Sometime back I was reading “The Memory Police” by Yoko Ogawa, it’s an Orwellian dystopian world where things disappear and are enforced to be forgotten. It’s soon erased from memory. People don’t realize the loss and seem least bothered as things are back to ‘normal’. Each day something or other vanishes. The protagonist uses her writing as surreptitious means to preserve the memory -something that is resisted by draconian Memory Police. There is a riveting passage in the book where rose petals inundate the river as people stare in awe, indicating that roses have disappeared. A bystander remarks as he observes the river flooded with petals "This is the most beautiful disappearance ever". Next day there are no roses.
Last month there was Biodiversity summit, as also IUCN report so on, pointing to species getting extinct at alarming rate as also numbers too are dwindling significantly. People don’t seem to be bothered, even during COP26 meet rarely was much importance given in media nor was it trending while juvenile entertainments kept herds here in India interested. Now, these news will disturb those who are close to nature -read about it, watch documentaries, experienced being in nature and know the sublime connections (as also those who have studied biodiversity and its importance) but for people staying in cities and towns with minimal interaction, contemplation or observation of nature -at the most utilitarian, this is another boring news -indeed in the infotainment market meant to keep the herds excited these don’t even qualify as news. Therefore it is important that to comprehend the enormity of loss one has to witness, experience and be connected. I recall almost two decades back we witnessed Siberian cranes in Rajasthan, there was so much excitement while we spent hours and days observing. Narrating these to people back in Delhi made me stand out as odd. Within a year or so Siberian cranes stopped migrating to the region. Imagine the loss we felt. Now imagine if these birds become extinct. Will anyone in Delhi be bothered? The reason why people need to experience being part of nature. This must begin quite early in life through education system, or else during holiday stays in resorts. Most resorts located next to forest or eco fragile regions are rarely interested in these (atleast when I started off as naturalist, indeed I had to create the position and explain. Now ofcourse things are changing). Otherwise issues like climate catastrophe or biodiversity loss will not resonate despite dire consequences. The greedy systems are working to make profit while failure of education is a failure to realize human potential and therefore incapable to comprehend reality.
The other day I was reading Ben Okri (Nigerian writer), he writes "We have to ask unthinkable questions. We have to go right to the roots of what makes us such a devouring species, overly competitive, conquest-driven, hierarchical". "We have to find a new art and a new psychology to penetrate the apathy and the denial that are preventing us making the changes that are inevitable if our world is to survive. We need a new art to waken people both to the enormity of what is looming and the fact that we can still do something about it", and proposes "existential creativity, to serve the unavoidable truth of our times, and a visionary existentialism, to serve the future that we must bring about from the brink of our environmental catastrophe". "As a writer, it means everything I write should be directed to the immediate end of drawing attention to the dire position we are in as a species. It means that the writing must have no frills. It should speak only truth. In it, the truth must be also beauty. It calls for the highest economy. It means that everything I do must have a singular purpose".
