Meenal Jhala

So the whole world is under lockdown. We’re hearing stories about how nature is rejuvenating. Birds and insects and animals are reclaiming their spaces. Whales have appeared on the Bombay coastline. Crows are showing up where I live. Spring is in the air and what a comeback she’s making when we stopped interfering.

But here is a fable for a not so distant tomorrow. Once the lockdown is over and things get back to “normal”. What will the normal be? There may come a silent spring. Can you imagine a silent spring? A spring without bees humming and birds chirping? Where the birds don’t sing anymore? A spring that brings with it death and destruction?

“No witchcraft, no enemy action has silenced the rebirth of new life in this stricken world. The people have done it themselves”. These are Rachel Carson’s words from her book Silent Spring written in the early 1960s, even more relevant today.Carson wrote about death and destruction by humans. Not destruction by wars and weapons, though she foresaw that as an immense possibility too, but another kind of weapon. Man made synthetic chemicals used as pesticides.

Carson was a marine biologist, conservationist and a writer whose book Silent Spring helped launch the global environment movement. Her book was first published serially in four additions of The New Yorker in 1962. [1]

Not surprisingly, the pesticide industry responded with a campaign of disinformation and sexism. Carson’s gender, looks and unmarried status were all seized upon by her critics, who called her a hysterical woman, a priestess of nature and a spinster……In a letter to President Eisenhower, Secretary of Agriculture Ezra Taft Benson asked “why a spinster was so worried about genetics” and….. Monsanto got in on the fun and printed a brochure parodying the book. [2]

The insecticide industry was the child of the Second World War. When chemical warfare was being created, for instance nerve gas to destroy the Jews in Germany, some of these chemicals were found to be lethal to insects. This discovery did not happen by chance. Insects were used as agents to check their efficacy on humans. So were born streams of these dangerous man made synthetic chemicals.

Insect invasions have happened from time immemorial. In the olden days people used natural methods to ward of insects. Then after the Second World War came man made insecticides. There was limited awareness of the nature of these chemicals. Each specialist had his own small view and not a big picture of the problem. Add to that, it was the age of industry, where money talked. And people who took a stand against these death traps were “fed little tranquilizer pills of half truths”. Carson wrote this in the sixties but as you can see nothing’s changed, in fact we’re far worse off now.

Humans have silenced nature by dominating her and paying no heed to her. The shadow of death looms large over all of us as we pollute the air, water and soil with these deadly chemicals. The nightmare won’t end.

Rachel Carson’s book is a must read for those who are concerned about the environment and about how we have the power to alter the world around us, are using this power selfishly and unwisely, and are moving at an accelerated pace towards our own and the planet’s doom.

Here is an photo essay showing the damage done by insecticides to farmers in Punjab in India, by Sean Gallagher. https://gallagher-photo.com/environmental-stories/pesticide-poisoning-punjab-india/. This is true of not only Punjab but many parts of India. Carson gives hundreds of examples of these occurrences in Europe and America in her passionate poetic prose of a book.

Paragraphs [1] and [2] are taken from an article by Katie Halper called Happy Birthday, Rachel Carson.

I’ve baked bread today, an Irish Raisin Bread from the book Secrets of a Jewish Baker by George Greenstein. This bread is rich and tastes divine with the whole lot of raisins that it has. It keeps well too. Here is the recipe.

How many of you remember reading William Saroyan in school? His essay Locomotive 38, The Ojibway, appeared in our class 11th or 12th (I can’t remember which) CBSE textbook. That was the start of my lifelong love affair with Saroyan. I’ve always repented for not saving those textbooks as literary gems in my library

William Saroyan was born in America in 1908. He came from a family of exiled Armenian immigrants who lived in poverty in Fresno, California. He was not interested in studies but even as a young child he nurtured a secret ambition to be a writer. His determination didn’t falter through the depression years. In 1933 his story The Daring Young Man On The Flying Trapeze was chosen by Story, a national magazine, and he received fifteen dollars for it. More stories were printed that year and by 1934 Random House had published The Daring Young Man On The Flying Trapeze And Other Stories. Saroyan had arrived on the literary scene and was causing quite a stir!

Saroyan wrote many books in his lifetime but my favorite one is definitely My Name Is Aram which was published in the year 1940, and like most of his books was largely autobiographical, about his eccentric and colorful fellow Armenians in his hometown during his childhood.

William Saroyan’s style of writing was unorthodox which he worked on a great deal to develop. It reflected his zest for life, his joy with his people and his surroundings and his humor, and this style eventually came to be known as Saroyanesque.

Saroyan wrote not only stories but also plays that became famous and opened on Broadway.

The film based on his story The Human Comedy won an Oscar.

Saroyan died in 1981. I was only eleven years old. I wish I had lived in his times.

Arto Der Haroutunian was an Armenian architect, painter and restaurateur, famous in his own right, who opened his restaurant in London in 1970. He wrote cookbooks too. His restaurant was the watering hole for many fellow Armenians of his time, one among them being the famous Saroyan.

This recipe is from his cookbook Vegetarian Recipes From The Middle East. It is a delicious Armenian pasta recipe called Banirov Arsha or macaroni with cheese.

Yashica Dutt did her Masters in Journalism from Columbia University, the same place Dr Ambedkar, the visionary light of the Dalits received his PhD from in the year 1927.

When I read Yashica’s memoir I was disheartened. We cannot imagine….Casteism is India’s dirty blot. it has been going on for years without recourse to the affected. The caste system was introduced in the Hindu sacred text Manusmriti thousands of years ago. Things have’nt changed much over this long stretch of time. The Dalits have lost years and years of progress because of casteism. Those lower castes who do manage to do well for themselves must hide their identities and put in twice the amount of effort as an upper caste. In India the truth is that if you are an upper caste your chances of “swinging it” in any sphere are tenfold.

Of course the arguement of most upper castes is that the Dalits already get too many benefits from the Government. But do these benefits really peter down to reach the most disadvantaged? Even if some lower castes do take advantage of these benefits they are mocked and ridiculed for their caste as students and in their jobs.

It feels shameful to hear, in this day and age, about the atrocities that upper castes inflict on lower castes. Sometimes it’s sporting a mustache that irks them and sometimes its riding a horse to ones wedding. They also practice untouchability; they don’t drink water or eat from the same utensils or even sit near the lower castes.

While the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation uses machines to clean manholes, in the suburbs around Ahmedabad such as Bopal which is an upcoming industrial and residential area, humans still have to do this disgusting job. One of my friends told me of an incident when the sweeper who was let down a manhole in her society resurfaced with condoms stuck to his body.

If you feel the way I feel, if your heart and head says that Dalits deserve far better than they have now, read this memoir. It is heart breaking, eye opening and will convince you to take a stand.

In her memoir, Yashica writes that her mother loved baking cakes for her when she was a kid. Once she baked a cake for her and decorated it with gems. I’m not baking a cake but making a gem laden, chocolate circle that is at once attractive and tasty too.