Thursday, September 26, 2019

A confession

I have been thinking about Greta Thunberg a lot of late. Predictably so. She has been all over the news. Anyway, this post isn’t about her or what she is doing. I don’t care whether she is a child actor, or has been instigated by certain elements, or whatever. She has been talking about a burning issue that a lot of eminent scientists and environmentalists have been drawing our attention to, for years. And she has been phenomenally more successful than all those eminent adults, even if it means attracting vitriolic comments from full grown adults, and trolling from none other than the POTUS

This post is about me and my own relationship with climate change. I know climate change is real, because I have seen my hometown Chennai drowning in 2015, I have seen my lovetown Mumbai witness increasingly erratic weather and monsoons. I worry about climate change incessantly. But I don’t care enough to do anything about it. In that way, I am a bit like Anushka Sharma, at my own level. 

I don’t use public transport, I like disposables, I enjoy AC, I love gadgets, I used to be a flying consultant. I haven’t done a single thing that contributes positively to the environment. Except I am not a flying consultant anymore. And I have always been a vegetarian. Those two aren’t conscious choices for the sake of the environment, so nay! No brownie points there. 

When a 16 year old takes a stance like this and travels across the sea from Sweden to UN, it takes tremendous effort and focus. When I can do 1/1000th of that change to my life, I will be in a marginally better position to comment on Greta Thunberg. And meanwhile, I am going to work hard to see what’s that one change I can make to my own life that will make me feel like I have taken a step in the right direction as far as the environment is concerned.

While I am at it, I will sit back and enjoy how Greta is taking on the biggest troll in the world

Saturday, September 07, 2019

Make hay while the rain pours

Mumbai is the new Cherrapunji, wet all through the year, the rate at which it is going. Cherrapunji, when I last visited last (a decade ago), was bone dry, like the Chennai of those years. Chennai, of course, is the new Mumbai, with every year’s flood besting the previous ones. Global warming has come one full cycle. Or, as Trump would say, it is the coldest, bestest rainy season ever, why are people rambling about ‘warming’?


You can read the entire article here.

Sunday, September 01, 2019

In a lifetime...

I was 17 when I was molested for the first time. It was a public molestation, in a crowded bus, that was ferrying me from the railway station (I took a train back from college) to a point closer home.

You can read the entire article here.