A heavy diagnosis

 The evening hangs heavy. A curtain of unseen rain, a parody of a meaningful metaphor.

 

I heard news that my childhood friend has been diagnosed with colon cancer, final stage. A friend with whom I shared poverty, poor infrastructure, mediocre schooling, and passionate cricket matches. A friend with whom I barely stayed in touch over the years. A friend who kept track of birthdays and death anniversaries like a modern-day Chitrakoot.

 The first thing that happened upon hearing the news - when he is still alive - is that I made it about myself. He is my age, belongs to my world, and this news was meant to cast a shadow in my own existence, obviously.

We do have narcissism in our blood, all of us. Maybe we don't. Maybe it's just me. Why else would I make his diagnosis about myself?

 When the fog of the news shifted from blinding to barely decipherable, I remembered the late night sessions in the terrace of Bldg No 8, Subash Nagar. We had graduated from crowd-funding rubber cricket balls to crowd-funding cheap whiskey. OC. Officers' Choice, 10 rupees per quarter. Each person getting a thimble of the sacred poison, imagining a high. The real high came from my friend's singing. In a parallel universe, he wouldn't have been a failed Diploma Engineer-cum-successful SME entrepreneur. In that universe, he would be singing new tunes alongside the modern greats of the industry. Till date, I cannot hear a Kishore Kumar or Manna Dey song without also hearing his own throat signature. 

There are those who sound good after a few drinks. My friend has sounded great when both he and the audience was sober. He was the lead singer of a frigging band when even South Bombay kids of the city didn't have aspirations of a band. A Chembur lad with poise and talent could dream big when dreaming big was not fashionable. 

When I asked him why he decided to acquire a Diploma in Engineering - a pursuit that was highly unsuitable for him - he gave me Bollywood gyan. He recalled a movie in which Pran, the father, is nonchalant when his daughter says she wants to introduce a guy. This is how the dialogue goes:

"Ladka kartha kya hai?"

"Gaatha hai."

"Beti, gaatha tho mein bhi hoon. Lekin woh kartha kya hai?"

My friend spoke about the impact this exchange left on him. He was then onwards on a path to mediocrity. I daresay he converted himself into a winner with his pursuits. Raised a family, made money... found the respect of society.

He became good. I know that he was capable of greatness. A greatness that could have been. Almost. There is many a slip between the cup and the throat.

 I still hold on to hope that he will emerge stronger from his diagnosis. That there is still an epilogue of this story that is waiting to be written.

At least I am no longer making this news about myself.  

Shall we punch UP, punch HARD?

 Consider the parable of the starfish. In it, starfish get stranded on a seashore. To prevent them from getting bleached by the sun, a young woman starts picking up the starfish one by one and throwing them back into the ocean. A cynical onlooker points out the countless starfish on the seashore and says, “You cannot possibly make a difference!” The defiant young girl picks another starfish and flings it back into the water, saying, “Well, I made a difference to that one!” This story wonderfully captures the zeal of the action-oriented optimist, a person who does what she can instead of worrying about what lies beyond her grasp.

In my imagination, the rescued starfish get beached again five minutes later. In my imagination, it is possible to teach the ocean to treat the starfish better.

 

The train was ten minutes away from the destination station. A six-year-old boy wanted to urinate. “Bring his slippers!” his mother beseeched the father, pointing to the wet, mucky toilet floor. “Just let him stand outside and pee into the toilet,” the father replied, wanting to save himself a slipper hunt in the middle of disembarkation stress. And that’s how it unfolded, with a new generation indoctrinated into, shall we say, unhelpful behaviour.

From a couple of feet away, I felt tempted to let loose my outrage. I felt certain that I had moral high ground as well as privilege on my side. I could cut this lower-middle-class father down to size in front of his child and wife. More so because I was a physical heavyweight, he was bantam at best. But a question plaguing me for months now stopped me. The question being: do I have the right to punch down when I claim inability to punch up?

Here, punching up would be making the Indian Railways accountable for the many deliberate and incompetent lapses that I have witnessed during this and other journeys. What stops me is the certainty that doing so will make me squander time, effort, and emotions. And at the end of the ordeal, I will realise, yet again. that my voice, my angst, matters not a whit to any government in this country. The reason I had reached this cynical conclusion were two recent attempts to interface with government bodies.

One was to do with a Company-Owned Company-Operated Indian Oil outlet. On a particular morning, a morning refuel of 200 rupees had failed to cover less than 35kms on my bike. Convinced that I had been given less fuel, I tried to speak to the outlet which punched keys on a console, told me I was mistaken and marched me off. I went to the Indian Oil website to find that the outlet was not even listed – complaining against it became more difficult. A spike of cortisol and a couple of hours later, I had somehow filed the complaint. I received a curt message two days later that everything was in order. No option to reopen the complaint, no call to enquire whether I had evidence to back my claim. The “Go ^%#* yourself” in the message was as implicit as it was loud.

A month later, many agitated citizens of my apartment complex, me included, tried to stop the burning of mounds of garbage in our neighbourhood. The summer air had thickened with smog; the average March AQI in the city was in the 120-140 range and we felt like we were halfway to Delhi. But the BBMP (Bruhat Bengauluru Mahanagar Palike) claimed they were as helpless as us. The contractor was to blame, or it was the fault of HMT (which apparently had independent jurisdiction in one part of the neighbourhood). I accompanied fellow residents to beg HMT officials to stop the practice. They promised action with unctuous ease and promptly stopped responding to our messages and calls when the burning continued unabated. The fire department did not intervene and the cops claimed that they cannot enter HMT to take action, as if we were talking about a militarised zone. Trying to involve local politicians and high-ranking bureaucrats did nothing to alter the situation either.

The first example dealt with the union government, the second the state government and they align with different political parties. What I am describing is political, but agnostic of political affiliations. Through these experiences I learnt, a little too inevitably for my liking, that punching up requires Herculean stamina. The kind that Dr Sivaranjani Santosh exhibited as she battled for eight long years to force sugary drink manufacturers to stop mislabelling their product “ORS”. This struggle should ideally have been a perfunctory rejection by the FSSAI because these drinks could worsen dehydration, cause spikes in sodium levels and other biological malfunctions. In short, this 8-year ordeal should have been an email!

There are other such stories, but not many of them. It is way too difficult to fight the government, and it is becoming increasingly more difficult as the judiciary becomes more aligned with the legislative and statutes such as the RTI that offer transparency weaken. Moreover, in this current political climate, activists have to additionally endure demeaning labels – they can be termed anti-national, difficult, psychologically damaged and more by a large portion of the society whose very interests they are attempting to represent. In the eyes of the public, they tend to become the rare discordant note in our pliant orchestra. Being an activist today is challenging.

But what has become easy, acceptable and melodious is the shaming of citizens who exhibit poor civic sense.

Like the man who rides his bike down the footpath and is boldly accosted by an elderly lady. Laudable, meme worthy, sure. But what about ensuring better urban planning that disallows this option, like ensuring uninterrupted steep ridges on the edge of every footpath?

The person who is mocked for parking in a no-parking zone. The post is cathartic to look at and like. But do we ask whether the government provided sufficient parking options to render this behaviour becomes redundant?

Residents throwing their garbage willy-nilly are ripe for our ridicule. But do we also check if they have been given the infrastructure to dispose off the garbage in a responsible manner?

If we must shame these people, fine, let’s do that. Maybe some of us will refuse our civic responsibilities irrespective of the infrastructure created for us and such amongst us deserve shaming. The trouble is that we stop there and go no further. When it’s time to graduate from soft targets to hard ones, we stop cold in our tracks. We instinctively respect the no-go territory of questioning the government.

If this is because we are slowly learning to demand, and that we will one day similarly shame our governments for failing us, then I’m on board. I will happily watch this kindergarten level of activism and wait for the Ph.D. level when the Prime Minister’s cavalcade is blocked by citizens for bringing the city to a standstill at peak hour.

But is that where we are heading?

We see uplifting videos of North-East India, where citizens obey civic rules with admirable poise. Does it mean that they have better governance? Isn’t it possible that enhancing civic sense is only a part of the solution. Should we then behave as if it’s the whole solution?

For more context, let’s take a look at some more uplifting stories, this time from all parts of the country.

Retired cop Inderjit Singh Sidhu at the age of 88 wakes up at dawn to undertake the cleanup of Chandigarh, his city. He sweeps roads, clears drains, picks up garbage… watching videos of him doing that on social media makes me teary-eyed. He shuffles through the streets and wills his frail body to clean as much as he can. Sidhu is a stark example of a growing breed of concerned Indians who are trying to become a part of the solution.

They are removing garbage from our lakes, hills and beaches, they are sanitising and beautifying our streets, they are out there, doing whatever they can, wherever they can. Organisations like The Better India tirelessly showcase these efforts and this certainly makes bystanders sit up, take notice and feel a twinge of guilt before reclaiming their indifference. There is no doubt that these activists deserve nothing but our unfiltered awe. It is another matter that many such efforts are questioned, nullified or penalised by the government because some vague protocol was not followed. That aside, the efforts of these proactive Indians highlight one half of a citizen’s mandate – to exhibit a sense of responsibility towards the society in which they live.

Perhaps it’s now time to shift focus on the other half – the rights of citizens. The punching up, the punching of the hard target.

In a democracy, the relationship between the citizen and the government is akin to that of the parent and the child. Respectively. Contrary to first impressions, we, the citizens, are the parents. It is our job to draw boundaries around governmental behaviour, to discipline the government when required. Seen in this light, when we claim the broom, we are doing our child’s job. We are saying: I cannot stand this room being a mess, and since our child isn’t going to do the needful, the only sane option is to clean it up ourselves. The room gets cleaner. For one fleeting, sparkling moment. And tomorrow, it will be a mess again. So while the efforts of the concerned citizens are laudable, they fail to upskill this intransigent 79-year-old adolescent called Indian Democracy. The adolescent is already slapping us around. What will happen when this adolescent attains full adulthood?

Having grown up without real responsibilities, the adolescent responds to disciplinary attempts with rebellion. If we give in, we transform ourselves from parents to hostages.

A few years ago, when I was researching noteworthy philanthropists for a ghostwriting assignment, I came across only one who was funding activism to take on the government. The rest of the philanthropists were taking the pragmatic route of appeasing, cajoling, literally mollycoddling the government so that important philanthropic projects will be supported. Or least won’t be shot down. It occurred to me that even the strongest voices of civil society – and billionaire philanthropists do belong to this category – must acknowledge the post-independent caste system in which the neta-babu are de facto brahmins whose shadows cannot be crossed. Can these “brahmins” now be reminded who’s supposed to be in charge?

If the Mahatma were alive today, he would suggest non-cooperation. He would insist that we publicly defy the laws of a government that refuses to treat us well. He might have asked us to withhold taxes!

Even if a few Indians are brave enough to do this, none of us has the magnetic pull to make this a scalable protest. But we might be able to resonate with something else he said with respect to non-cooperation. He told the mighty British Empire, and I’m paraphrasing, “In the end, you will walk out, because 1 lakh Englishmen simply cannot control 35 crore Indians if those Indians refuse to cooperate.”

Well, there are more than a lakh collectively operating the government machinery today. And they are our own people, and we don’t want them to walk out. We just want them to behave like disciplined children. And there are 140+crores of people today to make that demand.

NOTA will be a good starting point. To ensure that a fresh transfusion of blood into the adolescent isn’t adulterated with toxins and diseases.

We can also take some comfort in the fact that mass protests by farmers halted the Farm Bills in their tracks. Their resistance should inspire one even if one believes in the merit of these Farm Bills.

And for a brief, gleaming moment in 2011, Anna Hazare made activism a nearly mainstream phenomenon. I happened to be on an assignment in New Delhi back then, and I visited in Jantar Mantar for a couple of hours, breathing in the aroma of roused souls. Like many, I began to believe that the nation was turning a corner. The series of events that followed snuffed that belief. As a result, our collective cynicism perhaps became even more deeply entrenched.

Making the government accountable is hard, perhaps the hardest task in today’s India. But it becomes infinitely easier when a billion people do it at the same time. The first step is to believe that this adolescent can be reined in. The second step is to rig elections in our favour with NOTA. The third is to accept that while democracy shows blips of life during elections, it breathes deeply and fully in between elections. So we ask questions. We demand actions. And we do this so persistently that the impossible comes within reach.

That’s my pipe dream. What’s yours?

The Changing You

The people from your past think they know you.
Let them be.
Who among us has not changed beyond recognition since somebody somewhere knew us?
Do they know the impact of the books you have read since their departure? The poetry that previously left you unaffected, and now move you to tears? Have they any idea of the new connections you have built, the new insights you gleaned? Can they fathom the fresh pain you plumbed? The new cultures you have exposed yourself to? The everyday experiences that reshaped you through unrecognisable moulds?
The trillions of body cells that have altered you completely... were they slaves of mere biology? What about the effect of new ideology, new ideas, new emotions, rediscovered humaneness?
You are the fast-moving clay on the potter's wheel. You change every instant within every instant. You live and breathe through all those changes, eternally yourself. Yet, when you catch a glimpse of your past, you wonder about that stranger in the album. What unseen forces changed you? Was it the churn of the potter? And who is that potter? Time, destiny, or your own hand, taking it into itself, leading you into that gateway of the unknown?

The champion moment

I have been in my old hometown Mumbai when we (India) played the semi-finals and finals of the last two World Cups that we won. In 2011, a ghostwriting assignment took me there. This time, it was a corporate workshop. In 2011, I missed the first over of the semi-finals against Pakistan because I hadn't yet landed in Mumbai. This time, I missed the final over of the finals against South Africa because my flight took off. Such symmetry seems unbelievable, doesn't it?

Anyway, there I was, rising quickly to 25000 feet, despondently looking at my mobile screen, wishing for a crystal ball to peek into the Kensington Oval cricket ground in Barbados. From the brink of defeat, our pacers had almost taken us to victory. Now, I was missing that crucial moment when we would either end the drought or repeat a familiar stumble at the final step.

The aircraft crossed the Queen's Necklace shoreline and took a sharp turn to the South East. I craned my neck to watch that familiar curved coastline recede into the background. I reckoned that enough time had passed for the match to have concluded. A thought occurred to me: had we won, people would be bursting crackers. Why am I not seeing any explode down there? Will the burst of crackers even be visible at this height?

I mulled over this unknown fact for a few minutes. Another thought popped up: had we won, wouldn't the captain announce it to us? After all, the aircraft was filled with people more eager to hear the news than to land safely. That could only mean one thing: we had lost. 

The lights of the aircraft came on and the flight attendants began serving meals. And then, that much-awaited sound - the crackle of a microphone coming alive way ahead of schedule. It was the pilot who had heard the news from Air Traffic Control. India had won the World Cup. A wave of relief washed over me. The monkey was off our backs. While others clapped and recorded the meme-worthy moment, I looked out of the widow at a darker countryside, feeling bright. 

I suddenly felt empty. I reached into my seat's pocket and fished out the book I had been reading - The Gift of Therapy by Irvin D. Yalom. As it turns out, therapy has a part to play even in moments of success and joy.

My limited animal world

This story features a bat, a Pomeranian, a clowder of cats, a Cocker Spaniel, three snakes, a Squirrel Monkey, a green bird of unknown pedigree, a pair of Toucans and a Mithun. But you will see through the facade and know that the story is really about my inability to connect meaningfully with the animal world.

I have been an abstract champion of the animal world, intellectually understanding the need to be humble about our place in the world, the importance of biodiversity and its role in combating climate change. I know animals of all kinds make the world a better, a more interesting place. Cognitively, I am there. Emotionally, not so much.

Perhaps the heroic existence of the animals I describe would eclipse my own incidental part in the story. Here goes...

Episode 1: The awning bat

We had just 170 sq.ft to call our home in Mumbai, and we defended it against bird and beast alike, The one time a young rat (moonjuru in Tamil) entered our home, we lost our cable connection to gnawing and our peace of mind to the eeriness of the situation, and we did not sleep well till we stayed up half the night to chase it out. 

It is in this context that a bat made the half-broken sheet-metal window awning outside our room its home. Despite its diminutive size, it scared me; its penchant to claw across the blue netting of the window triggered vampire nightmares. In the weeks in which we made amateurish attempts to evict it, something shifted in me. Fear gave way to curiosity and I began to wonder about this organism that favoured this incredibly inhospitable crevice for a home. Thick traffic, unruly cricketers and pressure cooker whistles must have disturbed its daytime slumber. It braved all these stimuli unlike me, who couldn't tolerate its mere sight. For the first time, I questioned my claims over the world. I was too young to comprehend that I was challenging the basic tenets of rights, boundaries and the idea of the insider versus the outsider.

Episode 2: Feeling Sweety in Pune

The family into which my aunt married had a risky Pomeranian named Sweety who had coopted herself into a Tam Brahm diet and happily consumed sakara pongal (jaggery rice) instead of a crunchy bone. Sharing space with an animal indoors was a daunting experience for the timid 11-year-old that I was. But the experience came with rewards. One evening, I was allowed to take Sweety for her evening walk. While it was she who led me, I felt weirdly powerful for a few minutes.

Episode 3: Sparrows in Milwaukee

With the temperature dropping to 25 below zero in winter, the twelve minute walk from my home to my office in downtown Milwaukee felt like an unending series of steps. En route, I would pass the backside of a Greek restaurant where, if it was sunny and I was lucky, I would find sparrows. Exactly like the ones from my childhood, the ones that every Indian city housed before CDMA airwaves took them away. They would peck nonchalantly at invisible food on the frozen ground and I would marvel at their ability to be outside without ever having visited the Burlington Coat Factory.

Episode 4: An experience in ammonia

I briefly dated a woman - who I till date consider to be one of the kindest people I have ever met. When I visited her place, I was immediately enveloped by the powerful pull of ammonia. She had three cats, if memory serves me right. I felt awkward, unsure of my next step. But watching her immense love for those feline lives was an experience in itself. A humbling one, in which I questioned for the nth time my inability to connect that broadly and deeply.

Episode 5: Ginger in Yelahanka

When my best friend brought home a cocker spaniel, it felt as if I now had a pet, considering how much time I spent at his home. Ginger, as she was called, was her own person, defiantly disobedient and capable of mesmerising bursts of energy. In the presence of the second dog in my life, I learnt that humans are not the only species with such distinct personalities. I did not know this obvious truth in my late 30s, which should tell you how dissociated I truly am from life as we know it on this planet.

Episode 6: The downtown King Cobra

I have crossed paths with snakes many times in Bangalore. I saw a ritual of two snakes rearing their heads as high as they could, and till date, I'm unsure if they were fighting or warming up for procreation. Another time, a snake almost slithered over my feet in a footpath in Yelahanka. But my most majestic snake sighting happened during the pandemic. Since I lived on the edge of downtown, I used to walk through empty arterial roads on most evenings. One day, walking bang in the middle of Cubbon Road, I saw a King Cobra move with deliberate slowness across the asphalt. I mustn't have been more than twenty feet away from it, but I felt no fear. I felt awe. I remember looking around at the downtown structures just to remind myself that I was in an urban jungle before turning my attention back to the king.

Episode 7: Squirrel monkey in Mudumalai

It was a humble resort in Mudumalai, adjoining a brook. Dawn had erupted, but the mist kept the sun at bay. I thought I would spend the morning staring at fast-flowing water. Instead, I was regaled by a black-and-white squirrel monkey darting up and down the tree in which it was nesting, collecting food as if Armageddon was upon us. "Just the pandemic," I wanted to reassure it. "Armageddon is a decade away."

Episode 8: Scolding in Davangere

During one of the many solo bike trips I made during the pandemic, I checked into a hotel room in Davangere and went to a window to look at the squalid heap of garbage adjoining the railway tracks. A few moments later, a small bird - couldn't have been more than a few centimetres long - landed on the perch of the window, speaking a million words. With the window fastened, I did not hear its voice, but its expressive eyes suggested that it was scolding me even as it dazzled me with its radium green body, set against a beige flat beak. A moment later, it seemed to realise that I was a stranger, not the human with whom it could take liberties (such as scolding). It flew away, rendering the scenery unbearably drab.

Episode 9: Toucans in flight

The first post-pandemic solo bike trip was to Valparai. One mid-morning, I was walking on an embankment overlooking a tea plantation set in a shallow valley. Without warning, a toucan resting on a bare tree took flight. A moment later, its mate followed suit. I watched the couple glide across the valley, their black-and-yellow plumage so vivid, I could have sworn they were but a furlong away. The more than 1000km round trip had become worth it in those few seconds during which the two birds revealed their majesty in flight.

Episode 10: Mithun in Arunachal

With two appointments in Itanagar the next day, I was immensely fortunate to hitch a ride in a car going to the state capital from Ziro. We set off at 11pm and drove through most of the night through nonexistent roads, covering around 20 kilometres an hour. On one of the thousand bumpy stretches, the driver braked to give way to a Mithun crossing the road. The great beast looked at our headlights with an expression that said, "Surely you are more cultured than to flash me with those bright ones?" On cue, the driver switched off the lights. "That's better!" the Mithun seemed to say before ambling away. The nonexistent road did not seem so lonely after that. 

 

I hope to add many more episodes during the remainder of my lifetime. I'd be so lucky if I managed to do that.

Happy Birthday

 Happy Birthday, my love.

Today, you face the world as an adult. How I wish I could share this moment with you, understand your thoughts and feelings, feel proud and nostalgic. None of those things were in my destiny.

I just hope that one day, long after I'm gone, you read this post and know that you were dearly missed.

Rebooting with a mass extinction

Pic credit: eartharchives.org

Pic credit: universetoday.com

There have been five mass extinction events in Planet Earth's history. The most intense among these was called the Great Dying. No, this wasn't the one that killed all the dinosaurs. The Great Dying occurred approximately 250 million years ago. When atmospheric conditions were quite similar to today and the planet was home to a single super continent that we know as Pangaea.

Before we explore the causes of the Great Dying, let's acknowledge the toll it took over the next 100,000 years. 96% of marine species and almost an equal number of plant species became extinct. This marked the end of the Permian era and the beginning of the Triassic era, which is why this event is called the Permian-Triassic extinction.

Here are the theories proposed to explain the harsh transition between the Permian and the Triassic:

1. A few super volcanos located in today's Siberia went berserk. Over a period of time, this caused a global warming, with ocean temperatures rising by around 10 deg C. As temperatures rose and the metabolism of marine animals sped up, the warmer waters could not hold enough oxygen for them to survive.The asphyxiating effect was accentuated by the high acidity of the water as well as metal and sulfide poisoning. This is, as of now, the most widely-accepted theory.
   
2. An asteroid hit the earth, creating noxious gases, a long-lasting blockage of the sun, a drop in temperature and corrosive acid snow and rain. Even after the clouds cleared, carbon-dioxide from fires and decaying matter led to global warming that lasted for millions of years.
3. Perhaps the lack of ice caps during the late Permian led to a stagnation of oceanic currents. Without convective currents, anoxic water (anoxia means the lack of oxygen) could have built up. Usually, anoxic water would have remained in the deepest parts of the ocean, but now, it spilled up into shallow water. Even as marine life got smothered, the sea level rose.
• The lack of oceanic currents might have had another corollary effect. When oceanic bacteria eat organic matter, they expel bicarbonate. Without currents, this collection of bicarbonate grew. Bicarbonate-laden water rose from below, depressurized and dissolved bicarbonate escaped as CO2. The oceans bubbled like a mug of beer.

Each theory is as vivid as it is horrifying. As a complete novice to paleontology, oceanography and evolution, I am proud to parrot the wisdom of scientists operating those realms. And my foray into the past was to attempt to understand our present and make peace with our role in shaping it.

For the first time in Earth's history, it hosts a species that is capable of creating and accelerating chaos. Humans are capable of making materials and products that don't decay, but must be dumped on the planet's surface and oceans. We also have shown remarkable finesse in accelerating the era of global warming, which would have lasted tens of thousands of years, and bringing the planet to the brink of being inhospitable right here, right now. 

If we continue to be foolish and press the nuke button on Mother Nature's forehead, well, we will deserve to perish. But it is heartwarming to know that this planet has seen worse in the past and has recovered without many scars. Perhaps this time around, Nature will evolve species that feed on plastic, concrete and metal alloys just to accelerate the obliteration of our presence. But soon enough - perhaps in a few million years - our devastating presence will become undetectable to the naked eye. Earth will recover. We won't matter. Thank Earth for that.

7 great blessings of the pandemic

It is with reservations that I bring together the words "pandemic" and "blessings" in the title of this piece. I am aware of the great toll it has taken on the most disenfranchised people around the world. It has also claimed many, many lives and robbed us of time. Clearly, if one is to even begin seeing a blessing in the pandemic, one must necessarily look at future impacts of today's events. That's what I will do in this piece.

Let me also clarify that this is not an ode to gratitude. It will not ask you to stop feeling one way and start feeling another way. It would not remind you that happiness comes from within. Instead, it will attempt to collate facts and extrapolate them with objectivity.

 

Out there, in real space and real time, the world has improved in some ways. Let's see how.

1. The world is literally greener

The Himalayas are now visible from the plains of Uttar Pradesh! As early as April, reports began coming in that Indian rivers are becoming much cleaner, although the situation is not as optimistic as indicated in early reports.I myself witnessed sparrows returning to my neighbourhood in Ulsoor, which is at the heart of Bangalore.

As our industries and vehicles fume less, we are beginning to breathe easy. Last winter, Delhi was barely more habitable than Mars, but during the lockdown, the city's air quality increased by a whopping 79%. And according to a NASA finding (as shown in the image above), the air quality of the entire country stands at a 20-year high.

It is one thing to talk about how we could all strive to create a greener and cleaner world. It is another thing altogether to see this happening in front of us. Surely this is inspiring us to rethink the way we live? Surely we are beginning to see that, without a great deal of sacrifice and effort, we can live in a manner that benefits us as well as our ecosystems?

2. Moving from nation to species

European colonization eventually led to a rise in nationalism all around the world. As indigenous peoples fought for their freedom, they developed distinct nationalistic identities. Nationalism also got promoted by other global events including the two World Wars, countless internecine regional conflicts, and a Cold War that lasted for decades. Over time, we became rather adept at separating ourselves into nation-states. That's why we didn't have a clue about what to do next when faced with a conflict that affected us as a species. Even with its limited mandate, the UN attempted to bring all nations together to discuss the challenge posed by global climate change. The discussion quickly turned into debates that were hijacked and derailed by powerful nations. At one point, the debate was nothing more than a shrill exchange of angst between the developed and developing nations.

Even when we seemed to make progress (like with the Kyoto Protocol), it took an interminable amount of time for us to take the next step - the Paris Accord. And that small gain was summarily dismissed by Trump - a nationalist who, additionally, denies climate change.

Meanwhile, the other powerful idea that promised to bring us together - globalization - merely displaced jobs and prosperity while also increasing the gap between the haves and have-nots. Global trade, as it turned out, made companies richer and nations poorer. It was perhaps inevitable that globalization would eventually lead to an increase in nationalism.

Barring climate change, there seemed to be no issue that could potentially bring us together. And then came the pandemic. A challenge that, like climate change, affected us all. But unlike climate change, materialistic people could deny neither its presence nor its urgency. The pandemic is ideally suited to show us the limitations of the nation-state model of civilization. Viruses and rising oceans have one thing in common - they don't stay confined within borders. They don't care about your flag and anthem.

We are currently not seeing the pandemic create solidarity in the world because nationalists are still holding fort in major power centres. But when they are relegated to the dustbin of history, a new generation of leaders will operate with awareness that we are on this planet together. We will sink or swim together.

Perhaps an era of greater cooperation is just around the corner.

3. If we find the will, we will find a way

Ever since scientists raised their bugles to announce global climate change many decades ago, market fundamentalists have tried to negate the message."What are we supposed to do?" they ask. "Stop consumption, turn the clock, live like peasants? Do you know what will happen to the global economy if all of us limited our lifestyles? Can you imagine the loss of employment and the erosion of the economy?"

Well, in the past many months, hundreds of millions of jobs have been lost. Consumption has been force-cut. People have, willingly or unwillingly, cut back.

We make less, have less, do less. And contrary to predictions, we haven't perished. The idea that what is good for nature will be disastrous for civilization can now be challenged. Granted, we have to find solutions to big problems like employment, healthcare etc. But we can approach those problems while resorting to sustainability. We don't have to choose between Nature and Civilization. We can choose both.

Once the pandemic ends, the markets will take over again and a majority of people, starved of entertainment and freedom, will return to a life of excess. But it is comforting to know that, 15 years from now, when global climate change will become enormously undeniable, we have the ability to hit the brakes and bring down consumption overnight, if that's what it takes. It has been done and it can be done again.

4. A boost to sustainable living

A great majority of us are waiting for the pandemic to end so that we can re-enter a life of excess. Even in this majority, many will reconsider their consumption patterns. They might travel less frequently, make do with fewer material possessions... the extravagant might choose to make do with mere luxury, the luxurious might settle for comfort and so on... One hopes.At the same time, a minority will want to continue living a simple life of few pleasures and many connections.

The overall reduction in consumption might give our species a little more time before we reach the point of irreversible climate change.

5. Millennials and delayed gratification

"They have been fed everything on a golden spoon. The spoon was there, at the right place, when they needed it. They don't feel grateful and they can't delay the pleasures for which they will remain ungrateful."

Millennials have had to endure this unflattering generalization made by older generations. It is not their fault that they were born in an era of enormous social change and technological overhaul. They never had to wait a week to watch the next episode of their favourite television programs. How, pray, did we expect them to embody the stoicism of older generations?

But now, once the pandemic claimed their innumerable outdoor pleasures (leaving them with the solace of only online streaming platforms), millennials are showing us that they are not as fragile as we accused them of being. Many of them have led lonely lives, with few meaningful connections in the real world. But these connections are being fully harnessed and there is a greater acceptance of our shared evolving reality. I have seen this as a counselor and I have heard from my colleagues and friends how they have been pleasantly surprised by millennials.

We rely on millennials to solve our most pressing problems. They have less of the scarcity mindset and they are less obsessed with thoughts of their own families. They actually want to think in broader terms - about community, society, the world... therefore, their resilience is crucial.

6. Relationship arc accelerated

Relationship expert Esther Perel, known for her insightful TED talks, has noticed that the pandemic has created an excess of (or the complete absence of) alone time. These extremes are compounded by thoughts of mortality. All relationships are, therefore, fast-tracked to where they would be a few years down the line. We are witnessing more pregnancies, breakups, separations and divorces.

Those in relationships with strong foundations are using the situation to empathise, adapt and come closer. Those in relationships that never got a solid footing are being splintered in quick time.

Perel reminds us that we, citizens of the modern world, expect meaning, belonging and community from our most important relationships. Those who find these precious elements in relationships are able to stay grounded and optimistic.

Her talk with Trevor Noah helps get a gist of what is happening around the world. As a counselor sitting in a small cove in Bangalore, I have myself counseled 7 couples in the past two months. And I endorse Perel's assessment that all relationships are being accelerated to their futures.

7. Self development & health

Dusty violin cases have been removed from attics. The forgotten Kindle has returned to the bedside table. Flabby tummies are bouncing in waves in badminton courts and lakeside trails. The mid-morning twitter of birds is now enriched by middle-aged vocal chords finding a new lease of life. Yoga videos on YouTube are now as popular as Taylor Swift's new album.

Those of us who are not spiraling into debt or depression are finding new lungs for old passions. We have always complained of not having enough time or energy to cultivate ourselves. Now, all we have to do is convert our commute time to self-development time (that's 3 hours for the average Bangalorean). On cue, the training industry is offering workshops and programs at huge discounted prices.

There has also been a drop in the number of smokers. Smoking, like any addiction, retains its patrons due to the fact that its perils are in the unforeseeable future while its pleasures are right here, right now. But people forced to face their mortality in Covid times are more likely to pay attention to the perils. This is what the Smoker and the Gun thought experiment says.

Keep a gun on a smoker's temple and tell him that he will be shot if he takes another puff. If he is convinced that the bullet will be fired, the smoker will not dare take that puff. The pandemic has become the virtual gun on the temple.

Hopefully, those who have kicked this (and other) addictions will not revert to them.

A final word

50 years from now, those of us who will be alive will look at the pandemic as one of the greatest challenges in their lives. Will they also see it as the moment in history where humankind took a U-turn to live a saner, more holistic and sustainable life?

The Toxic Binary

As a counselor, I am noticing a huge increase in black-and-white thinking, also called Polarized/Dichotomous thinking.
This is a cognitive distortion in which a person feels they have only two options to choose from. For example, with a mushrooming of polarizing political leaders, a lot of us feel like we must either love this leader or hate him. We cannot see a third choice.
Sample this: a wife feels de-stressed when she goes on a walk by herself. But her husband has begun insisting on joining her. She has told him she wants to go by herself, and that has not worked. She begins to think: I can either go by myself and be selfish. Or I can allow him to accompany me and be sacrificing.
Can you see that there is no victory in either choice? She wants to be neither selfish nor sacrificing. But her mind is not presenting her a third choice. This is the Toxic Binary.
Can you think of win-win solutions for this woman?

In a starker example, a middle-aged man is feeling suicidal. He is ashamed about a particular behaviour he has exhibited in the past. Now, he feels he has only two choices: he could either continue to live and force his family to share his shame. Or he could die and spare them the agony of feeling that shame. 

It stands to reason that the hold of Toxic Binary thinking over our minds is the greatest when our emotions are at their peak of intensity. We will not be able to see a third choice and that makes us despair. At this juncture, we need somebody who can help us differentiate between fact and perception.

When I feel this and other cognitive distortions, I reach out to a list of people who can help me. Whom do you reach out to when your mind becomes your enemy?

Pic credit: http://clipart-library.com

Shall we invade now?

Sitting in front of his thought-driven console, Captain Zeen was getting impatient.
"Where's Arrgh? I must know the truth about these life forms in this suburban blue-green planet. Ah, there you are."
"Hail Captain!" said Arrgh. "My report is ready. I apologize it took so long. But these life forms are indecipherable."
"That's an understatement, isn't it? Look at them. They have millions of vessels that can fly, yet so few of them are up in the air. They have a billion vessels that crawl fast, and most of these are kept stationary next to their homes. They have pathways that can take them from one end of the continent to another, but the life forms stay indoors, as if they don't care. I am reminded of our ancient Emperor who created a kingdom of gold, but spent his lifetime on the balcony of the palace, wondering about the sun and the moon. Our folklore tells us that the Emperor was a fool. Can the same be said about these life forms?"
"I cannot say for sure," replied Arrgh.
"You are my expert analyst of alien civilizations," snapped Zeen. "Say something useful."
"I don't know if you consider this useful, Captain, but I have three possible explanations for what we see."
"Let's hear them."
"The first explanation is that these life forms believe in the supremacy of inner exploration. They perceive that to be more important than exploring their world. They reached a threshold point in their civilization where they realized that no amount of success and wealth can make them happy. So they have created a culture of finding happiness within themselves. They venture out only to carry food back to their homes. They probably consume very little."
"I remember conquering one such civilization in the seventh galaxy from home," said Zeen. "But they were spartan life forms. The surface of that planet showed no signs of ambition. These life forms, on the other hand... our scanners detected high-grade chemical weapons. Why are they armed to the teeth if they are all about inner exploration?"
"That is a great question. I confess to not knowing the answer. Would you like to hear the second possible explanation?"
"Only if it is better than the first."
"Well, our scanners show that these life forms harvested, manufactured and burnt chemicals in stella-tons till very recently. They polluted their water bodies, made their air toxic and bathed the food they ate with chemicals. They seem to have organized themselves into nations of varying sizes and when one nation didn't like another, they hurled chemicals at each other. At some recent point in their civilization, they must have realized that they were doing nothing more than killing each other while killing themselves. So they decided to mend their ways and honour their water, their air and their earth."
"This is even more of a ridiculous idea than the first," said Zeen. "Didn't we conquer a poisoned planet one stella-year ago? Was it in the ninth or tenth galaxy we visited? Ninth, I think. Those life forms knew that they were poisoning their precious water, air and earth. Did they stop? NO. When the water could no longer be drunk, they drank blood straight from each other's freshly-cleaved chests. After a point, life forms opt to become savages, not saints. Water, air and earth get poisoned in a thousand stella-years. Life forms except for us cannot think beyond a couple of stella-years. That's why we have been such successful conquerors."
"I agree," said Arrgh. "The third explanation is the most possible. Sometime in the recent past, these life forms faced a new enemy. An enemy that even our scanners cannot detect. So they were forced to abandon their glorious vessels and their glorious paths and take sanctuary in their own homes. This enemy has united them. Look, this small peninsula here is called North Korea. It seems to be the land of megalomaniacs. But the behaviour of life forms here is no different from the behaviour of life forms in this other nation here... Denmark. Something drastic must have happened for this warring planet to become so homogeneous and resort to a life of quiet reflection and severe caution."
"You make sense finally, Arrgh. If what you say is true, our visit is well-timed. We can stamp our authority on them when they are weak. They will surrender to our will in no time."
"I wouldn't be so sure, Captain Zeen. If what I say is true, then these life forms must have been disorganized from the beginning of time. And now they are united in the way they live and the way they acknowledge their interconnectedness with each other. They are weakened, but they are not weak. Let me remind you of the high-grade chemical weapons. Unlike in other planets, we will have to fight all of them together in order to win. Do you fancy our chances?"
Captain Zeen fell into deep thought, clicking his three forefingers together in enviable synchronicity. Finally, he said:
"Do you think they will stay united? Should we wait?"