Corona Escapades

 

And finally I was declared Covid positive on the 5^th Feb 2021.

The Covid 19 virus was already around for about nearly a year and somehow had been evading me. Probably this could have been the conceited thought that I was entertaining in mid-January 2021 which they overhead and decided to take on the challenge. Or maybe they had already marked me out for an encounter and were looking for an opportunity to sneak in. However they wouldn’t have found it too daunting since my guards were always down and often the expressway through the nose open without any masked barricade. Or were they too tentative and cautious, which is why I could evade them for so long. Whichever way I chose to look at it, ultimately the virus launched an attack, they managed to win some early battles but I finally won the war.

I have reason to address this microscopic parasite as ‘the virus’ while still using the plural pronoun ‘they’. This is a tiny life form but they perform their survival rituals in groups. Being tiny and non-complicated, it multiplies fast, is evolving and has a massive capability to adapt itself to its surroundings through mutation. Evolution of life has been a singular constant through the history of this planet. When we care to look back, the Dashavatars of Vishnu begin with simple life forms which first lived in water (Matsya  the fish), and then moved on to land along with water (Kurma the tortoise) and subsequently to land (Varaha the boar), and thereby took on or transformed into a finer version of its previous self. Later Charles Darwin also propounded the concept of natural selection in the process of evolution which is defined as "descent with modification", with the idea that species change over time and give rise to new species.

A few pseudo-intelligent minds of the world blatantly declared that the Chinese invented the Covid 19 virus in their laboratory while the research machinery of China has since day one been quite adamant that the Chinese people being the first victims were conveyed the virus through the Bats and Pangolins that they love to eat. If I may borrow from the great Shakespeare this has been too much ado about nothing. My opinion is that, since the time this planet cooled down and became hospitable, life forms have evolved and still continues to. There have been several corona viruses before this one and most were not so menacing. There also have been viruses that have been hosted by animals like poultry, pigs and cows. Covid 19 virus is just another latest life form which has mutated from some earlier state but this one has taken on a malevolent character against the human species. Unfortunately the human species has found itself at the receiving end this time since this Covid 19 virus has equated humans to be the most vulnerable and easy prey.

Coming back to my rendezvous with the Covid 19 virus, it was probably after the mid-month of January 2021 and probably at Nagpur that we had our ‘glad to meet you’ moment. As is their temperament, initially they did lay low, concealing their hectic efforts in attacking my lungs. I was at Mumbai on the 26^th January when suddenly out of the blue I felt feverish in the evening. I was exercising and eating well and there was absolutely no reason for the fever. The next day the body was normal, and as is my nature, I soon forgot the events of the previous day like a bad dream. However thereafter I started feeling tiredness in the evenings. 29^th January I returned to Nagpur and was thinking that maybe I was overworked and needed some rest. I had the next trip in my mind, on the 1^st February to Kolkata, to attend the Shraddh of Deepanjan and I didn’t want to lose the opportunity to meet Mamon and my Mashi. Though I rested on the 30^th and 31^st January, I wasn’t comfortable and the tiredness persisted. Probably I was completely in denial mode and couldn’t accept my own sickness, and so I couldn’t entertain the thought in my mind that this could be because of the dreadful Covid 19 virus. However I started doing steam inhalation those two days maybe due to some instructions from the life force inside. Moreover the compelling thought in my mind during those couple of days was my increased blood sugar levels. My urine had sweetened and I found ants roaming around the WC toilet. Therefore on the 31^st January I overdosed myself on the diabetic medicine hoping that my sugar levels will drop.

Well, it did nose-dive, and upon boarding the flight on 1^st February morning I knew I was going to collapse. With my decisions on medication I ended up making myself hypoglycaemic. I immediately had to purchase some chocolate cookies from the air hostess and munched on a few to become stable again. Now I was worried about Covid since I had to accept that there was a strange leathery feel inside my mouth and I couldn’t taste food. At Kolkata I stayed masked, met both my cousins and Mashi and spoke at length with them. The ceremony went on smoothly but that afternoon again I couldn’t eat much because most of the preparations were either oily or sweet. That didn’t help my condition. I went back to the hotel and slept the rest of the afternoon. Dinner that night was with Rumpa and Abro at a restaurant, where my condition worsened and immediately after consuming the soup I collapsed. I could feel a strange sensation of losing energy in my body and remember thinking that if I close my eyes for a while and keep silent, it will pass. I don’t remember falling on the floor, but regained my senses after people sprinkled water on my face. I had a bump on my head and also hurt my knee. Immediately I was given a glass of Pepsi which took my sugar levels to soaring heights. After finishing dinner we went to their place and Rumpa wanted me to stay over for the night. I refused as I was certain that I would create a mess if I was carrying Covid virus and therefore was dropped off at the hotel by Abro. They imagined that it was a neurological problem and I didn’t explain my antics with excess dosage. The next day I returned to Nagpur, with tiredness persisting and a worry which took over my thoughts.

The next day 3^rd February, was the peak of my discomfort. I continued with inhaling steam but wasn’t able to eat my food with relish. Nimje ji was bringing my lunch and dinner and taking back the earlier container which I had washed under conditions of extreme risks. On hindsight, the couple of days I holed out in my apartment denying my fallibility actually aggravated my situation and made me weaker physically and mentally. Since it had been decades that I hadn’t fallen so miserably sick, I imagined that my body had developed super strong immunity to counter any type of pathogen. I continued to not accept my frailty and not accept the present circumstances. Possibly it was a complete failure of my so-called understanding of spirituality. Idiots do make and are entitled to mistakes. Or maybe life had a different plan like a course correction, trying to breakdown a wrong path that I had chosen.

Sameer was consistently calling me up and urging me to go for the RT-PCR test. I held out for one day and gave in to his pleading on the 4^th February after I finally realised that on its own my body wasn’t able to overcome the sense of tiredness and the weakness was reflecting in my voice too. I was hoping for a negative result but instead ended up with a bruised ego. Sameer went to collect the report on the 5^th afternoon and informed me that he would arrange for taking me to Dr. Deshmukh’s hospital. He suggested the ambulance from the hospital to pick me up but I shot it down. The office driver also refused to come and take me citing his aged mother at home. While Sameer was searching for alternatives Kanchan just called in. She has an amazingly powerful 6^th sense. Then the moment I told her that I had been declared positive she immediately declared that she was reaching to pick me up. Such raw courage with immeasurable compassion is extremely rare. She is undoubtedly a highly evolved being. Meanwhile I had informed Soma about this. Well, thereafter events rolled very fast. Kanchan took over along with Sameer. I was sent for the CT scan of my chest and the score was 12/25. Dr. Deshmukh overruled my suggestion that I be allowed home quarantine. He admitted me into a spacious room and over the next 5 days pumped Ramdesivir along with steroids 40 mg daily along with a fistful of several sugar controlling and immunity boosting medicines. The concoction of drugs made me feel weird. It was as if something was continuously generating and exploding empty bubbles in my head. Even though I was sitting erect it felt as if I was swinging like a pendulum. I could feel the presence of a foreign matter inside me, something which was unable to adjust with its surroundings, was disturbed and in turn disturbing everything else. This duality inside remained for a few days until the foreign matter was destroyed. On the fifth afternoon Dr. Deshmukh permitted me to leave.

Meanwhile Soma, Prantik, Vinita and Biki had already started moving heaven and hell to ensure that my home stay went without any impediments. The apartment on the fourth floor wasn’t liveable except for a couple of beds but Vinita and Biki along with their kids moved in at immediate notice. They set up the kitchen with their gas cylinder and a new stove. All four of them must have contributed in every small and big way just to ensure that I get good rich food three times a day at my desired time without having to bother. Their kids continued with home classes from here and they all put up without a television, furniture and other arrangements. Soma and Prantik joined them on weekends. It’s so overwhelming a deed, a Himalayan feat of love and caring, such a grand gesture which I can never repay. I am forever in their debt. After my 14 days of quarantine, when I met them and saw what they had done, I remained dumbstruck. As a matter of fact, the kindness and love showered at me by some many people right from Sameer, Kanchan, Dr. Deshmukh, Soma, Prantik, Vinita and Biki, and many more was so awe-inspiring, so on-the-face, so humbling that I was left wondering as to what did I really do to deserve this. I find no explanation and no justification. Once again life had taken over the reins from me, and this time taught me that to give something precious without the hope of ever getting it back is the greatest act of selflessness.

To cut the story short here, immediately after being discharged I started with my exercise routine of 90 minutes in the morning. Initially it was difficult since the bubble bursting and pendulum swings continued for a few more days. I had lost weight and strength considerably. But within 10 days before my quarantine could end I was able to cycle for more than an hour as well as exercise with reduced dumbbell weights. My quarantine ended on the 18^th of February, I went to work from the 19^th and met my family on the 20^th. It had been a magical three week when powerful and beautiful things happened to me. The only thing I lost was body weight but there is clear instruction to never proceed on that path again.

TADOBA FOREST AND TIGER AND TOURISM

In today’s world, development has taken varied hues and forms. Most of the time we see human beings distorting and destroying nature to build a lifestyle for himself. Most of this development efforts are artificial, has a counter-productive impact on our lives and primarily harmful to nature itself since it is non-regenerative. However there is another sector where development is being tested through the protection of nature and natural conditions. One such segment is the national reserve forest.

Tadoba forest in Vidarbha Maharashtra is one of the several but dwindling numbers of pristine natural forests that have survived the human onslaught. In the past it belonged to the Gond tribals and local villagers inhabiting the area were primarily forest gatherers and agriculturists but several villages have since been relocated. The core forest area at present does not have any residential human presence and it is left entirely to the wild animals, birds and reptiles to prosper. Progressively over the years the protection measures have expanded with hunting being banned in 1935 and two decades later, in 1955, about 116.54 square kilometers of Tadoba forest area being declared a national park. The Andhari Wildlife Sanctuary was created in the adjacent forests in 1986 and finally in 1995, the park and the sanctuary were merged to establish the present tiger reserve of about the total area of the reserve is 625.4 square kilometer.

Tadoba the name has an interesting antecedent. Tadu/Taru was the name of a village chieftain in the region. In an encounter with the wild tiger he lost his life. The very fact that he got face to face with a tiger suggests that he was a very brave man. The villagers then built a shrine for him on the banks of Tadoba Lake which also speaks about the love, respect and regard that he commanded from his people. The suffix ‘ba’ to his name could either be an expression of endearment, or an expression of elevation to the stature of God (like Vithoba) or it could also be an expression of respect like a shortened version of ‘baba’ or elder. Incidentally the Tadoba Lake has crocodiles inhabiting its waters and is not meant for casual visit to Tadu Deo’s shrine. The crocodiles were introduced into the lake from a breeding center which was then dismantled. This has added to the vast list of fauna of the area.  

 The rich flora and fauna of Tadoba has to be experienced to be believed. The 600 odd sq. km. even though threatened by ever increasing human impact at its seams, is dense with vegetation and wildlife of different and rather innumerable hues and colours. Its 100 odd tigers are definitely the showpiece of this forest but anyone interested in wildlife and natural environment would never be disappointed. Those tiger tourists also avoid this forest in the rainy and winter season because sighting of the tiger becomes difficult. It is only in the summers when temperatures rise to 47-49 degrees Celsius that the royal beasts can be sighted easily resting at water holes.   

Tiger tourism has become the USP of this area. From right outside the buffer zone of the forest, hotels from budget to luxury have mushroomed up, catering to the unending number of visitors from across the world. In the year 2011, National Geographic made a series of documentary films on Indian Wildlife and one of it, the second documentary of this series “Tiger Jungles” featured Tadoba. That was the watershed year and since then Tadoba has become a very popular international wildlife destination. The hotels that cater to these visitors are a sight themselves. Right in the middle of rustic lifestyle of rural India, one can find and experience hospitality of urban lifestyle with very modern facilities. These hotels are managed by city dwellers but the work force is entirely local. Local boys and girls from villages who have been trained in hotel management take care of housekeeping and laundry, restaurant and food, swimming pool and playground, electricity and water, landscaping and decoration, etc. Certainly none of the village stores would be capable of providing the supplies and provisions that are required daily by these hotels and everything would have to be sourced from either Nagpur, Chandrapur or further, however this coexistence between the pastoral and the metropolitan at such close quarters is a sight indeed. The native idyllic life would slowly over time give way to the fast urban restless life in this forest. However I am not sure whether this is a welcome indication, even though the local boys and girls (some of whom were displaced from the forest) are getting gainful employment and possibly improving their lives. The one definite affect is that those locals who are employed by these hotels may not return to work on the farms, which could either be a positive or negative implication.   

May 2019 was my second visit to the Tadoba forest reserve and I visited once again in July 2019. Getting into the forest guards gypsy car always fills me with thrill and anticipation. The forest officials regulate the several gates to get into the reserve forest, the number of vehicles is regulated, and their routes inside the reserve are scheduled. Tigers are extremely possessive about their territories and females, and since their hunts are known to the forest guards they move traffic to such known and easy tiger sighting locations. About 40 Maruti Gypsy cars crisscross the terrain once in the morning and once in the evening in search of the tigers. Normally these forest officials’ cars stay on assessable roads and don’t venture into rocky and uneven paths inside the core area. Therefore even though there are over 100 tigers, merely a dozen are frequently seen. Currently Maya a female tiger is the connoisseur of all eyes.  Stories of Maya have become folklores, of her attitude, her many mates and her cubs. Animal sighting of is never guaranteed, and thus everyone classifies their trips inside the forests into success or failure in terms of seeing a tiger. Undoubtedly sighting the tiger makes the visit a fruitful one. I wonder, do other animals and birds feel snubbed or happy about the lack of attention.

Therefore even though finding myself under a massive tree fills me up with immeasurable awe and an overwhelming feeling, I can say with a degree of pride that my trip was successful after sighting Chota Madkasur.  Chota Madkasur is a collared tiger, a fully grown male. He was lying quietly at a water hole, one of the several water holes supported by the forest department with electricity from solar panels and remotely operated to pump the underground water. Chota Madkasur sensed a few Sambar deer’s walking towards the water hole that he was occupying and slyly got up, exited towards the back to rush and hide behind the bamboo bushes. The deer’s arrived within 25 meters of the water hole, they sensed him too and one of them let out a sharp call almost like a bark. That stopped all of them on their track. Slowly they backed out and forfeited their desire to drink water, even though it was height of summer.  After a while Chota Madkasur realizing that these folks don’t want the water after all,  came out of his hiding and sat near the water hole in full sight of everybody. This entire episode intrigued me. Did the king of this part of the forest abandon the water hole and hide because he wanted his subjects also to quench their thirst. Did he display maturity of the burden of a leader to take care, at best of the wellbeing of other animals sharing his territory or at worst the growth to full size of his future food supply? Or was it a cunning move to launch a guerilla attack on an innocent prey? I guess I would never come to know the answers. Never the less, what was in full display was that every creature preys on the other, stay near their prey, and fight each other for mate, food and water. There is an ecological balance in play in nature.

FROM SOMEWHERE ON THE INDO PAK BORDER

I hadn’t seen the international border between India and Pakistan before. Until then, an Indo-Pak border evoked two distinct images in my mind, undoubtedly implanted by Hindi movies. One during peacetime is a lonely isolated place, a no-man’s land, a desert with soldiers wearing broad solo-hats while riding slow camels, on the lookout for fully draped intruders who are supposed to be carrying guns and drugs. The other is a typical war zone with guns and cannons blasting across a barbed wire fence, soldiers running helter-skelter for cover, with radio transmitters passing quick messages and of course the quintessential loudspeakers blaring towards the opposite army. Both images until now had held a rugged charm in my mind; that this was a dangerous place and therefore justifying a desire to flirt with it. Foolhardy as it may sound, the joke turned on me. I saw unfold in front of my eyes another image of a border which involved tractors tilling the land within meters of the barbed wire fence (thankfully the fence from my image was present as the essential commonality representing the border) and a typical village with human and animal habitation, with a school hospital and motor vehicles. Yeah, the soldiers of the BSF were also there in the middle of this normal milieu. It was a classic so near and yet so far moment for me that there was no other option but to became wiser.

It was obvious that people had been living all along the border before the fence was constructed and long before the border was decided. Politics intruded on them, upsetting their regular lives and they have just accepted the new situation as always. Infact below the surface, I could sense that politics had to take a back seat and accommodate the will of the local population living on the border who would not give up on their land even for lofty idea like national security nor for ordinary idea like protecting themselves from gunfire. Though some people have been displaced others have taken their place. It seemed to me that the human spirit had triumphed over some narrow-minded considerations. It has always been intriguing how various lifeforms have been drawing lines on this planet calling something as their personal space. We humans take it a bit further. Not only do we have personal space but beyond that we also have community space and then national space. It highlights and celebrates our differences. We have gamed our psyche to accept that marking lines on the land would secure us our future.

I was in Rajasthan this month and wanted to visit the Naggi War Memorial. It was a first for me in terms of visiting borders. On way to Naggi my driver stopped at Bhullars place to take some local person along so that our visit could be fruitful. Bhullar is a VIP of the place, huge and burly with handle bar mustaches, who happens to be a big time farmer and at the same time a construction contractor as well as a construction material supplier.  There is a huge framed picture of his along with the previous Chief Minister of the state in his home office. It so happened that over the past couple of days some drug movement had been detected and confiscated on the border and therefore the BSF were not too keen with strangers. Bhullar diverted me to another village a little further away but right on the border and called up a resident of the village to be with me. That was a boon. A local resident is known face and worked like a charm in getting conversation rolling with the BSF. I spent an hour at the BSF camp and border fence. I wanted to write in detail about my visit to the border but the words of two wonderful BSF jawans requesting me not to go on social media with specifics ring in my ears. That they were Bengalis also weighs-in its appropriate share. They were extremely courteous and helpful to me but were worried about adverse impact from publicizing. The border at certain places like Wagah have become a tourist destination however respecting the wishes of my BSF jawans I shall try to go into a few facts without divulging anything which they wouldn’t appreciate.   

  

Here are a few nuggets from the fence;

-               - The Zero line or the Radcliffe line is a trench and represented by pillars of 4 - 5 feet each placed every few kilometers. The maintenance of these pillars is done by both the sides. The pillars are numbered, while one side looks after the even pillars the other side looks after the odd ones.

-          - The barbed wire fence is placed within 100 meters from the zero line on the Indian side with farming permitted upto the Zero line. The fence runs through farmers land but they have been compensated. While the farmers on the Indian side are not permitted to grow tall crops in excess of two feet near the fence the farmers on the Pakistan side have no such restrictions. There are no trees on the Indian side of the Zero line too.

-              - A BSF camps placed every 5 kms on the border with its watch towers has an intense patrolling schedule all around the clock. The BSF uses night vision equipments and flood lights all long the fence during the nights, the light from which is used by the Pakistani farmers to work on their farms during the night. Previously services of horses and camels were utilised but now it is motorized. The intensity on the Pakistan side isn’t visible atleast in Rajasthan. Their presence on the border is minimal though I learnt that they have a huge army base about 5 to 10 kms inside their territory.

-             - The BSF camps keep their portion of the fence well maintained and employ locals for grass and shrubs cutting mainly through the NREGA scheme. They inspect the Zero line frequently for telltale footprints of infiltrators and meet up with their Pakistani counterparts regularly over civilized conversation.  

-         - Our conversation threw up an interesting comparison between the borders with Pakistan and Bangladesh. The Bangladesh border has Muslim population on both sides while on the Pakistan side it is so only in Kashmir. That makes the borders in Bangladesh an unfriendly place while on the Pakistan side barring Kashmir the rest of the Border States is friendly and co-operative. On the Bangladesh side the population on both sides of the border are related to each other through family ties while this isn’t so on the Pakistan side barring Kashmir. On the Bangladesh side the border infringement is mainly on account of cattle, textile and human while on the Pakistan side it is drugs, arms and terrorists.

-             -  The BSF watch tower near the fence is a two storied structure which offers unrestricted panoramic view on all sides to detect and monitor every type of movement near the fence on both sides.

      

       

      Returning from the border a few more interesting things struck me.

Some of the villages near the border in Rajasthan have alpha-numeric names like 5 SA, 11 FA, 9 FD, etc. The villagers call themselves by such alpha-numeric names and it comes as a surprise initially. It is as if the original names were coded and the person who coded them couldn’t retrieve their real names.  The reason for such alpha-numeric names was not clear to me and someday I hope to understand this.

Rajasthan is an extremely arid and dry place with little rains and extreme weather. However in Shri Ganganagar agriculture is the major occupation and every inch of land is utilised. The soil here is almost powdery and clayish. Bhullar tells me that the nature of the soil is such that it has a great capacity to retain moisture. Agriculture in Shri Ganganagar being all canal fed, the farmers are able to take four crops in a year. Wheat needs to be watered only twice before harvesting, cotton only once and mustard needs no water at all. I found that to be amazing and it is no wonder that farmers prize this land and are unwilling to let go inspite of strained relationships between the two countries.

Kalibangan is a small town near Shri Ganganagar and is an archeological site belonging to the Indus civilisation about 4000 to 5000 years ago. The ASI Museum at Kalibangan possesses some jaw dropping exhibits collected during excavation. The Saraswati River mentioned in the Vedas used to flow near Kalibangan before it was disrupted. The entire region was also rain fed and supported a huge and rich civilisation which traded with Mesopotamia and Egypt. The river basins of the past fed and supported the population and contributed majorly to the richness of the soil.  

Due to the river system and strong flow, the excellent properties of the soil go a couple of meters below the surface as well. One can see farmers selling a couple of feet of their top soil to brick kilns in the region who are several in numbers and baking bricks in huge quantities. Bricks have been the basic construction material for over thousands of years all across the Indus civilisation as can be seen from Lothal, Dholavira and Mohenjo-Daro.

A NATURALISTS VIEW ON INEQUALITY

For starters I am restricting this discussion on inequality only within the human species without including all other life forms. If I do include every natural being under the sun then this would be an opaque exercise leading to a vague nothingness because there is too much inequality around. Now amongst the human beings too, there are a lot of natural inequalities. Some inequalities are visible like colour, height, weight, hair, bone structure, etc., and some inequalities are invisible like intelligence, understanding, creativity, etc. Normal natural life is made unequal. However when we pick a backdrop subject like socio-economics as our canvas, and plot human beings on it as colours and lines, then we begin to believe that we can force a conceptual idea like inequality of income and wealth distribution into our minds and discussions.

Economic inequality has become a vastly popular topic. Everyone loves it because the argument is always a one-way street. It suits all of us; everyone wants to see inequality reduced on this planet since each one of us feels or experiences depravity in some or other manner. Every economist worth his salt right from Sir William Petty (17^th century) to the latest Thomas Piketty have rendered yeoman service to the idea arguing against inequality and have almost succeeded in brainwashing the world against the rich capitalists. The United Nations promotes it vociferously, the underdeveloped countries crave for it, and even the developed countries have joined the band wagon because they too have poor people living within their borders. We hear increasingly about governmental initiatives like additional taxes on the rich and corporate social responsibility in India, and also private voluntary declarations of philanthropy by the rich across the world. Being rich is viewed negatively and sometimes when the rich alienate themselves then it leads to situations like the French revolution. The biggest offence of the rich is that they are minority in numbers and the biggest paradox of the poor is that they all want to become rich.  We all love to hate the rich but aspire to become rich ourselves. Evidently clownish! Had being rich been the crime then laws could have been framed dissuading everyone from treading on such a heinous path. Incidentally and rather ironically we do realise the aspirational potential of financial soundness, it pumps the urge to industry, it fuels the desire to exert efforts, and it is the mother of creativity and inventions, all of which are the basic ingredients of growth and prosperity. Nevertheless in an absurd yet intellectual way we want the capable to generously sacrifice their benefits for the sake of their incapable brothers. We risk the capable getting demotivated and the poor getting lazy, a lose-lose situation. Anyway, this isn’t the disagreement that I wish to put forth. Let me take the deliberations a little further.

Is inequality desirable; not really. Inequality breeds exploitation where the capable exploits the incapable. Exploitation dehumanizes. Exploitation has its roots in greed and fear and is a vastly negative feeling. Not only do the exploited suffer but even those who are unfortunate to view the exploitation go through agony and emotional pain. This probably is the basic cause behind all international appeals and drive against inequality over the past two centuries. Correctly the target has been exploitation by the rich of the poor; wherein economic concept of socialism was propounded and legal frameworks were laid down to protect the rights of labour. However this has made the problem take another ugly turn. Let me explain.

Is equality desirable; my answer is a flat ‘No’. The focus and drive towards equality in income and sharing of wealth is showing solid and positive results across all countries. As more and more human beings across the planet are being pulled above some inconsistent poverty levels, it is having a grave consequence on the planet. Better health conditions, better education, better earnings are all leading to increase in population and purchasing power of the human species. Since the past hundred years as we have started living a better life condition, we have exponentially exploded in numbers. All of us together are demanding more grains, more meat, more clothing, more electricity, more petrol and diesel, more cement concrete housing. Our governments take pride in being able to provide it to all of us because being unable to do so, they face international condemnation. We have reduced on exploiting the human species but instead have started increasingly exploiting the natural resources. We have as a consequence increased the levels of greenhouse gases and global temperatures, shrunk the polar ice tables, are in the process of sinking coastal settlements, and have made global weather erratic and unpredictable in terms of high summer heat waves, dry forest fires, colder winters and frequent cyclonic storms across the planet. We need to pause and rethink about where this is leading to. Has our insistence on equality which incidentally was neither the intent nor condition of the natural world, made life on this planet unsustainable?

Differences or rather inequalities between the various life forms are bound to continue. Inequalities between human beings also are bound to continue and it should. That is the natural order of life energy. This planet has its own scale for balancing its energies. Any effort at disturbing the balance is dealt with severely and in the interaction of energies a new balance gets established. This planet has seen several ice ages sandwiched intermittently with meltdowns. Several species have walked on this planet only to be eradicated and replaced with another different species. Like every other life forms we humans also are insignificant and inconsequential. This cycle will continue as long as our sun continues to burn whether we like it or not. This does not mean that we open the doors for exploitation of the weak. Since ages, people from India have been trading with the Romans, the Egyptians and the Chinese, and these businessmen were always encouraged through religion and through their kings to donate generously towards the welfare of the common people. They did and should continue to do so.   

Finally it brings us to our eternal enquiry ‘what can we do’. Progress is fundamental to our lives. We all should work to live better. But the right question to ask ourselves is ‘progress towards what’. And my answer is happy sustainable living. Unassuming as it may sound; progress in life depends on (i) efforts (ii) attitude (iii) intelligence and most importantly (iv) divine grace.  Progress is impossible without all the four elements in good measures. However my insistence on divine grace is unequivocal because even if several of us exert equally hard and are equally educated, our results are widely dissimilar. On the other hand someone with little efforts walks away with fantastic results.  Better efforts, attitude and grace would definitely lead to better progress and they feed on each other, like a cyclic effect. The problem started arising when progress got measured in material terms. The ostentatious hoarding and display of material good is downright immoral, self-indulgent and counter-productive. One can argue that it has served to motivate others to emulate the efforts required thereby giving rise to a hard working society. But to my mind the long term result where everyone has the capacity to demand more materialistic stuff is very damaging to the environment. Maybe we humans need to wake up to the reality that we have peaked optimum progress and any further progress would work against our survival. Today progress has necessarily to be nudged towards general good, general happiness and towards a sustainable planet.

We have a couple of hard choices in front of us. One is where we restrain ourselves, and channelize our efforts towards progress in certain areas while stopping or reversing it in other areas thereby leading all our efforts to a sustainable path. Material goals should be shunned and replaced with planet sustaining goals. We have to reward the successes of individual efforts in new and unique ways other than monetary terms. Primarily it is hunger and insecurity or in other words survival which drives humans towards efforts to overcome them. Strong message has to be developed and percolated that our survival as a species into the future would depend on forfeiting certain privileges and confirming ourselves to a deliberate pick and choose of bare planet sustainable acts. Possibly some complacency and sacrifice would be called for from our lofty but impractical goal of equality for all humans.

The other option is to continue the way we are going. Absurdly developing natural conditions will give birth to unique bacterial epidemics which could prey on humans for its own survival and growth. That would expose the inequality amongst us since the weaker amongst us will fall prey first. We may or may not survive into the future but if we do surely we would share this planet with a few new species and with continued inequalities between us. Escaping this planet to colonize a similar planet would also mean the same thing. First of all only a privileged few amongst us would get that chance contrary to the concept of equality. Secondly for arguments sake even if some of us do escape and survive, our cells would mutate given the new environment where they find themselves and they may not mutate in a common similar manner. But then those differences would be pure science fiction to speculate.