It was a room full of stars; some of the best known faces from the fields of arts, science and commerce had gathered to hear one of India’s most revered writers speak. Amitav Ghosh was in the city to launch his upcoming non-fiction work, The Great Derangement: Climate Change and the Unthinkable — a not-so-gentle reminder of the proverbial cliff that climate change is steadily pushing humankind towards. “It’s happening right now, it is real. Unfortunately the problem is not being addressed, especially by artists,” said Amitav from the podium. “Most of the writings on climate change are extremely boring. There is also a considerable lack of concern about the issue,” he pointed out adding, “Genres such as speculative or dystopian fiction are often set somewhere in the future, but it is today’s reality that one needs to talk about.”
For the writer, work on climate change started with The Hungry Tide, a book set in the mangroves of Sunderban, West Bengal. “After Aila (cyclone), a vast expanse of the land has become saline and non-cultivable. And people are migrating to other states for work,” he said pointing at the consequences of climate change. “Precipitation is changing and as we all know, dry places will become drier and wet places will become more wet. So in the future, Mumbai will have more rain,” he said catching every Mumbaikar’'s attention in the hall.
But it was an incident back in 1978 that has stayed with Amitav all these years. It has now somehow translated into his preoccupation as a writer. “It was during my Masters, when I was also part-timing as a journalist. I had witnessed a tornado for the first time in my life. This is one of the rarest of tornadoes that has ever occurred in India and I happened to be in the middle of one of them, where I saw, cycles, scooters, tea stalls flying up in the air. An entire wall of the Miranda House library was sucked out — it was an extraordinary sight. Had it been today, I probably would have stayed back to take a selfie, but thankfully I ran for shelter.” To this, the hall at the Nehru Planetarium shuddered with laughter — not a rare sight when Ghosh addresses a spellbound audience.
Through the evening, he kept touching upon several topics — from carbon economy of the past, modernism and the apparent solar energy of the future. “If you go through the conclusions of the Climate Change summits, you will realise that it is nothing else but neo-liberalisation of solar energy,” he said. But after an hour-long quasi lecture, when some of the silver heads started wobbling sleepily as he pointed out, Amitav changed gears and addressed the immediate concern of Mumbaikars. “The cyclonic patterns are intensifying — nature seems to have become unpredictable. And Mumbai is more directly going to get affected by these changes. When I went through the disaster management plans of the city, I realised that they are mainly evacuation plans. Come to think of it, just to evacuate South Mumbai through two roads with a bottleneck towards the upper side of the city seems like an impossible task!
Anil Dharker who was also present at the launch added, “It seems, the richest will be the worst affected in the city, unlike elsewhere where the poor do.” He also hinted at how builders were underplaying the problem while luring people towards sea-facing houses. But his impatient fans were eager to get their books signed by the author, so almost at the tail end of the session, he threw a last piece of advice: “The next time you hear about cyclones, don’t just ignore them. Something must be done, because we are approaching doom, completely unaware.” “On that sunny note,” Anil Dharker and Amitav headed to meet the guests.
