Heal the World: Blog Action Day 2009

Why has it suddenly become so important to be aware of how we treat the Earth? It’s something you just don’t think about until it’s smacking you in the face, I guess.

I am guilty of being careless to my environment. I’ve thrown a plastic packet or empty coffee cup out the car window, just because I didn’t want to hold on it till I came across a trash can. I bought the eco-friendly jute supermarket carry bags, and invariably forget them in the car. Like a charm, I always remember when I’m in line at the cashier and in a hypermarket? Not going all the way back to the parking lot to get a couple of bags. Just take the plastic home and re-use. Simple.

But then I learned that plastic takes like, a gazillion years to disintegrate or decompose. So right now, we probably have enough plastic in our garbage dumps and landfills to cover the planet from corner to corner. Okay, that’s my own metaphorical exaggeration, but if that’s how far my imagination will run just to see how bad the problem could (hypothetically) be in a split second, then I’m sure it’s possible.

Living in the Middle East, and in the Gulf more so has made me less civically and environmentally aware. Other countries are crumbling under the price of oil, but for us it is hardly even an expense. It’s loose change, which is why we drove two cars up until very recently.

It is hard to keep in mind a concept like climate change. To incorporate it into your daily life because it’s happening in other parts of the world. Yes, the winters have gotten much colder and windier, and the summers a few scorching degrees hotter out here in the desert in the past five years I’ve lived here. Yes, the weather is always weird and unpredictable when I go back to India, which has been at varying times of the year. You expect summer, you get monsoon.

I guess that is the first indicator that something is amiss. That the seasons weren’t always so erratic, in India, Bahrain and all over the world.

Then I watched An Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore, and The Planet Earth series from the BBC. It was only then that I truly appreciated the wonder and beauty of our planet, our home in all its splendour. Both films made me put aside daily minutia and marvel at the complexity, the diversity and variety of life on our planet.

In signing up for Blog Action Day, I have signed on to be part of this global conversation. Because I have slowly but surely come to realise that we have to be more responsible, so our children can enjoy as much of the wonder and beauty we got to enjoy. Perhaps we have taken it for granted... for far too long.

Signing up for Blog Action Day opened up a world of resources about real, practical things we all can use to do our bit for the climate. It’s important, relevant, even crucial. Some useful links:

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=10-solutions-for-climate-change&page=2

See what people around the world are planning to do for climate change: http://www.350.org/

So, what is global warming? And what's the problem anyway?

The science is clear: global warming is happening faster than ever and humans are responsible. Global warming is caused by releasing what are called greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The most common greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide. Many of the activities we do every day like turn the lights on, cook food, or heat or cool our homes rely on energy sources like coal and oil that emit carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases. This is a major problem because global warming destabilizes the delicate balance that makes life on this planet possible. Just a few degrees in temperature can completely change the world as we know it, and threaten the lives of millions of people around the world.

Well, if that's the case then we need to wake up today. Learn from the mistakes of our ancestors and put our A's into G. Our daily questions need to change from, "Should I buy a sedan or an SUV?" to "How low is the carbon footprint of the car I want to buy?"

I think it's more a question of changing ourselves, before we can change what we've done to our planet. We need to heal ourselves, before we can heal our planet, and make up for the damage we've done.

Home sweet home

Living abroad for 4 years has made me appreciate being home in India. It's been raining almost the entire time I've been here, and after 50 degrees Celsius desert heat, I honestly can't complain.

It has been the most whirlwind 2 weeks of the year. We've socialised enough for the rest of the year, in the span of this 2 weeks. And now, sadly, it's almost time to get back to the grind.

Every time I come home, I'm reminded of the sheer diversity and fantastic affection of the vast number of friends and acquaintances I've met along the way. I'm reminded that I wasn't always an expat, and I wasn't always a stressed corporate slave. There was a time when I used to sit in my bedroom way into the night, reading, talking on the phone, watching TV or generally wasting time like any normal college student with not a care in the world.

I'm also reminded that I am not that person any more. My city is still the same, but I am an adult now. I find it daunting to imagine returning and making my life here. Being away for so long makes you forget the con's and romanticise the pro's. But from where I'm sitting right now, less than 3 days away from bidding farewell yet again, the pro's far outweigh the con's.

Things have changed at home too. I no longer have my own room; I am now a resident of the guest bedroom/TV room. I have a beautiful dog who makes me smile every time I glance up to look at him, just because he is such a definitive, graceful canine masterpiece. He is really the best dog in the world.

See?

Man in the Mirror

It's taken me a while to come to terms with the fact that Michael Jackson died. I'm not usually one to hanker after celebrities (especially American ones, where my gardener would be a celebrity), but Michael Jackson seems to have had a profound impact on my life... cliche as it may sound.

I grew up listening to Michael Jackson. To me, he was an artist, idealist, magician, and visionary all in one. His music was the soundtrack of my youth.

So intense was my admiration for his music and with his dancing, so strong was my emotional attachment to him through his music, that I like many other fans felt sorry for him when his face morphed into another person altogether. I felt his bizarre behaviour represented a troubled, misunderstood person who was nothing but picked on and cornered by the whole world, like a deer in the headlights. So I never really found the tsunami of MJ jokes funny in the least.

The face they show of the Michael Jackson that died is not the Michael Jackson I knew and loved. NOT the MJ I wanted to marry. His radical and rapid physical transformation was freaky, unsettling and just weird. It also means I am no longer certain if the images out there of him are, in fact him or a product of Photoshop. These, however, sum up the idol of my childhood, the music to my ears, the rhythm in my step all those years when I wasn't sure of myself and unhappy, when his music made me smile when I was at many a low point.

Milking it for all it's worth...

... Because we just never seem to learn. “Milk” is definitely not the best or most gripping movie ever made. Political activism, campaigning and the gay movement set in the 1970’s is a story far removed from today, but screaming to be told 40 years later.

And really, hats off to Sean Penn who stole the show by a gay mile, personifying Harvey Milk and everything he stood for. I admire the way he utterly transforms into the character so absolutely, so entirely that you forget it’s the same dude. The same guy who played a convicted murderer in “ Man Walking, the same guy who played a mentally challenged father in I am Sam. And now the same guy who played a gay man so convincingly and so unabashedly. I can't imagine many men who would be willing to step out of their heterosexual shoes and do that, in the interests of telling such a compelling story.

But the thing about this movie is that it was set in a time before I was even born. The 1970’s was the hippie era – sex, drugs, rock ‘n’ roll, drag queens, gays and lesbians, free love, flower power. I was born in the ‘80’s. The world moved on from the ‘70’s and not just in America. Blacks fought for their civil rights and today we have a black President in the White House. Women fought for their civil liberties and today stand at the top of every economic, political, social and corporate ladder there is. Yet we still have this gaping gay grey area.

Perhaps that’s because while life moved forward from the days of racism, bigotry and prejudice, the world became more religious and fought many wars over 4 decades, thanks to religion and God.

And God didn’t change his mind about homosexuality in 40 years. The books still preach the same gospels as they did centuries ago when they were written, and homosexuality is still a damnable offense in his books, no matter what language it's in. It’s unnatural, unworldly and plainly satanic.

Can two men or two women reproduce? Can they be a family, in the same way men and women have built families since the beginning of humanity? No. And these are all questions raised in the movie, but questions we still cannot answer.

The thing is, the expectations and perceptions of a family have changed so drastically since Harvey Milk was faced with those very questions. So if Madonna can adopt a child from Malawi and Brangelina can adopt orphans from Cambodia, Ethiopia and Vietnam and raise them with their own biological children within the same family, then where is this so called normal standard of a family?

If it’s family values we’re talking about, then that’s a universal standard that doesn’t have anything to do with the people that make up the family. Husband, wife, son, daughter... they’re just labels. We teach our children to be kind, loving, compassionate and hard working. There are some basics that don’t change, whether it’s a mother and father raising the family, a mother and mother, father and father, single mother, single father, grandfather or grandmother, uncle or aunt. As long as there’s love, what more does a family need?

It’s something we just can’t seem to agree on. Religion. What my religion says is different from what your religion says. My Prophet looks different from yours. My religion is “better” than yours.

That’s what it's come to today, the way I see it.

Harvey Milk couldn’t take on the fight for gay rights for the entire world. But he sure as hell took it on for America, and I think he shaped the U.S. in a way that helped it live up to its definition better than any other country. A free country, where everyone is equal.

I'mmortal

What is it about human nature, that when our own mortality is in question we shrug and think "what will be will be". But when it's a husband or a wife or a child or a mother or a father who's mortality or health comes into question we frighten so easily?

Maybe it's because when it's an important person in your life, you don't want to lose them because you think, "what would I do without them?" You're scared because you don't want to live without seeing them every day. We take comfort in our family and friends because for the most part, we're all human and we're all social. We need community to survive.

So when my husband complained of a weird pins and needles kind of pain in his left arm last night, I couldn't sleep. I couldn't sleep because I was thinking to myself, "What if I wake up tomorrow morning and he doesn't?"

Pain in left arm = heart attack

Right?! Sometimes I'm too paranoid. But it was weird.

What is it about us...

... Indians, that we can't just take a bow when we are appreciated and applauded. The success of Slumdog Millionaire this year has filled my heart with joy. It is a film that reminded me of a city that was my home for 16 years, a city that was bursting at the seams when I left and seems to be just about at breaking point today, almost 10 years later.

Yes, there have been many far better Bollywood movies made about Bombay. Salaam Bombay is one example. Slumdog is a Hollywood production, a Western point of view. And so what if it is? Why do we roll our eyes and say "we're making too big a deal out of this movie"? What the hell is wrong with us that we can't just smile graciously and say thanks?

Or is it that we're just jealous?

How does it matter who made the movie, or if he's Indian or gora? How does it matter that the US and the world have fallen in love with this movie, and it was released in the west before coming to India? Maybe you have to live in Bombay to understand the dynamics of the latent underbelly of such a city, and what it means to live side by side with it, or to be born into it by pure circumstance. I never forget that I could have been born far less fortunate. It's something I will never ever stop thanking God for, that I wasn't born a maid or a driver or a labourer or a toilet cleaner. But when you live in India your whole life, I guess it's easy to forget how easily that could've been you.

I for one, am thrilled at the success of Slumdog. Having watched it thrice, it won me over from the very first scene. It is SO Bombay but it brought something new to the table - hope in a city that very rarely gives anyone the opportunity to hope, or even dare to dream.

So have we as the collective Indian critic become so jaded that we can't recognise, appreciate and celebrate hope when we see it in it's purest form, even if it's in a movie?!

Seriously, what the hell is wrong with us.

Go Slumdog