The other day I saw a kingfisher, usually shy, perched on a low branch near a person watering plants with a hose, so that whatever life jumps from the undergrowth by the sprinkle can be pecked up. Well, this is new, I thought.
This instance, of an absolutely preventable catastrophe, was designed and paid for by the world’s most powerful humans pitted against the less powerful ones just decades ago, and yet it persists.
What we must attend to instead is the rising heat devouring entire habitats and its immediate ramifications on human settlements and earth’s ecosystems. Cities such as Bengaluru are not accustomed to the kind of heat in store.
The video in question is as much a marker of the real human experience as it is of the brutality humans are capable of rendering as a species to one of their own. This othering had been a constant through our minuscule stint in the evolutionary timeline.
Many of us who grew up listening to this track relived the song for what it was once again. It was a time of great cultural churn when this iconic song was released, as the 80s was turning into 90s, and for whatever was in store for music and culture thereafter at the turn of century.