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..…the rain don’t mind was a popular song by Milli Vanilli. That is also a mantra among policy makers, academics, development workers and communities today. Only, instead of the rain, the default scapegoat is climate change, and to judge from the many controversies surrounding it, a great many people do mind. I was lucky enough to carry out a survey on the impact of climate change in the mountain villages of Uttarakhand [1]. And that convinced me like no published article has that climate change is here. Now.
The people of the Bhagirathi and Pindar valleys would laugh if you told them that people are still divided about whether the climate is changing. The rhododendron that once flowered in April can now be seen in February. More important, perhaps, from a sustenance point of view is the effect of these changes on agriculture.
The changes that the villagers experience are many..but the root changes in climate, the initial boulders that cause an avalanche of changes are only two: lessened precipitation and lack of freezing temperatures. These further lead to a decrease in winter crops, decrease in apple productivity, increased pestilience and changes in ecosystem composition. Some villagers have taken heed of the inevitability of this change and started growing tomatoes- previously unknown at those altitudes.
But what can they do about the bewilderment that a changing landscape causes. Villager after villager told me sadly, “himalaya khali ho rahein hain”. Blame it on the rain, its going away soon.
[1] Peoples Science Institute, 2009, Documenting Climate Change in Uttarakhand. Study conducted with assistance from Himmothhan Trust. Available from the Peoples Science Institute, Dehradun.
Chicu lives in Uttarakhand and defines herself as a natural resource manager, traveller, and latent gardener. A civil engineer by training, she works with the People's Science Institute, a non-governmental organization working towards read more...
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As parents, we put a piece of our hearts out into this world and into the custody of the teachers at school and tuition and can only hope and pray that they treat them well.
Trigger Warning: This speaks of physical and emotional violence by teachers, caste based abuse, and contains some graphic details, and may be triggering for survivors.
When I was in Grade 10, I flunked my first preliminary examination in Mathematics. My mother was in a panic. An aunt recommended the Maths classes conducted by the Maths sir she knew personally. It was a much sought-after class, one of those classes that you signed up for when you were in the ninth grade itself back then, all those decades ago. My aunt kindly requested him to take me on in the middle of the term, despite my marks in the subject, and he did so as a favour.
Math had always been a nightmare. In retrospect, I wonder why I was always so terrified of math. I’ve concluded it is because I am a head in the cloud person and the rigor of the step by step process in math made me lose track of what needed to be done before I was halfway through. In today’s world, I would have most probably been diagnosed as attention deficit. Back then we had no such definitions, no such categorisations. Back then we were just bright sparks or dim.
When Jaya Bachchan speaks her mind in public she is often accused of being brusque and even abrasive. Can we think of her prodigious talent and all the bitter pills she has had to swallow over the years?
A couple of days ago, a short clip of a 1998 interview of Jaya and Amitabh Bachchan resurfaced on social media. In this episode of the Simi Grewal chat show, at about the 23-minute mark, Jaya lists her husband’s priorities: one, parents, two kids, then wife. Then she corrects herself: his profession – and perhaps someone else – ranks above her as a wife.
Amitabh looks visibly uncomfortable at this unstated but unambiguous reference to his rather well-publicised affair with co-star Rekha back in the day.
Watching the classic film Abhimaan some years ago, one scene really stayed with me. It was something Brajeshwarlal (David’s character) says in troubled tones during the song tere mere milan ki yeh raina. He says something to the effect that Uma (Jaya Bhaduri’s character) is more talented than Subir (Amitabh Bachchan’s character) and that this was a problem since society teaches us that men are superior to women.
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