Baobab - A fascinating Species

The name was not very common to my ears neither was its look to my eyes. Ever since I saw them at the Aspire Park in Doha, I might has asked my Landscape Architect friend umpteen number of times to remind me of the name of this tree. He used to give me the name with the questions, “why, what happened?” I always wanted to know more about them.

I am told that we have a few of the species in some botanical gardens in India but incidentally never got to see one. “There are nine species of baobab in the world, and Madagascar, one of the world’s biodiversity hotspots, is home to six. The African mainland and the Arabian peninsula have two, and Australia has one. Africa’s most notable species is the Adansonia digitata, named after the French botanist Michel Adanson, who undertook an 18th-century exploration of Senegal. He stayed there for five years and contributed to the publication of 1757’s Natural History of Senegal.” theguardian.com)

The shape of the trees are fascinating but the most fascinating fact is that there are individual Baobab trees alive on the planet earth for the last 3000 years. Yes you have counted the zeros alright, its three thousands!

Isn’t it amazing for somebody to stand the sand of time and witness the continued changes happening over the millenniums? But they are not able to withstand our atrocities any longer. 

A recent article made the shocking disclosure that as many as 9 of these individuals aged between 1100 and 2500 years are dying off. Unfortunately our way of polluting environment and encroaching forest lands is killing them. Victims of Climate Change! The Guardian reported “The oldest tree by far, of which all the stems collapsed in 2010/11, was the Panke tree in Zimbabwe, estimated to have existed for 2,500 years. The biggest, dubbed Holboom, was from Namibia. It stood 30.2 metres (99 feet) tall and had a girth of 35.1 m.” (theguardian.com)

Do you not feel that it's about time that we change our way of life and give others a chance? 

Live and Let Live!

 

World Environment Day: Wish you a sustainable lifestyle

The most explicit definition of Sustainable living that I ever came across is the following:

“Meeting our present needs in a way such that the coming generation would be able to meet their own.”

Our generation is selfishly rushing to achieve their self-defined illusive “Progress”. In the process we are mercilessly converting our farmlands, wetlands, forests and water bodies destroying the natural habitat of our co-dwellers in this earth.

On the 5^th of June 2018, this World Environment Day, I request all to take a moment out to decide where we want to go from here. We need to be wary of finding our environmental report card in the hands of our grandchildren and decide between growth and development.

Growth is all about getting bigger and bigger whereas development is about getting better.

I have no qualms in accepting the fact that it will take a messiah to change the world totally and revert the damages already done. But no one can stop us from participating in whatever small way to be part of the change that we want to see in our environment.

I can assure you that any step, however small that might be would not be insignificant. There are a few things that we all can undertake, no matter where we are or our circumstances.

Firstly we need to plant trees…wherever and whenever possible. Any opportunity should not be missed and it could be in our courtyards, porches, patios, terraces, balconies or even window sills. Create your own flowering nook or a kitchen garden and in doing so please remember to use terracotta pots instead of the plastic one.

Secondly say goodbye to plastics. They are doing immense harm and their outreach is now thousands of feet under the sea. The idea is to start with the disposable, single use products and slowly move to the others.

Finally let “Recycle, Reuse & Reduce” be the mantra of life.

In the end I will leave with a quote from Senegalese Baba Dioum (1968). "In the end we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.”

The news clipping below may help to understand the gravity of the situation and motivate you. First one is a good news about Tamil Nadu banning plastics and the ones that follows are scary to say the least. 

WhatsApp and What a Wonderful World……

The school that my daughter attends for music decided to participate in the annual day celebrations of a school for children with special needs. When it was their turn, they got to the stage and stood shoulder to shoulder with the choir group of the celebrating school. Together they presented the popular song, “What a wonderful world” by Louis Armstrong. I felt it was quite an intense and emotional experience for all the participants as well as their parents. As they sang together

“I see trees of green, red roses too
I see them bloom for me and you
And I think to myself what a wonderful world……”

it was a defining experience for those kids who had little idea about the challenges associated with the term “special needs”.

But this is not the subject of this post. In preparation of the program, the teacher in charge had formed a group in the “WhatsApp”. She coordinated with the parent of this small group of voluntary participants letting us know about the time to drop-offs, pick-ups for rehearsals, dress codes and other critical details about the venue, meeting points etc. related to the final day. The kids these days are fully occupied and finding a common free time to rehearse by itself is no mean task.

“WhatsApp” was a great tool for those 5 weeks and it can be extremely efficient as long as it is strictly used for purpose. No customary “good mornings”, no forwarded messages, no spam… pure business. After the program, the group became defunct.

I wish we could use technology with such prudence….always! Not letting it infringe our personal space to dump others views, opinions or frustrations and create havoc!

Culturally diverse? Yes Please!

Let's start this topic with a quote from Jane Austen. “There is nothing I would not do for those who are really my friends.” she said and argued “ I have no notion of loving people by halves, it is not my nature.” That's probably how most of us as Indians feel about our culture except a few who thinks differently.

I have been living outside the country for more than two decades and have met many people who has left the country temporarily or permanently who echoes the same sentiment. One thing that unites us all is the our culture no matter how diverse we are in our thoughts, beliefs, language or appearance.

Yes we are still culturally diverse although many of our festivals and values are now intertwined across the subcultures.  But retaining this trait for a country of India's complexity and volume withstanding resistance from people who quite often spew venom in the social media is quite an commendable achievement.

I once listened to an interview and one statement made about our country said it all. India being so large and diverse, something need to be kept in consideration while drawing an inference on any particular cause or issue. What one inferred could be correct but the irony is that the opposite of that is also equally true.

As an example one might infer that the Indian society at large is becoming intolerant towards each other's religious beliefs, but the opposite of this is probably the greater truth. We see the same when it comes to #girl child, #respect for women, #social division, #dowry, #respect for National language, #celebrating other festivals #freedom of speech, and the list goes on.

Without going into the details of people and culture as a management subject, it won’t incorrect to state that only cultural identity that Indian diaspora has is that related to back home. One may think otherwise but the world out there begs to differ and tag us all with the Indian culture.

Writer's Block or Writer's Excuse

Finally I looked up for its literal meaning in the Wikipedia. I believe it was a subconscious instruction to my fingers to confirm what my mind had been suspecting for some time now. Writer's block is a condition, primarily associated with writing, in which an author loses the ability to produce new work, or experiences a creative slowdown. The condition ranges in difficulty from coming up with original ideas to being unable to produce a work for years. Throughout history, writer's block has been a documented problem.

 As if finding a subject was not difficult enough that my mind also insists on justifying that with reasons before it would let me get going with my writing task. 

This makes maintaining a blog even more challenging. 

I am sure, I am not the only one who feels this way and envy those who keeps churning post after posts day after day. There was a time when one used to approach the proverbial wise-man, who could easily been a woman too, for support and solace. 

But now with changing time, we approach Google or should I say ... we google! Thinking why I should be any different, I asked Google for help and help there was in abundance.

I thought, why do I need to take the trouble to tap my finger on the laptop. After all I am the lazy bum of the twenty-first century.

I spoke to Siri to find out if she could help me out. She too was equally efficient as Google. (One day I should let Siri do some Googling for fun.)

Now I have plenty of ideas and many sources to tap ideas from. Maybe I need to start brainstorming for new excuses….

Daymare? Nay! It’s a Dream

Your great grandchild will be surprised to know that you had physically transported yourself to tourist destinations. It will be shocking for them to accept the fact that people took such extraordinary efforts for mundane experience of a jungle safari or a walk on the Great Wall of China. An experience which could easily be enjoyed during a lunch break. If it is not yours, his grandchild will most certainly be looking at us as though we were the hunters’ gatherers of the twenty-first century.  

It’s not a daymare, it’s just a dream!

Virtual Reality is making inroads into the life of the proverbial common man at a speed much faster than what we would be comfortable to accept. Any major, important or popular tourist destination has already been digitized in their minutest of details. We can easily experience a fly over the highest peak of the largest mountain or inspect the intricate details of St Paul’s Cathedral leaning back on our desk chair. Today, it may analogous to gazing at the computer screen but I have a dream....  

Very soon VR technology to will evolve to a full-fledged Dolby digital like experience. As I write this post, google is busy documenting the street views of the major cities around the world. I wouldn’t be surprised if the forests and deserts are also being digitized by someone else.

The journey that one would embark in the near future would be as real as they comes, effectively encompassing all our senses but remaining within one's own comfort zone. Standing in front of the favorite monument one would be able to feel, smell and talk to the fellow virtual traveler admiring the same view in real-time, albeit virtually.

When that day dawns, the able, unable, disable and differently-able person alike shall experience the joy of visiting exotic locales. This is going to impact the life of all; the lazy, the crazy and everyone in between. The “selfie experience” will still remain quite intense while the “selfie camera” moves into the computer which will be shouldering all the hard-work. 
With that reality still lurking at a distance, my best selfie is yet to clicked. I do leave a virtual selfie. 

But till that time comes we have to drag our feet and physically send ourselves to places  armed with a good selfie camera. After all human beings' primitive instinct of showing off has to be addressed in style. The camera need to support different formats of all the social media options. Whether it is Facebook, Pinterest or the Instagram, the photos once posted need not get cropped. Mobiistar phone with its front, dual selfie camera to capture a 120° wide-angle shot would definitely give you an edge over the commoners. And moreover need not to worry about the battery dying in the middle of the trip and its worth checking it out virtually in the Flipkart store.

This post remembers Morton L. Heilig, referred by many authors as the father of Virtual Reality. 

The Forces of Nature by Marc Quinn

Marc Quinn is a British contemporary visual artist of a very high repute and caliber. His repertoire include sculptures, paintings and installations. We were fortunate to be able to stand in front of his sculpture called ”The Conservation of Mass” and admire as it was displayed in the grounds of the Museum of Islamic Arts (MIA) Doha. This majestic looking 2015 stainless steel piece is of dimensions 263h X 750w x 192d cm was part of his first solo exhibition in the region.

Varshika had made a brief video presentation of this sculpture in her own way during our visit.

This is part of Quinn’s wider body of works titled “Frozen Waves” characterized by minimal arches, gestural shapes and stainless steel construction. The artist cautions that these are not sculptures of waves but an unwitting self-portrait by nature.

These has been inspired by the brute authority of nature that constantly enforces the “dust to dust” existence of all living creatures. Each piece are reminiscent of the gestural shapes we witness in the eroding conch shells before nature turns them back to sand particles. The immense force of nature gets crystalized into solid forms through these artworks.

All names are borrowed from the science of fluid dynamics for that extra sensation that touches through our eardrums.

The Conservation of Mass

The Conservation of Culture

The Conservation of Matter

The Conservation of Linear Momentum

The Conservation of Ultra Gravity

The Conservation of Turbulent Flow

The Conservation of Subsonic Flow

Photo Credit: http://marcquinn.com/artworks/