Page 33 - Khabar Magazine (February 2020)

Musings

Optimism

Eclipsed

or Rising? movie because we were in Cherai Beach, at a resort

some 45 minutes north of Kerala’s Cochin Internation-
Contemplating an impossible world, al Airport (COK). We were having a reunion of sorts,
with family in India coming from Hyderabad, Kolkata,
and a world of possibilities—from the and Pune, and family from outside of India coming
tranquility of “God’s Own Country” from Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United
By RAJESH C. OZA States. It has been a time of great joy, but I find myself
reflecting on the past “dumpster fire” of a decade.
I’m usually a hopeful sort, but as I look back over
On a hopeful day after Christmas in Kochi, I am the past ten years, the metaphor that haunts me is a
reflecting on what a solar eclipse means to me. While heartless fire. I smell this place that I call home burn-
I can focus on the darkness, given the many blessings ing. Home is India. Home is America. Home is Earth.
that have come my way I prefer the light. Perhaps it Our planet is literally on fire. According to nasa.
is merely the spirit of the season that has given me gov, “The world is getting warmer. Whether the cause
hope in what otherwise has been a rather dispiriting is human activity or natural variability—and the pre-
close to the past decade for far too many humans and ponderance of evidence says it’s humans—thermom-
animals suffering from man-made crises. Or perhaps eter readings all around the world have risen steadily
because, here in Kerala, I’m reminded of the diversity since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution.” The
that has long been India’s strength. website proceeds to ask (and then answer), “But why
This inclusive sense of all religions sharing In- should we care about one degree of warming?” I think
dia as a welcoming home is reflected in a favor- each of us must answer that question in our own way.
ite ditty of mine from Manmohan Desai’s film For me, it’s not just the earth science, although
Amar Akbar Anthony: that, too, is vitally important. It is about the world
Anhoni ko honi kar de honi ko anhoni that my granddaughter, Eshni, will inhabit long after
Ek jagah jab jama ho teeno I am gone. Already, I am distraught about the fact that
Amar Akbar Anthony while she was in New Delhi, Eshni was smoking nearly
We make the impossible possible and the 50 cigarettes each day. Okay, my daughter and son-in-
possible impossible! law’s nine-month-old baby wasn’t actually dragging
Together in one place, we three stand united: on several packs of Marlboros or Charminars, but she
Amar Akbar Anthony might as well have been. The smoke in the capital
This is the first time in nearly two decades that of the country of my birth is intolerable and getting
I have not spent Christmas Eve at the Stanford The- worse. I can barely imagine what is worse than intoler-
ater on University Avenue in Palo Alto, California. able. Unlivable?
My family has made a tradition of going to see a film And the United States is not much better. Al-
quite different from Amar Akbar Anthony, but one with though we Americans don’t have the daily visual clues
a similarly hopeful heart: It's A Wonderful Life, the to tell us that our planet is burning, I as a Californian
holiday classic directed by Frank Capra. can attest to the fact that the blue sky is a false harbin-
My family missed seeing our favorite Christmas ger of things to come if we don’t manage the change
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