yet again ... getting lost ... then enjoying self-discovery ...

Environment Day: Of tokenism and ironies Published at The Citizen on 5th June 2017 here . Thanks are due to the team at The Citizen Suddenly everyone around seemed to have reignited their love for their mothers, realized that their mothers were the best ( whatever it means ) and rekindled their memories of pleasant incidents with mothers. Preceding the Mother’s Day was Women’s Day , a day to celebrate women, as if half the population on planet does not exist otherwise. After a point even the mainstream media had had enough. A Hindustan Times ’ article stated “ While I do appreciate the free manicures, drinks and air miles this Women’s Day, let’s aim to stop the tokenism. It means nothing. Instead, let’s aim for deeper, long-lasting and more substantial solutions ”. While an editorial in The Hindu said “ What have we reduced International Women’s Day to? It’s nothing short of a jamboree. Events aplenty are organised around March 8 to demonstrate our admiration for ‘woma...

Plastic is there to stay and the onus is on us to change our lifestyles and protect the environment. Published on First Post on 6 th June 2017 here .  Thanks are due to the team at First Post. An unedited version below. Images of turtles, albatrosses and other marine species dying on account of plastic in our oceans have been doing rounds in recent years. Many of us have been pained but most of us seem to have done little. Two shocking incidents this year not only underscored this but also gave us a final warning. A warning to act now or to face a future not very different from that of these species . The first is a whale on the Norwegian shore which was so sick it had to be euthanized; 30 plastic bags (besides other garbage) were found in its stomach. The second is the publication of a report on Henderson Island. More than 37 million pieces of waste plastic were found on an uninhabited island recognized as a UNESCO World Heritage Site for its ecology! Plastic ...

How serious are we about the earth? This piece is published at The Citizen on 5 th April here . Thanks are due to the team at The Citizen. ‘W e are a nation that talks of salads and eats samosas ’, Sanjeev Kapoor, the well-know chef, had stated in an interview. He may well have been referring to our attitude towards our planet , albeit in metaphorical terms. Two events bring this out starkly. Images from Cold Play concert at Mumbai, November 2016, depicted trash lying scattered after the event. More than seventy thousand people had attended the mega-event; many of whom had contributed to the litter. During the event they had pledged to the Sustainable Development Goals or SDGs; their pledges and actions turned out to be anti-thetical to each other. This is how the media covered it: ‘ Nobody could be bothered with civic sense or niceties such as recycling for a sustainable living ’ ~ huffingtonpost.in ‘ It was an event designed to raise awareness but lik...

The wild is in us not them Thanks are due to The Citizen, Gayeti and Aishwarya. This piece finds place on The Citizen here . At the Hyderabad Zoo with friends recently one was shocked to hear them introducing mammals to their kids; each reference was from characters in animated Disney films. Films made in another continent, speaking a language different from that which the kids spoke at home and presumably not made with Indian kids as the primary audience. There was neither a single mention of species that find place in our ever alive mythologies nor of those mentioned in their school text books or story books. No mammal, except the lion, was identified as being part of the state. Eavesdropping on conversations of other families during the trip, and speaking to others after the trip, confirmed the fears. This was possibly how a majority of our urban house-holds perceive forests and wildlife. Sheer disconnect of the urban population from a part of its cultural herita...