Mayank Chhaya Daily

Imagine as a man if someone kicks you in your groin and then lifts your entire body with your ear and then twirls it even while giving you bikini wax and removing your wisdom teeth..

A slight morning--Mayank Chhaya

Imagine as a man if someone kicks you in your groin and then lifts your entire body with your ear and then twirls it even while giving you bikini wax and removing your wisdom teeth. That’s the sort of thing Earth’s climate change is either already doing to us or will soon do to us unless we retrieve our heads from our collective arse and do something to reverse or arrest global warming.

Reading the executive summary of the sixth report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that is the series of torture that flashed through my mind. The fact that earth is now warmer than it has ever been in the last 125,000 years ought to cause some panic globally. The figures about the rising temperatures are staggering but what is more staggering is what is already happening across the world—more intense storms, more intense wildfires, more devastating drought and more melting of ice. Every thing is more, as in much badder than before if badder is what you understand.

Let me quote just one finding that must set you thinking. “In 2019, atmospheric CO2 concentrations were higher than at any time in at least 2 million years (high confidence), and concentrations of CH4 and N2O were higher than at any time in at least 800,000 years (very high confidence). Since 1750, increases in CO2 (47%) and CH4 (156%) concentrations far exceed, and increases in N2O (23%) are similar to, the natural multi-millennial changes between glacial and interglacial periods over at least the past 800,000 years (very high confidence),” it says.

The lowest end is 800,000 year and the highest 2 million years in terms of how bad things are in how long. That we, humans, are causing all this has never been doubt and it is no longer even a debate that we are. The question is what we are going to do to fix it.

As I have frequently pointed in these columns, Earth/Nature have no obligation to keep us alive or even let sentient life take hold and flourish. Nature has none of the motherly instincts that people have so foolishly attributed to it. Nature works on the principle of minimum equilibrium and adopts the most ruthless way of achieving that equilibrium. It makes no concessions for you and me. Its processes may be slow compared a single individual’s lifetime but they unfold inexorably. Earth’s primary concern is and I am sure it is not even that much whether it survives or just splinters and becomes trillions of debris.

Let us not overestimate—I would argue let us not estimate at all—Earth’s munificence towards us. It will do what it must do in response to elemental changes caused by either human activity or the sheer fact of it natural cycle. It is up to us live on with a reasonable measure of respect because it will have no problem wiping us out and not even mourn for a second.

I strongly recommend that you read the IPCC summary for policymakers here.

Kalidas and a spectacular attention to even small visual details

Apart from his obvious virtues as a great dramatist, I particularly relish and unequivocally applaud Kalidas’s extraordinary attention to visual details. I have written about it a few times in these columns in the specific context of his Vikramovarshiyam’. I do return to the superb simultaneous Hindi translation from the original Sanskrit and accompanying commentary published by Ramnarayan Lal Benimadhav, a well-known publisher of Allahabad, now Prayagraj.

What I have is a remarkable first edition priced at three rupees and fifty paises.

Early on, Kalidas is describing the revolution of a chariot’s wheels. The first thing that struck me is that there is a specific name for the wooden spokes. It is Ar. There is a term also for the gap between the spokes; it is called Arantreshu. The Hindi commentary points out that that the "sticks" between the fulcrum and rim of the wheel. 

Kalidas notices that when the chariot’s wheels revolve rapidly the gaps between the wooden spokes disappear and create an illusion of there being spokes even within those gaps.

When you read it by itself, it may seem like a trivial detail but actually it is a great tribute to a great writer who is paying attention to even the smallest of details even while tacking grander themes of love and longing. Brilliant.

Neeraj Chopra, javelin, Gravity and I

Indian athlete Neeraj Chopra who just won the gold at Tokyo Olympics for javelin (Photo courtesy: olympics.com)

Watching India’s athlete Neeraj Chopra clear a remarkable 87.58 meters in javelin throw and win the country’s first ever Olympic gold medal in athletics played well into my current preoccupation—an intense preparation for a prospective book about Gravity.

May I remind you, like I have done several times prior, that everything we are is a direct consequence of Earth’s gravity. It is reasonable to speculate how different we might have been anatomically had Earth’s gravity been, say for instance, like Mars’s, meaning 0.375 of what it is now. Earth’s gravity is 2.66 times that of Mars’s. The distance that Chopra’s javelin traveled, its trajectory, the amount of energy it took him to run up to the line and launch it and the way the javelin landed are all a result of the way Earth’s gravity. On Mars, it would have flown a greater distance and its trajectory might be very different not to mention Chopra’s ability to run too would have been different.

A great thrill for me while reading up for the prospective book about Gravity is to understand how in such fantastically varied ways gravity influences not just sentient life but everything in the universe. The beauty of it is that it is not even a real force the way we understand real force. It is so subtle and yet so profound. The feeling of being grounded that all of us have comes from Earth’s gravity. While the idea of floating around in zero G or even less than Earth’s G may seem exciting for a while but if you were born on this planet, I can assure you that you would not like to float around all the time. Feet firmly on the ground is a thing.

The arch that Chopra’s javelin made from the launch to the landing was also a consequence of Earth’s gravity. In a sense, his javelin took some escape velocity to leave his fingers, take off, fly a bit and then eventually land at 87.58 meters. All this while a terribly subtle force we call gravity was at work.

Remember that.