The Old Order Changeth....

Some months ago, Mum passed away.  It was hardly an unexpected event: she had been ailing in her winter years with a frail physique and a frailer mind that was lonely and introverted and worried with the premonition that is hard to accept, even in advancing years despite her brave wan smile, gentle countenance and unfailing courtesy.  Time is hard on the Old Order as it changeth, yielding place to the New.

A few days ago, I climbed up onto the roof of Manas, the family home, to check the water level in the overhead tank and the blossoms on a large tree – not easily visible from the ground – were radiant in the mid-day sun.  A couple of decades ago, she had planted a sapling of this fruit – rose apple -- belonging to the Syzygium family of jamuns; there are a number of varieties of this species and cultivars that have spread across Asia yet it remains a fruit that is, in most parts, not commonly available. 

Chambakya or rose apple was her favourite for it kindled memories of childhood summers in the humid warmth of Ernakulam, a little town as it then was, and of her beautiful old home of laterite-and-mud, with its open well filled with fresh water and orchard behind – a ‘paramba’ - of jack, mango, jamun, bananas, coconut and greens .  We all relive our memories in sepia, yet, in her middle age, those memories were everything.…..

For many years, I hardly noticed the tree as it inched its way up to meet sunlight above a growing, verdant canopy in her tasteful garden and, if patience is a virtue, she had it in buckets.  And then one year not so long ago, it blossomed, as trees will do with panache, its delicate flowers jostling with buds and tiny fruits, yet there was none to eat, for they dropped easily.  This was hardly noticed, for Mum was old now, with a failing memory of her favourite fruit and a self-imposed risk-averse food regimen, so there was no feeling of loss when that happened, no dismay at patience unrewarded, no antipathy. 

And every year, the tree has blossomed, even as fruits remain evasive.  And every year, I have climbed up to the roof to watch the bees at frenetic work in the warmth of the summer day with their sonorific buzz and delightful dance – wild Rock Bees, a species that is worthy of as much worship as the Gods in our temples of elegant, if inert and divisive, stone.  In residences around our family home, their hives are burnt, smoked, sprayed and cut, with a thousand little victims lying as inert as that edifice of stone-and-wall yet here, in this little patch, with its trees, Ixora, anthurium and tiny wild flowers, there is a refuge; they are welcome to forage, the food court is open.                  

This year, as I watch them at work, I wonder.  Did Mum plant this tree for herself? Such is legacy. 

Squeezing A Stone

It’s been a while since I spoke to this elderly gentleman, a nice, unassuming hard-working chap, with large spectacles and an avuncular air about him.  My ‘How-are-you?’ is a regulation question…..

The reply is an absent-minded, 'Fine'. But he wants to say more.....  

‘As you know,’ he begins, ‘my wife and I live on the ground floor and I have built three flats above ours for my three daughters.  The flats are all on rent.  We do not have a municipal water connection and get 8 water tankers every month.  That’s twenty thousand rupees.’

He pauses and takes his spectacles off, cleaning them meditatively.

‘Yesterday, the water tanker driver supplied his last tanker to us.  They have run out of water.’

He sees the expression on my face.  

‘The tenants are all moving out this weekend.  One young couple will return to their home town.   And my wife and I are looking to rent an apartment.’ He pauses, and then smiles, ‘Let’s change the subject, he says, but I must tell you that I never expected this to happen to me.’

I am silent and hopefully my look shows empathy, understanding, commisseration for it is the least he can expect from me.  Walking back, I think of our city, with its profligate, indifferent ways, where entitlement preceeds responsibility, of hotels with jaw-dropping luxury that tell you that water is precious so could you please reuse the towel but allow us to keep our jacuzzis running, of apartment complexes where a call to conserve is met with a howl of defiant protest and of cynics who believe that Economics will solve the problem, for as Oscar Wilde said, they know the price of everything and the value of nothing.  

It isn’t water that is in short supply…..

And I think of those fifty thousand hectares or so of sugarcane by the Cauvery river that are probably still being irrigated; the crop of each hectare will consume 12-15 million litres of water.  

Multiply that by 50,000.

Stories tell us more than facts do.

And, no, we do not need that sugar.

A Different Kind of Procession

It is noon and the hills and valleys in the Western Ghats are scorching.  We walk  up a small stream - my favourite one -  in the shade of a gorgeous canopy and the air is cool, the water inviting.

These are quiet, subdued streams now in these hills and valleys, far from their raging versions in the rains.  The monsoon last year was scanty and, as summer sets in, coffee planters commence their annual irrigation to help the blossoms along.  The picking of coffee is nearly done, the chatter of workers replaced with the sound of irrigation motors and the swish of jet sprays of sprinklers that reach for the sky: a six-hectare plantation will soak in about a million litres of water.  Yet, there are livelihoods and plants to take care of and the blossoms for next year's crop.....

As dusk and night set in, human footprints fade away along these streams.  And then the denizens of the stream take over, their movements soft, silent and cautious.  

A romp of small clawed otters,  civets - the small Indian civet (with rings on its tail) and the palm civet, a porcupine, leopard cat, a brown fish owl, these are the denizens of the stream ecosystem.

Why am I in the limelight?  Three small clawed otters aren't a crowd, but a romp

And there are the bigger boys too who visit.

The streams and the trees along these streams are for them to hunt, fish, drink, rest, move, wait and hide.  The stream is theirs,  yet they take nothing away and leave nothing behind that can harm its flow, for it is their home.

Each is fabulously adapted to this system and moves with genetic dexterity; in its absence, they wouldn't have lasted the purge of evolution.  When these little streams dry out because they lose their tree cover or have their sand mined or we aren't prudent in our usage of water, or when they are empty of fish and crabs, these denizens of the stream fade away, their lives overturned.  And how does that affect us?  We do not know what we do not know, yet we do know that our world becomes impoverished in every possible dimension, not just the biological chain. 

Only when we truly understand this will we accept that owning land by the stream isn't a right, it is a responsibility.

Of stewardship.