Summer and old boys

Last year, March was already hot. These days summer is coming early, and the monsoons are setting in late - it rains heavily only from end July. Also, winters are much milder than before. Other than that, I haven't noticed much change in the weather over the last fifty years, no matter how much people all around keep muttering about 'disastrous forms of climate change'. Well, not yet, anyway. It has been blazing since about the second week of April, and now we are heading towards May: every day the celsius climbs to 42-44, and the IMD says this will continue through the next month, but, despite all the talk about heat waves, I can't say I see a very real difference. I mean, when has summer not been horrible hereabouts? We just have to curse and bear it and wait for the rains, as always before. And yes, a lot of people are going to get sunstroke, a few will even die. Not news. As we grow older and more ease-loving, these things irk us more, that's all. I used to wander around town without a care in this kind of heat on a bicycle till I was in my mid-twenties, and I can see the hardier of my little boys still merrily kicking around a football in the nearby park of an afternoon as though they couldn't bother less about the heat. Their numbers have greatly decreased and the number of cotton wool-wrapped, air conditioner-cuddled ninnies has greatly increased - there's the pity. I worry about the health of all those who come to attend classes at three in the afternoon more than they do themselves, though over the last decade they have luxuriated here in cool comfort, whereas I sweltered in the heat along with my hordes of boys and girls for more than twenty five years before that. What surprises me, really, is that the kaalbaishakhi has been playing truant in recent years, and sometimes I hear that there was no snow in north Sikkim and Gulmarg in January, but it  was heavily compensated in mid-March! Also, that sometimes Bankura is becoming hotter than Jaisalmer.

What worries me much more is the fear of power outages growing ever more frequent, and even more than that, the possibility of water famine, of the sort that many parts of the country are already facing - Bangalore, to name the latest city to suffer. And I can't see that remedial measures are being taken along a wide front well within time, long before real disaster strikes. Conservation and reduction of waste must become the name of the game, countrywide, mandated by very strict laws and active governmental involvement, because the 'people' will never do it on their own: they are too ignorant, or too stupid, or too shortsighted, and far more interested in relentlessly increasing consumption levels. People who install more than three air conditioners in a house occupied by just one family must pay a specially heavy tax, for instance; a steeply progressive water tax geared to volume of usage must become mandatory, instead of being filled up to make space for more residential buildings, lakes must be dug and maintained on a very large scale again, and waste water must be recycled everywhere ... that's just four of the twenty essential steps that I can list off the cuff. Imagining the kind of trouble we are going to face if such measures are not undertaken urgently makes me shudder and pity all who are more than twenty years younger than me. And of course, I sigh sadly and fearfully to think that every crisis of this sort could have been greatly ameliorated if not entirely avoided if we hadn't allowed the population to explode over the last 75 years... (see the older post, The population bomb).

Sudipta Sengupta, St. Xavier's Durgapur ICSE 1991 batch, who has been living in Houston, Texas for over 25 years, visited me last evening. It was a good meet-up, and, as with so many others, I was both flattered and delighted to see that he retains so many and such good memories. 'Suvroda taught us to think and to challenge.' Not a bad heartwarmer for an ageing teacher. If you are reading this, Sudipta, thank you, and come again whenever you can, keep in touch, and don't forget to send over those photos of days gone by. Good luck to your son.

[P.S.: there's a new post on the other blog after a long time. Do look. And I am gratified to see that several old and beloved posts, such as Forty five and counting, Growing up in Durgapur, and especially The end of an era, have come back into the most-read list again. Good to see that many readers are taking the trouble to explore old posts. As I keep saying, the best contents are not limited to the home page!]