climate change Posts

“A Fish in Alien Streams” by Herjinder

25 01 , 2022 No Comments

A Fish In Alien Streams by Herjinder is an extraordinary book. An account of the introduction of trout by the British. The colonial rulers missed angling as they did “back home”. So they figured out ways in which to transport ova, by sea, in cold conditions to lands as far as Tasmania and India. The Victorian Age was known for some incredible innovations but to discover a viable method of transporting trout ova from Europe to Tasmania and India was astonishing.

I picked up lovely fun facts. One of them being that the original British owners of Kissan jams and sauces were responsible for introducing trout into the sub-continent. Also, how floods have been responsible for dissemination of the fish into the streams of Kashmir, Nilgiris and Sri Lanka. The last interview in the book is with an eighty-three-year-old Jimmy Johnson, an angler. He is a Himachali / Anglo-Indian, whose father, Lt. Col. C. R. Johnson, was one of these British officers who were deeply involved with trout culture farming. But Jimmy learned angling not from his father but by watching the famous angler of the valley, T. Tyson ( the author of “Trout Fishing in Kulu, 1941”). Jimmy’s school was in Mahili, across the river from Katrain where Tyson used to fish virtually every day. And Jimmy would watch the great angler while playing with his friends on the left bank of the river. He started to like Tyson’s ‘game’ more than his own childish ones, seeing it as ‘an interesting game in which delicious lunch and dinner were also guaranteed’.

But in nearly a century since there was abundance of trout in the rivers, the fish is fast disappearing. One of the prime reasons being the rampant construction in the valley and global warming. There are many occasions that Jimmy goes to fish and returns home empty-handed. Yet he renews his angling license annually. In his lifetime, Jimmy has seen trout-abundant rivers to sparsely populated ones now.

It impossible to recapitulate the essence of A Fish in Alien Streams by Herjinder. Suffice to say that this is a wonderful mix of historical narrative and primary source material such as books and interviews. It is very easy to read even if you are not interested in fishing or trouts.

The book cover by Harshad Marathe deserves a special mention. It is unique.

Read it.

2 Nov 2021

Merlin Sheldrake “Entangled Life”

11 01 , 2021 No Comments

Merlin Sheldrake, as per his website ( merlinsheldrake.com), is a biologist and a writer with a background in plant sciences, microbiology, ecology, and the history and philosophy of science. He received a Ph.D. in tropical ecology from Cambridge University for his work on underground fungal networks in tropical forests in Panama, where he was a predoctoral research fellow of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute.
Merlin’s research ranges from fungal biology, to the history of Amazonian ethnobotany, to the relationship between sound and form in resonant systems. A keen brewer and fermenter, he is fascinated by the relationships that arise between humans and more-than-human organisms. He is a musician and performs on the piano and accordion. Entangled Life is his first book.

Entangled Life is truly explosive in the manner Sheldrake upends so many longheld beliefs about evolution particularly anthropometric definitions that inevitably position humans always at the top of the intelligence rankings. He busts so many myths about about the importance of microorganisms. Shedding light on the theory of symbiotic relationships between algae and fungi is well enough but to go a step further and say that mitochondria and chlorophyll within a plant cell are the result of an astonishing symbiosis where the bacteria was engulfed the fungi and evolved to the stage is mind blowing. His chapters on truffles and lichens, that he refers to as ‘living riddles’, can be long length documentaries by themselves. The other chapters have much to offer as well in terms of the crucial role fungi can perform in environment preservation such as mycoremediation or cleaning up contaminated ecosystems. Mycofabrication, creating materials by re-composing the types of material such as mycelium foam that is used for packing as is being done by DELL for carting its servers. Mycelium leather can be used for furniture or as designer Stella McCartney is exploring– to create clothes. Researchers at NASA are interested in the potential of mycotecture and the possibility of growing structures on the Moon. These materials have proven to be lightweight, water-resistant and fire-retardant. Also stronger than concrete when subjected to bending forces, and resist compression better than wood framing. They also have a better insulation value than expanded polystyrene, and can be grown in a matter of days into an unlimited number of forms. Another fascinating discipline is bio-computing where slime mould networks are used to solve a range of geometrical problems. There is so much more about fungi Sheldrake shares that is illuminating, most significantly that living organisms have survived billions of years but are an intrinsic part of evolution. He explains this in detail.

Merlin Sheldrake’s extraordinary energy, vivacity and passion for his discipline sparkles through every page of this book. More importantly, his infectious enthusiasm to share his knowledge with the lay reader. It exudes through every word he writes. He is one flamboyant scientist to watch out for in the near future.

His exposition on microbes, the extent to which fungi have spread on earth, his worrying analysis of the impact human intervention has had on the social interrelationships of these microorganisms have to be taken cognizance of. They are alarmingly prescient given the times we live in. He brings in astrobiology, biogeochemistry, climate change, farmers rights and the impact of pharmaceutical corporates upon the farmer and his agrarian knowledge etc. Astonishing breadth of disciplines Sheldrake covers by sharing his passion for fungus. And you know what, it all rings true. There is so much logic in what he shares that at no point it feels that it is a scientist jumping all over the place in excitement. It is worth listening to.
Entangled Life borders on the technical but when a specialist’s exuberance is so infectious, it spills over easily to grip the lay reader with similar enthusiasm. So much to learn! I love it.

Merlin Sheldrake is certainly a scientist worth watching out for. He is to biology what William Dalrymple is to history. Hugely informative but both scholars wear their knowledge lightly, making it accessible to a vast circle of readers/fans.

Read it. 

27 Dec 2020

“United we are Unstoppable”

04 10 , 2020 No Comments

United we are unstoppable: 60 inspiring young people saving our world — in their own words is a collection of essays, compiled and edited by Akshat Rathi. Rathi is a London-based journalist for Bloomberg News. These testimonies are brief and clearly spell out the young activist’s mission. Some start with the particular incident that transformed them to start a personal campaign to do their bit towards saving the planet, others on what worries and propels them to start a movement and how it dovetails together beautifully with similar campaigns run by equally enthusiastic and committed individuals scattered around the globe. The essays are arranged according to the continents the young activists reside in. Illustrated b/w maps acting as separators accompanied by key points of climate crisis in that geograohical area are a fantastic snapshot introduction to the problems being faced by the locals. Organising the essays within each section on the youth’s local contribution interspersed with ways in which the readers can also assist is a good way to understand, navigate and understand on how to make relevant changes in our lives The book slips into that space of a cross between a primer and narrative nonfiction but it makes easier to appreciate environmental activism and perhaps even be motivated to be agents of change ourselves It is only collective will that can help save Earth.

As Rathi says in his introduction, “These young people don’t just bring new energy to the climate fight; they bring new perspectives, fresh tactics and unwavering resolution. They don’t just understand that everything in the world is connected; they also know how to bridge the divides that have been forming. They know that tackling climate change requires cutting emissions, but that getting there will require facing up to and rooting out deeper injustices perpetuated in society. The youth climate movement has sprung from the grass roots, brought millions into the fold and changed the global conversation.”

Powerful form of storytelling. Share widely!

4 October 2020

Tuesday Reads ( Vol 3), 25 June 2019

25 06 , 2019 No Comments

Dear Reader,

I have just finished reading Amitav Ghosh’s magnificent novel Gun Island. It is about Dinanath Datta, a rare books seller whose life gets entangled with an ancient legend about the goddess of snakes, Manasa Devi. It is a fascinating story that begins in the Sunderbans to New York to Venice. Gun Island has a fantastic cast of characters but it is also a story very relevant to our times for its focus on the situation of migrants and climate change.

At the New Delhi book launch held on 13 June 2019, India Habitat Centre, Amitav Ghosh was in conversation with Raghu Karnad. It was a very special evening as it occurred two days after the untimely demise of the playwright, Girish Karnad. So the book launch morphed into this public memorial for Girish Karnad too. It began with the new Jnanpith winner Amitav Ghosh’s tribute to another Jnanpith winner Girish Karnad. The conversation began with Raghu Karnad, son of Girish Karnad, saying, “My father was a chronicler of Karnataka and of this country, I consider you to be a chronicler of this planet. Interconnecting the countless parts we are in the midst of but miss. They are forces of language, war, or even eco-system.” These opening remarks triggered off a fascinating conversation about “unlikely coincidences” and “meaningful resonances” that exist between space and time. Also what does it mean to try and rationalise events that defy rationalist thinking but at times it is impossible to do so. A significant proportion of Gun Island dwells upon the global migrant crisis. During the conversation Amitav Ghosh commented that “the central literary question is how do you talk about the slow violence that eats itself into peoples lives and never finds its way into newspapers? In the papers every day there are so many reports about violence but this slow violence does not get attention. We have learned to turn our eyes away from it. The issue is how do we find ourselves back to recognise the violence unfolding around us. Poetry is better able to respond to the catastrophe and cataclysm we see around us. Poetry does not have that commitment. Poetry has always responded to every natural event. You see it in Byron and in pre-modern Indian poetry which is not poetry for the sake of poetry — it is devotional. We have to find ourselves back to that…back to being able to talk about other things apart from us.”

Gun Island is an unputdownable book. It will sell well but more so because of the old fashioned word-of-mouth recommendations. At the book launch there were whispers overheard of Amitav Ghosh probably being a contender for the Nobel Prize for Literature in the coming years. Who knows?! But for now it would be interesting to see if this book makes it to the shortlist of the more prominent literary prizes around the world like The Booker Prize. It is certainly a book that cannot be ignored!

Of all the books I read in the past week Gun Island was exceptional.

More anon,

JAYA

25 June 2019

The Magic School Bus on Netflix

05 10 , 2017 No Comments

The immensely popular Magic School Bus books have now been released as a new animation series on Netflix. Here is the trailer:

 

This edutainment series are a marvellous way to introduce children to concepts such as the water cycle, volcanoes, climate change, environment, solar system etc. The reasonably priced and heavily illustrated books published by Scholastic are available on Amazon. Some facts about the series:

More than 90 million books in print, in 9 languages! 
• The book series celebrated its 30th anniversary in 2016
• The Magic School Bus is the longest-running children’s television science series, with the classic series on the air for 18 consecutive years
• The series presents scientific facts in the form of stories

• Each book has a page at the end detailing in a humorous manner which parts of the book represented scientific fact and which were fanciful storytelling

The series were released on Netflix on 26 September 2017!

5 Oct 2017 

 

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