Mahanth is usindiamonitor

I am immensely fortunate to sit in my air-conditioned home as I write this. But my heart is still capable of breaking for the plight of those in India and other parts of the world who are limping through devastatingly record high temperatures with no relief in sight and no chance of getting anywhere near any sort of air conditioning. Just wanted to get that out of the way up front.

The weather patterns causing record high heat, floods, droughts, forest fires, hurricanes, typhoons, climate refugees, and all other calamitous varieties of dramatic climate mayhem around the world are only going to get much worse in the near future. And we humans are obviously not doing enough about this problem.

As an Indian-American I acutely feel the pain of those in both the United States and India who are suffering the devastating consequences of mankind’s inaction. This pain is amplified particularly cruelly upon those who depend on working the land for their livelihood during this period of environmental destruction.

India in this particularly hot and calamitous spring and summer of 2022 can best be described as a tandoor oven. Record high heat days plus unbearable environmental conditions abound and threaten to become the new normal, at best. Perhaps nobody feels the acute pain of this disastrous and systemic phenomenon more than farmers, who are witnessing their crop output being decimated right before our eyes in real time. One of the lifebloods of India’s agricultural economy being painfully slaughtered right now in our pathetic modern milieu is the staple of wheat, though that is not the only one. Throwing fire on this wheat problem is the cruel irony of our world: the main ingredient in the millions of bread products like naan emerging piping hot this very second as your read this out of of lakhs of active blazing hot tandoor ovens sprinkled around India and around the globe, is…wheat!

Please, don’t take my word for it. Just take a little time to watch this excellent video by Singapore’s Mediacorp and judge for yourself. I would consider this a must-watch, regardless of where you live in the world that we all share.