Tuesday, April 20, 2010

The Dragon Ticklers

“If you can't take the heat, don't tickle the dragon.”- Anon.

For me this is a burning issue and even though I wanted to put it in the cold storage I was only able to keep it in the back burner for some time and now it has come out simmering. This summer the heat is unbearable as it was in the last and in the previous one and in the summer before that and… as our beloved ancient Freak philosopher, oops, Greek philosopher Thermalonics quipped, we never sweat it out for the second time in the same summer. Every time we step out of our house it is not the same old sun over our head.


The other day there was a heated argument between me and Mimya over the causes for this ever increasing level of heat. She accused me of releasing above normal amount of Green House Gases into the atmosphere. Bamboozled I told her that I do not own  a Green House, let alone a small house of any other colour and due to the acute shortage in LPG bottles supply the only gas  I release into the atmosphere is what that goes off when I use the loo. Dejected and angry she went out vrooming her bike and saying that I was such a moron who could never be taught the reasons behind the soaring mercury nowadays. I was so baffled to hear that Mercury is soaring; I guessed it is going to go up, up and up and into another galaxy thus leaving our solar system with just seven celestial bodies (I am not that bad a moron to have not known of the recent demotion of Pluto). If Green House Gases could drive a planet away from its place I thought it is indeed a matter of great concern.


Eating meat is one thing that adds to the planet’s temperature, I came to know. The reason is so gnarled and crooked like cankered ivy. It takes about some 20 kilos of plants to add a single kilo of flesh in a slaughter house animal. So whenever you have a mouthful of juicy beef or mutton it is actually 20 mouthfuls of green plants that goes down and vanishes into you. As we eat the cattle that eat the plants that protect our planet from heating…. you got it. So behold meat-eaters! You are all culprits and you are always denied a warm welcome into our eco-sensitive world. (‘To give up meat or give a fillip to the global heat’ is what our eco-friendly meat-eaters are contemplating hard now.)


If the sun goes on baking us folks at this rate we better equip ourselves to get prevented from being grilled like pepper bacon. The electrical gadgets like fan and air-conditioners are of no use in our land of never ending power-cuts. Our scientists (not the ones who involved in making cryogenic engines, Cry-O-Genic?) should come out with appliances which would not require power to run. Huge windmills at whose sight Don-Quixote drew his sword to fight will come handy. Windmills not only have wings like fans which would facilitate the blow of wind but also help in grinding flour and drawing water  from well. We can produce even electricity with the help of a windmill. The problem is we need enough wind to move the huge wings. This too can be solved by felling the remaining, sparse trees in our habitats to pave way for the free blow of wind. (If some political party, taking a cue from me, announces in its manifesto for next year’s assembly elections to issue free windmills to all Family-card holders, I won’t be responsible for that. Yet, the sight of having windmills strewn all over the Tamil landscape will indeed be a sight unmatched. This will eventually lead to the sprouting of Cervantes’ and Marquezes in our literary arena and branching of magical realism in all spheres of life.)


As I go on typing this note Mimya reads from behind and murmurs, unscrewing an imaginary nut from her temple… ‘The heat has got its first victim here….’.