Sustainable Development

A defintition by C.S. Holling:

''Sustainability is the capacity to create, test and maintain adaptive capacity. Development is the process of creating, testing, and maintaining opportunity. The phrase that combines the two, "sustainable development", thus refers to the goal of fostering adaptive capabilities and creating opportunities. It is therefore not an oxymoron but a term that describes a logical partnership."

(emphasis added)
Holling 2001 in Newman and Dale 2005, 'Network Structure, Diversity, and Proactive Resilience Building: a Response to Tompkins and Adger' Ecology and Society 10(1):22

India Together

For anyone who wants an alternative source of news to put 'India Shining' into perspective, subscribe to newsletters from India Together.

(not going to insert link, google it you lazy bums.)

National Gallery, Edinburgh

Some of the art I saw when I visited the National Gallery, Edinburgh.
More in a later post.

An Allegory, El Greco

Diana and her Nymphs, Robert Burns

Francesca da Rimni, William Dyce

Wandering Shadows, Peter Grahm

The Three Ages of Man, Titian

The Sick Rose, William Blake

The Hill of the Winds, Sir David Young Cameron

The Death of Adonis, Giuseppe Mazzuoli

St. Bride, John Duncan

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/28/opinion/28dowd.html?hp

Yes, it's in 'Opinion' and is therefore most likely a spoof (at least I hope it is).
But still. Read it.

Climate Change and World Peace for Dummies

As pointed out by Eric Pooley of Time Magazine, Al Gore's Peace Prize will be a subject of intense debate. One camp will hail it as deserved recognition, at long last, of the severity of climate change and the urgency with which it needs to be tackled. Everyone else will call it either: a.) SlightlyRidiculous (since there were more deserving candidates and/or causes) or b.) Totally and Completely Ridiculous (since the climate change-world peace link is a myth or worse, since climate change itself is a myth).
You probably know by now which camp I belong to.
And therefore can imagine my irritation, annoyance and frustration when I encountered this article on The Telegraph, entitled 'What has Al Gore done for world peace?' by Damian Thompson. What annoyed me more than the article itself (which at least made some attempt at pulling together a series of 'facts') was the string of absurd reactions to it in the Comments section. Two major themes were - Climate change is not real / Climate change is not linked to peace (or lack thereof).
Below is my response. I have deliberately left out the all-important incident-and-example rhetoric, since people tend to twist every piece of evidence to suit their own particular perspective. The thread I have proposed below has already been written about extensively. My summary of it is simply a compressed version:
______________________________
A theme that should ring true, and close to home, for all the Yankee cowboys here (suitably simplified to match the level of intelligence I see on this forum). Try, if you can, to wrap your minds around this -
1. An important driver of human conflict is intense competition over scarce (or highly desired resources)
2. Climate change entails a change in the distribution of some highly valuable natural resources - like freshwater.
3. The resulting poverty is likely to drive areas of scarcity (Africa, parts of Asia, etc.,) into further sociopolitical unrest.
4. Therefore, an important driver PREVENTING unrest is the mitigation of climate change, or at least adaptation to it.
5. Education is the first step towards changing policies, since we (and by we, I do not mean the United States) live in a (supposedly) democracy-loving world.

Therefore the link between education and peace.
Therefore the conspicuous lack of peace within America and American 'foreign policy'.
Therefore the Peace Prize for an environmental educator.

Geddit?
_____________________________________________________

Chomsky on the role of the press in a democracy

"Chomsky is quick to explain that none of this is to be taken as a conspiracy: no one meets with editors behind closed doors to tell journalists what to report. No one has to, for reporters know that they can become rich and famous if they just remain "normal". The best example: Bob Woodward. As an unknown journalist with nothing to lose, he broke the Watergate story right under the noses of the established reporters. And he became famous. But today, no one is afraid of the investigative journalist of yore. On the contrary, Woodward is the only journalist who has been able to spend hours with the otherwise so secretive Bush, and in his book "Bush at War" critical questions are few and far between:
After my interview with President Bush the morning of Aug. 20, the president offered a tour of his ranch. We walked outside, and he climbed behind the wheel of his pickup truck and motioned me toward the passenger side. National security adviser Condoleezza Rice and a female Secret Service agent squeezed into the cramped passenger back seat. Barney, his Scottie dog, parked himself between us in the front and was soon in his master's lap.
Woodward does not give us the information that voters need. Rather, he entertains us. As Chomsky puts it, the US media see their audience as consumers, not citizens."

An excerpt from an article I read on Noam Chomsky. I can't find the exact link, but it's somewhere on his website.

A Question for Arundhati Roy

Dear Arundhati-didi :

I have read your books and your essays. Come September, and The Road to Harsud have moved me the most. Angered me the most. And woken me the most sharply, to the "...absolute, relentless, endless, habitual, unfairness of the world." While I do not presume that you will ever read this, I would still like to put a question to you.

What can I do, and how should I be feeling?

We live, as you say, in the world of "spurious choice". I can choose to buy Big Business out of business, but is what I buy instead organic, or local, or fair trade? Which one is to be traded off against the other one? And in the millions of choices I make everyday, this bottle of water vs. that drink vs. thirst, I am then exhausted. This exhaustion, I realize, is the ultimate weapon of Big Business. (I object to the use of that phrase, it doesn't seem fair to be sizeist. But I do acknowledge that Big = Powerful, most of the time, in economic terms.) This exhaustion, this feeling, at age 25, that I would like to curl up under a tree and look at the sky, or be with a lover, or damn-it-all, drink the Coke that my uneducated childhood has addicted me to. To remember what it is like to Not Know.

But of course, I can never go back. And if I did, I would regret it. Therefore, the question is - can I meaningfully go forward? Can I make any difference by leading a different life? (I don't require an answer to know that I must lead a different life anyway.)

And in the background of all of this, there is the unrelenting, absurd and nameless terror, anger and frustration that the world wrenches out of me. Terror, anger and frustration were further than the edges of the universe when I was growing up. Now, they are constant, darkly glittering, burning cold companions. Ruthlessly invasive and unforgiving. I say they are nameless because they are directed at everything - and therefore at nothing, meaningfully. Who should I be angry at? George W. Bush and Shell? Or the endlessly recursive set of circumstances that make George Bush and Shell possible? And the terror and shock, when I realise that time and space are illusions even in this purely mental exercise - at the heart of the circumstances making George W. Bush and Shell possible, is the individual. Me. Where I spend my money and how, where I laugh with my friends over coffee and whether or not I smoke and where I buy my clothes.

So: Caught as we all are in this endless circle, this going-nowhere-fast spiral, I can only Scream.
What can I do, and what should I feel?

Jai Hind

This is an email I wrote to my friends last year on Independence Day. I just looked at the list again and found that I still love each and every single item on it, just as much. Even the sad ones. Even the dispicable one. I love them all.

________________________________

I couldn't fit everything in. I couldn't even fit the most important things in. I tried. I couldn't fit in all the sad things, certainly not the all the happy things. I tried.

Kashmir. Kashmir ki kalli. Kyo ki saas bhi babhi bahu this. Amitabh. Jai Shree Krishna. Ekta Kapoor. (Hai Ram). Bhajans. Tulsi. Aagar batti. Bhenchod. Trucks. Truck Drivers. Bullock Carts. Honda Civic. Honda. Bajaj. TVS Scooty. Idea Cellular. Goa. Aguada. Farmers. EVERY SINGLE INDIAN FARMER. Ghats. Ghatis. 6-seater rickshaws with chaarso-bees drivers. Manjulabai having an affair with the watchman and staring down her nose at your boyfriend. Marathi. Hindi. Telugu. Wannakam. Elephants. (No, not to go to school on.) Brass handis. Pink Sarees. Taj Mahal. Thar. Konark. Kanyakumari. Mumbai models and Kashmiri beauties. The word 'kamar'. Burkhas, saris and skirts all going out to lunch. Seedy hotels with great food. Karigars. Upset Stomaches. No water in villages for months on end. No villagers left in villages. Harsud. Naya Harsud. Mangoes. Tablas. Limbu Pani. Lassi. Mango Lassi. Air India to London. Kids playing football in the rain. Kolhapuri chappals. River-Linking. (Not whilst I'm alive.) Silver Kohlapuri Chappals. Indradhanush. Wada-pav. Pomfret. Prawn curry. (OH DAMN IT - ALL THE FOOD. ALL THE FOOD.) Monsoon. Hindi. Hindi teachers. Tuition teachers. Mumbai. Cycles. Dabba-wallahs. Shahrukh Khan. Flutes. The Bold and the Beautiful. Om Puri. Manoj Bajpai. Rajkumaris. Faux Rajkumaris. Faux Rajkumaris in Central London clubs. India-Gate. Rajkumars. (There are no faux Rajkumars). Baniyan-Brief for Rs. 25/-. Torn Baniyan. Cricket. Chai-tapri. Tapri-chai. The Right to Information.

Himalayas. Uttaranchal. Uttaranchal. Yeh to patta nahin, ji. Bumpy roads. Expressway. Illicit driving license. Driving school teachers picking you up from your house. Kerala. Lift-man. Red earth. Nine West. Bail-gaddi.Bombay Bomb Blasts. Baga beach. Tibetan joints. Watchmen with whistles. (Watchmen with whistles blowing them full-on in the middle of the night, right outside your window.) Lathi-charge. Lathi. Kodaikanal. Lonavala. Bijli. Karate. Shikar - STILL. Bijli band. Taj Mahal. Delhi Station. Nuclear Scientists and Poets. Red Fort. Dhobis. Maalis. The Armed Forces ('Come Be a Jawan Today'). Agni. AK-47s. Kargil. Siachin. Marigolds. Valley of flowers. Hockey. Tantra. Mynahs.

Mussourie. Manali. Jodhpur. Sandstone. Black Cotton Soil. Fields. Brown Fields. Anna Hazare. Green Fields. Paddy Fields. Parrots. Tigers. Tiger kings. Reliance. Reliance. Reliance. Delhi Parliament Attacks. Tippu Sultan. Jataka. Palki. Palaak. Doordarshan. Mahabharat on Doordarshan. The Olympics on Doordarshan. Baazar. Bhendi. Mynahs. Sardar Sarovar. 40 million dam-displaced. Farmer suicides. Project Tiger. Sariska. Shikari. Beggars on platforms. Beggars on streets. Beggars smiling at you and giving you a blessing. Beggars shouting at you in incomprehensible-curse-dialect. Soft Porn sold on the road. Moghras sold on the road. Shivaji. Tongas. (Where do you still find tongas?) Dehradun. Lapwing calls. German bakery. Chappals. Chai. Filter Coffee. Dosa. Halwa. Full moon shining on banyan trees. Kamasutra. Gulmohar (I know, Mr. Gole, its' not indigenous.)

Not because of,

Not inspite of.

Just.

Jai Hind.

Haiku and more

Back in England.
Today is my birthday.
Who knows.

Somewhere, I'm sure, in those twisted mountains in Ellora, there is a door-gaurd who knows.

How do I know?

How do I know this PhD, this office, this subject, constitutes the right path for me? Because they do not feel alien or look new. I recognize them as I would old friends. Or new ones who feel like old ones.
How do I know this man is right for me? Because I remembered his face the first time I saw it.

Ellora - II

After the lushness of Kailasa, a walk around the hillside to the Buddhist and Jain caves feels either like a cool breeze or a splash of icewater. Depending on how much you melted at Shiva's feet. It felt like a splash of cold water to me. And I was completely swept away. There is something even more moving about the Buddhist caves. Their austerity only highlights the perfection of technique, the expressions on the Buddha's face leap out at you all the more because he is the only one in the room. There is no throng of people here, living, dying. No ceaseless press of life. There is only being, no becoming. And yet, there is nothing static about these caves. Some of the images that have stayed with me:

Inside a small, small chamber, the Buddha is seated in a teaching position. His eyes are shut and he is smiling that halfsmile of his that makes all of your smiles suddenly seem fake by comparison. (New personal challenge for 2007: Smile one cosmic smile.) You walk the length of the empty cave up to this tiny chamber at the far end. All the while, you imagine that the Buddha is alone in there. You peep inside, mesmerised by that smile. You don't notice that on either side of this tiny chamber, there are two perfect creatures looking down at you from either side. Door gaurds. They actually keep you out. The sight of them is so unexpected, they look so real, so vibrant, so from-somewhere-else, you feel a whole lot of healthy respect and a great deal of awe, and you are prevented from taking that step into the sanctum. (Though the marks on the inside walls prove that I might be a fool for thinking this way - people have obviously gone right in.)

Inside the Vishwakarma, a hundred impressions first crowd for space and then melt away as you drown in the mighty face in front of you. Two things that struck me immediately: Between the pillars and the walls of the dimly lit cave, you can only see darkness receeding into the distance. You imagine it stretching all the way to the end of the cave, where, ultimately, it will curve around the back of the seated Buddha and you will get a glimmer of light from the only window in the room. At this point, you will be sharing a piece of the sky with him. From the entrance of the cave, those passages look like doorways to other worlds.
Secondly - Inside this cave, the acoustics magnify the slightest sound. There is no other ornamentation, hardly any light. In the looming darkness, the Buddha seats enormously, lit only by one shaft of pale sunshine. The pillars on either side are almost oppressive. The ceiling looks like a ribcage. You are inside a spiritbody. And there is nothing else. You cannot think a single coherent thought, you feel the impulse to whisper. But far from being oppressive, the overall impression is one of liberation. There is nothing else.
After I have taken my photos, I walk outside to put on my shoes and change my mind. The cave is totally empty now. I run inside, kneel at his feet and press my forehead to the ground. I look up and smile, and run out again before anyone else has a chance to come in.

Ellora - I

I thought I would write about Ellora as soon as I returned home. That way, I reasoned, a lot of the detail would be preserved. I realize now how silly that impulse was: more has been written about Ellora than I can hope to even read, let alone better. And the rapture in the detail can only be experienced, not read about. As for preserving my impressions in their entirety, I'm glad I'm writing late. This way, the ones that have really stuck - the ones that mean the most to me personally, - I can write about. So. Here are some of the things that return to me again and again:
- Nataraja, larger than life, dancing the world to ruin and destruction. Underneath his thumping feet, famine, destruction and panic. His arms outstretched, his head tilted back. I recognize that expression as my own. As everyone's. I imagine swirls of energy, of light, of flame, wreathing him. His aura, if he had one, would simmer. It makes me panic just looking at him like that. It makes me cry to see that one of his hands cups the cheek of his wife, seated at his feet. Don't be scared.

- On the opposite wall, Shiva, larger than life, meditating. Shiva as a man. A simple yogi. His expression will come back to me many caves later when I look at the Buddha's peaceful face. And I will recognize it as something not of this world.

- Two lovers engraved on the wall of Kailasa temple: He holds her face and bends down to kiss her. Again, I recognize that kiss. So do you. It is the splitlightsecond before the first I love you. It is the minute before a long parting or the instant when, after your return, you are held once again and feel that no matter how long your journey, the one step into waiting arms is what has brought you home. We all recognize that moment.

- Seven mothers hold their children. Their bodies appear animate with love. 'I remember how my mother used to embrace me. I would look up sometimes and see her weep'.

- Shiva and Parvati. Talking, embracing, cuddling, teaching-and-learning (though in that one she looks tense, nervous. As if he will reproach her for not understanding his point). Kissing. Making love. Standing there so real at the end of dark corridors, so large, so full of energy that I begin to forget that I am in a temple of stone. The first step to this forgetting is when I start to think how lifelike they 'look', and wonder - If stone can be so alive, how infinitely alive am I?! And everyone around me. And these trees! And the rock that makes this mountain, and this air! I take a deep breath and look at the end of this particular corridor again. There, in the dim shadows I see the curve of Parvatis' waist and Shiva's fingers resting lightly against it. I see their bent heads, leaning into each other. The curve of one of her knees. I feel that she feels the strength of the arms that encircle her shoulders. And that's it. I've forgotten that these creatures look alive. They are alive. I've forgotten that centuries separate the sculptor and me. I forget that myth and reality separates Shiva and me. I forget everything, and walk forward smiling, to meet my friend.
I will never, ever, forget that. And I will never, ever say 'looks alive' ever again.

A Letter from India - Part I

Home again. I'd expected big changes - but nothing seems to have changed much. The last time I came here, I was shocked at the general infiltration of MacReebok. This time, there are no new horrors skulking on the horizon - no new malls - and so I suppose there is less awareness of change. But an insidiously unpeaceful feeling is still buzzing in the background of the streets. At first, it's hard to get a feel of. People look happy, shopping with their families. Some stores are even open late - well past dark - and this makes shopping-dinner-movie evenings possible. Great. Good stuff. There are also a slew of new cars to carry people from their new apartments straight to the mall. And tonnes of mobile phones on every corner. There are huge hoardings patchwork-quilting the sky. And everywhere, there are people. A press of people. A throng. A herd. A multitude. A crowd. And it is always moving, this crowd. Ceaselessly. At night, sleepless from jetlag or heartache or both, I can hear the sound of cars and motorbikes. Used to be, I could only hear the odd truck punctuating the sound of crickets from my garden. It used to make me feel like I lived in a border town, somewhere remote and Faraway from everything. Somewhere exotic (only the very naive imagine border towns to be exotic, I was once told. Maybe I am very naive indeed, because I find them utterly beautiful. Exquisite, even.)

Used to be, I knew trees on street corners. Used to be, I could see stars even as I walked down a street in the middle of the city at night. Now, they only appear in the sky after I get back to my house - because we live in the middle of no-light. We have kept the stars, and they gather shyly in the dark above my house. I'm so grateful. So, so grateful for that.

Randomly, and therefore perhaps not quite accurately, these are now the symbols of our success, as I see them pinned, plastered and painted everywhere: Gold palm trees inside malls; the Sphinx; Napoleon and Caesar; Neon; Sex; Noise; New Stores Selling Gloss. It is as if we are all racing towards the places adorned with these symbols because they represent our arrival. We've seen, we've conquered. So what if we have no interest in actually going to Egypt, we can bring the sphinx here. And it can sit outside our multicoloured mall, guarding it. We can put our cigarettes out on its nose. We came, we saw, we acquired.

A part of me is delighted. Another part is appalled. I want no part in this. I want a part in it. The speed is thrilling. The speed is sickening. There are so many people, out on these streets, at night, and they're all (okay, I exaggerate: most of them) are wearing such pretty clothes! But no one is looking at me, no one is seeing me standing here. And I am not seeing them either. We are all simply aware of the press of nameless faceless sexless people, thronging around us, mutual architects of this sense of buzz. The unmistakable smell of a big city on the move. For the first time, I'm lonely on these streets. The lights are so bright. The glare is blinding. But most of all: There are so many people here. I'm so lonely.

Thank God, at least above my house, the stars still shine.

The Scream

An excerpt from Slavoj Zizek's The Parallax View that I found on http://radicalpolitics.wordpress.com :
_____________________________________________________
In the beginning is the scream. We scream.
When we write or when we read, it is easy to forget that the beginning is not the word, but the scream. Faced with the mutilation of human lives by capitalism, a scream of sadness, a scream of horror, a scream of anger, a scream of refusal: NO.
The starting point of theoretical reflection is opposition, negativity, struggle. It is from rage that thought is born, not from the pose of reason, not from the reasoned-sitting-back-and-reflecting-on-the-mysteries-of-existence that is the conventional image of 'the thinker'.
We start from negation, from dissonance. The dissonance can take many shapes. An inarticulate mumble of discontent, tears of frustration, a scream of rage, a confident roar. An unease, a confusion, a longing, a critical vibration.
(…)
And so they urge us (and we feel the need) to study society, and to study social and political theory. And a strange thing happens. The more we study society, the more our negativity is dissipated or sidelined as being irrelevant. There is no room for the scream in academic discourse. More than that: academic study provides us with a language and a way of thinking that makes it very difficult for us to express our scream. The scream, if it appears at all, appears as something to be explained, not as something to be articulated. The scream, from being the subject of our questions about society, becomes the object of analysis. Why is it that we scream? Or rather, since we are now social scientists, why is it that they scream? How do we explain social revolt, social discontent? The scream is systematically disqualified by dissolving it into its context. It is because of infantile experiences that they scream, because of their modernist conception of the subject, because of their unhealthy diet, because of the weakening of family structures: all of these explanations are backed up by statistically supported research. The scream is not entirely denied, but it is robbed of all validity. By being torn from 'us' and projected on to a 'they', the scream is excluded from the scientific method. When we become social scientists, we learn that the way to understand is to pursue objectivity, to put our own feelings on one side. It is not so much what we learn as how we learn that seems to smother our scream. It is a whole structure of thought that disarms us.
And yet none of the things which made us so angry to start off with have disappeared. We have learnt, perhaps, how they fit together as parts of a system of social domination, but somehow our negativity has been erased from the picture. The horrors of the world continue. That is why it is necessary to do what is considered scientifically taboo: to scream like a child, to lift the scream from all its structural explanations, to say 'We don't care what the psychiatrist says, we don't care if our subjectivity is a social construct: this is our scream, this is our pain, these are our tears. We will not let our rage be diluted into reality: it is reality rather that must yield to our scream. Call us childish or adolescent if you like, but this is our starting point: we scream.
________________________________________________________

Perhaps it is darkness

Perhaps it is Darkness who is scared
And not me
Or anyone else.

__________________________

Something I wrote for deviantart a while ago but which re-appeared in my head this afternoon, wanting to be here too.

What is Indian Morality?

An article about sex education in India in the International Herald Tribune yesterday sparked this off. Specifically, this inane statement by Shivraj Singh Chouhan, chief minister of Madhya Pradesh: "government has devaluated (sic) Indian culture and its values...Instead, the younger generation should be taught about yoga, Indian culture and its values." Right. Let's just deconstruct 'Indian Values'.
Perhaps the values Chouhan mentions can be found here. Specifically, perhaps it is our typically Indian set of values that allows each one of us to talk the talk and walk right past houses like this everyday on our way to glitzy malls or highrise offices or the airport - so that we can get out, get out, GET OUT. After all, in a country where people living in the heart of even wealthy areas live hunter-gatherer lifestyles, perhaps it is only moral for us to look away. Shame on them, grovelling in the dirt. (Photo source)

___________________________________________________________________
Perhaps Indian morality is to be sidestepped when it comes to the media. I don't see anyone successfully shutting down Cosmopolitan. Even though, hell, whether I was having casual sex in Pune or not, I could most certainly learn how to 'do it well', once a month. I could also watch saas-bahu soap-operas on TV where X is the illegitimate son of Y who is sleeping with Z who is actually his older sister. These soaps have won lots of praise for being wholesome family entertainment that depicts 'Indian Values'. Much appreciative clucking goes on when some particularly virtuous virgin shuns the attention of some ruffian lothario because such rendezvous are 'Not in (her) culture.' Of course not. But hold on, what does our virtuous virgin watch for entertainment? Bollywood dramas where hips thrust from east to west and women are jolted up and down to the pelvic thrusts of romeos driven mad with lust for their jawani. Please. Where are Indian values in Indian cinema?! (Photo source)
____________________________________________________________________
Oh dear oh dear. What can I say. If I took a little girl here would I tell her to look away? Or would I tell her that ancient India had a stunning appreciation of the power, beauty and poetry of the human body, used it to great symbolic effect and didn't shy away, in it's art, from depicting sex as - well - great! As fun! As sacred! (And since when have those two things not mixed?!) Would I tell this girl (lets imagine she's curious - all the little girls I know, are) about the sexual rites of Tantra, about the graphically detailed Kama Sutra, about the legendary sexual exploits of Krishna or Shiva? Would I tell her about the poetry of Mirabai, some of whose pieces drip lust and passion from every line? (Photo source) (Also see here for a fabulous article that deals, in part, with the blatant sexuality of Chola art.)




Perhaps Chouhan should consider this before implying that 'morality' is in any way connected to the bland, lifeless, literalistic interpretations of 'virtue' so often imposed on 'Indian culture'. What such interpretations often lack is an appreciation of the role of intent. Surely the intent (or lack thereof) involved in our blind eye towards the poverty that surrounds us implies much worse malevolence than the sex education programme? Perhaps the hypocrisy of a government that applauds India's' 'free media' but then rants from the rooftops about 'dirty sex scenes' represents far worse ignorance? The intent behind the sex education programme is to save lives through education. From this perspective, how can a balanced, open discussion of sex and sexual health pollute intent?! The very 'worst' (I use that word to pander to Chouhan's perspective, not my own) it can do is encourage the entirely healthy curiosity about an aspect of life that is naturally awakening at adolescence. And wouldn't teenagers who seek to indulge their curiosity be physically and psychologically safer if they had had some sex education?

I Write of That Journey

I've been struggling for a while to articulate what this blog is really about. Sure, it's about my PhD and my thoughts on environmentalism. The title is inspired by a quote by Gregory Bateson: "What is the pattern that connects the crab to the lobster and the orchid to the primrose? And all four of them to you? And you to me?"

But obviously, if you were to ask me so what does that mean for your blog, my answer would be two-fold:

The short one: I want to write about connections. Process. Cause and effect. Momentum. Direction.

The long one: At the heart of all of these things there is a throbbing pulsing intangible something. If I were a mystic, I would call it Love. Not the tattered word that supersaturates our relationships, our recreation, our lust or our quest with sickly sweetness. Something more. Something deeper. I find that other people have described this much better than I will ever be able to. I make it sound like fluff. Like a pretty concept. Their words reveal it as a crystal-hard, glowing here-now-and-always Thing. Perhaps because they have experienced it. And I, despite always looking for it, have always been a creature of movement, too restless and impatient to grasp it. Mirabai (The picture above depicts her singing a devotional hymn to her beloved Lord Krishna) writes of it as a journey - that was the first appeal. But if you read closer, it hasn't got anything to do with moving, and everything to do with (cliché as it sounds) knowing that you are already there. Less of becoming, more of being.

Here, in her words, is the pattern that connects:

I Write of That Journey

Mirabai

I remember how my mother would hold me.

I would look up at her sometimes and see her weep.
I understand now what was happening.
Love so strong a force
it broke the
cage,

and she disappeared from everything
for a blessed
moment.

All actions have evolved
From the taste of flight;
the hope of freedom
moves our cells
and limbs.

Unable to live on the earth, Mira ventured out alone in the sky –
I write of that journey
of becoming as
free as
God.

Don’t forget love;
it will bring all the madness you need
to unfurl yourself across
the universe.

What freedom! What light, what colour, what joy, what music, what transcendence, have we seen - any of us - compared to this!?

Read it. Read it again. Read it with your eyes closed, if you want to see it. Know it.

Responses to The Alarmist Perspective

This is shaping up into a valuable debate, for me at least.
Here are two responses to 'The Alarmist Perspective' (below):
Response 1:
Again, as you said, I think you've done a better job than the article in articulating what the problem is. And

while that has it's use (I'm not for a moment implying that just because you don't have a 100% doable solution, you stop talking about the problem), you still haven't given me much clarity on what can be done. I ask that because even if the government won't listen (as of now, that may change), industry might. For selfish reasons like "we care about the environment, buy our products". It's happening in the West, it'll come here. But my sincere advice to you in your struggle would be not just to tell us all what's wrong, but identify realistic ways of changing or at least amending it.

Response 2:
I'll try and keep it as short as possible - I thought the article was thought provoking. However, most such writing is rarely ever action-oriented, which in turn means that although it aims at drawing attention to a problem, offering solutions is not the aim.

In this case, especially, offering solutions is not entirely possible. Not because we aren't well equipped but simply because solutions will come with understanding and that won't come when there's such widespread ignorance about the absolute criminality that for instance, gas spewing generators perpetuate.

As for your take on the issue, especially the theoretical aspect of it, Za, it makes a lot of sense to fit such patterns into a larger psycho- economical framework. Where I work, this is what we are trying to tell the government - that growth is usually viewed as progress when actually it might imply a change. In theoretical terms, what we view as a linear and upward trajectory might be a parallel process. So, we've been trying to get the planning commission to listen to the idea of having separate planning processes for growth that will necessiate sustenance of what we already have and growth that will take us further. As we explain to the babus, the difference is if I have an apple, do I want to keep it fresh or do I want to make it into juice? And more importantly, that making it into juice will means I have to keep it fresh first.

I hope that makes sense to you? I work with a government where the going is tough. It might offer some hope to say that I see the will to change things only growing. That has come about because we lot (that Za calls social activists, who are actually just restless creatures gnawing at the government day in day out) refuse to give in to a normative discourse, which in this country is very very easy to do. Instead, we are stressing the pragmatic benefits of taking an alternative approach. I must say that I am very very impressed with how increasingly attentive the political establishments are in this regard.
As for the corporate giants, I am repulsed by how little they do. Body Shop for instance go around advertising their "good" behaviour. But what about it's nine other sister concerns all owned by L'Oreal that don't do anything even remotely close to what Body Shop preaches through it's product advertising? Sorry, perhaps I expect too much. But I don't agree when it is alleged that the government might not listen, but corporates will for whatever motive. History shows otherwise. We must remember that at the end of the day, the government is a non profit organisation - which means it will do whatever necessary to govern the country and that won't happen if the country is going up in smoke. I know I said I'd keep it short. Blimey!

I also received a very well thought out, valuable comment on some of my economic points in a Comment to the original post.

This post is getting rather long though, so I will summarize my arguments for and against all three responses in a separate one. Keep the arguments coming!

The Alarmist Perspective

A couple of weeks ago, an article in the International Herald Tribune caught my attention.
The piece deals with the huge shortfall between capacity and demand for power in Growing India and the hugely inequitable supply that results from this.

I've been reading things like this for a while - as will anyone who reads the news - but I thought it was interesting that the article was carried by a non-Indian newspaper. Says something about the scale of the problem, I thought. So, as is my wont, I sent the article out to a bunch of my Indian friends and asked them what they thought.

A question that subsequently arose in one of the responses was: Is halting economic growth really the answer?
Great question. I thought it'd be great practice at debating, communicating and thinking, to respond. Below is the email I sent in return. I'd love some constructive criticism on the points I made:
__________________________________________
Hey,
Thank you for asking the hard question. (If you were simply asking it in passing, forgive me the spiel below, but simply cannot resist debate and practice. So spiel below I will, please.)

My Response, off the top of my head and not relying on any 'party line', this is just me talking back:

It was a while ago that I read this article, so I don't remember the subtler messages, but if it did imply that halting economic growth is the solution then no, I don't agree either. Obviously though, there must be room for subtler solutions: it can't be either zero-growth or unbridled growth at any and all costs.

A couple of points I would make off the top of my head:

1. Inclusive growth seems impossible in trickle-down perspectives. This assumes that if we have a large amount of wealth, the benefits of this will trickle downwards to those who need it, ultimately. The inherent paradox is: Economics assumes the Perfectly Rational Man, but trickle-down requires a certain degree of altruism. Perfectly Rational Men are, (at the risk of vast oversimplification) opportunistic, relatively short-sighted and basically out to get the largest slice of the pie. (Obviously. I am not implying that rationality is evil, but this is what it entails - do everything in your power to be on top, push, struggle, get there. And I am like that too, I don't deny it. Why else have I accumulated a carbon footprint large enough for some small nations, trying to get a PhD.)

2. Lets not forget that this model of economic growth also assumes infinite resources. Our economy - even when it switches from manufacturing to services (as economies in the process of becoming 'developed' do), is powered by coal, oil, natural gas, and hydro- power. Two things stem from this:
2a.) The power of these resources flows from resource-rich but economically marginalized areas (the countryside) to resource-poor economically integrated areas (cites and industrial centres). This inherently furthers the marginalization of large sections of our population.
2b.) The resources themselves, managed as they are at present, will either run out or become unfeasibly expensive to harvest within the next two generations (an oversimplification based on some theory and some observation, but you can change the numbers from 2 generations to 5 to 10 - the ultimate answer is not less alarming for it). After that, technologically developed 'alternatives', so far untested for the scale and depth at which they will have to be employed, are assumed to 'take over'. For the concerned environmentalist and social scientist, this reads (much to my alarm) as follows: An over-heating economy marked by inequity and resource-poverty is about to explode into absolute chaos.

The underlying theme in all of this: Inclusivity does not come with increased growth, it comes with effective distribution. Right now I see lots of growth, but where is it going? Is anyone consciously putting in as much effort into distributing the benefits as they are into powering even more growth? (In pockets, they are. Great. More power to the people driving the process, and long may it continue. But overall, I think the balance is still skewed in favour of more, more MORE.) If overall economic well being were the aim, I would see a balance between growth, sustainability and equity.

I do not see this. If you do, let me know - it would lift some of my blackness to find that no problems exist where I think they do.

If I sound Marxist, worry not, I'm not calling for that - I'm in no place to offer a solution like that. All I can say is that: grow as much as you want, the problems will grow in lockstep if growth does not assume a radically different face, because the paradoxes are built in.

Right. So I've done worse than the article by now: brought in lots of theory, sounded alarmist and not offered a concrete way out. Great. At least it's practice in how (not to) communicate. Blah. Honestly, what is the point, no one is going to listen to a dolly-haired girl wearing Miss Selfridge shorts and red nailpolish. Humph.

Rambling incoherently now,
Zareen.

White Noise

It happened again the other night.
There was a trance-night on campus and I was so keen on going that I went ahead to the party even though I didn't know anyone who was going and my boyfriend categorically refused to go. (Understandably, anyone who does not like to dance as much as I do is bored when they go out with me, since I get so immersed in my dancing.)
It took a while for me to get 'into it', several times I thought myself silly for being so compelled to go and walked to the door. Several times I just stood in the smoking section of the club and lit up, because I thought people would think me incredibly silly, just standing around alone on the dancefloor, too shy to dance. (Me. Too shy to dance. God, what's happening to me!!)

The music wasn't helping. Trance is wonderful stuff, I think, when it's not trampled all over my mind-numbingly boring, repetitive beats. I like variation. I like unpredictability. I like drama, crescendos, random ribbons of flute music tying heavy rhythm into featherweight packages. I like flying on undulating currents, so that it feels like my body is somehow having to predict the music. The thrill is entirely lost when the music is so predictable that my bodymind has to do no thinking whatsoever.
But I digress: this was not meant to be an exposition on 'What is good trance?'

So. Picture me: alone, dolled-up, feeling silly, feeling alone. I really wanted to dance. I really wanted to know some people - dancing is more fun, and more of a challenge, when you have an audience, I think. Friends who can also dance, who can out-dance you. Even though it is such an intensely personal inner journey, my best dancing has always happened when there are people watching you, clapping encouragement as you fly higher and higher.

Suddenly, there was a shift in the music, in the light. I put out my cigarette. I took a sip of water out of the glass I was holding. I suddenly forgot to feel alone. The music had changed, and it had struck something in me. I shut my eyes, leaned against a pillar and listened. And then,
magic:

In the moment of silence between two beats, I suddenly woke up. If sacred trance was a well-known genre, I would call this music that and you would know what I meant by it. The unmistakable feeling, for those of us lucky enough to know it, of music that sounds like a prayer of the body. The beats entirely in tune with what your feet, hands, legs want to do. I shut my eyes and danced. At first, it was very strange: I haven't danced alone at a party for months, it takes some getting used to. There was a rush of things in my head. I remember them as clearly as if I had thought them all a second ago. I remember every movement, every flicker of light shining through my closed eyes:

I should go home.. I should go home, what if Mark goes away and I can't get in to my flat! I should go home. I have to study tomorrow, God, what am I doing here. The music is so wonderful, one track more, and I will go home.
And then -
I can't leave just yet. One track more.
My hands rise far, far above my head. My eyes close. My head tilts upward toward the stars. I can't leave, I won't stop. I'm thirsty. I won't stop. This sounds like a prayer, this music. But a prayer to what? To Nature, to movement, to myself, to what, what, what? What is the thing that is keeping me connected to this music? My body feels bound to it, I'm thinking with my feet and dancing with my mind. I want to fly. What is keeping me tied to this music?

I can see, behind my closed eyes, out there but inside me:
Treetops. Stars, exploding brilliance, diamonds against a pulsing black sky. Wind, waves, water crashing, cascading. The music throbs out there, above me, below me, inside me. What is keeping me connected to it. I move effortlessly. I feel no pain anywhere, I can breathe as deeply as I want to, and yet I'm moving as fast as the music and I can't - won't stop. All my fears flash past my eyes: Mark will leave. I am alone. I should be studying. What if I never get my thesis. Noise, noise, against the music. The music pushes through: that flute, piping it's way through the music, past that noise. I am riveted by it, transfixed, bewitched, enraptured. There is no way out of that music, it is everywhere. And I am everywhere. And then --
Nothing. Suddenly, those images become blackness, that noise becomes wordless. There is only movement, Being. Truth, wrapped in flute song and throbbing under it's grasp to the beat of my heart.

I walk back to my room hours later. My hunger and thirst have gone. I feel no pain anywhere. My feet hardly touch the ground. Silence.
And in that darkness, star-rise.

Catching Ideas

Catching ideas
like raindrops
blossoms fall to the ground.

My Reasons

Browsing Google during an extended study break this evening, I found out about the earthfireice campaign to collect a million pledges from individuals and businesses to to take simple steps to cut their carbon emissions. As I took my (six) pledges, I created a small profile and stuck it up to a google map. I'm now a small green dot in Colchester (the only green dot in Colchester up on that particular map - if anyone'd like to make some promises and keep me company, it'd be great!)
Anyway - as I created the profile, I came to the 'spieling' part that usually annoys me senseless. But today, I realised something that's been at the back of my mind, wordless, for quite a while. A large part of my reasons for taking personal action against global climate change has less to do with the misery I know it will inflict on my own children (should I choose to have any) than on the misery I know it is already inflicting on 'other' species. I don't want to go into the myriad statistics on the numbers of species we can expect to lose from the direct and indirect effects of a drastically changed world. Instead, these are my reasons:

The feel of monsoon rain on hot Indian earth, smelling like gardens in heaven will smell like.
The feel of cold breeze, laden with the scent of lemon trees. The splash of a polar bear, the water running off its fur. Butterflies. Hedegehogs waking up on time. Seals. Forest peace. The dance and war of ocean storms. The sight of fields ripening under an autumn afternoon.
All of these are my reasons.

At the end of the day, the only reason I need is to look out of my window and find the sun shining off the leaves of spring trees to Know that it is the 'right' thing to do to bleed to death, trying.

Transported, Transcendent, Truth

Rather a mouthful, that title... Maybe too much of a burden of words for the singularly evanescent feeling I'm trying to describe.

I had a thought about 'work'. Sitting near my window with the breeze blowing onto me and my music turned up as loud as it will go (loud enough to wake the whole world), I suddenly had a memory: In was in Goa for New Year's Eve a couple of years ago. My friends and I planned to go to what I very economically told my parents was a 'party'. Bless them, they didn't press the issue, but 'party' was about 1000 times too tame a word. Well, they needn't have worried. My asceticism - and what I learnt there - would do them proud if I told them about it. This is what it was like:
Hundreds of people, a large number of them stoned out of their minds, or drunk. All my friends were with me. The press of people everywhere. Pulsating, wordless music so loud you could feel your insides shaking. Dark starlit sky above, deep deep sea below. Only Goa can be like it was that night. And yet, in the middle of that press of people who one could argue were as debauched as it is possible to be: drunk, stoned, sexed up, on the prowl, a small ray of innocence and beauty - I found out what it is to really dance. Not a single cigarette touched my lips, or a drop of alcohol, or drugs of any kind. My only beverage was mineral water. People tried to dance with me - they soon gave up, I wouldn't open my eyes to acknowledge their presence. Someone came up behind me and put his arms around my waist. He soon gave up too. You can't dance with a girl who is simply not there, 'at' the party. And yet, I heard every single sound around me, underneath the music. People's feet. The sound of my friends voices. For one incredible second, even the sound of a cigarette flickering to life and the click of the lighter that ignited it. My friends bought me a bottle of water and I drank some of it mid-dance. I didn't stop once. I danced. Flew on the wings of that music, tirelessly, without a single thought, all night. Sometimes as fast as my body would move, sometimes standing perfectly still with my eyes shut, but still somehow caught up in movement. At one point I felt like bursting into tears, but didn't. I never once wanted to stop from either tiredness or boredom.

Complete. Total. Absolute. Unthinking. Release.

The purity of those 10 hours has stayed with me since - I only have to remember it to feel it's grace. I want the long hours I want to spend on this PhD to feel like that.

02:37 - 24/April/2007

I'm not really working flat out, but I'd rather be here than anywhere else, and I'm wide awake. Better to be working intermittently and slowly than not at all, eh?

Observations at 2:37 -
People returning from International Night. Can hear assorted languages, in assorted volumes. But mostly laughter, the stray drunken shriek or howl. A group of girls shouting goodnight and 'I LOVE you' across the grass to each other. Probably pissed out of their minds :) Music from people's apartments.
The lights in Colchester.
Halogen lamps on campus, shining like soft globes of gold in amongst the trees. I always imagine that they'll fall off their posts and bounce softly onto the ground. Dead silence in the department. Am I the only person here?
My boyfriend online. He says a cat has gotten in to his house tonight. I wish I was that cat. Or rather, that a cat would get into the office and curl up on my lap. I have a picture of Pasha (my ginger tabby, away back in India) on my desk. I can't take my eyes off him, he's so gorgeous. Even in a little 4 x4 picture frame.
Would never stop reading, or working, just so it could lie there undisturbed. My little ivy plant on my desk is probably asleep. (Does light disturb plants sleeping?)
I want to be here until sunrise and watch those golden lights outside turn off one by one. Or maybe they all fall asleep together.
Funny I'm not hungry. Must be all the smokes. I bought a chicken dinner before I got here. It'll have to be breakfast.

2:45.
Am here until 5, and I'm off just as the birds start to wake.

Lonely Owls. I should start a club called Lonely Owls.

Rust and Stardust indeed!

A question I often ask myself - as does everyone interested in environmental issues does, I think - is: To what extent is degradation an inevitable process of the ongoing experiment with civilisation? Or to put it another way: did we get to the state we are in (both the glories of it as well as the darkness) unconsciously? And so, how on earth are we going to begin learning our way out of it?
A related issue is: What difference can I make? Or 1000 people like me. Or a million. Can we really do anything at all? Of course, I have often heard that the answer lies somewhere between yes and no. No, we might never change anything. Yes, we already have. No, we might never change anything. But Yes, it is important to keep trying. And keep trying we will. Some of us will give up, some of us will not, and some of us will give up and then resume.

On a deeper note, though, I can't help but think of all those who talk about the essential illusion of reality. By that I don't mean the absence of circumstance or cause and effect. These are Are, of course. But underneath them, there is this thought, repeated endlessly through the ages, but particularly well put by H.P. Blavatsky:
"The Universe is the periodical manifestation of (an) unknown Absolute Essence."
So, at the deepest levels, we do not know what turns the cosmic wheel. And, as Stephen Hawking put it, to know why it turns at all would be "to know the mind of God".
And yet, we all know that: "Yet, the Universe is real enough to the conscious beings in it, which are as unreal as it is itself" (another one by Blavatsky).

Is this enough of an imperative for continued action? That the universe is real enough? That is an open question and to some extent irrelevant in the everyday workings of environmentalism.
Yet, in opening the deepest basis of action itself to scrutiny, it paradoxically opens a path towards remarkable balance and perspective: The Universe is real enough to the conscious beings in it - which as unreal as itself. What are the tiny things that keep us from the 'deepest driving desires' which the Upanishads say form our true essence? And if the preservation of nature (read: beauty, wholeness, truth, whatever words you want to insert) is, as many have felt, a deep 'driving desire', perhaps the rest is really just rust and stardust.

Incoherent or simplistic as this may be as a justification for continued blood, sweat and tears, it is a thought that has shone one small white shaft of light into the dark place inside me that is filled with doubt.
And for that, I am grateful.

(On a slightly irrelevant note, and just to dispel some of the existential confusion the thought of not actually existing might have engendered (I do flatter my own post, I know), look at the talk page on Wikipedia's article on the Upanishads. It seems that these people could do well with reiterating to themselves the basic philosophy of the writings they so hotly debate: the rest is rust and stardust!! The 'divine hand' that prompted the scripture in the first place must be laughing its sides out.)

The Rest is Rust and Stardust

and the rest is rust and stardust.
something painfully simple, honest and clear written by Nabokov - in Lolita, I think. and as a follow on to my thoughts through the day on embracing silence, i think this is the perfect way to come to terms with silence, solitude - and even start to like them again. (i say again because they were once my best friends. growing up tends to make you forget how to handle them, i think.)
so: at the end of this day of quite a bit of academic as well as personal thinking (and some thoughts that merged the two!), here is what i have discovered re. my 'solitude crisis'.
this is a PhD programme - in most respects, i am a university student, working to deadlines (not very efficiently, as you can see. most of my time is spent in staring!) and having set goals (supposedly). but. when i first came here, what was it i wanted to do? not necessarily gain the 'Dr' title (i still can't believe i might gain that!), but instead, find a creative answer to a unique question. find some meaning in an apparently unconnected series of information-points. find the pattern that connects. how can that come if i am - as i am at home - constantly surrounded by a gaggle of giggling friends (bless them, i miss them like a wound). yes, conversations help clarify insights. but before those insights come, the rest is rust and stardust.
now, Zareen, to work. think. for God's sake, forget everything else and do what you're here to. think. so every time i forget, the magic words to remind me are: the rest is rust and stardust.

Embracing Silence

Orientation week for research postgraduates should have had a compulsory module entitled Embracing Silence.
Eager-beaver PhD hopefuls should have been tested on their ability to sit long hours without saying a word, tested on their ability to remain sane under pressure without the comfortable social pillow of rants with classmates about upcoming deadlines. After all, there are no classmates in a research programme. Especially if you do not work in a lab, are not affiliated to an existing programme of research and are basically the only one who seems to know what on earth you are researching (and even this is not always so clear). Those lucky enough to have started during the autumn term have it easier: offices are warm, no one wants to be outside. There are no barbecue smells wafting in from the lakeside. There are no sounds of: giggling, birdsong, wind in the trees, impromptu football, ice cream fights, bumblebees, music, bicycles whizzing along sun warmed stone, friends gossiping. Life.
For those of us (read: me) who started during the spring term, the office is a space of silence, the outside is a cosmos of sounds reflecting a fast awakening summer. For those of us (read: me) who started during the spring term, there is the twin hurdle of overcoming the seemingly instinctive magnetism towards sunshine and the apparently insurmountable urge to share it with friends. Looking at the sunshine dappling everything with green and gold outside does not compensate. Having friends at a distance (read, over the Internet, away back home) does not compensate.
Embracing silence.
Yes. If I ever get this dratted PhD, and am ever talking to 'new' students, this is what I will tell them is the hardest thing to do.
For now, its a couple of hours of reading and writing before I succumb to the sunshine.

Where I am now

The pattern that connects? That's a laugh. That was such a mouthful to think out, it kept me away from writing for half a year. Slowly, though, it is beginning to come back. As I take my first baby steps along the long path to my PhD.
I plan to use this space to talk about the patterns I find as I go on this journey.

For a background:
I'm here at the University of Essex's Department of Biological Sciences, in the Centre for Environment and Society. My supervisors are Prof. Jules Pretty and Dr. David Smith.
After my Masters here, I decided to stay on and continue with the same research as I began for my dissertation: researching people's participation in sustainable development (an even bigger mouthful than 'The Pattern That Connects'. I am a glutton for difficulty, it seems.)

Anyway here I am, and here are my stories. Some of them small pictures, some of them questions and some, just vague feelings that PhDs seem to bring.
Here are my patterns.
Here I am.