through the back door – after everybody already knows about it and after it has already become a major public debate.

Europe welcomes huge Greek debt deal – another piece of junk news that does not tackle root issues, and only offers bogus surface views.

High profile attorney calls for prosecution of Rush Limbaugh – another example of junk news.

Jennifer Aniston wears leather leggings for Joe Leno – huh ?

So, where does one go?

Clearly, the choices, at the moment, seem to be what is known as alternate sources. Some call it counter-current. I suppose it means counter to the current trend.
Unfortunately, there may not be a single source that covers relevant topics of all kinds from all corners. One needs to keep track of a number of sources – web sites that cater to single items – for example the plight of some indigenous people somewhere, or one organization engaged in one social activity at one location.
There may be a million such small sources. They are not even listed properly in one location and circulated widely. One may never even know of the existence of one such source tucked away somewhere.
One way to describe the current state of affairs may be – information overload.
Our senses are dulled by repeated bombardment of junk news from all directions. The brain feels stuffed by it. We feel sated.  Our appetite for searching out new news is therefore kept perpetually at a reduced level. We are living not just on junk food, but also on junk news.

Geology of British Columbia

If a person is still desirous of finding independent real news, one can of course search through alternate channels, such as google search. Unfortunately, even that might be filtering some of the news out, due to pressure from one authority or another. Recently, even the Government of India summoned google and Facebook for example, to demand that they filter out what the Government perceives as undue criticism of its conduct. The Government probably calls them unfair and derogatory remarks by individuals. You might call them free speech. Add to all this the fact that ‘terrorism’ looms large in our collective psyche, thanks to incessant harping of this issue over the last decade, as if man only invented terrorism in the year 2002 and before that, only honey and milk was falling from the skyBut, going back to the topic – where can you search out proper news? There may not be any easy solution any more. But there are alternatives.
One could begin to search out like minded folks as a start, and try to hang out with them, in real life, as well as virtually. They might lead you to the water. There are hangouts around, and most are open to public. Some are simply blogs which you can read and comment on. Some are hangouts you create and invite like minded folks to join in. Then there are NGOs, or non-Government organizations that are engaged in good work.
I picked up Vandana Shiva’s case that way, and ended up speaking with her once on her work. I came to know Association of India’s Development that way. I came to know of Madhusree Mukherjee because her book on Churchill was available as an audio book. I spoke with her, and through her, I learned about Debal Deb and Felix Padel.
I searched out themes and subjects within google plus and begin to follow interesting people that post there on say, anthropology, climate change, or sustainability. Sometimes I comment on some of their posts. Sometimes, they add me to their circle. Gradually, you create an ambience around with content of your own choice. You create a newsfield that filters out junk and lets in the type of information you consider worthwhile.

Genome – by Matt Ridley

So, what are the results, in my particular lifeWell, on a scale of one to hundred, if I have a hundred persons in my virtual world as friends, I still have ninety that are acquaintances from personal contact. They include people I know from childhood or met up somewhere and stuck a friendship at that time. They include relatives. They moved from my real world, to my virtual one.
But this ninety percent do not supply me with news or activity that so attracts me. They do not really share my interest, nor my world view. This is where the remaining ten percent comes in.
In a way, my world of news could still be awash with people that do not stimulus to my crave for information. They are there to anchor me to my physical past and to send personal tidbits time to time – like news about a relative getting married.
It is the rest ten percent that provide the chemistry and the wavelength in the information that quenches my virtual thirst. As to inspiration, this ten percent is also a source, but not the only source. There are more sources of inspiration than just people on my social network. Writers that wrote books that enlighten and inspire me are one. People that speak on U tube or podcast, or  write blogs, or articles on magazines, and still others. People I might meet by chance somewhere who may not be well known, but whose perception, observation or comments profoundly affect me – are the random sources.
So, in a way, I live among the 90 but search out the 10. It is almost like what Tagore wrote a century ago – সব ঠাঁই মোর ঘর আছে আমি সেই ঘর মরি খুঁজিয়া।
But wait – I did mention eBooks, audio books and the Gutenberg project, did I not? Electronic publishing, bot on written format and spoken one, had exploded on us. Without it, I doubt I would have had the time to read, for example, Madhusree Mukherjee’s book on Churchill’s action and inaction during the Bengal famine of 1943. I would not have been able to reread the extensive writings of Charles Darwin on evolution of the animal kingdom and about the descent of man. I would have left Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Emil Zola, Mark Twain and a lot of others alone simply because I did not have the time.
With audio books, I found something constructive to engage in while driving to work and driving back home, five times a week. Turnover of book I read ( or listened to) every month increased dramatically. And since I was not particularly fond of fiction, my percentage of non-fiction reading shot up. These books, to me, were pure knowledge – or news at a different level.
Take the Indo-Aryan controversy. A very fat recent publication, covering both sides of the argument that Aryan people might not have invaded India four or five thousand years ago but instead might have been of indigenous stock. Covering more than a dozen world renowned experts on the topic, both for and against the Aryan invasion theory, both Indian born and non-Indian – is an exhaustive document meant for the scholars and professionals on the subject, but also for serious amateurs. I have an eBook version of it that takes no space other than my iPad, which also holds a hundred other such books. It is only about 8mm thick, or one third of an inch thick. It helps me refer to specific chapters and articles to it at almost any time, and it includes all the photographs, sketches and other tabulated data, apart form textual matter. I might not have been able to refer to it so often and so easily, had I not the eBook version along with the printed one.
My interest in human genome was perhaps first stoked by George Gamow and Isaac Asimov. But my reading of the book “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins had a profound effect on my understanding of where I came from. It, along with further interaction with people involved on the subject resulted in me sending my tissue samples to an US Genetic lab for analysis of my own genes to trace paternal and maternal ancestry, which in turn further reshaped by idea of where I came from and how.
More recent audio books on the human genome, covering chapter by chapter explanation of each of the 23 pairs of chromosomes has enriched my understanding of the living blueprint of not just ourselves, but the entire history of the evolving design, from the simplest to the most complex, contained within ourselves.
Online publishing of books through electronic media has changed so much in the last decade that I am even reading a book circulated free of charge about how to publish your own book online without much of a cost and have the option of a potential reader simply buying the eBook by downloading it, or to have a print-on-demand function where the store will only print a book when order for same is received. The guide book that explains all this, in 143 pages – is free of charge. I only read it at lunch breaks in office, and have covered the first 18 pages of it.
I am also reading about the 10,000 year explosion, a book that explains how the advent of civilization and its complexity has reportedly accelerated the genetic code building in humans in the past 10,000 years. How blue eyes, or lactose tolerance, are both a very very recent development in humans, and how that might have come around.

10,000 year explosion, by Cochran & Harpending

Since I got interested in the genetics of the living and the extinct world, I started reading another eBook named The Molecule Hunt – Archaeology and the search for ancient DNA. On my iPad, it is a 723 page document and I am now on page 298.
Take the book on British Columbian Geology. It taught me why Burgess Shale is on top of a mountain in British Columbia and yet provides the worlds best fossil bed for the earliest of life forms that happened in shallow tropical seas at the equator in the Cambrian period, more than 500 million years ago.
All this information, to me, is variations of news. To me news is description of a combination of events that happen at the present and events that happened in the past, providing a connection and a trend. It proves the link between now and then. Projected properly, in could try to predict what might happen in the future.
So, my ten percent world is not quite empty, nor is it drab and uninteresting. It has texture, shape and colors. It is a kaleidoscope that covers the length and breadth of my interests and concerns. It keeps my brain ticking away. As a result of this ten percent, my outlook to life is forever shifting and turning and fine tuning itself. It connects me with the rest of the whole.

It balances out my other 90 percent.

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Suta at the edge of the grasslands

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Suta held her baby at her waist and glanced north. A grey blue sky was interrupted by low hills and the brown earth of an arid land without much vegetation. Ahead of her, to the north east, lay the end of a huge fresh water lake.

By now, Suta knew the difference between a fresh water lake, and the ocean. You could not drink the ocean water, but could eat fish that lived there. A fresh water lake had drinking water she could carry with her.

The planet was gripped by the last of the ice age. It would remain thus for many more centuries.  The time frame was about ten thousand years ago.

To the south of the lake was the beginning of an unending stretch of undulating land of lush grass. It was a scene Suta had never seen before. As far as her eye could see, it was just green and more green.

And the land was teeming with animals. She could see the slow moving dark dots on the savannah. It was that land, and the game, that proved to be such an attraction to her clan. It was into this land that they wished to enter. But it was still a day’s walk away, and downhill.

Twice before they had tried to enter this land of the endless greens, and twice they were attacked by other humans, driving them away. Their clan had lost its old leader and two younger men. One woman and child were abducted, and another child was killed, stricken by a thrown rock.

They were recuperating and regrouping.

They were not hungry, since rabbits could be trapped and firewood was available. They had succeeded in carrying the smoldering fire, they they could cook even when it rained.

But they knew, come winter, food will get scarce and it will get a lot colder. There were not good caves in the area as shelter. They needed to go through the mountain pass into the green savannah, or they would die. There was no going back either, since the land they left behind, was so difficult to live through in the winter. Their only good route lay ahead of them – and roving bands of spear and rock throwing bearded men has successfully repulsed them twice already, with almost no casualty to themselves.

The old leader was dead. He had held the small clan together through many a winter and helped them move through difficult land for the past ten years. But now he lay in the open hill side, his skull cracked open, and how soon the vultures arrived to tear into his flesh. As it grew darker, they kept lit a fire in their camp behind a few boulders and fed wood into It all night, to keep animals away. But she had seen, peering above the boulder, scanning the land downhill from her, how the leopards had come sniffing around at the carcass, as had the hyena and the jackals. Before it got fully dark, there would be little of the man left at the spot where he fell. Animals will have scattered his bones right across the land.

Moy, the younger man still left able bodied, had tried to take control of the group. Suta had lost her man a winter ago, when he got progressively sick and could not keep up with them any more. Their clan left him to die on a hill top. She too had to leave him, or else she would not only die herself, but also cause the death of their child.

Suta had seen enough death to have a clear idea of what it was, and her sense of self preservation was less fierce than her sense to save her bright eyed child. She would do anything, even leave her sick man, or face death herself, just to make sure the child survives.

 She would have liked a son, since she lost her son five winters ago to a lion. But a son had not come so far. She got a daughter instead, bright eyed and always laughing. Suta loved the child. And now, she was without a man.

Moy liked her, but he had his own women, two of them. Suta did not feel like competing with those women. Besides, the two women had four kids between them. Too many. Suta preferred, for now, to stay by herself without a man, and help the clan in preparing food. She knew how to skin an animal and how to roast it without wasting fuel.

Suta had come back into the circle of her clan members, holding the child by her hand. She was five years old. Another five years and she would be grown up enough to fend for herself. Suta could count easily upto ten and more, mostly using one of her fingers  starting with right hand. All her fingers were used up by the time she reached ten. Any number more than that, and she used her toes, though it got difficult to keep track beyond ten. She knew that her child was five, and that in another five she will have grown up. Suta’s task was to see that she stayed alive and healthy till then.

They had skinned two rabbits, two dead birds, some worms and a few shrub berries. Since they still did not have much water, she had roasted the meat and left the worms and seeds to be eaten raw. They had eaten their meal just before dark. Half the clan was sleeping. The others kept guard.

Suta helped her child into her grass bed, and covered her up with the fox skin quilt. She had herself stitched the piece using mostly fox hide, but also pieces of a porcupine and a a river otter that they had found dead when they last crossed a river many moons ago.  She was not just a good cook skinner of animals and a good cook, but also good in stitching leather using a bone needle and rabbit sinew as chord. She was already teaching her child those essential skills.

Her thoughts were jolted by a sudden shrill scream. Everyone jumped up. Suta’s child cried out in terror. They had heard that sound before. Soon, it was accompanied by the thumping noises. Everyone scampered away from the camp and huddled behind the large boulders.

The thumping grew louder, along with the unearthly screams that tore into the night. A herd of Mastodons came charging down from the western highlands – either heading for the lake for a drink or for the lush vegetation on the lake shore. Their dark sloping shapes and the domed heads outlined against the glow on the western horizon. Huge beasts, many times the numbers that Suta could count quickly on the fingers of her hands thumped their way past the huddled clan. They had seen mastodons being hunted by men, but that was in different terrain and in different arrangements – many men against a single sick or old animal. This herd was so large, it would trample an entire clan if annoyed.

The herd thundered past them, screaming and squealing, ignoring the huddling group of less than a dozen humans. There was a commotion at the waters edge. And now it became clear

Moy, who was watching the scene and also the south eastern opening into the green lands farther afield, got an idea. This unearthly noise and intimidation was aimed at driving away other animals at the shallow end of the lake. The giant animals needed the waterfront theatre to itself.

However, this frightening scene is likely to drive away the roving bands of raiders at the mountain pass to the south east. Herd mastodons were known to be wary of humans holding spears – and are as apt to charge at them as other animals by the water.

So, Moy stood atop a boulder and peered into the darkening scene. Sure enough, the herd branched into two. One part fanned out towards the lake end. It was the smaller section of the herd. They scattered all the animals from the water.

The larger group, meanwhile turned southward and charged down the sloping mountain pass into the distant savannah. Moy was now sure. The intension was to clear the approaches to the lake of the spear wielding humans. This would be a good opportunity for sneaking into the grassy plains. It had to be done wile the Mastodons were still present, so the plainsmen would be missing. And it had to be done stealthily, so the Mastodons did not get annoyed by Moy and his team.

He turned to his gang and hissed softly under his breath, signaling an invitation for them to get closer. He would explain it to them, half in simple words and half is sign language. They would bid their time till it was a bit darker, and then slip out and sneak into the grasslands – crouching or slithering on their belly if need be, and they would get to the open grounds past the narrow mountain pass before dawn. Once into the endless open savannah, there would be ample space to lose themselves from attackers. They would also keep their eyes open and pick up any weapon they find on their way through the pass. They needed at least two more good stone tip wooden spears and a few hand axes.

Suta packed her small belongings into the leather pouch and kept her daughter sleeping. The child will be women up at the last moment and the quilt will be packed in. She had her stick, her cutting flint blade and her stone ball. She had the poison seeds in her pouch. She had the dried jerky and smoked rabbit wrapped in leaf, and she had half a gourd of water. She would have liked it full, but there was water, plenty of it, ahead and to the side of them. The lake itself was massive and one would take more than a summer and a winter to walk around it.

She was ready.

—————————–

 Tony sat back and contemplated the scene he had just created. He was not fully satisfied. Firstly, he was tempted to use the wooly mammoth instead of the mastodon. They were related, but the mammoth was, after all, a mammoth – the king of the land. But the problem was, Tony was not sure of its exact range, and the exact time when it went extinct in different parts of the world. It was the most cold adapted of the ice age pachyderms. He knew of the possibility that human hunters might have been at least partly or largely responsible for the extinction of these megafauna.

So, was it normal to expect a large herd of forty or fifty mammoths to be present so far south and out of the ice belt? They were essentially around the present day northern Iran near the southern shores of Caspian Sea. To the east and south of them was the immense stretch of grassy well watered savannah, and the land of a high biomass of vegetation and animals – all kinds of food source for humans. It was to be also a land of relatively high human population, part of which was beginning to experiment with marginal and seasonal agriculture here and there. The  Aurochs was about to be domesticated, into future cattle, as was jungle foul, into chicken.

Tony thought that a Mastodon, even if less dramatic, might be more plausible in the ice free lands, or the early ancestors of todays Asiatic or African elephants. He chose the Mastodon because, again, it had the magic of an extinct animal, never to come back again.

The thing is, he had not studied the topography, geography, flora and fauna of the last phase of the last ice age enough to be able to describe the land, its people, its climate and ints animals well enough to weave a serious story. And yet, he knew, that his ancestors were there – he inherited their faint footsteps through those lands in those times.

And he wanted that woman into the story.

120 pages for a failed civilization

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Tonu had written nearly two hundred pages of the novel, when he got a block. It was less of a writers block, and more of a disenchantment with the lack of a plot. It had the same basic characters – Neil the expatriate Indian living in British Columbia, Mabel the teenage turned twenty something that still nursed a crush on Neil. Karen the neighborly single mother binging up a daughter. Added to this basic mix was Mabel’s relatives, and Neil’s sorrow at losing his parents back in India recently.

But he thought the story was going nowhere without a strong plot, and he could not think of a plot that had some drama.

Neighbourhood snowscape

So, Tonu stopped writing it and took a month to settle himself. That was in December. He spent most of it traveling around in British Columbia, Yukon, Northwest Territories, and south east in Washington state, Idaho, Montana and Wyoming. He covered a lot of land all by himself.

Returning back, he took an hour to select a domain for himself and install the package for a suitable blog software. By the end of the day, he was off and running.

This time, instead of writing continuously on a story, he wrote independent blogs, a few pages at a time. Some of them would relate to the story, or about the writing of the story. Others reflected his thoughts of the moment, about anything.

Within the story, he had brought in a ten thousand year old perceived ancestor, as well as prehistoric animals.

Outside his window, he could see a world that was dusted by snow. It felt good. Perhaps this was the last century one would see snow in these latitudes. Folks were talking about a general 2 degree rise in world temperature, but the change was not supposed to be uniform. Climate uncertainty is one of the suspected outcomes, the other being a rising sea level as more of the ice locked on land as glaciers melt and reach the ocean.

Plastic in the ocean and inside stomachs of dead baby albatrosses generated some discussion on Facebook. He initially suspected that the pictures might be doctored. But as it turned out, they were not. There was a dead zone in the pacific ocean where floating junk collected and turned the open ocean into a plastic garbage dump of humongous size.

He even had a sample of an eBook on his iPad called Plastic Ocean, by Capt Charles Moore with Cassandra Phillips. It described how a sea captain’s chance discovery launched a determined quest to save the oceans. The eBook cost $13.99 on the iTunes book store. Tonu had a free sample version that contained 47 pages only.

Places where floating junk collected are called ocean gyre. It is where surface ocean currents are circular, and may be combined with large wind movements. These seem to help concentrate floating debri. It is in one of these gyres that a plastic oceans is being born, collecting huge quantities of floating junk, thanks to man.

Five major gyres on the planets oceans are the North and South Atlantic, the north and south pacific and the Indian ocean gyre. And it is the north Pacific Gyre, between the American west coast and Asia, that the greatest and growing floating dump exists.

Madhusree had put up a picture of a dead albatross, which I mistook for a gull, with loads of plastic pieces in its stomach. But I had originally thought the picture was doctored. It did not look natural. However, I was mistaken.

The dead bird is a powerful symbol, but the root issue is far more relevant, and dangerous. Plastic has been invented more or less in our generation. And in one generation, it has succeeded it really screwing up the world.

That too, was just one symbol out of many that directly pointed to the unholy influence of man, the creature supposedly created by God after His own image, that turns out to be the destroyer of environment and habitation.

Tonu thought if man the destroyer of environment was a powerful enough theme to provide an angle in the story, with some relevance in the life and times of Neil, the thirty something bachelor from India coping with his hormones in Canada.

He had more sample eBooks on his iPad that awaited his decision if he wanted to purchase them. One such eBook was named “The 10,000 Year Explosion”. This was a book that explored how the last ten millennia might have accelerated human genetic evolution, and gave rise to lactose tolerance, blue eyes, and many other traits by which one could trace one’s ethnic footprints from the recent past, spanning the last ten thousand years when human civilization got off the ground. The book was written by Greg Cochran and Henry Harpending, and cost about 21 dollars. It was not cheap.

Sample eBooks on my iPad

Then there was a book by Robert Sapolsky that he was looking at as well. It was named A Primate’s Memoir.

But books aside, there was this situation with the world, where all news snippets could be woven into a pattern, a quilt with a patchwork, and a general picture would begin to emerge.

Tonu was not a bitter person by nature, neither apathetic. But he often felt that human civilization itself was a self fulfilling evil omen. The very thought of human endeavor, and his “god given” right or penchant for wanting to better his life perpetually, and seeking weekly forgiveness of his sins, was disastrous for the planet and its inhabitants, including fellow humans. Worse, he did not even know what sin was being committed.

This feeling got firmer and firmer in his mind, as time moved on. Even so as he saw that the world was not ready or interested to confront the issue at this level, or to dig deeper to find roots of any issue if that makes supporting their their difficult.

Claiming that there were far too many humans for the planet was a non-starter. Humans had a God given right to multiply, at whatever expense. They constituted the market size, for merchandise and for faith. Everyone wants a growing market, so every vendor can grow in it.

But, if issues reach a precipice, population might begin to adjust itself through series of mass catastrophe, before Gaia had her revenge and the animal kingdom and human civilization reach a sort of sustaining equilibrium with zero market growth year upon year.

That equilibrium, to Tonu, appeared elusive in the short term. There appeared insufficient incentive for man to restrict his greed. And since Man was not homogenous, and one segment was willing to expand its lifestyle at the cost of another, one could in some limited measure, find himself progressing, and thus be interested to continue the status quo, except it was not a status quo but a steady downward slide.

Long term, he had no illusion that he did not have the vision. Looking back into history and comparing the past with the present, he could easily see that people have mostly not been able to predict the future, even short term, that accurately. Every theory is considered ironclad, till it fails. After that, the theory is bust, and another new one replaces it, again based on that failed philosophy of perpetual growth machine.

Most glaring failure of man was to form a global Governance system, even after realizing that the planet was one and humans, despite their differences, were now more a global community that ideally should be subject to the same rule, and same governance across itself. This had not happened, allowing exploitation of one group by another – the same story that started many civilizations ago, and continues to date.

Tonu checked up the page count.

Hmm.. It was past 120 already.

He had typed almost four pages of nothing – not a damn thing. At the end of it, he came back to square one – a fundamental question of where he came from, how, and why. This was a question, he had no doubt, people before him have asked, all the way back to where man had a brain and thought capacity complex enough to ask that question. That ice age ancestor of his likely asked the same question to an un-responsive gray sky over central Asian steppes.

Add to that the realization that not just Tonu, or his ice age ancestor, but the entire human species was wasting time as well as wasting the planet.

So much for writing about a notional Indian trying to settle in Canada.