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S U B V E R S E JUGULAR VEIN

Dearth hour

Jug Suraiya

Last Saturday i was all geared up to be an active participant in Earth Hour. You know what Earth Hour is, of course. It was started in Sydney, Australia, in 2007 when over two million residents of the city switched off the non-essential lights in their homes and offices for one hour in a show of solidarity with the universal crusade against global warming and climate change.
The concept caught on fast and, in 2008, some 50 million households in 35 countries across the world observed Earth Hour by putting off their lights for 60 minutes at a given time. Last Saturday, India joined the Earth Hour campaign which now spans 65 countries. Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kochi, Thiruvanantha-puram, Amritsar and Chandigarh were slated to switch off their lights for an hour, from 8.30 p.m. to 9.30 p.m. Though Gurgaon, where i live, was technically not part of the Earth Hour movement, i decided our house too would pitch in to aid and abet a good cause.
So come 8.30 i headed for the light switches to turn them off. When — lo and behold — the lights turned themselves off. How amazing. For a moment i wondered if i were, unbeknownst to myself, developing powers of telekinesis, you know the sort of stuff that people like Uri Geller and suchlike show on television by moving objects and bending teaspoons and assorted cutlery without touching them but by only thinking about moving or bending them.
Brindle looked at me with renewed interest. If i really were developing occult powers would i perhaps cause to materialise out of thin air a slice of Amul cheese, Brindle’s favourite snack, in much the same way as the Sai Baba was said to produce vibhuti for his devotees? My wonderment and Brindle’s optimism were short-lived. Don’t be ridiculous, the two of you, said Bunny. The lights haven’t been turned off by ESP or any such nonsense; the lights have been turned off by a power cut, she explained, shedding new light on the lightless mystery.
It was then that i realised just how advanced and conscientious in terms of protecting the environment our sarkar was, and already had been. In other, less environment-friendly countries, citizens had to remember to go turn off the lights in observance of Earth Hour. In India Unshining, we citizens did not have to bestir ourselves to put off the lights because our proactive sarkar did it for us through a power cut, so that we could all be part and parcel of what might be called Dearth Hour.
Indira Gandhi said that poverty was the biggest pollutant. Mrs G got it wrong. It isn’t poverty but progress that’s the biggest pollutant. And our successive sarkars have realised the truth of that axiom and acted on it. To make sure that India remains as pollution-free as it is progress-free. Look at countries like America, and Europe, and others, all so hell-bent on this environmentally dangerous thing called progress that they’ve ended up jeopardising the entire planet, what with global warming, and climate change, and ozone holes, and sunburnt polar bears, and Al Gore and R K Pachauri madly airdashing about hither and yon to do something about it and in the process leaving behind carbon footprints the size of Antarctica before it got melted away. That’s what progress has done to the planet.
So, no progress, please, we’re Indians, said our sequential sarkars and made sure that we weren’t overburdened with such pollution-causing things like bijli, and roads (think of all those poisonous emissions from cars and other vehicles), and schools (think about all those trees which would have to be chopped down so as to produce all the paper that would be required to print all those textbooks, exercise books, exam papers, etc, etc, that an environmental hazard like literacy requires).
So as Brindle, Bunny and i sat in the sarkari-sponsored darkness we gave thanks to the power-cuts-that-be. Hallelujah to our eco-nomical sarkar which makes sure that it is, and always will be, the dearth of us


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