Talking Shop: Tomorrow is the day

“The best novels are based

on people keeping secrets.

You think lies are harmless?

Put all the lies together and

there’s a calamity on deck.”

— Alafair Burke

April Fool! Don’t you dare guffaw and laugh at me just because I am two months and two days too late. I am here, aren’t I? For all those who read the headline and rubbed their hands in glee over what’s coming their way, by way of instant poll predictions and a definitive analysis of what the new Government would look like, bah! It is time for die-hard poll vultures to remember that there’s more to life than politics, elections and the erotic tools employed by our leaders. That’s because as a few romanticize and enjoy their voyeuristic couch-dom, the average Joe is sweating it out, literally.

As I said, the only moral of this story is that there’s far more to life if there is a tomorrow. And a tomorrow there shall be, hopefully… The ‘hopefully’ interjector has been bunged in because just last week, Delhi notched up the dubious distinction of experiencing its hottest recorded day in history, ever. Summer sizzled and the temperature threatened to breach the 50° Celsius mark, flirting with us at 49.9° Celsius. The ‘Real Feel’ indicator was playing truant as well, thumbing its nose at us by touching 52.9° Celsius. Congratulations to all of us, we are the djinns who have worked shamelessly hard to engineer this miracle.

No sibling rivalry here

After all, who else but us can claim to have impacted on a telling scale the lives of 8.5 billion people? No one, because we have changed an entire Planet in just a generation, around 15 to 20 years, leaving an indelible stamp on it. It is time to pat yourselves on the behind and then sit them down on the comfy leather interiors of our near-misting-with-coolness luxury cars as we embark on a journey to meet El Niño and La Niña, the two siblings we have unleashed upon Planet Earth.

This column is not about the Niño-Niña brother-sister duo, so I shan’t delve on them, other than to say that betwixt them, there isn’t any sibling rivalry. They have just worked as we programmed them to, in perfect unison, and created the intended hurly burly of storms, floods, wildfires, drought, hurricanes and huge waves. These were all caused by changing climate patterns in the Pacific Ocean that have affected global weather, thanks to our Messianic engineering. We paid scant regard to repeated warnings thrown up by nature, and the results are being felt now in right earnest.

The economic and social impact we face are significant, and will only get sterner with time. Already, there are alterations to marine habitats that are threatening fisheries; agriculture has suffered from drought and unpredictable rainfall; low showers have impacted water resources, hitting hydropower generation; torrential rain has led to flash floods and dam-bursts; extreme heat conditions have led to forest fires and dead crops just before the harvesting season; extreme cold conditions have seen people, produce and machinery freezing over. All of it our doing, how very wonderful.

It’s different this time

In case you haven’t noticed, the impact of changing weather is different this time, as variegated as this column is from others talking about the tip of the iceberg. Let’s you and I, therefore, clamber onto the iceberg itself, and see what its over- and underwater bits are doing. One, the change is causing billions of people to wake up from their stupor, not because ACs are not cooling anymore or heaters aren’t warming, but because of what’s happening inside their heads. Yes, I said heads.

With environmental concerns hitting panic levels due to extreme weather vacillation and oscillation, consumers are willing to change their buying behaviour, even if that means coughing up 12 per cent more for sustainable products. Why the sudden concern for the environment? Well, because latest and reliable studies have shown that as brain chemicals and circuitry face hotter temperatures and reach burning points, people are changing. How so? Well, this is where it gets interesting, even hair-raising, and that’s why people are worried silly.

Tighten your pants for this one, please. As brains heat up, people are lashing out at one another more. Colour preferences are changing and people don’t know why they suddenly love pink (sorry Pink, you are just an example), a colour they detested till yesterday. People’s choice of friends is changing too, as are the reasons for choosing them. This is not happening to commoners alone. Even leaders and standout citizens are changing – as has been heard in recent election speeches.

Animals are changing too

How so? Well, dogs are biting people six times more than before, driven crazy by the heat. Cattle and sheep are turning fierce and angrier too, sometimes ferocious – and are biting people. In a weird finding, the study shows that as drinking water resources dwindle, mankind is moving towards a ‘mass extinction’ phase. Don’t worry, though, for before extinction will come the ‘insanity phase’, leading to civil wars and unrest, as happened in Lord Krishna’s hometown. That’s reason to breathe easy, for we shall be dead on the streets before a cow or goat snips our backside.

Having mined our land, cut down forests, fished the seas dry and flattened our mountains, we are now looking to move up the value chain some more. We are headed to the clouds and not sparing them either. What if Joshimath slithers, Manali falls apart and Kathmandu shakes time and again? We shall now target the sky. We have begun with the tallest mountain peak in the world, gifting it something called ‘Everest tourism’ – in the process, we have strewn people debris and waste and empty oxygen bottles lining the pristine mountain snow. We also have human traffic jams, queues of paying tourists waiting to scale Mount Everest just for the heck of it; if you have Rs 20 lakh and small change, you can join the queue too and wave at the cameras for posterity.

We have turned a virile Goliath into a nut-less David. There is still a tomorrow, though, but only just. We have to stop our shenanigans on the Planet today, while there is time. Earth can still be nursed back to its former preen and green, provided we keep our distasteful actions on hold. It will be touch and go, yes, since we have been quite mercenary and merciless in our rape of the very land that has fed us. It is time to stop being men and become human again; it is time to keep our hands off.

Only if that happens will Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay stop cringing, wherever they are now.

The writer is a veteran journalist and communications specialist. He can be reached on [email protected]. Views expressed are personal