The Sustainability Series: Introduction

Until recently, when I heard the term "sustainability" I always associated it with "ecological sustainability" which is nothing but the ability for all organisms to thrive in a diverse environment and reproduce, thus maintaining their population on earth. But while interviewing one of my friends, I was made to realize that sustainability is not just "saving the environment" but made up of three pillars: social, environment and economic development and engulfs four interconnected domains, namely: ecology, economics, politics and culture. Simply put, it is something that improves quality of life for humans while also maintaining the surrounding eco-systems. Herman Daly, an economist says, "What use is a sawmill without a forest?" This quote excellently points out that perfect sustainability if not impossible, is difficult to achieve. Having a sawmill would mean more economy, but also downfall of trees hence jeopardizing ecological sustainability. Gain in one domain automatically leads to loss in the other domain. Thus, we humans, being the "most intelligent creatures on the planet" must do as much as we can to somewhat maintain a balance between all domains of sustainability.

I consider myself as someone with an identity crisis, a mix between sustainable and unsustainable. I am a victim (victim is hardly the right word) of consumerism, buying a lot of new stuff frequently, forgetting to carry my own grocery bag and ending up using several plastics, printing documents for convenience instead of going paperless, etc. etc.. But I also limit my red meat intake, refuse plastic for small items and to use the electric clothes dryer, chide at people for wasting food, etc etc.

Some of my friends though!! THEY are good examples to learn from - most of them have dedicated their lives (presently) to sustainability, meaning, their jobs make them follow the path of sustainable development. Outside their office too, they advocate the same principles and follow them. I asked five of them the same questions and you will find how each of them educate you about sustainability in the following posts.

Ten Terribly Tiny Tales (Oscars 2017 Special)

Arrival
Just like the Bollywood moms,
She could sense her son's arrival,
But she wasn't the only one,
The lamp at the next door neighbours' flickered,
Their daughter knew as well.

Fantastic beasts and where to find them
Pangolins, wild boars and giant lizards cohabited with humans,
"But, how? It's such a populated city", the foreigner exclaimed.
"Indeed it is", said the local guide,
As she showed around to people fantastic beasts and where to find them.

Fences
Train on the track, electrical fences,
A heartless poacher, his hunt commences,
So many elephant deaths, the situation tenses.

Hell or high water
Numbers were never his forte,
He was more interested in chemistry,
Come hell or high water,
He would win the maths teacher's heart.

Hidden Figures
Her back felt heavy,
And the weighing scale showed a tremendously high value,
The mirror told a different story,
Those hidden figures, only visible through reflection,
Perched on each shoulder, smiled back.

La La Land
In Sikkim, they used to say, "La La" when they meant "OK",
In Singapore they convince me about things saying,
"I wasn't late, my watch was slow la!" or
"You don't look fat, just eat la!"
It's fate to be dwelling in La La Lands for me.

Lion
The wife took 'pride' in the fact that
Her husband's 'mane' goal was to help people in danger,
He was just a regular guy, a life guard,
But, for her, he was a king, as brave as a lion.

Loving
They met at a food fair,
She in her mid 40s and he in his early 20s,
United by the same passion,
Loving knew no boundaries, neither of age nor cuisine!

Moonlight
"Conspiracy theories are for losers", said his friends,
When he told them what he thought he was.
On a lonely night, when he stepped out under the moonlight,
He felt his body change, and heard himself howl.

Passengers
One was late for his namaaz,
One held on to his cross, as the vehicle swerved,
One was lost in thoughts as to what she'll wear for the Puja,
A shared taxi cab, all of them were passengers.

How the relation between me and sports is a comedy of errors! (I don't care, I love it)

I've been a water baby since I was a child. Even won a pizza once for coming third out of five people in a school swimming competition! However, I've been a "beginner" since as long as I can remember. My swimming expert friend once gave me 1 out of 5 for swimming. The swimming instructor at the university told me, "How will you teach others if you yourself are swimming like you're trying to cross the ocean?" while tutoring a newbie friend. I can't maintain backstrokes and can hardly displace myself doing it froggy style. That said, I simply love swimming. In the rare occasions when I manage to overcome sloth, as soon as I enter the water I realize how much I have been missing and how often I should exercise this.

Yoga, originally from India, is being practiced all over the world now and is extremely popular among people who have been seeking to find balance in their life. Alas, that isn't the case for me. The instructor tells me, "Your brain is very restless, that is why you cannot balance your body.", when I struggle to keep one leg above the ground and both hands up in the air, or "Your breathing is very fast, your shoulders are very tight." You see, for the past few months I have had my first set of yoga experiences and sometimes it makes me more agitated than peaceful. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I'm bad at it. :P Despite all my flaws, I feel more flexible than ever (I can almost touch my toes now, at least!). Hopefully, the "beginner" phase for yoga will not last as long as for swimming.

The cycle I bought last year was a feeble attempt to resurrect my previously excellent and long lost slim body. But at a friend's insistence (Why blame the friend, it was me who wanted the cheapest one!), I bought the cheapest possible bicycle (and also learned how to pronounce "bicycle" right). The logic of getting an inexpensive one was that I was rarely going to use it. But the quality of it turned out to be so lousy that I almost NEVER used it. I can safely say that the amount of calories burnt fixing the troubles it gave me were significantly larger than the calories burnt riding it. I remember I had this AMBITIOUS plan to cycle to work once (not too much, 11 km, but with a lot of elevations and construction along the way). I realized as soon as I began that there's no air in my tire and couldn't go more than 2 km. I parked it at the nearest bus station and took a bus to work instead.

With kickboxing aerobics (that's what I've named it), I get confused if the instructor makes us do multiple moves consecutively and just stand and watch others. With badminton, I blame the wind and go for a walk or dinner instead. With basketball, I have a deflated one in my cabinet just sitting there. With kayaking, I lie down the kayak and meditate instead of rowing. I tried ice skating and I fell down several times, bled and was LITERALLY scarred, and that scar will never fade away. With climbing steps, mere 48 steps get me breathless. I tell everyone that I have "borderline asthma" if they suggest running. When I used to do Pilates, I used to take it VERY PERSONALLY when the instructor said in her singsong voice, "For people who can't do this, there's an easier option".

I hope whoever is reading this considers my anecdotes as an inspiration to try out everything and have fun doing so! Whether you're going to perfect it or not, you don't know yet! But if your motive is to stay fit, or even to just pass time, get going! Ending it on a Coldplay song lyric, "If you never try, you'll never know, just what you're worth." 

Ten Terribly Tiny Tales (Part 4)

Roof
Arthritis kicked in at 60,
Dementia at 70,
When he made it to the roof,
His rapture made him feel like the king of the world.

Fan
ACs are for the rich,
Equatorial country,
A 3-generation old induction motor,
The fan's going to stay, just like the perennial summer.

Bleed
He was a wild one,
His father warned, "Don't go into the woods!",
The thicker he went, the more leeches he attracted,
The more he saw himself bleed, the more alive he felt.

Thread
Small black beads strewn across the living room,
The thread which was holding them lying on the floor,
"This is over", she screams,
Despite his promise, the house smells of nicotine.

Hollow
Incessantly fighting, they never accepted their friendship,
"I'm moving to New York", she told her,
"How lovely it will be to never see your face again!"
Both smiled, already feeling a hollow in their hearts.

Moment
His swimming-schooling must've been on point,
All of 21, he beat the greatest swimmer in recent times,
Phelps needed a moment, LITERALLY, to catch up. 

Finger
Her finger felt heavy,
It was supposed to bring fortune,
Broken dreams, heart and family,
She let the ring flow with the river.

Bitter
They say it'll cause cavities in your teeth or give you diabetes,
They say it'll make you fatter,
They know nothing about chocolates,
The bitter it is, the better.
  
Stunt
An action film, a popular hero,
Yes he is called a "hero",
Not just in the story-line, but also in reality.
I'm just his stunt-man.

Wings
"Wings are made to fly", said the Little Mix lyrics.
Say that to a hen, or an ostrich, or a penguin,
Say that to a caged bird,
And say that to a woman who sacrificed her dance career for marriage.

10 pictures taken in the past one year that sum up my love for travel

I agree the title of the post is extremely Buzzfeed-ish but I just couldn't resist posting this. Here are a bunch of pictures taken by family and friends over the past 12 months that remind me of one word: "Wanderlust"!

July, 2015

"Everyone is traveling": Every family member of my friend Roshini was traveling at that time and hence she was overcome by the desire to do so herself. I was dragged along as travel companion to one of the nearest Indonesian islands to Singapore. Even though we had a tryst with Bintan only for the weekend, we had quite a lot of rather "interesting" experiences.

September, 2015

Retard: My folks and I traveled to Spain and Portugal for a fortnight in Autumn of 2015. This picture is taken in Salamanca, a Celtic city in Spain full of castles, towers and churches. You can see my dad annoyed  at my cliched jumpshot pose walking away in the background.

Seagull be like whaaaaat: In the coastal town of Cascais, Portugal just after I tried to sneak in to a hotel restaurant to relieve myself in their loo but eventually had to use the public restroom for 1 Euro.

December, 2015

West Bengal

Amidst the Kopibaari: The first leg of my trip to India was to my hometown, Siliguri after two years. This is not too far from the town in field next to where my parents recently bought a plot of land.

Rey and the haystack: My sis-in-law wanted a picture on a haystack to generate a picture with that "rustic feel" of rural North Bengal. I followed suit, my brother obliged. In the foothills of the Eastern Himalayas, Dooars is rich in tea plantations, wildlife, simple people and good food.

Rajasthan

 

Shady business: In Jaswant Thada, Jodhpur, Rajasthan. Sabiha's iPhone took better pictures than my Powershot camera. This is one of the only comparable pictures from my camera to her super-bright iPhone pictures. Let's just say I was mildly green out of envy in the Blue City.

Tip of the sand dune: This picture is one of the happiest. A bunch of Banjara women approached us and started singing and dancing amidst the sand dunes of Jaisalmer. The one who is forcing me to dance in the picture was sort of scary with blue eyeliner on her lips demanding more tip than what we gave her later on.

January. 2016

Pose a million times: Was in Bangalore for Spoorthy's wedding which is evident from the Henna on my hands which was yet to darken. Had to check out the much talked about Nandi Hills and Felix made it possible, both the trip and the photograph. Of course, Pauline and Fabien were good company as well.

March, 2016

Creepy cutout: This is on top of the tallest hotel in Bangkok, Baiyoke Sky Hotel. Who better to go to Bangkok with for Thai food and shopping than my mom who shares my love and taste for both!

May, 2016

Birds of paradise: Carey Island, less than 60 km away from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia is a birdwatcher's paradise and popular among fishermen. I had gone there for the long weekend in May this year.

Until next travel plan execution!

How clean energy and women empowerment go hand-in-hand

Like most, I was ignorant until recently about the term clean energy. Being an electrical engineer and researching in the field of electricity via renewable sources, it only occurred to me recently that when people speak of clean energy, they usually refer to electricity and water. They often forget that a large part of the world: mainly south/ southeast-Asia and Africa struggle with clean COOKING energy. The poor and the rural often rely on wood, coal, crop residues or animal excreta for fueling their cook stove. This may lead to health ailments and birth defects of progeny. Recently during a talk at the institute I work in, on being asked why such hazardous practices have not been reformed yet, the speaker simply replied, "Because most of the users of such cook stoves are women!"

Even though the middle class and above has seen tremendous improvement in gender equality, it is yet to make its mark in politics. Due to a minority of women in the political field, there is hardly anyone to advocate for women in the poor/rural population who spend most of their time/energy collecting polluting fuels for their cook stove and cooking on them. There are lot of promises by the politicians on "power for all", lower rates for electricity and alerts to consumers in case of load shedding. Similarly, there are campaigns and voluntary work on education for all. But there are hardly any articles written on a certain village achieving clean cooking technology or the government providing subsidy for cleaner but more expensive cooking fuels to the poor.

There are exceptions of course. Global Alliance For Clean Cookstoves is targeting not only to achieve less polluting technologies for cook stoves but taking initiatives to train women and help them participate in national awareness campaigns in South Asia and parts of Africa. It is also working towards building capacity for enterprises and providing financial support to women entrepreneurs self-employed in clean cooking technology. Closer to home, i.e. India, the Surya Stove by Nishant Bioenergy runs on powdered biomass such as sawdust and has an automated fuel feeding and ash cleaning system. Project Surya is targeting the use of biofuels and solar energy for improved cooking stoves and exploring if rewarding women directly with funds from carbon markets will help in wide adoption of the stove. A startup called BioLite based in New York is using smart wood-fuel stoves to produce enough heat to cook food as well as convert the remaining to electricity. One of my colleagues has his own charcoal and non-charcoal briquettes enterprise producing fuel for room heating, water boiling and even large-scale cooking. (Visit: Namuna Biomass Homepage). They use agricultural and forest residues for briquette production. To produce charcoal, they create local enterprises consisting of poor families and purchase loose charcoal from them to make it densified. The enterprise is also training locals to convert invasive weed (Banmara) into fuel. Likewise, there are several other organizations/ individuals who are attempting to improve the clean cooking technology industry and involving more women in doing so.

The above is not based on extensive research but based on results fueled by my curiosity on why women play such an important role in clean energy. Despite people's best efforts, clean cooking energy and women empowerment have a long way to go. Until then, all we can do is make people aware of the perils of open stove cooking and hope that the government will pay a bit more attention to it as well.

Keine Ahnung!

Menschen (people) ask me why I am learning German. I want to say "Keine Ahnung!" which LITERALLY means "No idea!". But all I manage to say is something as feeble as, "I love Germany and Germans. I love the DFB: Miroslav Klose is my celebrity crush for 10 years." And then they chant the most stereotypical chant, "Life's too short to learn German."

To some extent I agree. For the ongoing 3 months, my Saturdays are mostly wasted panicking about the huge pile of German homework I have left to complete before the early evening class. I cannot just fly off for the weekend to see my parents or go travelling as I have made a commitment, an expensive one at that: hence I LITERALLY can't afford to miss a class. I spend a considerable amount of time wondering why a pair of spectacles is feminine and a pen is masculine while a notebook is gender neutral; why some words are so long that they incite hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia in me; why they have the same word for tomorrow and morning and the capitalization of the first letter makes a difference; why adjectives change form based on which part of the sentence they are used in.

It is true. German is a confusing language, but so are other languages. For example, Hindi too has genders for inanimate objects, Vietnamese and Tamil are pretty difficult to pronounce, Bengali has a lot of O's compared to A's. Mandarin has tens of thousands of characters, etc. Despite these challenges, each language is powerful and beautiful in its own way and requires time, patience, appreciation and inquisition. Here are some reasons for which I would like to be fluent in German:

1) It gives me the same satisfaction to hear someone speak in German as it gives when I see the waiter bring food to my table. Imagine how fantastisch it would be to understand what the person is saying as well!

<3 p="">2) I have probably liked the Facebook pages of all the footballers in the German national team. Imagine how wunderbar it would be to read what they post (I mean I more or less get it already!) and feel pride in deciphering every word of it. :D

3) Germany has a big name in academia and a big name in renewable energy. Some day, one day, near future or far, maybe just maybe I would want to study/ work there. Enough said!

4) German literary figures and musicians are world class. Bach, Beethoven, Goethe, Kafka all hail from Germany. The simple motivational quote in Deutsche, "Alles wird gut." brightens my foggy day. All will be good. I came across Franz Kafka's quote the other day: "Liebe ist, daß du mir das Messer bist, mit dem ich in mir wühle", which means "In this love, you are like a knife with which I explore myself". Hence, both in depth and simplicity, German literature has caught my attention.

5) Oktoberfest. My first tryst with beer was at an Oktoberfest celebration in university. I was not a big fan then, nor am I a big fan now of the pot-belly inducing cornflakesey flavored alcohol, but it definitely gave me the courage to try something new and I haven't ceased to try since (no I am not talking exclusively about alcohol).

Although this is just the beginning, and has been just the beginning for quite a long time, 10 years from now, I will probably be teaching other people how to speak in German. Sweet dreams are made of little things like these, even if I have miles to go before I sleep.