Footprints on the Mountainside

Saving the environment seems such a mommoth task. It simply leaves people immobile. Where does one begin?

Some things are easy. Don’t litter. Don’t damage. Don’t waste resources. But what exactly does this involve? What does the common person do to be saving the environment? Not everyone can research. Not everyone can make it the calling of their lives. Not everyone even knows what to do.

Yet, we have a huge number of people available, who would, if pointed out, definitely be happy to make small adjustments that together can result in massive change. The key is in identifying exact things, that are quick to do and watch out for, once people know.

If it doesn’t take too much time, doesn’t involve a great deal of effort, a large number of people will happily walk the path to feel a little more secure about the state of the world tomorrow.

I find that like any other dauntingly huge task, this one seems much more doable when we break it up into bits.

First, make a not of the words/issues that occur on the subject of saving the environment: plastic, paper, forest reserves and trees, water, energy, pollution, fuel, spreading awareness……… We can keep adding to these as and when new words occur.

Let’s take each aspect and brainstorm on it (the links above open into seprate articles on each subject, to keep things managable out here). If you have ideas, please let me know, and I’ll add them in, so that we have a ready resource of stuff that is really easy to incorporate into our lives and has the potential to make a huge difference.

After a long season of slog, its the good, diyllic times again, before the summer vacations get us. We have plenty lined up for the summer, so Raka and I thought it was time to take a working breather.

Out came the trusty Hero Honda passion, and off we went - just the two of us, journeying because we wanted to, like the old times, and like we rarely get to go now a days.

Out first halt was at the Kamath Residency at Nagothane. It is a place we go to often and consistently like for the comfortable home like environment and outstanding food, which is getting rare, in a world of resorts which taste and feel like all others. We had a hidden agenda here. They are planning an extension of their resort facilities, and want to include an artificial wall as one of the offerings. Naturally, we were in on the discussions, and that was a pleasant evening well spent on talking passion of climbing and planning the ideal climbing wall.

The room itself felt like home. Not surprising considering that we have probably stayed in every room this place has over the years. Raka is trigger happy with the TV remote, and the rest of the evening was pure romance with the old Kamal Hassan, Rishi Kapoor, Dimple film - Saagar. Speak of flash back times, I practically grew up singing the songs from this one. Raka has a huge crush on Dimple, of course

Next morning, we were good to go on. We rode through the Tamhini Ghat, passing the multitude of camping facilities come up recently, right on, past the Garudmachi - the programme location of High Places, which of course was founded by Vasant Limaye, one of the oldest outbound training pioneers in India.

And we rode on….. the two of us and our trusted bike. That’s how we like to travel. Carefree!

The kilometers were ticking, the milestones were flashing, and we were in Pune, in time for the first birthday of the son of a very old friend. It was the time for flashbacks, and backslapping and cheer. We stayed with another old friend in Pune and spent the whole day watching Amitabh Bachchan films, while the poor chap slogged away in his office.

I contacted friends from ISABS in Pune, but didn’t meet anyone. Strange how I called when I was in Pune, but didn’t meet. The calling could have happened from Mumbai too. Go figure. Lazy time passes fast, and it was time to head homeward again, but not before my favourite halt on the way - The Japalouppe Equestrian Center. I usually want to stay here, but this time, we were short of time, so it was a quick couple of hours.

Japalouppe is special to me. I love horses and dogs, and this place has them both. Its a farm house cum riding school overflowing with life forms. The owner Rohan More, is a good friend of ours, and its a special thing indeed to catch up with another horseman and talk about horses - just like the good old times. Scratching dogs and being at peace was the chief agenda.

Rohan is planning a new climbing wall too, when he adds some facilities to the place, so we talked about that. Materials, location, planning…… dreaming is fun. its dreams that make us do things once they get urgent enough. We discussed various materials that could be used for the wall, and different ways it could be utilized in the scheme of things at the ever busy life in Japalouppe.

All too soon, it was our deadline to leave. Since we like to travel on bike, we also like to reach places before dark. its really not funny driving long distance on busy roads with trucks claiming ownership of the whole road, and bikers being as vulnerable as mosquitoes.

So off we went, in the direction of Mumbai. Our quick escapade out of Mumbai having succeeded in a most satisfying way.

I find that the internet acts as a barrier to the morals of many people. Many people who wouldn’t be causght dead stealing in their day-to-day lives steal without hesitation online.

A regular visitor here just brought it to my attention that another blog (which I will not mention here) has been steaking content from this site. She found out accidentally when she forgot the exact url (she has this site in her bookmarks at home) and tried to search for the site from some specific words she remembered in the article she wanted to access. Our site showed up as expected, but another site showed up too, with the same article.

Thinking that it was something I used for a reference, she browsed through it, to see if it was of any interest. What she found is the exact same article, copied word for word, including links in the article to other pages in the site at specific areas. The thieves didn’t even bother to pretend to cover their tracks.

Our logs here show plenty of hits coming from that site, so I’m not complaining. The articles refer to the links in a tempting way, so the thief is actually losing traffic, because people are very likely to click on those links. I’m not complaining
I doubt if it matters to him though.

I wonder what makes people want to steal people’s content. I freely allow anyone to use any information from this site, as long as a live link is maintained to this place. The reason is as much one of credibility, as the fact, that most of my articles and experiences are closely related to my knowledge and experiences from the very off-beat life I’ve led. It will simply sound fake if copy pasted, and the rest of the content in the site is obviously someone else.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter to me, because they can’t really steal in terms of removing content from here. This place is more important to me than some scraper who cares nothing about visitors.

Situational hazard. I shrug and move on.

Heh. It’s a life long project. I’m 31 now, and I still don’t know what I want to become when I grow up. There are so many passions to indulge in. One life - so much to do. I’m making a note of my most wanted futures for this life time, in an attempt to get them on record. Regulars here know that this is subject to change - of course.

Yeah - so go on - yell at me for infecting your mind with these tempting little dreams and don’t blame me if you want to do these too.

1. I want to develop a small farm. Organic farming is something I am really interested in. I plan to build a spacious home on the property, which I will be using to run programmes in as well. This home is going to be constructed with natural materials. Mostly stone and mud with some wood. Planning to make the property self-sufficient in terms of energy needs. Solar power and bio gas for cooking, heating water, light and electricity. Perhaps wind/water mills for electricity as well. Totally organic produce, which will provide for most of the food requirements of the people living here. Horses and dogs complete the picture of course.
2. I want to become a mahaout and live a wandering life with my own elephant for at least 2 years. I don’t know much about elephants, but I’m a willing and hard worker, not to mention experience with other animals and a sharp brain. I will learn.
3. I want to raise my kid away from the stereotypical city attitude. Living in the city is fine, but there is a whole world to explore, and chips are not the tastiest food on the planet, television and films are not the best source of entertainment, and having fun need not always be noisy. I’d like my child to learn the value of living straight from the heart. The importance of running full power behind dreams that we are sure about. Yeah I know I don’t have a child yet, but that is a matter of time.
4. I want to put my memories on record. I’ve had some incredible experiences in my life, and am constantly advised by friends and family to write a book about them. I will. I don’t know how fascinating it will be, but I dare say its not going to be something that can be put down easily.
5. I want to do something really nice for the environment. It could be in the form of creating awareness of environmentally friendly options and responsibilities in far flung regions, or it could be working in a forest department to help conserve the resources and protect the animals or it could be something I haven’t thought about yet. But I will do it.
6. I want to get people tempted by solar cooking. Its really easy to build a solar cooker and it works to save a lot of money, natural resources, energy and effort. So why not. For those who don’t know, solar cooking uses heat from the sun to cook food. It is slow cooking, so the food doesn’t char and burn, and the utensils are really easy to clean quickly. The slow cooking retains most of the taste of the food and makes it really delicious. You can put food to cook and skip off to do your own thing for a couple of hours without haunting the kitchen or worrying about it boiling over, burning, or setting fire to something. You save electricity / gas / kerosene / wood / whatever you use for cooking. An efficient solar cooker is really cheap and quick to make, so if you need to cook more, you can simply make one or two more cookers. They can store flat and hardly take space when not in use. They can double up as a fridge at night (reversing the cooking process). If it gets old, you throw it out and make a new one, without worrying about the expenses. Tempting - isn’t it?

So much for now, but stay tuned to this page. I’m bound to drop in and make additions and revisions.

I came across an interesting page that compares a piece of writing with an algorithm based on study of the differences of usage of language between the two sexes. This study can be found here. Curiosity is a virtue, or so I thought and promptly proceed to paste in a few articles from various areas of this site into the “genie” and see the results.

My results hit male as often as female. Is it that my writing style is masculine or that the genie is wrong? As far as I know, I’m female

The paper is quite interesting, and explains the findings from study of various samples and the differences the statistics bring out. Some differences are that females are more “involved, while males are more “informational”. This link to the genie puts these findings into a form, that you can submit writing into and have it see how the your writing reads out.

With a name like Vidyut, many people already confuse me to be male (all other Vidyuts I know of are male). Perhaps this is another thing that may be adding to the confusion?

Can’t say. Definitely worth exploring.

I often find behavioural differences between males and females, as well as differences in thinking styles. I find women more expressive and quick to reach out, while men often seem to be more into doing stuff, but not talking much about it, unles it is well within comfort zones. Women are quick to react to new events and try out new stuff, while men fare better in terms of consistency.

And so on…. but I’d better not bore people with unresearched findings. I’m just tickled about someone going to these extents to document the differences.

Comments and opinions welcome!