Tiding over the climate crisis

A tree that fell over a taxi in Dadar when strong winds hit Mumbai earlier this year during Cyclone Tauktae. Pic/Ashish Raje

Imagine for a second that a severe cyclone alert has been issued in Mumbai. The city is being evacuated, and the working class consisting of people like construction labourers have already taken trains and buses to their native villages in the hinterlands of Maharashtra, or Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, leaving their rented shanties behind. But you live in a tony sea-facing property that you own. Apart from your car, it's the main asset you have. So, you're reluctant to abandon it. But better sense prevails and you hit the road to leave the city, only to find that Linking Road, SV Road, the Western Express Highway and other such connectors are all choc-a-bloc with vehicles that have other middle-class people like you in them. The airports have no flights because of the impending cyclone. The trains are all booked out, too. What, thus, can you do? Precious little, points out author Amitav Ghosh in a new podcast that he's a guest in, called Marine Lines, which journalist and author Raghu Karnad hosts.

Amitav Ghosh

In it, Ghosh dispels the myth that the Arabian Sea off the coast of Mumbai is a place of calm that's bereft of cyclonic tendencies. He points out how the city has had a history of severe storms in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, and how the fact that things have been relatively quiet over the past century is an unexplained anomaly. He also paints the disturbing picture we alluded to above, where he explains why it's the middle class that would be stuck in a quandary if a severe cyclone were indeed to hit Mumbai, and how the more mobile working class would find it easier to flee. "The sea would be the only available route, but does Mumbai have enough of a fleet? I mean, you would have to have a Dunkirk-like fleet to evacuate 10-12 million people," Ghosh explains, alluding to the evacuation of people from the French town during World War II.

Karnad also picks the author's brain about a book he had written five years ago, The Great Derangement, in which he'd penned a sort of premonition about the climate disaster that seems to be lurking around the corner like a mugger that jumps on a person at an abandoned street on a dark night. These are the sort of warning signs we need to take heed of if we are to prepare ourselves for the impending, man-made doom, because there are two options before us - one is to take the situation seriously and prepare accordingly, and the other is to remain being an ostrich with its head buried in the sand.

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