The Civilized Barbarian - Reflections During The Lock-down
To save our environment and our world we will need to relate differently, not to the environment alone but to each other as well.
Mumbai 2020. Before Corona entered our lives and the lock-down was imposed, children used to play on the lawn where I live. They tossed rubber balls at each other, they peddled their baby tricycles or bicycles around, they tested their balancing skills with their scooters while toddlers watched over by their parents or care-givers wobbled around grinning at everybody in sight. The adults walked on the garden path, some briskly, some at a more leisurely pace. At times they relaxed on the garden benches sighing over the beauty of the sun setting over the sea or watched the children with tenderness.
After the lock-down, we were no longer allowed to leave the building or go out but as far as the garden went, things continued pretty much the same. The children came to play every evening, the adults walked, sat around or chatted with each other and on the surface, things seemed peaceful. But something was missing. Two small children who would earlier come and run around the lawn, play ball or chase each other over the grass, were not to be seen any longer. It didn’t take me long to realize why. Our building society had decided to restrict the use of the lawn to “residents”. All nannies, drivers, servants (not referred to as such; we’re very civilized, we call them “household staff” and things like that) were forbidden from setting foot in the garden. You see, it became necessary to maintain “social distance”.
The two children who stopped visiting the lawn were the children of a resident driver. As offspring of a “servant”, they too were not allowed to play in the garden any more. The little boy was apparently sent to the village with his mother. The six or seven year old daughter is to be occasionally seen these days, loitering around the front car park alone, with no real opportunity to play with other children. One of the kinder building residents has lent the child her son’s bike and claims she is happy cycling around the compound with it.
I am sure the cycle helps. And yet I can’t help wondering how the ostracized kid must feel about her father. I wonder what she must think about her family status, about herself, about us, the residents. I wonder what thoughts she will carry in her head about the people who, using the finest of logic showed her, her true place in life. In the first stages of lock-down the Corona virus had stunned our brains to such an extent that it seemed impossible to think straight for a while let alone to react, but when the daze had worn off and my normal capacity to reflect returned, I found myself wondering about the logic of this decision to shut out an entire section of people residing in the building, in the name of social distancing.
Meanwhile, not so far away, creeping up ever more speedily in our direction was a nightmarish tangle of trucks, lorries and cranes engaged day and night in dumping immense rocks and boulders in the sea for the purpose of reclaiming land in front of all the seaside buildings to make way ostensibly for a coastal road. We residents all along the coast had been uniformly upset, furious, helpless at this act of desecration, a move undertaken by the state government in conjunction with the local authorities without any proper debate or dialogue with the citizens of Mumbai. We were (and still are) not only furious at losing our sea view, at saying goodbye to the open space in front of our houses but also concerned about the damage that this thoughtless project is causing to our environment - damage to various species of protected coral and marine life, apart from destroying the nesting ground for turtles and the winter home of migratory birds which descend here every November or December.
How dare our leaders take decisions affecting us, we fret and fume, how dare they use public money, our tax money, to serve their own ends. We continue to rant and rave helplessly about decisions being made without any kind of genuine consultation; decisions which are not only about to change the city’s topography but will benefit hardly a fraction of Mumbai’s citizens consisting mainly of a bunch of car owners and taxi users. What could be the logic other than to line the pockets of a few real estate developers, builders and politicians?
Human beings have usually used their personal power and intelligence not to bring about a better world, a happier, more free and creative world but one in which the many have been exploited for a few to create a little niche of comfort and luxury for themselves.
Let’s stop here and think about it. What is the logic we human beings generally use when we make decisions which affect not only ourselves but others as well? We go back, it dawns on me, to cave-man thinking. The cave-man chief to put it metaphorically, eons ago, beat his hairy chest and bellowed (in his own prehistoric lingo): Me hairy brute, me got more brawn power than you, me take decisions. He was followed by a more intelligent sort of cave-man who probably thought (but didn’t say): Me, more brainy than you, me also more cunning. Me know how to exploit you. You listen to what I say and do what I tell you to do or else …
In other words human beings have usually used their personal power and intelligence not to bring about a better world, a happier, more free and creative world but one in which the many have been exploited for a few, to create a niche of comfort and luxury for themselves. The politician, the policeman, the religious leader, the upper class citizen knows that his power gives him an edge over the ordinary citizen and uses cave-man logic to get the most out of a situation.
Is the logic of Mumbai’s educated, upper class residents, living in well appointed apartments, served by a number of poorer people in need of jobs, any different really from that of big business or governments anywhere? When one human being forbids another human being who is actually sharing the premises with him or her the use of a common facility which everyone needs - fresh air and natural beauty - what is the logic behind it? I’ll tell you. The logic is, me apartment owner. You working for me, me pay you. Me decide what is convenient for me. And so, the people who slog for us, who look after the children, who cook for us, drive for us, shop for us, clean our homes, are deprived of a facility for no fault of theirs, and generously permitted if they wish, to enjoy the scant, concreted open space offered by the car park in front of the building. Now with the lock-down having somewhat eased, a few of of the staff take the liberty of catching up on their exercise and dose of fresh air on the street outside.
With so much time freed up by the lock-down for self reflection and for mulling over the nature of the society in which we live, it has become clearer to me than ever before why Mumbai (or perhaps India on the whole) will find it difficult, if not impossible to win the battle against the authorities. It is because we citizens are incapable of standing united — seriously — for any length of time. At a time when the fight against the reclamation of land along the coast was at its height, we needed and wanted the poor people to lend us a hand, wanted them to collect signatures for our petitions from their chawls and slums, wanted them to appear at our protest rallies and so on. Now, when we are in no rush for their favors we politely brush them aside without a thought about how they must feel at this segregation, no matter how meekly they go about their work. The picture of a lonely child, not making sense of her exclusion from the lawn where other children are still allowed to play, refuses to leave me. It has come to symbolize our attitude generally, towards the less privileged. The irony is that the people I write about (and to be fair I must include myself among those who are comfortable in life at least at the moment!) - are not bad individuals. It is not that we don’t care or that we are deliberately cruel to others. It is just that our minds, our attitudes are so hopelessly shaped by a kind of conditioning which, whether we like it or not, ends up in our living hopelessly discriminatory and divided lives, most of the time, without any awareness of it.
The lock-down has given us an opportunity to re-think how we want to live together in this world. Are we going to use it to change our lives or will we ignore the chance and focus on returning to our old destructive ways?
Of course, finally the destruction caused in the name of development in Mumbai, the chopping down of trees and forests throughout the city or indeed wherever one happens to live in the world, the destruction of mangroves and other natural resources, will benefit nobody, neither the poor nor the rich. But who has the energy and space left in their heads to truly grasp this? The rich everywhere in the world are for the most part, busy safeguarding their wealth, their status, their privileges. The poor are busy digesting their rage against the rich, busy earning their livelihood, and most of all disillusioned with the politicians, their employers and generally with the way their lives are being managed by people with minimal interest in their well-being. In America the problem may be racism and discrimination against the blacks. In India we have our own special brand of discrimination based on caste and economic factors. Religion too, has everywhere become a great divider of human beings. How often do we relate to each other on the basis of our humanness rather than of shared culture, religion or privileges?
To fight the significant battles of life, to stay the destruction of our wildernesses and open spaces, to make room for real growth which includes overall human well-being and happiness, we need energy. Do we have any left over from our self indulgences on the one hand, and on the other, as far as three quarters of the world is concerned, from the numbing struggle for survival?
Most of us continue to shape our lives according to our cave-man mentality without realizing it. A few have stumbled onto the painful realization that this is so, and are looking for a way out. This is not what life is about, it is surely not how we are supposed to live with each other. More than a few of us are looking for a better world than the one offered to us by TV serials, cinema posters or ads for a super luxurious lifestyle, here. We are looking for others who feel the same way, who are willing to open up a new discussion on how to build a better, fairer world than the one in which we have lived so far. Now and then we find each other — in the cities, in the countryside, at workshops on awareness and in other similar spaces. Time will tell whether enough of us manage to find each other and be able to hold each others’ hands to create an entirely new society in time, before we human beings destroy ourselves altogether. We will find out whether we are capable of forming a new and different kind of community, a world that will have room for diversity without discrimination, where clean air and blue skies, where green fields and trees and fresh water sources, where the sea and the forests will prevail because they will be valued more than personal power, status and financial wealth.
