How humans exploit us

I am living being too you know. I have feelings too. I experience pain. I wince when somebody has intentions to harm me. It hurts when somebody plucks at my leaves or breaks my branches. Humans never realize that.

We plants have served humans for a very long time. Our leaves, our roots, our shoots became their food. We are the ones responsible for their survival. All the best parts of us, our fruits and the roots were mercilessly plucked and eaten by them.

Humans progressed and so did their acts to pollute nature. The machines that they use to live and travel emit poisonous chemicals and we take in most of those pollutants. They have killed us by hordes without any remorse, to build new homes. We have served humans by providing food, by cleaning up their messy pollutants and yet they continue to exploit us, harass us, maim us and kill us.

I make my food from light, you know through an act which has a very complex name. I use the energy from the sun and convert it to an energy which will be used by me to live, grow and become strong. The wicked humans have even come up with ways to tap into my energy source and take away all the energy that I gained from the sun, as electricity to power their noxious gases emitting devices. They want to kill us by not even providing an opportunity to grow.

I wish that we had evolved along with humans. I wish we had the power to gobble up humans when they desire to hurt us. Few of my relatives are carnivorous, you know, all of us are not as docile as you think, but we have not evolved enough to consume humans. I wish I could transform myself into modern weaponry at a moment’s notice and shoot pine cones and sharp pointed twigs at the people who intend to harm us. Earth is our home too, you know and we have every right to live on it. If you do not stop these atrocious acts of destruction against the tree-kind, we will stop serving you and start revolting against you, then where would you go?

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I was inspired to write this short piece based on two articles.  Prof. Ramaraja Ramaswamy from UGA College of Engineering developed a technology in which thylakoids, structures in the plant cell are modified and immobilized on a nano-material to generate electricity from photosynthesis. I could’nt help feeling sad for the plants after I read the article below and thought how human truly exploit plants to the maximum extent possible.

http://www.treehugger.com/clean-technology/researchers-discover-new-way-harvest-electricity-plants.html

The second article is about an artist Sonia Rentsch who created the beautiful guns and other weaponry using materials like leaves and sticks. I looked at the images in the article below and I was awed by the creativity of the artist. I also felt uncomfortable to see the plants depicted as modern weaponry which are used to kill humans.

http://www.treehugger.com/culture/sonia-rentsch-harm-less-guns-made-nature.html

My Mother - Part 2

The phone rang again. My mother picked it up, “Hello…I will not call the police…tomorrow evening at 7:00…” and she hung the receiver. She looked at me and smiled.

After a couple of hours my uncle came in. My mother asked me to go to bed. As I lay on my bed, I could hear hushed voices. They were discussing about the ‘naxalite’ but I could not make out what they were talking. I was feeling sleepy. My eyes closed.

 Next day was a regular day. I woke up and got dressed for school and went to school. My mother came to pick me up in the evening. I saw the sky blue colored maruti car waiting for me at the school gate. I was surprised that she drove all the way to take me home. The distance from my school to home was about 3-4 km and I went to school and came home in a school bus. I went home, freshened up and sat on our dark green colored sofa with a book in my hand. The clock ticked away without any worry. I could not concentrate on what I was reading. My mother was walking to and fro across the marble floor and her pink saree rustled as she moved. The phone rang. Beads of sweat formed across her well shaped brows just above her red bindi,  and as she picked up the receiver her hand trembled. She said, “Hello…yes I will be there” and hung up. She called somebody else and said, “He will be here in 5 minutes. Yes…yes I will do it”. Then she went downstairs to her clinic and the maid came upstairs and watched over me as I looked down into the book. (Our house is a one-storey building, downstairs is my mother’s hospital establishment and upstairs is our home).

After half an hour she came upstairs, huffing and puffing. I put my booked aside and watched her.

She called my father on cell phone and said, “He came. He was tall lean and had a cap, which covered his features. He did not say anything; he just stood there in the Out patient (O. P) waiting room and looked at me. There were also other patients in the O. P. room. I went close to him and asked, ‘What do you want? Why did you come here?’. The patients heard me talking loudly and looked at him. He became nervous and he started walking away. May be he did not expect other people to be present. I walked after him. The patients and their male relatives realized that something was fishy and they followed me as I went behind the guy. He started walking fast, as I was catching up with him. I increased my pace. I shouted at him, ‘Is it you who asked for money? Are you really a naxalite or are you looking for easy money?’ He walked faster and we approached the main road. As we walked on the road, the people behind me and a few on the road joined in and shouted at him, ‘Stop! where are you going?’ Just about that time the police jeep approached and he ran away. The police went after him. I do not think he was a naxalite. I came home. After a few minutes, the S. I. came and said that they lost him. He asked me to report if I received any more calls from him’…Ummm”.

She put down the phone came to me, smiled and said, “Everything is fine”.

After that day we did not receive any prank calls from that ‘naxalite’ or any other person claiming to be such. This incident made me realize that my mother is a strong and courageous woman.  

My mother at my marriage, 8th August 2012

My precious!

Over breakfast, my husband Pradeep Kumar Gouda and I had a very casual discussion about the dropping gold prices. He told me, 'Gold price has come down to Rs. 26000', I replied, 'We should buy it', he retaliated saying, 'No, we should not, it harms our economy'.

Our small discussion intensified his desire to write about why buying more gold is harmful to the Indian economy and he offered to write a guest column in my blog. So here it is!

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King Parikshit, descendant of Pandavas once went hunting. Kali, the evil of Kalyug appears before him and asked him to allow him to enter his kingdom. The king denied but Kali pleaded a lot. The king accepted and told to restrict Kali to only places where there is alcohol, gambling, prostitution and gold. Kali happily accepted the offer  and the first thing he did was to sit in the King's golden crown and corrupted his brain. The activities which the king did later that day led to his eventual death and end of the dynasty.  The king fell because of the evil in the gold. The same evil thing is hurting Indian economy very badly!

Indians for a very long time are fascinated by the yellow metal. The country's merchants sold spices and other goods and brought gold home.  Indians have amassed huge amounts of gold and our hunger for gold has never decreased. Today, India is the largest importer of gold and the recent drop in the gold price has not affected our demand for gold. In the last month, blame Akshaya Tritiya, our imports of gold has actually doubled putting a serious pressure on our current account deficit. India imported 1,015 tonne of gold in 2012-13.

Lets look at why we like buying gold. I agree, gold is amazing when it comes to jewellery. It adorns women greatly and men to a little extent. A recent statistics say that close to 70% of the gold we Indians buy is in the form of jewellery. Ironically, most of the jewellery we purchase ends up in lockers and in my opinion the new generation is not interested much in wearing jewellery to work place and there are very few occasions in a year where a person gets to show off the jewellery.  While we agree that gold can be used as a last resort to save family in case of any crisis, the real question is what percentage of families actually sell physical gold or mortgage the family gold? This number would be very low.

People bought gold to hedge themselves from the high inflation the country saw in last 2-3 years.  The rally in gold price started after the 2009 Subprime Crisis when people moved to safer assets like dollar and gold while stocks and other assets failed miserably. In August 2011, when S&P downgraded US dollar, Gold broke loose and rallied significantly. People thought value of gold will always appreciate which made them buy more and more gold.  Eventually, gold did great when compared to other asset classes like stocks, bonds, real estate etc till the recent fall.

So, how is our hunger for gold affecting our economy? Gold, unlike other metals & commodities has frankly no economic value but only aesthetic value.  As a metal, it has some awesome chemical properties but because of it price, it is not used like Copper or Silver. This was well recognised by John Maynard Keynes who opined that the Gold standard is a 'barbarous relic' and introduced new monetary system expecting that world will give gold lesser importance.

The economic growth of a country is directly linked to savings done by citizens and organizations. The money saved/invested by the people in bank savings accounts, fixed deposits, stocks, bonds, real estate etc provides funds for entrepreneurs to do business and helps in economic growth of the country. But investment in gold goes nowhere and has no positive impact on the economy.

The gold purchase has negative impact on our economy in two ways. Firstly, all the money that is "invested" in gold is getting locked and is not helping in the economic growth. Secondly, the country had to import lot of gold to meet the domestic demand. When we import anything, there is a downward pressure on Rupee vs. other currencies. Our obsessive gold imports (luxury) together with oil imports (necessity) have contributed significantly to depreciation of rupee. Rupee kept sliding as we imported more oil and more gold. This resulted in increased inflation and our monetary watchdog RBI had no option but to increase interest rates. Higher interest rates and inflation means higher cost of doing business and thus slower economic growth.  The Gross Domestic Savings decreased from 36.8% in 2007-8 to 30.8% in 2011-12.

Gold is also causing significant harm if you look from environmental angle too. Today, gold production is less when compared to demand.  Rough estimates indicate that to extracting one ounce of gold leaves 30 tonnes of rubble in open pit mining. Gold mining in West Africa, Philippines and places in Amazon have affected lives of local population and other species. Miners use harmful chemicals like Mercury and cyanide in the gold excavation process and these eventually contaminate the water stream.

The present government tried its best to curtail gold purchases. They imposed import duty on gold, they imposed tax on purchasing of gold, but results are very disappointing. People continued purchasing gold. Government has introduced two schemes with which they are trying to divert money being invested in gold into other assets.

Firstly, government is offering tax incentives upto Rs. 25000 for money invested in stock market under Rajiv Gandhi Equity Savings Scheme. Secondly, RBI is coming up with inflation indexed bonds starting from June 4. These bonds will not only provide interest on the capital but the capital itself is protected against inflation. The capital on which interest is calculated is also adjusted with the inflation. Even though, RBI presently indexed inflation with Wholesale Price Index instead of Consumer Price Index which reflects the inflation faced  by a citizen more accurately, it is a really good step.  These bonds are better as an investment alternative as your capital will always be protected against inflation. Also the money invested will be used productively and will aid in the development of the country.

I hope the recent fall in gold prices will make Indians consider other assets like inflation indexed bonds, stocks etc and help our country in its economic growth.

-Pradeep Kumar Gouda

My Mother - Part 1

I was listening to the radio yesterday. The RJ asked the callers what they liked the most about their mothers. One girl answered that she loved her mother for her cooking. This small talk on the radio made me think about what I loved the most about my mother.

I love my mother for her courage and her wisdom. She is a brave, determined and compassionate woman who always encouraged me to dream and aspire for bigger things in life. She is not only a mother but also a practicing Gynaecologist and Obstetrician with her own establishment.

Among all the memories I shared with her, the memory below is a special one, because this incident is the reason why I believe she is a strong and courageous woman. I was about 12-13 years old at that time.   

My mother…

I splashed a red water colour across the white paper. The paper drank the red colour. I dipped my blue painting brush into yellow color on the palette. As I was about to paint, I heard the telephone ring, ‘tring tring tring’. It was those days when the phones had screeching tones and the receivers were at least half a pound. My mother walked out from the bedroom and picked up the ash colored receiver. Here plaited black hair rested on her chest and the black sari with dark maroon flowers contrasted against our white marble floor.

She said, ‘Hello, who is it?’ and was silent for a few seconds.

The she slammed down the receiver. I asked her, ‘Who is it?’

She replied, ‘Wrong number’, and went inside the bedroom.

I painted red and yellow streaks on the upper half of the paper, melting the boundaries that separated the colors to create a sunset. The phone rang again; ‘tring’ and my mother came hastily from the bedroom and picked it up.

She said, ‘Hello, who is it?’

After a moment of silence, she said, “Who are you? What are you telling? If you call again, I will report to the police” and she put down the receiver.

I dropped the painting brush aside, came close to her and asked, ‘Mother, who is it?’

She replied, ‘It is a prank call. Nothing important’ and stroked my hair.

She went inside the room and called somebody.

She said, ‘Hello! Where are you? Hmm…I just now got a call, the person claimed that he is a naxalite and asked for Rs. 50,000. He said he will come tomorrow evening to take it. Hmm...I thought it was a prank call, the first time, but he also called the second time. What should we do? Hmm…I told him that I will report to the police. Should we do it? Hmm…I will call our SI and have him here tomorrow evening. Can you come tomorrow? Umm…‘I will call your brother and see if he can help. I will keep you updated.’

She hung up the call. I slowly walked to my painting and sat on the floor. I held the brush in my hand but I could not paint. The conversation of my mother with my father revealed the facts behind the so called ‘wrong number’. My father was out of town at that time. I knew it was serious but I was too young to understand the implications of the call.

                                                         To be continued...

With my Mom at Alleppey, 2009