Earth Hour and all that

Another Earth Hour has gone past. According to the official website, “For the first time in history, people of all ages, nationalities, race and background have the opportunity to use their light switch as their vote - Switching off your lights is a vote for Earth, or leaving them on is a vote for global warming.”

As one who chose to study ecology years before it became fashionable, I am, just possibly, ‘greener’ than you. But I did not switch off all my lights at the appointed hour on Saturday.

Apart from the fact that I found the concept of voluntarily switching off lights ridiculous in a country where the government does it for us anyway – for several hours every day – I do feel the whole idea of Earth Hour trivialises the issue of climate change.

Sample this poppycock from a national newspaper: “Have you always wanted to contribute in your own way to preserve the environment? It’s simple now. Even your children can do it, and it’s akin to giving the ailing Earth a thousand hugs. Just switch off all your lights.” If only dealing with climate change were as simple as that.

Events like Earth Hour allow people to feel good by doing something that is essentially useless, even counterproductive. A lot of people will switch off their lights this Saturday evening and most will probably feel very righteous about doing their bit to save the planet. But once the hour is up and the lights, TV, refrigerator, music system, air-conditioning, and all the rest of it come back on, it’s back to business as usual. Apart from the warm and happy glow of ‘having done the right thing’, nothing would have changed.

For most people, participating in Earth Hour is not going to lead to any tough decisions being taken on lifestyle. They can hop back into their SUVs to get to the neighbourhood store to buy bottled water without feeling guilty. After all, they already cast their vote against global warming, didn’t they?
And then there are the candles. There are going to be the now-customary candlelight marches. Hotels and newspapers are promoting candlelight dinners. One major city mall will dim its lights and has urged citizens to illuminate the place with candles instead.

This would all be funny if it weren’t so serious. Clearly more people need to understand the link between carbon dioxide and the climate. Candles = wax = hydrocarbon = fossil fuel = carbon dioxide. Depending on its size, burning a candle for an hour releases anywhere from 15 to 60 g of carbon dioxide. A standard 100 W bulb in India would release between 40 and 60 g of carbon dioxide in an hour.
This is not to say we don’t need awareness about climate change. But time, resources and people’s attention spans are all limited. Couldn’t we direct our efforts into promoting awareness in a useful, meaningful way that would have long-term effect on carbon dioxide emissions, rather than waste them on an energy-sucking event that will lead to an insignificant blip on energy use?

Surely India’s innovative minds can come up with an awareness-raising exercise less useless and more appropriate to the country? How about a car-free hour? One Bangalore-based IT company already has no-car days every few months when employees are encouraged to take public transport, walk or cycle to work. Another has planned a bike camp for its employees to promote biking to work.

But these are too few and far between. We need more such intelligent initiatives. We need to learn that every hour every day is earth hour.

Harini Nagendra

I recently met a very inspiring and dynamic young person who I thought I had a lot in common with (!!). She works in the field of urban ecology and is currently researching street trees in Bangalore. You can read more about her and her work in this article I wrote about her for Citizen Matters.

Keladi

Another post on Malnad, a continuation of the previous post, if you like. A version of it appeared in Deccan Herald a while ago.
Most people know of Sagar in Shimoga district as the nearest town to the world-famous Jog Falls. But did you know that a mere 6 km from Sagar is a village that was the capital of one of Karnataka’s great empires, a village, moreover, with relics of a 1000 year old history?

In the early 1500s, a certain Chaudappa Gauda of the village of Keladi discovered some hidden treasure. In a dream, he was told that the treasure was his to take provided he offered a human sacrifice. Luckily for him, two of his servants volunteered for the task. Chaudappa used the treasure to build a fort at Keladi and put together an army. Thus began the dynasty that was initially a tributary of the Vijayanagar empire but was independent by the 1600s. At its zenith, the Keladi empire covered most of south-western Karnataka and parts of northern Kerala, commanding the ports of Honnavara, Bhatkal, Bekal and Mangalore, and also included portions of the Ghats and extended to within 60 km of Mysore. The Nayakas were finally defeated by Hyder Ali in 1763, who often cited this win as having established his fortune.

A good place to start exploring the area’s history is the Keladi Museum and Historical Research Centre, established in 1978 by the scholar Keladi Gunda Jois. This museum houses artifacts from the region, including ancient coins (some as old as 2nd Century BC), manuscripts and copper plate inscriptions. The curator is historian Venkatesh Jois. Earnest, committed and supremely knowledgeable (he holds 3 masters degrees and a doctoral degree!), Jois showed us some of the palm leaf manuscripts and the museum’s huge collection of kadatas or ‘black books’ – cloth manuscripts made by seasoning with tamarind paste and charcoal.

Jois spoke passionately about the Keladi empire and its valiant Queen Chennamma, who ruled for 25 long years from 1671 to 1696, no mean feat in those ancient times. Chennamma ruled wisely and ably and earned the love of her subjects. It was during her reign that a special bond was formed between the Marathas and the Keladi kingdom. In those tumultuous times, Rajaram, son of Chhatrapati Shivaji, was fleeing for his life. Mughal emperor Aurangzeb had already killed his brother Shambhaji when Rajaram came to Keladi asking for protection. Unwilling to spurn an asylum-seeker, Chennamma granted him refuge, knowing this would invite Aurangzeb’s ire. As expected, the mighty Mughal army soon bore down on the Nayaka kingdom. But amazingly, the local army vanquished the Mughals, who floundered in its hilly terrain.

Keladi served as the Nayaka capital for the empire for fourteen years after which the capital was shifted to nearby Ikkeri. Today, with its 400-year-old houses, all with sloping tiled roofs and moss-covered compound walls, Keladi is a village that exudes the charm so typical of beautiful Malnad. Everyone walks, everyone smiles and everything looks and smells green.

Life here revolves around the earliest monument built by the Keladi Nayakas, the Ramesvara temple complex. Situated opposite the museum, it is a large, long building with pale yellow walls that looks most like a government high school. Inside is a spacious courtyard with two wells and only a handful of people and our first impression was that we had stepped into someone’s house, albeit a very beautiful hou se. The temple complex houses three shrines – the Ramesvara, the Veerabhadresvara and the Parvati shrines, of which the Ramesvara is the oldest and the Parvati the newest. There is a common mantapa for the Ramesvara and Veerbhadra garbha-grihas. The temple is built in a mixture of styles. Whereas the use of granite pillars and the gargoyles are characteristically Vijayanagar, the ceilings, for example, seem to incorporate Islamic influences with their delicate floral and geometric patterns. The Veerabhadesvara temple ceiling has a prominent Gandabherunda, the two-headed eagle that Jois informed us was the symbol of the Vijayanagar kings, the Keladi empire and the Wodeyars, with minor variations. Another notable figure in the temple is a rare representation of Vastupuruva, beside which is an upright, marked rule: the measures of length on this rule were used in land assessment, as also in the geometry of the temple itself.

The adjacent Parvati s hrine is an unusual combination of wood and stone. Severely plain from the outside, it has some uncommon, remarkable wooden sculptures and pillars inside. Venaktesh Jois informs us that the wood used here is the prized red sandalwood (rakta-chandana, Pterocarpus santalinus). The intricately carved wooden ceiling, still retaining a glossy sheen, and the dark red wooden sculptures lining the wall near the ceiling are stunning.

In the temple courtyard is a dwajastambha (victory pillar). At its base is a panel that Queen Chennamma had installed, showing herself, wearing a widow’s garb, flanked on one side by Shivaji’s son Rajaram and his attendant, and on the other by two hand maidens. There is also a figure depicting Shivaji on a horse in the Veerabhadraswamy temple.

There is an other ancient monument at Keladi, a 900 year old Jain temple. Tucked away in a small buildi ng hidden inside a large garden, it is an unprepossessing structure, little more than a single room housing some idols.

Yet its antiquity is palpable. Here, busy preparing for the temple’s renovation by the Dharmothana Trust of Dharmasthala, were the temple priest and GV Kallapur, head of Research and Publications at the Keladi Museum. Kallapur told us about the bronze images of Parsvanath Tirthankara that were found here earlier this year. Inscriptions on one of the images recorded the installment of the image in the Basadi in 1172 AD, well before the Vijayanagar periods. But even that is not the oldest relic here: Kallapur enthusiastically showed us a well behind the Basadi, made of bricks characteristic of the Ganga period, indicating that Keladi has probably been inhabited for at least 1500 years, if not more.

Beautiful Ikkeri

I can never get enough of the Malnad area - hills, winding roads, and everything drenched and saturated green. Here's a piece I wrote for Deccan Herald on Ikkeri, the erstwhile capital of the Keladi/Ikkeri/Nagara Nayakas.

In the 1600s, an adventurous Italian traveller named Pietro della Valle set off from Venice to travel the world. After spending some time in Turkey, Egypt and Arabia, the peripatetic della Valle came to India and in 1623, visited Ikkeri, the capital city of the Ikkeri Nayakas. The beautiful Malnad vistas seem to have soothed his eyes greatly for he writes rapturously of its “delightful verdure”. Of the Nayaka capital, he says its numerous lakes, fields and “goodly Trees” all blended pleasantly, so that it seemed “to consist of a City, Lakes, Fields and Woods mingled together, and makes a very delightful sight”. Visiting Ikkeri nearly four centuries later, I could see why della Valle had been bewitched by the place. Shorn of its status as a capital city and reduced to a mere village, Ikkeri still gently seduces the senses.
In della Valle’s days, the city was enclosed within three lines of fortifications, the first two of impenetrable bamboo and the third a mud wall. No sign of the first two exists now, of course, but historian Venkatesh Jois, curator at the Keladi Museum and Historical Research Centre in nearby Keladi, informed us that traces of the Nayakas’ fort and its moat still exist and that archaeological excavations are underway at the site.
Ikkeri was neither the first capital of the Nayakas nor their last. The dynasty was founded in 1499 at Keladi, near Ikkeri, because of which they are also called the Keladi Nayakas. After some fourteen years at Keladi, the capital moved to Ikkeri, which is 3 km south of Sagar. Incidentally, the legend behind the location of Ikkeri should sound familiar to Bangaloreans – Sadashivappa Nayaka chose the site for his capital when he saw a hare begin to chase his hounds, which is exactly what made Kempe Gowda choose the site for his new fort in Bangalore in 1537. Ikkeri remained the Nayaka capital for 125 years, after which the centre of power shifted to Nagara and then to Kavaledurga.
Inside the fort at Ikkeri, della Valle describes in minute detail the impressive citadel and the palaces of the Ikkeri Nayakas, all made of mud and timber. But he was distinctly unmoved by the houses which, he said, “stand thinly and are ill-built”. We couldn’t have disagreed more. Many of the houses we saw were built of laterite bricks, all had sloping, red-tiled roofs, many had a faint hint of green that bespoke years of standing in the rainy Malnad weather. Without exception, all were exceedingly handsome, adding charm to a landscape that was already intoxicating in its beauty. Venkatesh Jois, whose beautiful abode we visited in Keladi, told us his house was close to 400 years old. Quite possibly then, at least some of the houses we saw at Ikkeri were the same ones that della Valle dismissed so inexplicably.
Ikkeri is best known for its splendid temple, dedicated to Aghoreshvara, the non-fearful Shiva. It is believed to have been built in the early 1500s, probably at the time the capital was moved here. It is built on a slight mound in the midst of a large courtyard and a lawn dotted with colourful wildflowers that seemed to have escaped a careful gardener’s notice. The temple itself stood on a high platform, giving an effect of grandeur to the whole building. It is a remarkable structure for the way it gracefully combines various architectural elements. The temple’s indented platform, for example, brought to mind the Hoysala temples at Belur and Halebid, while its gopura with its small doorways echoed Chola influences. The cavernous pillared hall in the main temple and the pillars in the adjacent small Parvati temple are all typical of the Vijayanagar style of architecture. The resulting blend is a unique style that historians refer to as the Ikkeri school of architecture. Another example of this style is the open Nandi pavilion just outside the main temple. With arches on four sides, a parapet running along the roof, and a large Nandi seated inside the pavilion, this unusual structure is unique to Ikkeri.
During his two-week stay at Ikkeri, della Valle had the good fortune of being present during the celebration of a festival here, possibly Deepavali, for he writes that “an infinite number of torches and candles were lighted” inside the temple, on its outer walls and in the courtyard. The then king, Venkatappa Nayaka, accompanied by two grandsons, arrived at the head of a procession heralded by much singing and dancing, says della Valle. The royals spent an hour inside the temple hall and after more music, dance and presumably prayer, left. Things were far more subdued when we visited the Aghoreshvara temple. No lights adorned its walls and no girls danced around a king, yet the temple was quietly impressive. We admired the temple’s grand doorways, the sculptures chiselled into the hard stone, and marvelled at the size of its hall. Dusk fell as we left the Aghoreshvara temple that evening, and though there were no lights, we could see in our mind’s eye, a king and his retinue leaving the magnificent temple after an evening of celebration and prayer.

Hospital Waste

Here's an instance of callousness that really shook me: a waste dump on the roadside near Avalahalli which contained not just kitchen waste but also body parts, blood samples, needles and sundry other hospital waste - all untreated, of course. Environment Support Group is following it up. Here's an article I wrote about it for Citizen matters.


It was late afternoon on 3rd November when five men worked by the side of a lonely stretch of road in the as yet un-named land between Anjanapura and Kanakapura Road. The men silently hoed and shovelled the last dregs of a waste heap, shoving the plastic and other indistinct matter into a truck parked nearby, where one of the men stood next to the waste. At first glance, it appeared to be one of the many dumps of domestic waste one often sees on empty plots, full of plastic bags. In fact, it was something much more dangerous – it was untreated hospital waste.

Leo Saldanha of Environment Support Group and Sangeeta Gowra, 35, a teacher at a school nearby, were among the first to see the dump and had initially thought it was restaurant waste – among the items that had spilled out of the plastic bags or were lying loose among the waste were coconut shells and coffee shop waste. But then they noticed the blood samples, needles, lab reports, visitor passes, cotton, surgical masks and other items among the waste and realised what it was. Recognising the health hazard the dump posed, Saldanha immediately dialled 108, the newly launched round-the-clock emergency response service for medical, police or fire-related emergencies.

To make matters worse, Saldanha picked up a sheaf of papers from the site which turned out to be requests for biochemical tests and lab reports of particular patients. Each report gives several details including the name of the patient, his or her Universal Hospital Identification Device (UHID) number and a barcode. Such patient details are usually held to be confidential. These reports, as well as 80 investigation slips and some discarded visitor passes that were at the site were all from Apollo Hospitals, Bangalore.

You can see the complete article here.

Filmy litter

Do you remember the movie Dil Chahta Hai and that scene where Akshay Khanna meets Dimple Kapadia? There she is trying to heave her luggage into her new flat when the handle snaps on one of her suitcases. Akshay steps in to help the damsel in distress. But what does said damsel do with the broken suitcase handle? Well, she tosses it aside, of course.
Cut to the Kannada movie, Pallaki. Here we had handsome hero Prem crazily in love with heroine Rumanitu Choudhary. You remember the movie’s great hit song, Kannalli neeneyne, of course. A sequence in the song shows Rumanitu walking down the road with a friend when the heel on one of her sandals suddenly snaps. So the disgusted heroine takes off her broken sandal, tosses it aside, and walks on.
I loved how little things were shown in such a realistic fashion in Dil Chahta Hai – how, for example, when they finally get her luggage in, Dimple collapses onto the divan, and then realizes she has landed on her bag and pulls it out from under her. Or how Aamir Khan gives his mike to a technician before he goes out to dance and sing Koi kahey, kahta rahey. Sadly, the scene with the suitcase handle also mirrors reality: most people would have done as Dimple (and Rumanitu) did. She threw her trash aside amongst some plants near a wall. Not in a dustbin. The saddest part is that the heroes in both the movies did not find their lady loves’ littering ways odd or inappropriate. Nor for that matter, did anyone in the audience. Is it any wonder our cities are full of trash? Raise your hands all of you who keep your bus tickets, chocolate wrappers or juice boxes with you till you can find a place to dispose of them. Raise you hands all those who talk to others to stop them littering.
What if the directors had done things just a little differently? Dimple’s character could very easily have been shown throwing the broken handle into a dustbin, just as Rumanitu’s character in Pallaki could very easily have carried her broken shoes home to throw them in a dustbin there, rather than toss them into some bushes along the footpath. Would these minor changes have influenced anyone’s behaviour? Perhaps not with just one scene in one movie. But if all our movies showed our heroes and heroines treating trash responsibly, a standard of acceptable and desirable behaviour could perhaps get set: it’s un-cool to litter.
We can rant all we want about how the administration/ municipality/ politicians/the neighbours/poor people/ auto drivers/tourists/ somebody (other than us, that it) is to blame for the piles of trash that we find everywhere in Bangalore. But the truth is, it is us. We are the ones who dirty our cities.

Ah! Chocolate!

You don’t ordinarily see a complicated graph and accompanying instructions on how to eat it when you unwrap a chocolate bar. But then, a 99% cocoa bar is no ordinary chocolate bar.

The first thing you see when you unwrap part of a Lindt’s 99% cocoa bar is a cautionary notice. “Important,” it screams, “The chocolate you are about to have is a chocolate that has a very high cocoa content! To fully appreciate this exceptional chocolate, we invite you to follow our suggestions on tasting.” If the intent is to intimidate, Lindt succeeds admirably. In most cases anyway. But a confirmed dark-chocaholic only drools in anticipation on reading this and feverishly tears off the outer cardboard package. Inside is a golden wrapper with more instructions. And more warnings. “This chocolate brings out all the force and richness of cocoa beans,” it intones, before going on to suggest that you prime yourself, or rather your palate, by first adjusting to 70%, and then 85% cocoa. Been there done that, I think. Next? Lindt suggests you first take a small bite and let it melt on the tongue to savour the flavours. Now we’re talking. Except there is a scary graph that follows which lists the various flavours you can expect and their intensities – bitter, acidic, astringent, fruity. Whew!
Chocolate these days is serious business, I realised, comparable to wine with all its attitude. So to help you appreciate it better, here’s a quick crash course on what goes into making a chocolate bar. Like wine, good chocolate has terroir, which means geography matters. So the true chocolate connoisseur will detect the hints of vanilla in cocoa beans from Madagascar, smoky or earthy undertones from West African beans and fruity or even flowery flavours in those from Central and South America. To savour these differences, single-origin chocolates are all the rage right now in many parts of the world though they are difficult to come by in India. But many a fine chocolate is made of a blend of premium beans. Lindt uses beans mainly from West Africa with a small proportion form South America – the exact blend is a closely guarded secret!

The type of cocoa beans used can also affect the ultimate taste experience. The three varieties of cocoa beans are Criollo, Forastero and a hybrid of the two called Trinitario, named after Trinidad where it originated. Criollos are considered the best beans for making fine chocolates, on account of their fruity flavours, but they account for only 10% of the world’s cocoa crop. Most of the world’s chocolates are made from Forastero beans.

And then there’s how the beans are processed. Cocoa pods are harvested twice a year. The pods have to be split open to get the beans which are inside. The beans are then fermented either by spreading them out and keeping them covered with banana leaves for four to seven days, or by keeping them in leaf-lined covered baskets. Too less fermenting and the beans can become bitter and astringent; too much and you can get other undesirable flavours. Then they are dried and shipped off to chocolate manufacturers who will roast the pods to get the nibs – the meat of the cocoa bean – out. The nibs are ground until the friction and heat of the milling reduces them to a thick chocolate coloured liquid, known as 'mass' or chocolate liquor, which contains 53-58% cocoa butter. This is the basis of all chocolate and cocoa products.
Not all chocolate is created equal. Milk chocolate can have anywhere from 25 to almost 50% cocoa (although some American chocolates can have far less) and as the name suggests, it also generally has milk, milk powder or condensed milk, along with sugar and emulsifiers. Dark chocolate, sometimes called bittersweet chocolate, contains a lot more cocoa, upwards of 60% and much less sugar. If you’re wondering how it is different from simply eating cocoa powder, the answer lies in the fat. Cocoa, or to be more precise, cocoa solids, include cocoa butter and cocoa cake. Cocoa powder is made from cocoa cake alone, while chocolate also contains cocoa butter.

While the sweetness of milk chocolate has almost universal appeal, dark chocolate is not your everyday comfort food. Like wine, it can be an acquired taste and needs a refined palate to truly appreciate its nuances. Which is why Lindt’s suggestion that you educate your palate in stages actually makes sense.

So to get back to the 99% percent cocoa bar. The not-so-fine-print and the daunting graph and instructions past me, I finally take a bite and wait to be transported to chocolate heaven.

Heaven is bitter. And somewhat dusty, initially. But patience has its rewards and a few short moments later, as the chocolate melts, I can feel the myriad flavours of the cocoa beans coming through. There are the hints of acidity, lots of fruity notes, a whisper of sweetness, and finally, a creaminess that, once the experience is over, begs for an encore.


A slightly modified version of this article appeared in Deccan Herald some months ago.