Reflections of Life in Delhi

After gaining substantial confidence as a writer, I finally decided to write a bit of a description of the things I cherished in my life in Delhi. As compared to the magnitude of contention, happiness, and wisdom that was imparted to me by that life, this piece is quite small. However, it does justice to the simple pleasures of life that are immensely appealing to the people of the city, and the children born to it. More recently, I have been feeling suffocated and writing this simple piece reminded me why I have been so miserable.


When I moved to Columbia five years ago, the transition from New Delhi was extremely difficult. The streets are quiet in the daytime, but even as evening approaches here, one can only notice the rush of cars. Coming from a city with a population of fifteen million and counting, existence seemed void in this city, which I labeled as a graveyard initially.

In Delhi, each day overwhelms one with the ostentatious presence of life.

I would wake up to the cacophonous noise of the crow, if not woken up by the neighbor shouting at her son to stop wasting time and get ready for school. The vibrancy of the birds borrowed from the mornings lured me to the balcony where I would smell the mint and sage bushes my mother had planted in our little rock garden. Next, I would check our rose and jasmine plants for any new buds and would eagerly anticipate getting the progress report of the ones gracefully opening up.

The next couple of minutes were spent with the biggest dilemma of my life- whether to finish the glass of warm milk I had been standing with for about twenty minutes, or not. As I saw the neighbor’s son pour it down the drain of his balcony, I decided to gulp-in mine. This mistake was always regretted because by the time I decided to drink the glass of whole milk, the crème settled on top of it made me gag.

The walks to and back from the bus stop always felt as if they would never end, especially in summer. The soles of our canvas shoes (part of our school uniform) let the heat from the tar seep in and kept me wondering each day if I would be able to get away without a blister.

In the monsoons however, the walks back were always fun. We pretended to have forgotten our umbrellas at school and had much fun getting drenched in rain. In the evening, or on a Sunday afternoon, we would always make sure to spend plenty of time on the rooftops so as to not miss our chance to see the peacocks that often perched on eucalyptus trees nearby. On better days, we often prayed for the rain to fall down like cats and dogs so that we could block the rooftop drains and make our own little swimming pool!

The evenings were a ritual of simply getting out of the house and letting the smells of the street-side food vendors tempt you. It was hard to resist not indulging in our senses into the spices that came along with those heavily fried snacks. To complement the flavors, the sweet and sour tamarind chutney always brought about the best justice.

After dark, when it was finally time to relax and focus on homework and studies, there were always people celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary or their newborn’s birthday and the loudspeakers forced everyone in the community to be a part of those celebrations. One could call the cops, but only in vain to find out that the noise dropped to a minimal amount for the fifteen minutes they spent inspecting the neighborhood and then went back up to its original levels.

Transporting myself out of that urban jungle though, I find that I have found much peace in my new home as well. I can walk by the Congaree river for hours, just hearing it collide with the rocks and happily let the sun warm my feet. I can actually witness each turn of the season - observe the changing fall colors and  “smell” spring.
The only sensation whose absence still tortures me is the monsoon season- lingering smell of the rain before it even hit the grounds, a splash from the puddles which destroyed my white school shirt every now and then, and the simple hope of gazing into the seemingly oblivious eyes of the beautifully shimmering peacocks.

Perhaps, it is my childhood I miss, rather than the place. But for now, I’d like to believe that going back will somehow simplify everything and I will reflexively run out as soon as it starts raining.

Perhaps, Hope Lies in the Creation of Environmental Palavers

I am taking a class called "Writing for Our Lives- Nature, Literature, and the End of the World".
 In the context of environmental change, behind the countless readings we did from a varied sources, I observed a disturbing trend. A majority of the authors were either interested in simply expressing their anguish and agitatation with humanity, population overload, and the fact that their rivers were not as pristine and secluded as they once were, or in ultimtaley stating that there is no solution for reversing the extent of damage we have done to our environment. Others are content with blaming lazy people, governments, etc. 

Today, I was introduced to quite an intriguing concept- a palaver.

Palaver is an assembly of people who recognize that they do not know enough to know how to solve a problem which we all face together. As traditionally believed, the strength of a palaver lies in the fact that each member comes with strong background in a certain discipline and is willing to offer his/her expertise on that. When the idea of a palaver for climate change was introduced in the class, I remained frustrated as I realized that if the arguments and the people chosen to construct them were not chosen carefully, the palaver would then just end up being a non-virtual blog full of opinions going in no particular direction. This reminded me of a recent modern day example- the Copenhagen Summit on climate change.

Copenhagen didn't get us the legally binding global carbon emission reduction agreement we wanted. To many it was a disappointment, a vindication of their fears that world leaders would fail to seize the moment and rise above national self-interest to secure a historic climate treaty. It was the failure of a broad and a large-scale palaver discussing how to tackle climate change on a global scale. However, the more I analyzed it, I realized that another important consideration into creating a palaver that would give a fruitful result is to make these palavers on a small scale. Failure of the summit on large scale resulted because every country stands amongst a different kind of economic stature, lifestyle, construct of the economy within the society and thus, different demands from each other and amongst its people within itself. Therefore, this opens up an opportunity for businesses, local communities, and individuals to create their own palavers- assess their ways of thinking amongst their small surroundings, and see what works for them best, despite the lack of a national or even an international political consensus.

Local palavers and initiatives stemming out of their discussions can be replicated by groups across countries and nations can deliver substantial practices in fighting local climate change. The idea is that once these are successful and replicated with necessary tweaking in other regions, the beneficial local climate change in one or perhaps two small regions multiplies by 500 regions and so on. At the same time, they can drive the mass shift in attitude and behavior that is needed to tackle climate change.

The key at the root of any solution stemming from these palavers is to use incentives to engage people to become a part of both the economic and practical solutions that are needed. Following are a few examples that illustrate this idea.

CRERAL is a co-operative in south Brazil that supplies electricity via the grid to 6,300 mainly rural customers in the area. To increase the capacity and improve the reliability of its supply, it has built two river-based, low-tech, low-cost mini-hydro plants (0.72 and 1.0 MW capacity) that produce about 5.5 GWh of electricity a year, or 25% of overall demand .

In northern Tanzania, the Mwanza Rural Housing Programme (MRHP) trains villagers to set up enterprises making high-quality bricks from local clay, fired with agricultural residues rather than wood. As houses are now built from bricks instead of woods, not only does this reduce deforestation, the bricks have been used in more than 100,000 homes in 70 villages, providing improved comfort and durability .

Such practices not only create a solution for the local communities, but they also set up case examples which can be carefully studied and implemented in other communities. Moreover, holding a palaver and implementing its solutions locally alleviates the lack of control that people often feel in the midst of such policies because they may affect them but not benefit them, at least in immediate monetary terms (If everyone understood and happily accepted the long-term benefits green initiatives, things would be a lot easier). This problem can be tackled as well as the industries initiated by the policy- in our case example the hydro-plant or the brick factory- can be privately bought and sold so as to gain profits from their own small scale establishment by eliminating costs of acquiring it from elsewhere.

After contemplating on this topic for a bit, I realized that the creation of palavers could be extremely powerful in tackling climate change by implementing environmentally conscious habits. However, before the creation of any such palaver, it is most imperative that the affecting region is local, and a definitive objective is set which incentivizes and empowers people. This will lead to support and resources for the people and practical local climate change solutions will follow. Meanwhile, as big global deals are being sought, the local communities will already be moving-on with the task at hand.