I walked eagerly to the backyard, looking forward to pulling a sprig of Moringa leaves toward me. I relished these leaves daily till about a month back, when I travelled to Bombay from Goa for a family reunion. Bombay, where high-rises hide the sky; Goa, where you still see soil and sky in communion (a kinship under threat). Bombay, the consumer’s dream; Goa, the escapist’s sanctuary. I fit broadly both descriptions, of consumer and escapist—perhaps, we all do. The consumer takes materially, the escapist takes mentally, seemingly opposed yet one in the act of taking.
The happy middle is where the mind of the recipient rests. To learn to receive is to move away from a consumer’s anxious taking and from an escapist’s illusion of not taking.
Where stood the Moringa tree, with its delicate leaves and slender stems, stands now a stump. My heart ached or rather sank—curious that we call it heartache, when the feeling itself originates not in the heart but somewhere else. It seems to occur in an organ buried deeper than the heart, a place that our medical devices cannot access. And it’s more a sink than an ache.
The hacked tree stood as a reminder of a broken humanity: how can we think of ourselves as intact and intelligent, when we amputate a healthy arm that carries food to our starving mouth? The analogy, be told, is appropriate, because Moringa is known as a miracle tree, every part is health-giving. It’s by far, The Giving Tree that Shel Silverstein wrote about in his picture book.
With no sprig in hand, I returned to my door left wide open to welcome the morning light. A tiny green leaf caught my eye. It was at my doorstep. I picked it up. Wiping it gently with my fingers, I took a bite—I should know a leaf that I plucked and ate every day for two months, yet I erred on the side of caution and hesitantly chewed. Moringa indeed!
I looked up and saw that the neighbour’s Moringa tree had grown during the rains, and its branches were hanging delicately over my homeowner’s compound. The breeze had carried one of its tiny leaves to my doorstep. As the taste buds registered that the leaf was from a Moringa tree, the sinking feeling transformed into joy and a moment of realisation: When we believe in coincidences, we are robbed of experiencing life’s benevolence. A tiny leaf at my doorstep from one Moringa tree while my mind distressed over the felling of another, brought me back to a “higher love.”
All appeared beautiful again and my eyes gazed thankfully at my green surroundings. They came to rest attentively at the banana plant outside my front door. Bearing fruit and a beautiful purple flower, the plant was working hard to create nourishment for other living beings. When ripe the fruit will be harvested and the plant will perish, leaving behind a few spurs or spurring new shoots that will grow and nourish like the mother plant—benevolence, isn’t it? And it’s also an example of carrying forward inheritance, from mother to child and plant to spur or shoot.
All that I gave the plant was kitchen waste, peels, leaves, used coffee grind, overripe coconut, and a bad batch of kombucha. And what was it giving in return? You give me waste, I give you food: Can we hope to replicate a cycle of giving so untainted? Not if we continue to squander our inheritance. The sinking feeling is not an ache but a reminder that we are wasting what we have been given—the inheritance of love.
Two nights prior to the full moon in May, I learned to weave a coconut frond, from my friend at the food forest (natureWORKS). I prefer for her a word used centuries back in India, that is mostly forgotten and in disuse today–kalyanmitra (friend in well-being).
I was both grateful and filled with joy by my experience. The act of making a Mol’lam (a woven coconut frond) brought forth to mind many images and much inspiration.
As an ode to all early crafters, who have helped establish the human experience of solidarity and contentment, and opened our hearts to receive with humility, and to Goa’s very own Makers of Mol’lam , including the two in the first photo, I dedicate this inspired verse.
Thank you note: I had originally used the word Mollan, which was accepted by all who read the post. However, a friend and journalist, writer from Goa, corrected me and pointed to the original spelling Mol’lam (guessing it is phonetic). I have made the edit.
Image courtesy: natureWORKS, Pilerne, Goa. All images are licensed under Copyleft
Makers of Mol’lam You weave a frond That the breeze once moved
A wave, a swish, a sway In greeting For those who took the time To look.
How did you imagine A frond you could weave What made you braid This divided leaf?
Did you lay on it first Or use it as a fence Did the gaps show you That a weave and a knot would Help serve your end?
Through your hand, to your heart Did the veins carry inspiration Not a moment of genius But of attention?
You tried and you tried again Till the gaps were closed And the frond, Once a leaf, now a Mol’lam Came to be known.
Beauty unchanged Imperfection remains The drying leaf, its brittle ends In colours that have shades Our palettes do not contain.
Makers of Mol’lam Don’t you stop Let the fingers feel Let me kneel In humility For I do not craft, I make not beauty, nor art.
Inspiration flows, It carries on. To those who receive It belongs When a moment of attention Calls it forth.
Oh, makers of Mol’lam Please don’t stop For our hands must continue To use what is given And is received.
To take there is no need Plenty is ours We must know how to kneel Not with heads bowed down But with hearts open.
If our hands don’t remember to make Our hearts slowly will forget That beauty is as it is Imperfect.
Makers of Mol’lam Mothers, fathers Ancestors, and elders Through you inspiration flows.
I call it forth With folded legs, bent at the knees While hands they weave Do not close in prayer Open they are to receive.
Reverent in humility As I watch the leaf respond For it is not I that craft I make not beauty, nor art.
Around two weeks ago, I went to bed with the thought of spending the next day at ‘Bean Me Up’, a vegan restaurant with a delicious menu and an inviting tree cover.
I wanted fresh, nourishing food to be given to me, so that my hours were free to reflect, read, and write. I imagined myself under a canopy of trees, staring leisurely at the sky and gazing at the shrubs and climbers in shades of brown, green, and yellow, while the mind carefully assembled and made sense of recent experiences and observations.
I awoke with the imagined visual in my head, and with something else—a feeling that hadn’t been there when I went to bed. I felt a longing for stillness.
Like a sweet birdsong in a woody enclave, stillness called me to stay. My mind combined this call with the feeling of care and love for the planet: We need to slow down and stop burning fossil fuel at the current rapid rate.
I arrived at a decision to stay home, but not quite that smoothly. My mind tried initially to negotiate a way out of cooking. It longed for free hours and so it chose intermittent fasting as an alternative to the restaurant. But hunger pangs, the habit of drinking coffee, and the taste for freshly roasted coffee with equally fresh non-dairy milk played havoc on the mind. Book turned over, I found myself in the kitchen using precious time to cook, while I yearned to read and write.
This may seem like an unnecessary struggle to a pragmatist. But to me it is an interplay of mind and matter. Love and care is not pragmatic, and neither is it blind. It just strums the strings, if we permit it.
I discovered that hunger, restlessness, longing are part of the strum, as is patience, ever so soft that it is almost inaudible. My eyes grew restful and the mind less agitated. I looked with a quieter gaze at the fairly green setting of my rented home in Goa.
It occurred to me that I am much closer to my food source now than I had previously been: A tree or a plant, benevolent neighbours, and a local village woman, named Dadi (Grandmother), the title by which she introduces herself.
Image courtesy, kyobi.blog – From trees to me, through the benevolence of friends and neighbours: a heartfelt thank you to all and to Dadi.
The coconuts I receive from my homeowner and from M&M (friends at the food forest where I spend part of my day) taste sweeter than those transported over kilometres or miles. Bananas and chikoos/sapotas from my homeowners’ backyard, mangoes from a neighbour’s tree, and bananas and papayas from natureWORKS (the food forest) are juicy and relishable, and the leafy veggies, cucurbits, beans, and parboiled rice from the village market and local farmers deserve a second helping.
I soak and ferment, using the help of microbes to cook wholesome meals of stir fried or curried veggies with a generous sprinkle of fresh and dried herbs for seasoning, accompanied by a single grain, either millet, rice, or roti/Indian flatbread. Most greens I pluck and eat raw—why cook what need not be cooked? It takes me an hour or 90-minutes to get food on my plate, and what is prepared for lunch serves as dinner. Then why did I make cooking an impediment to my mental pursuit?
The strum continued and tuned up with the ambient ‘tymballing’ of cicadas (tymbals are membranes that male cicadas vibrate to create rather a loud sound).
Restlessness ebbed slowly, giving me an unobstructed view of what really troubles me about cooking. Wastage of water tops the list—mechanised methods that draw water from rivers, lakes, and aquifers to pump it up through pipes into tanks, only to bring it down again into taps or faucets to drain into sewers, make little sense.
Our replica of the natural water cycle may have missed considering three important points:
Evaporation is when water is pulled up naturally, and this is agradual process 2. Evaporated water is not contaminated but isin fact enriched with atmospheric particles (depending of course on what’s circulating in the atmosphere). 3. Water, when it drops from the clouds onto soil, replenishes and regenerates. It does not need to be treated, chlorinated, and depleted of its life-giving attribute.
Thereon the list consists of the steps that accompany cooking—cleaning the kitchen counter, doing the dishes, scrubbing grime off the kitchen sink, using inefficient gas or electric stoves that release most of the heat they generate into the atmosphere, and moving or standing throughout the process at the kitchen counter, while blood courses through the veins, burning more effectively than the inefficient stove. Cooking is an act of creating. To create is joyful; it brings about regeneration of energy and not dilated blood vessels!
Again I imagine, this time an inspired response to my days at the food forest (natureWORKS in Goa) and to reading, ‘Road Back to Nature,’ by Masanobu Fukuoka, agricultural scientist, philosopher, farmer, and writer.
A process designed for regeneration is designed for wellbeing. They go together, because energy that is applied, produces energy. The form can change but energy remains—it regenerates.
When we apply energy to clean and scrub, it’s not regenerating. We are using up energy reserves given to us by the food we cooked. We are expending our energy. The solution is not a dishwasher or a housekeeping robot; they are conveniences that use energy without regenerating, and therefore are not designed for wellbeing.
Must we continue being bearers, creators, and enthusiasts of a non-regenerative design? Perhaps, we need to acknowledge the flaws to reimagine how we can dwell in wellbeing.
I begin by shifting my perspective to include a principle that Fukuoka explored: ‘Nothing, no matter what it is, has value in and of itself. I understand that the value of food is in the energy it regenerates. That’s why a small seed grain or a vegetable carrying the combined energy of the sun, earth, and living water (untreated, and not pumped and carried over long distances) is more valuable to mankind than food that is over-processed or dead.
What about the kitchen counter and kitchen sink, where lies its value? Perhaps in a design that converts blood coursing to blood circulation. Sitting cross-legged to cut vegetables, clean produce, and knead dough, and building a raised platform closer to the floor so that we can squat and cook is realistic and achievable with effort. As for our replica of the water cycle, most of us cannot reengineer drainage and water systems, but we can try and create some value. With the support of family, we can reduce the flow of water used, rinse and reuse dishes till the end of the day, avoid using flowing water to rinse, cook once a day, eat the same meal twice, and use non-toxic soaps made of organic material that is biodegradable.
And how may we ascertain the value of our effortful acts, which ‘in and of itself’ are pointless? By feeling the strum: if joy is part of the sound then we know that energy is regenerating. If not, then stay still and listen.
Each time I read the word Mother Nature, it makes me pause. I find it bothersome that we personify nature as female, only so we can exploit and abuse it unceremoniously.
We continue to worship Father God but wring out life from the manifestation, Mother Nature: We respect in concept and violate in reality, how can that not be bothersome?
We divide an otherwise unified force into male and female, into thought and action, into belief and disregard, in the way that we divide ourselves into mind and body. A false dichotomy, because when the body needs water, the mind feels the thirst. When the mind feels joyful, the body is light, and there’s a bounce in our step.
A little retuning may teach us a valuable lesson: ‘Don’t trust that which inclines the mind towards dichotomy.’ Black and white are not contrasting colours, they are shades on the grayscale, and earth and sky both have electromagnetic activity. Why then accept Father God and Mother Nature?
In the semi-rural setting of Goa, India, I begin to pay attention to ease, and where it can be experienced in our surroundings. I walk on a floor made of cow-dung and my calf muscles sigh in relief. I sit in the cool shade of a tree canopy in sweltering heat and my heart sings. I read words written on stone with chalk: ‘May our connections grow more loving’ (translated from Bangla, one of the 19,500 mother tongues or dialects spoken in India) and my mind awakens to the purity of thought.
Image courtesy: natureWORKS, Pilerne, Goa (India)
I water plants on a mud path covered with dry leaves and my steps feel light. I eat a papaya ripened on a tree that is growing in soil fed by dry leaves and manure from decomposed human and food waste. Half a papaya makes my body feel nourished and sated and I notice that I feel no hunger or thirst as night sets in and I slip into slumber. I meditate in a veranda surrounded by trees and observe as the mosquitoes buzz in my ears and chew at my flesh. I realise then that the sensation is not as troublesome as the reaction, only to resume reacting till I can relax and return patiently to the ease of realisation.
Ease, I discover, is the plane on which Father God meets Mother Nature. It’s where all that is created unites with all that is being created. The creator is the process of creation—Father God is Mother Nature!
Welcome, Maad (coconut tree in Konkani, the local language of Goa). Pedestal up, like in a movie shot, and what do I see on the plane of ease? Gyrating fronds or leaves of a coconut tree.
The coconut tree when in bloom gives us Neera, a refreshing and sweet drink extracted from the flower clusters of mature trees.
The gyrating fronds weave unresistingly into thread-less mats to sleep on, and they make an airy, privacy fence that doesn’t block the breeze.
The leaves or fronds shade mud roofs and prevent them from cracking in the heat of the tropical sun.
The tree’s fruit pulp is a delicious and revitalising appetite filler.
From the pulp comes coconut cream and milk that is used in many cuisines and desserts.
The water in the fruit is a blessing on a hot day.
Fibre from the outer husk of the coconut can fill our mattresses and be used as a loofah for dishes or to exfoliate the skin on our feet.
Coconut fibre is also good to layer soil. It improves drainage and it retains moisture.
The shells of the coconut make an appealing boundary for plants and prevent precious, well-composted soil from being washed away.
Coconut shells make earthy-looking soap dishes and are handy bowls for our easily acquired, all natural, zero cost, and zero waste, coconut-fibre loofah.
The roots of the tree are medicinal.
The bark (of a tree that has completed its lifespan) can be used to build our shelters and to make furniture.
All this and more from a tree that needs negligible care.
Pedestal down and there you are, and I am, resting blissfully in the shade of the tree: ‘Father God, please meet Mother Nature.’
A little about natureWORKS from the family that lives on the land and is sharing the experience with me: ‘natureWORKS is a sustainable homestead we are creating with mud and alternate architecture, amidst a food forest. We use only recycled and upcycled doors, windows, timber, roof and floor tiles. Also, other second-hand materials, like glass, steel, and aluminium, that would otherwise end up in junkyards or landfills. We aim to keep our carbon footprint as tiny as possible. Most living will be out doors, under the trees with only cooking and sleeping at night done indoors, especially during the rains. Our lifestyle is simple, basic, frugal, and fairly radical. The homestead, for us, our 95 year old mum and our two children, is purely for family use. It’s not really a “Dream Home,” as something to be selfishly attached to, or be house proud of, or show off about. But it definitely is part of a blueprint and roadmap for sustainable living on our planet.’
On January 1, 2022, I returned to Mumbai from Goa (coastal state in India known for its fertile soil, beautiful beaches, and susegad or untroubled lifestyle that has been changing rapidly with urbanisation and an influx of urbanites into the state).
In my car was a cake box that had been converted into a tray for three spinach saplings and two herbs—Brahmi (Waterhyssop) and Chirata (Swertia). Alongside sat three recycled plastic bottles, one holding a sapling of Ritha/Reetha or Indian soapberry (Sapindus mukorossi), and the other two carrying a young Kadipatta or Curry tree and a passion fruit plant.
Seeds and cuttings of other beautiful plants, including the favoured butterfly pea with its deep blue (almost purple) flower that colours our tisane and soothes our nerves also made the journey. I had ordered tisane and enjoyed spinach like any good consumer of nourishment, but now my process of maturation had begun. I was soon to become a beneficiary of nature’s benevolence and a participant in its joy.
Every morning, I watched as the butterfly pea and other seeds and saplings continued to grow and thrive, while I contributed by caring for their needs. Sunlight, water, fresh air, and healthy soil are amply present in natural surroundings that haven’t been interfered with, however in an apartment they must be provided for, making my care a mere circumstantial necessity.
I observed that the seeds integrated the nutrients made available to them to become the plants that they were meant to become, and the plants were integrating nutrients, from the atmosphere and the soil, to become nourishment for us: as nature intended.
The butterfly pea sprouted and grew from seed to sapling. It swayed gently in the air and the head of its upper stem turned towards the sun at intervals, like a rotating device atop a lookout tower. One evening, I intuitively grounded a stick in the pot for the slender stem to lean on. The next morning, I found the plant gracefully wrapped around the stick. This plant’s nature is to wrap itself around a more solid structure, from which its fragility gains strength, as soon as the wooden stick was offered it did as nature intended for it to do.
I continued to share my observations with friends and benefactors who had gifted me the seeds and saplings in Goa, and they continued to share what they witnessed of natural cycles in their food forest.
M from the M&M duo shared a beautiful photograph of a mature Ritha/Reetha (Indian soapberry) tree that had shed its leaves to mulch the soil and protect it from being scorched by the summer sun in India. M mentioned that the shedding of leaves followed the fruit-bearing period.
The fruits were drying in the sun, the leaves were protecting the soil, and the tree trunk and branches were preparing to sprout and unfurl new leaves: What had been integrated, had disintegrated to become.
The leaves were becoming nourishment for the soil and its creatures, the fruits were becoming medicine for our wellbeing and a resource for personal hygiene, cleaning, and other household requirements, and the soil was becoming a food source for many plants and trees that sustained life. The tree was disintegrating to integrate and was “becoming to become”: as nature intended.
And we, what are we becoming to become? If at the heart of nature’s cycle is regeneration, then are our tasks all distractions? Those working to empower the subjugated amongst us are likely to think otherwise, because lack of equity is the cause of many problems in human society. However, without the firmament of regeneration, we might merely be helping people to become part of an exploitative system.
As I write, I hear the raucous call of those working on road repairs outside our apartment building. In the heat of 38°C (100.4°F), they exert energy to pull and tug at underground wires and call out loud the command of the leader at the head of a long human chain.
Had they been educated, within the system, they would design and build the machines that ploughed the earth, excavated the soil, and tugged at the wires. They wouldn’t labour with their hands and bodies, they would labour with their brains and mind. Labour they would still remain!
They would not become skilled craftsmen, or talented workers, nor would they become empowered creators who experience and live the joy of participating in a regenerative system: as nature intended.
With this understanding, I explored the feeling of empowerment within me. When is it that I felt most empowered? Therein I sensed lay the answer to the essence of empowerment. Choice, free thought, free speech, financial provision, all of which I have had access to since birth, somehow reminded me of weak clay pots that collapse when exposed to heat—These ideas of empowerment, I realised were incapable of containing its essence.
My exploration brought me closer to the feelings that empowerment evoked or the feelings that evoked empowerment. Joy, wellbeing, harmony, and trust contained my experience of empowerment, they were its essence. How then are we to empower? Where lie these attributes of human experience? Perhaps in a regenerative system, as a solution towards equity for all living beings, where that which integrates disintegrates, and that which disintegrates becomes: as nature intended.
Moments of intention. Image courtesy: Neha Mundhra and Madhushree Daga
What began as a loosely planned journey of best intentions to keep my carbon emissions low as I travel far from the city towards greener surroundings has become an unexpected lesson in understanding what it means to live by our intentions.
Intentions don’t hold the reigns the way willpower does. They are not an exerted force that keeps us on track, they are akin to the fragrance that guides us on the path. (Track for me is like a course cleared for an athlete, and a path is land that has been tread upon by generations but the landscape is still intact: flowers, bushes, trees, and stones are as they were, no longer wild but not manicured or tidied up).
Living by intention, a life that is more respectful of natural balance is not quite that simple, because it’s not about aligning ourselves with some larger, more perfect phenomenon. It’s about what we put out there so that natural balance is maintained within and around.
We don’t just decide to live a zero waste life and stick to it without compromises, making life difficult for ourselves and those we live with. Instead we have the intention, and each time we buy or ask for something, we live that intention with complete cognisance. There is no compromise. There is a choice at each step and there is knowing and recognition that the choice could have been better or different in different circumstances—the minute we get this, we start to choose to put ourselves in circumstances that are more conducive to developing our intentions and we accept the circumstances that we cannot change.
During the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic, I did all that I could to reduce our packaging waste—my mother and I began to make bio enzymes with citrus fruit peels, water, and jaggery, it’s a great all-purpose cleaner for the house; we proactively managed delivery of fresh produce to the residents of our apartment building, setting up a system where residents inked their apartment numbers on grocery bags and kept them downstairs on delivery day, we coordinated for all deliveries to come one day a week to reduce the back and forth for the vendor and to cut down the use of fuel, and we requested that he carry all produce in crates separated by apartment numbers (not in plastic bags that the delivery boys disposed unthinkingly after our delivery). The orders were of significant quantity and he was understanding enough to make the effort.
We made many small adjustments, including baking biscuits and roasting snacks at home, so that we could eliminate unnecessary wrappers and boxes from our recyclable waste that most often gets sent to landfills, because the entire chain still needs to be developed to match our copious consumption of packaging. I also chose to make my own fresh almond and coconut milk for the same reason. We bulk ordered natural laundry and dishwashing soaps that came without individual packaging; the list of small tweaks was long, each a choice that we made despite being used to the conveniences that city life and financial flexibility provide, and then (in April 2021) we got Covid.
Both my parents and I were unwell at the same time, and extended family galvanised to send us food so that we got the necessary nutrition. Everything had to come in disposable boxes and bags, nobody had spare stock of reusable boxes to send our meals for three weeks. We had to accept fruits and vegetables in plastic bags because giving our cloth bags was no longer an option. We didn’t have the energy to bake and make, and we needed the right food to help aid recovery. We ordered it all! Sure we chose homegrown brands that made and packaged consciously, but everything we needed was being shipped and delivered to us in more packaging than place in the house to store.
The effort that we put through 2020, the first year of the pandemic, and the changes that I had gradually introduced over a decade made me see how adjusting to the situation was a non-negotiable that strengthened intentions and did not in fact bring them to a compromise.
These strengthened intentions were the reason I calculated carefully my carbon emissions while planning a four-month learning expedition in India that began in November 2021. As a woman travelling alone, I made safety an important criteria and chose a combination of road, flight, and train transport; second best to a journey by train throughout.
However, the travel hasn’t gone as planned, and therefore I call this a loosely planned journey of best intentions.
I took to the road and went from Mumbai, a city of about 21 million people to Hatkanangale, a rural town of about 15,047 people at a distance of ~375-kilometers or 233-miles. After serving at a ten-day Vipassana Meditation course in a remote location in this rustic town, I was supposed to participate in the following ten-day course as a meditator, only to discover that the three-day gap between the two courses did not offer me the needed rest after a rigorous volunteer service.
My heart felt satedby the experience of untarnished moments of purity, where the mind was at complete ease with no blame, covetousness, or ambition, and each action was born of understanding, love, and gratitude, but my body felt exhausted. I took the cue and opted out, adapting to the situation that had arisen.
The next leg of my journey was supposed to be covered by plane. I had planned to go to Navadarshanam, a community-managed forest preservation and sustenance farming land, but instead I decided to drive a distance of about 250-kilometres (~155-miles) to the coastal state of Goa, where I had lived for three and a half years. The place I call, ‘home in my heart’, and the penultimate destination on my way back to Mumbai, after volunteering at Navadarshanam and exploring by train the coffee-belt in the mountainous region of Chikmagalur in South India.
Goa unexpectedly shifted up in the travel itinerary. And here I am writing this blog post, unsure of how my plans will evolve. In a world where we look for certainty, I am learning how to mature my intentions without the force of will to bend circumstances. You know what it feels like? A slinky that a child’s tiny hands are trying to keep in perfect equilibrium by making the palms still and nerves calm, except that the trick to balance the springy motion of life is not in the palm of our hands, its in what we put out there to maintain natural balance within and around.
It won’t stay still. “It’s slinky!” Image courtesy: Getty Images
In the unhurried pace of rural life, I listen to the silence of the Honey Forests and I watch how uncertainty pushes us into action. Goa is part of India’s vast Western Ghats, a mountain range of 160,000 square kilometres (~62,000 square miles), where giant bees, known as mavā mūs in Konkani, the language of the region, gather honeydew from trees to make honey that is more flavourful than honey from the nectar of flowers, conferring on the Western Ghats the title of Honey Forests.
We rush, we pursue, and we conjure and imagine, because living with uncertainty is hard. It’s hard till we accept our vulnerability, develop our patience with wisdom, and put forth our determination with love—All in its own time, trusting that the whiff of intentions will lead us to honey that is sweeter. So far, I have not managed to cut carbon emissions from my travel as much as I wished to, but I walk more, buy carefully, turn down the water flow when I do my chores, keep the stove flame lower than the perimeter of the pan, compost regularly, cook at home, use till things are unusable, mend what I can, keep lights turned off when not needed, and am doing all that I can to live by my intentions.
Diwali, festival of ‘inner’ light. Image courtesy: Enchanting travels, in Varanasi, India
I looked out the window and my heart fluttered. The sun had set, leaving behind the usual brightness of city lights that seemed soft and shadowy in the presence of seemingly endless strings of green and orange fairy lights, that lay like a blanket over the bushes in the garden and snaked around the trunk of a lone standing tree and the stems of two graceful palms.
A rather literal representation of Diwali, the festival of light(s), I thought. The version of the Diwali story that my sister and I heard repeatedly as children was narrated by our grandmother, and what I recall is the return of the noble couple, Rama and Sita, who preserved virtue and reigned over greed and avarice despite indescribable hardship.
To welcome virtue and the noble couple into our home, our grandmother lit twenty-one small earthen diyas (cups) with ghee (clarified butter) and a cotton wick, as do most households even today, then why the need for twinkling strands of electricity?
This year loud noise and smoke from fireworks and the ocular disturbance of electric lights coincides with the cry of the scientific community and of youth activists to cut emissions and to change radically our ways of production and consumption as the planet heats up.
My eyes looked at the fairy lights and they read the notifications that appeared on my phone about commitments being made at COP26 (Conference of the Parties, a UN conference on climate change)—simultaneous realities that highlighted the co-existence of darkness and light. It occurred to me that the noble and ignoble simply share space.
Is it not possible however, that there can be a little more light and a lot less darkness, of the kind that Diwali symbolises without the electric spectacle?
Each year, as festivities begin, I rant about what we are doing to the planet and oftentimes I send a strongly-worded message to the Managing Committee at our apartment building. This year, I chose differently. I inclined towards an inclusive stand: a little more (light of wisdom) and a lot less (darkness of ignorance), please!
I requested Management to turn off the fairy lights at midnight, when almost all residents are asleep. They agreed, only to turn the lights back on at 5AM before dawn, when people start stepping down for their morning exercise. Not perfect, but at least a five-hour respite had been made available to those having to bear the worst brunt of this light show. A sight we easily escape by drawing the curtains or pulling down the blinds.
Did I just compromise my idealism or did I learn for the first time to apply it correctly? Is idealism not about fighting all odds to get to the perfect outcome? Is it not about striving for perfection? I didn’t know this at the time, but the recent negotiation was the outcome of a new perspective: Idealism is about continuing to care despite all odds, allowing what we care about to alter our life. No longer the ranting reformist, I was transforming into a tolerant “inclusivist”, grateful for every experience of peaceful accord.
This was the second in a series of realisations and negotiations that happened over two weeks. The first was on a Saturday morning, when I sprinted to catch a bus. After twenty-five years of resisting the growing crowds in my city, I found that I was unable to get into the car and power my way to my favourite cafe at a distance of 13-kilometres or 8-miles. And so I ran, like Lola.
In the 1998 experimental thriller, Lola had twenty-minutes to save her boyfriend, I had less than a minute to run to the bus stop to catch the bus, which was at a red light about 300-metres from the stop.
Just in time, I climbed onboard, and was told that the bus was going to a bus depot a little farther from where I boarded. I disembarked at the next stop and learned that only one bus halted there. Who knew how long before a relatively empty bus would show up? With hungry friends waiting for breakfast and to relish a reunion after eight months, passivity was not an option. I walked at a brisk pace, unconcerned by sweat and crowds, focused on making it quickly to the next stop. As I walked the distance of a kilometre or 0.62-miles, I watched three buses to my destination speed by.
Finally, I reached the desired bus stop and waited patiently for the bus; ten-minutes later it arrived. I climbed the three steps, thinking it’s time these buses got ramps: realities change and realities are varied, to design for a single reality is flawed.
I walked to the front thankful that unlike the buses I had missed, this one had vacant seats. Sitting by the window, I felt the air circulate and all trace of mugginess was erased from my skin and memory. I looked out at signboards of institutional stores in narrow lanes of old Bombay: gems of typography and style, hidden by huge facades of modernity, made distance and time irrelevant.
Yazdani Bakery, Fort, Mumbai
Daryush Bakery and Glamour Ice creams, Girgaum, Mumbai
My friends weren’t at the cafe yet. They had delayed their arrival in anticipation of my bus adventure. I was far from bothered as I got a table and ordered an almond-milk cappuccino. On the contrary, I was buoyant and filled with joy. I had negotiated my way out of an old habit or mental block. In a city of approximately 21-million, I had braved the bus because I loved nature and the life of all beings a little more than my comfort. I felt free and liberated. I learned that the joy of choosing from love is much greater than the righteousness of principles and is beyond the reach of conveniences offered by the modern economic system. My friends were amused, ‘Do you realise that most people who rode with you, do it every day?’ ‘Sure, but I did it for love,’ was my reply.
The third such incident in this series involved a road trip. After two-long Covid wave-and-lockdown years, I was making plans to give service at and to sit a Vipassana meditation retreat. From there I intended to drive to Navadarshanam, a forest preservation and sustenance farming space, with a halt at a coffee plantation to learn about the harvest-to-roast process that converts a beautiful berry into a brown bean and completes the morning ritual of many around the world.
I enjoy road trips, especially because India dotted by villages and adorned by small verdant fields, waterfalls and streams, sun-dried montane grass, and perennial wild green forests offers stretches of un-manicured beauty as relief from shabby, unplanned development.
I assumed simply that a road trip to my various destinations would be less polluting than taking flights, till I checked a carbon footprint calculator: a return flight and the journey by road released an equal amount of Carbon Dioxide, 0.16 metric tons. Not marginally less but equal! Detours while driving and taxi rides between airports and final destinations maintain this fine balance.
The least polluting option is also my least favourite. Overnight train rides across 1200-kilometres or 745.65-miles bring emissions down to 0.01 metric tons, but they also sound in my head the horn of caution. Unpleasant experiences from past journeys make me apprehensive about choosing this option while travelling alone. I may therefore compromise and fly one-way while taking shorter train journeys on the way back. A decision as imperfect as the five-hour respite from the Diwali light show, and a choice that fills me with the same buoyancy as the bus ride after twenty-five years, is a reminder that love is larger than principles and greater than perfection. And all that love needs is idealism of the inclusive kind.
My maternal grandmother came from aristocracy and she married into a family similar in stature, yet, there came a point in her life where cupboards filled with gold and silver cutlery were replaced by four annas.
An anna was a currency unit formerly used in British India and afterwards in sovereign India upto the 1960s. Four annas is equivalent to 25 paise—that’s not even a cent! It’s actually 50 paise short of a cent (one cent is ~75 paise at current exchange rates). Yet, not once did her five daughters hear her complain.
She had the choice to go back to her maternal home, lament over or denounce her husband’s ill-founded habits of speculative trade that had brought them misfortune, but she chose not to utter words that demeaned her dignity: For her, dignity came from acceptance and trust, trust in the laws of the universe.
In that moment of choice, she decided not to be fortune’s dice. She could have, and the world would have sympathised, because for one who had so much, the pain of loss is felt vicariously by all, while for others it may be ignored, because ‘we are born into our fate’, a phrase that justifies our preoccupation and our systemic flaws.
Her choice to retain her dignity through acceptance and trust meant that she continuously had to rise to the highest potential in humans. And each time she did, life provided support. Four annas were substituted, without asking, by a sum of money that would last for a while.This was a present for Rakhi, the festival where sisters and brothers recognise the purity of the relationship, expressed by a vermillion mark on the forehead and a string tied on the wrist, both symbols of the blessings and protection that relationships of purity bring.
When she was an octogenarian (in her 80s), her spine deteriorated and she lost the ability to walk and gradually even to turn in bed. She had the choice to be bothered by this physical discomfort that lasted for about three years, but she chose instead to keep her equanimity, and when she breathed her last in her 91st year, she did so with a gentle mind. A final exhalation after her evening nourishment told us she had moved on silently, with the same dignity with which she lived.
My grandmother’s life taught me that choices are available to everyone, those who lose their endowment, but gain privilege through strength in character, and those who have neither endowment nor privilege because they simply need to develop their character to make advantageous choices.
Advantageous is that in which the mind is at ease with its own truth, where it doesn’t need to use its will to straighten fortune’s twists and curls. Choice begins with a simple question, about the kind of person we wish to be in that moment.
Recently, Shalaka Sisodia, friend and founder of Seeds of Awareness (SOA), a non-profit that addresses the delicate topic of choice and agency with children who come from challenging backgrounds shared a promo video. Ajay Devgn (one of the finer movie stars in Bollywood, India) was introducing the possibility of choice in a run-up to SOA’s recent release of short films that show the journey of two children, and make us pause and reflect on the moment when they made a choice. The choices naturally lead to a series of consequences that mould their life, however, what stood out for me was that regardless of the mould they created, the choice to remould was still theirs to make.
Life’s incredible benevolence became evident to me through these films—there is always a second chance! However, it’s not all upbeat, because a second chance is often hard to take, it requires tremendous courage, and more importantly it requires support. This takes the personal journey of choice-making from the individual to society.
I think for the most part people are happy to help, however, in situations that may save someone from personal ruin, hesitancy seems to be a more common response. And asking for help is hard when you’re caught in a whirlwind of broken dreams, domestic and emotional violence, and destructive behaviour.
This makes Seeds of Awareness’s commitment to help and support that much more worthy of admiration. Shalaka comes from much endowment and privilege, and yet she has put herself and her organisation in a place where many would dare not go, mostly because tough realities lay there; and it takes generosity and strength of character to stand up to them. Her team and her group of facilitators share equally in this acknowledgement.
These short films (Hindi with English subtitles) can begin important conversations with children that we might find difficult to have otherwise. It may be best to remember that a conversation of this nature is not about pushing our own bias. It is a way to understand the child’s reality and to empower the child, as well as support them so that they can make advantageous choices with the least amount of friction.
If you’re an educator, a parent, or someone who interacts closely with children, and are interested in facilitating such conversations, reach out to the team at Seeds of Awareness and understand the best way to direct these conversations. The situations and the backgrounds of the children in these short films may differ from the ones that your children encounter, but is that really pertinent?
Sireesha Dasaka, ex-banker and a full-time mother of two children (boys of twelve and eight-years), trained as a facilitator with Seeds of Awareness, and was privy to a dialogue at an International School. She witnessed 6th and 7th-grade children vocalise empathy for and sensitivity towards the children in the film, despite not having exposure to the particularities of their situations and background.
Their moral radars were quick at catching the injustice of repression, stereotyping, unhealthy body image, and gender disparity. ’It seems,’ says Sireesha, ‘From what I observed of these children, empathy comes naturally to us humans.’ And all that needs to keep that circle of empathy from disintegrating is a conversation, a pause, and a moment of reflection that helps us make advantageous choices.
Are you in or are you out? We are clearly dividing the world into fractions, and are no longer a whole, or perhaps we simply never were.
Last week, I watched a soliloquy performed on Zoom (a video communications platform) by an Indian female actor, who played the role of a mother finding out about her son’s queerness as he comes out of the closet by giving her access to his diary. An emotional play that had two possible endings, or rather two possible conclusions that the playwright put forth for the actor to choose while enlightening us, the audience, about both conclusions.
The first, a tragic conclusion that closed with the suicide of the boy—where taking his own life was easier than facing a “questionable” identity. The second, a conclusion the playwright and actor opted for by overtly dismissing the first as an unacceptable closure, was optimistic, inclusive, and held within it the joy of belonging (both for the person that is accepted and the person that accepts). In this option the mother decides not to conflict with her “non-heterosexual” son’s identity, and to partake in his world to develop understanding and complete acceptance.
While the discussion following the performance largely focused on the need to speak up and take a stand and emphasised sexuality with such fervour that it seemed like gender identity and sexuality were somehow synonymous (a misdirection that many conversations take), the play left me with two thoughts to reflect on. One, partaking is a conscious choice and it does not influence our other choices—if you’re heterosexual, stay that way because you’re comfortable with it, but don’t resist the friendship and joy of including a non-heterosexual person in your life, and vice versa. And two, keep sexual preferences aside as a matter that is personal and therefore must be respected as private. Sexuality is bio-chemical, gender is conceptual, a construct of language and culture.
Therefore, I am deliberately using the term non-heterosexual; it’s a mouthful but at least its not reductive in a way that erases the nuances of a person’s personality to place them within the LGBTQ+ construct. A non-heterosexual and a heterosexual person are the antithesis of each other merely in sexual preference—the flip side of the same coin—the material the coin is made of remains the same, like our common humanity.
The play in discussion, Ek Madhav Baug is an honest attempt at inspiring empathy, produced by Humsafar Trust, a health and human rights organisation for the LGBTQ+ community in India. Non-heterosexual people are labeled and neatly placed on the fringes of society as a minority, alongside people of colour (other than the colour white); women; citizens of the less industrialised (commonly known as less developed) world; indigenous people or people living in tribes; people who do not contribute to economic growth, broadly defined as the poor and illiterate; people whose lives are more dispensable, such as lower middle-income earners. We are all minorities because our subjective realities—and at times our existence—is not respected.Lack of sufficient representation is merely a symptom of the malady, the malady of disrespect and prejudice.
Since many of us fall into the minority classification, let’s think numbers for two minutes:
There are 1.3 billionmultidimensionally poor people in the world. And people who fall into the lower middle income category are approx. 3.28 billion—they subsist on 196 US dollars per capita, per month or about 2,360 US dollars a year.
Of course there are overlaps in these categories, but we can perhaps without much statistical complexity take the median number of 3.6 billion people who quite certainly qualify as a minority—a little less than half the world population! However, only together as a collective do we form this incredible half, separately in our own little fractions we are an insignificant minority to be noticed or taken seriously when we contribute to the current rhetoric: I recall that in the 1990s and early 2000s a business was considered progressive when it showed equal or near-equal participation of women in the workforce, and North American universities spoke of diversity by including students from Asia and Africa.
Why were non-heterosexual people not part of this “image of progressiveness” back then? Possible that there were not as many non-heterosexual people demanding representation and therefore were excluded from the adopted hyperbole. Today as the United States of America and Europe espouse LGBTQ+ rights, the community has gained a place in the common rhetoric and in platitudes on diversity, only to have their reality diminished by the label, so much so that many try to fit the stereotype: I remember a gay friend dismissing the stereotype back in 2010 with a remark that he too was a man. This was his reality, and there were characteristics of a man that he identified with, as much as I have seen him identify with the characteristics of a woman at other times. Similar to what most of us in the heterosexual lot feel, whether male or female.
Could it be that we all identify with either/or characteristics at different times? Likely, if we assign these characteristics by biology in the first place. For me personally, characteristics are the same across humanity: aggression, compassion, kindness, selfishness etc.; only physicality differs. In my previous posts I have taken the stand that information on birth-sex or sexual reassignment (such as in the case of a transexual person) must be collated for medical purposes, while gender because it is conceptual may need to be restricted to gatherings of the likeminded: not all concepts are fathomed by all people and are often interpreted based on our understanding and life experiences. Respecting these boundaries and limitations is important.
Let me illustrate this with an example, a girl who is part of the team at Oscar Foundation, a non-profit that trains youth leaders through sports was encouraged to hold her own at her community in Mumbai, India. She learned about domestic violence and equal rights, and when she witnessed a woman being beaten by her husband, she called the police. She had gained strength and courage, and she did the right thing to support a neighbour in distress, except that when the police came to the destination they carelessly revealed to the neighbour the source of the complaint; the police left; the husband directed his anger from the wife onto the girl; the wife continued with life as normal; but this adolescent girl had to run away from home, because her father a conservative patriarch came to hear of the incident from the irate neighbour and decided that he was going to give his daughter a thrashing. She was lucky (not many are) to have relatives who took her in and intervened on her behalf. The father calmed down after a few days but the girl is not allowed to play sports or go for her training, and has cowered. If we wish to change things in society, we need to create understanding through dialogue, and respectfully win support. By activating the minds of the oppressed without engaging those around them seems like a naive act that needs to deliberate on reality and the tools for social transformation – Oscar Foundation has already made this a part of their community and integration effort.
If labels and gender were useful at ending prejudice or a negative bias then the LGBTQ+ label should have helped increase inclusivity? All it seems to have done is created a more clear divide as reflected by hate crimes that are third to race and religion, and that grew from 2.2 to 2.7% in the US between 2018 and 2019.
No different from the equality rhetoric that has done little to end, let alone reduce violence against women: Globally, an estimated736 million women—almost one in three—have been subjected to intimate partner violence, non-partner sexual violence, or both at least once in their life (30 per cent of women aged 15 and older). This is probably true for most of the seventeen UN Development Goals,
I am not certain the world will ever have perfect inclusivity, historically there seems to be no evidence of this; maybe human nature does not lend itself to the possibility? Humans tolerate what is popularly accepted, with political and religious institutions taking the lead in shaping acceptance and culture. In India, transgender is considered the third gender by law, yet they are largely unacknowledged as a part of mainstream society; they are feared and abhorred, shunned and tolerated, merely because they are present in our mythological stories and in history, recognised by gods and kings.
—As a liberal thinker, I flinch at my intolerance of conservative views, because to me that is a farce of inclusivity.
—As a heterosexual person, I feel comfortable enough in a majority to extend respect to those who may not have the same comfort of belonging.
—As a woman, I know what discrimination feels like and I write with the hope that we can cohabit if not espouse.
—As a female of the species, I know I am a design of nature as much as the male, and I hope that our shared origin enables us to live without oppression of the other.
Some humans will make the choice to reflect on their biases; some will not. Some will choose to be inclusive and to cohabit; some will not. Offensive or antagonistic positions are not going to win support or create lasting transformation in society, we need to engage and dialogue, and we need to let things be. We who are half (of) the whole are reduced to a minority when fragmented, weneed to stop feeding the rhetoric, and we need to stop creating the rhetoric.
All people, minority or otherwise need a framework of support and solidarity within their immediate surrounding. The rest may or may not choose to be inclusive. Stop an act of physical oppression with immediacy, and win support and inclusivity from the people you rely on and those who rely on you, over time with patience and empathy, after all we are who we are on the inside, the rest does not matter because it changes.
I come from a family with a generation of engineers. My father and his brother went to one of the best engineering colleges in India that is reputed worldwide (The Indian Institute of Technology-Bombay). Engineering was a discipline of choice for an India that was rapidly seeking industrialisation after a long and oppressive colonial rule—we considered it sensible to make up for lost time and lost opportunity by emulating our oppressors. The world was moving rapidly in a certain direction and free India, powered by its engineers, was ready to move along.
The engineers in my family, however, made a transition into business or the academics, and eventually into the arts. Their training in linear thinking offered them a certain rigour that enabled deep mining of information to be expressed through their chosen field of art. Their choices and the application of their training has given me a glimpse into both worlds—the world of the logical and the world of the intuitive.
I am starting to learn that both mental applications (linear and non-linear or logical and intuitive) need to coalesce to create beautiful solutions that fitnaturally into the intricate web of creativityso as not to break or destroy the delicate strings that run through and from species to fossils, fossils to minerals, minerals to rocks, with water beneath, around, and within.
When a child with impaired vision is given a ball with bearings that create sound to indicate movement and direction, allowing the child use of auditory senses to enjoy a game, design and engineering does not alter reality, it accepts the problem and makes it a little easier to live with.
When a small-farmer, also a mechanical engineer, innovates to intercrop two native species of plants that sequester carbon from the air, fix nitrogen in the soil to improve soil fertility, and make for inexpensive and nutritious fodder that reduces overgrazing of already degraded land, logic and imagination co-create an improved reality to reduce the severity of a problem.
Jose Flores Gonzalez intercropping Agave and Mesquite at his farm in Mexico. Image courtesy: Mongabay.com
On the other hand, Carbon Capture and Storage (CCS) in trying to solve a pressing problem may actually leave us with a bigger problem to solve: By injecting captured atmospheric carbon deep into Earth’s core, below the volcanic/basalt rock, we will lock “forever” the excessive carbon dioxide emitted by us humans, and quite likely continue to fiddle with and alter natural systems.
We extracted carbon as oil, natural gas, and petroleum, and mined it as coal, now we plan on injecting it as liquified gas. The balance that we tipped by releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, we aspire to fix by taking it from the atmosphere and putting it back underground—A seemingly simple solution to an obvious problem; only if it were as easy…
In October 2020, while working on an initiative to introduce a respectful consumption model in clothing and textile, I spoke with an associate professor of mechanical engineering to help create a solution to plastic packaging in the clothing retail business. ‘Clothes are not perishable products; there must be a packaging solution that is natural, biodegradable, and that serves the purpose of protecting fabric during shipment. Can you help identify or develop something that meets this criteria?’ I requested. He spoke with his colleagues and got back to me, ‘We only work with composites (80% synthetic polymers, eg. plastic, and 20% natural substances). ‘Seriously! But composites are hard to recycle, aren’t they?’ I asked confused. ‘We are engineers,’ said he in reply, ‘We look at a problem and devise a solution, that’s all.’
This explains how we came up with recycling as a solution to our growing collection of plastic waste, except that composites are hard to strip apart and recycle. My head was filled with images of biscuit wrappers, coffee cups, milk cartons, and bags of potato chips; all packed in a range of polypropylene, polyethylene and polyvinylidene chloride or dichloride films, mixed with metal foil or wood fibre. Composites reduce the cost of packaging, they increase the shelf life of our products, but only a small part of a composite can be recycled while most of it ends up in a landfill or in the ocean.
And a bigger problem with recycling to manage waste from composites is scale; We need to scale recycling to match the current consumption and disposal of packaging, and we need fossil fuel to run recycling machinery—Fossil fuel combined with scale is where trouble began in the first place.
A linear mind says, ‘no problem!’ and simply breaks apart the fossil fuel and scale combo.
If we decarbonise, anthropogenic (human-induced) greenhouse gas emissions become insignificant, and scale with scarcely any emissions of the harmful sort ceases to be an issue. Perfect, industry can go on as is, consumption can continue unhindered, and economies can flourish and compete. The solution—transition to renewable and clean sources of energy—is as linear as this oversimplified view of the problem.
Sure, decarbonising will help restore balance in the atmosphere and will help save the biosphere, but what about the changes triggered by our continuous and scaled use of clean and renewable energy? Earth’s systems apart from the atmosphere and biosphere include the geosphere, hydrosphere, and cryosphere (the frozen parts of the Earth’s surface), and all five are involved in a symphony, where changes to one (piece) create changes in the entire composition.
In this reduced view of the problem, we overlook another important fact: organic matter needs time to renew, failing which it depletes and dies before its time, dispossessing all that it interconnects with. For example, clean geothermal energy concentrations from the Earth’s core depend on radioactive decay that may take thousands of years to become significant (and part of Earth’s heat may be primordial, therefore not regenerative by nature; once depleted, it cannot be restored), Larderello, Italy, site of the world’s first electrical plant supplied by geothermal energy, has seen its steam pressure fall by more than 25% since the 1950s.
Well, this is merely an obstacle in linear thinking, isn’t it?
We can always substitute geothermal energy with hydrogen from biomass, the new star in the “Environmental Walk of Fame”, however residue, resource, and cycle of exchange need to be considered to calculate impact, resource can range from plants and algae to wood, and residue maybe methane, sulphur and other elements (I admit I need to read more on clean hydrogen, however it make take a while for us to prove that it is a panacea to our copious need for energy).
So, we leave aside clean energy and focus on renewables such as solar and hydro energy from the sun and free-flowing rivers, both of which are abundant and will not be exhausted, only harnessed, except that one of the world’s largest gravity dams for hydroelectricity, the Three Gorges Dam across the Yangtze River in China, has started to warp: the structure is bending out of shape with the push and pressure of “harnessed” water. And the increased risk of earthquakes and floods caused by damming and restricting huge quantities of water that is part of a free-flowing river system is becoming obvious.
Capturing and concentrating solar energy too comes with its own imprint on soil and weather cycles, especially when done at the scale we humans require. Our current economic engine is designed and engineered to ignore the truth in Small is Beautiful, the case for which is evident in imbalanced Earth systems that sustain all life. The 30×30 initiative by the High Ambition Coalition (HAC) is a fabulous recognition of this truth – ‘We cannot restore nature if we do not respect its cycles.’ Thank you Outrage and Optimism for your podcast on HAC.
“The illusion of unlimited powers, nourished by astonishing scientific and technological achievements, has produced the concurrent illusion of having solved the problem of production. The latter illusion is based on the failure to distinguish between income and capital where this distinction matters most. Every economist and businessman is familiar with the distinction, and applies it conscientiously and with considerable subtlety to all economic affairs – except where it really matters: namely, the irreplaceable capital which man has not made, but simply found, and without which he can do nothing.” – From Small is Beautiful, A Study of Economics as if People Mattered, by E.F. Schumacher.
If the problem of climate change, exacerbated by greenhouse gases, is to be solved, we need to look not towards industrialised innovation but towards human-scale technologies; we need to use our brains and our ingenuity to work in congruence with nature and not against or despite it.
The hazards that we will face over the coming years are inevitable; we cannot forcefully bring to a halt a phenomenon that has been put into motion without feeling the tension. Like a car out of control that skids even after you apply the emergency brake, the Earth’s systems will continue to go awry even if we finally get around to reducing our unconsidered use of resources. We will need to be prepared and adequately responsive. Our energy, attention, and income or investments when focused on the right measures, such as regenerative processes and restorative tech, will help us come out of a crisis that we have created. Innovation that does not respect the capital that nature has given us may not solve the problem: tinkering with natural cycles is pointless, it’s we who need to change our habits.
Kyo and Obi 