On a rain-washed afternoon in the heart of the city, more than hundred college students and teachers got together to make bombs from scratch. But the cops were nowhere in sight. Why? Because this new generation of environment lovers and climate advocates were dirtying their hands not to make explosives but vegetable “seed bombs” that were later scattered around the city to provide an alternative means of nutrition for the underprivileged homeless population. This act of raising vegetables, fruits or flowers on land that the gardeners do not have the legal rights to cultivate is called guerrilla gardening.
From ancient times, humans have foraged for food and shared common resources like water and land. We need a revival of these ideas as a balance to industrial scale farming that results in a lot of carbon emissions. Obviously, young people have to be at the forefront of this transition because they will be the ones to face the brunt of climate catastrophes.
Recently, Earthmates — the eco club of NSHM Knowledge Campus, Calcutta — invited climate fiction author Rajat Chaudhuri to conduct a creative writing workshop. It was followed by our “solarpunk” guerrilla-gardening exercise, where more than 100 students across departments enthusiastically kneaded natural fertiliser, soil and seed into small pellets or “green grenades”, which they later dropped in and around the city. Solarpunk is an emerging sub-genre of science fiction as well as a social movement, which focuses on decentralised low-tech action for a better and greener future.
Chaudhuri stated, “The next revolution may not be about firebombs and Molotov cocktails. There are brilliant niche-level approaches in solarpunk and other movements which need to coalesce and breakout.”
Sayantani Sengupta
Solarpunk researcher,
St Xavier’s University, Calcutta
Human library
What if books, our companions in the search for knowledge, could come to life? This question led to the concept of the “Human Library”, a living repository of experiences and knowledge.
Today we learned much about the Sundarbans and the majestic royal Bengal tiger from our human library Pradeep Vyas. He recounted the awe-inspiring beauty and ecological significance of the Sundarbans mangrove forest, a Unesco World Heritage site spread across parts of India and Bangladesh. The Sunderbans tigers have faced an alarming decline in population due to habitat destruction, illegal poaching and climate change. As the human population grew, so did the pressure on this delicate ecosystem, pushing the tigers to the brink of extinction. It is time we youngsters step in to help keep the tiger’s future burning bright.
Shrayan Misra
First year, BTech (CSE), Techno India University, Calcutta
