Tiger Work, page 10
We shared everything equally. We agreed that we must not allow one to have more than the other. We agreed that we were mutually dependent. It was in the interest of the one that the other was healthy and alive. Labour too must be shared. No one was allowed to sit down while the other worked. No one was a servant. No one’s status was higher than the other’s. The land was held in common. Love was voluntary. No one was obliged to love back. Day after day we added to these principles, which the extreme gravity of our situation compelled us to discover. Everyone deserves respect. Everyone has the right to be heard, even if they have nothing to say. Everyone has to make their contribution to the running of things. We agreed quite quickly that money would not be a part of the world we were making from scratch.
‘But how do we measure value then?’ I asked.
‘We measure value by how things enrich our lives,’ she said with that clarity of hers which was at once considered and light.
She took to writing the principles down on a board.
‘But what if we don’t know how to measure the value of something? We might think something valueless, when its value is in its absence.’
‘Example?’
That was her way. Whenever I said anything that was abstract, she asked for an example, to concretise my thinking.
‘Peace,’ I said.
‘That’s because you think peace is passive. But I think peace is dynamic.’
‘Really? You’re bringing a special meaning to the word.’
‘I think peace is the result of active qualities like forethought, hard work, vigilance. Peace is not for me the absence of discord, but the fruit of cultivation.’
‘What about beauty? What does beauty actually do?’
‘Beauty is not passive. Beauty inspires. It makes us think. It gives us ideals. It makes us want to be better, in some way.’
‘Strange you should say that. Beauty makes me surrender. It brings me to the edge of the impossible. It often fills me with despair.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘I’m not sure.’
Then she gave me an untranslatable look and stomped off out of the house and was gone for a day or so. When she was gone like that, I would just sit in the garden or in the room and stare out of the window, my mind vacant, the huge emptiness of the city crowding down on me. In times like that a crack from the abyss would enter my mind. I would become aware of the whole world and its vacancy, and a terror would come over me that would paralyse me for days. And it was only the sound of wolves outside – jostling in the streets below, or warring with the other beasts that now prowled the countryside and the towns – that roused me from my existential torpor.
On one such day, as I waited for something to wake me up from the funk in which I was wallowing, I heard the sound of weeping coming from the trees over on the south side of the house. I sought out the place and found no one. But the weeping sound continued. Then I concluded that perhaps it was a fugitive feature of the place. I think I was right in this because a day later the sound of weeping came from somewhere else; and it went on moving each day, till one day it was far across the city, and then it moved on, out into the world.
10
She returned one afternoon looking very thin. It was as if the emptiness of the world were erasing her. She told me she had seen a green cloud drifting towards us. I was going to ask her about it when she said, as if she’d been brooding on it a long time in solitude:
‘In the new world we are making, everyone ought to have the same quality of education.’
‘What about those who don’t want to be educated?’
‘We have to change what education means. It shouldn’t be something you are compelled to do, like going to school every day. It should be conveyed as a tool for life. That’s what it should be.’
‘Tools for living?’
‘Yes. A book I read in the tunnels said that in the past most people were not educated at all. Many were educated to fail. Only a few were educated to succeed. That’s all wrong. Everyone should be educated to live. Education ought to be a basic human right, like eating, or sleeping.’
‘And you want everyone to have the same standard of education?’
‘Yes. Everyone should know how to start a fire, build a house, survive on an island, craft a boat, give birth, sew up a wound, read directions by the stars… In short, everyone ought to be a mini-civilisation. So that when the world perishes, and one person is left—’
‘In our case, two.’
‘Then they should, together, be able to start civilisation all over again, but better.’
I was puzzled about why she was talking like this. She had a strange new passion in her spirit. Her eyes were ablaze when she spoke.
‘We should teach children to read the world, to know about animals and plants and trees, to know what is poisonous, and how to neutralise poisons. We should teach them how to know people, to read their characters. They should read nature. Sooner or later they will create science again, but it should be an enlightened science: not one that wants to shut down and abolish the mysteries, but one that wants to reveal them, and thus amplify them; not a science that is an enemy to the spirit of human beings, but an ally; not one that is afraid of not having the answers, but one that relishes the questions and the unknown.’
‘I would like a science that explores the mystery of what we are,’ I said. ‘Did you know that once, for a brief period, science actually proved the reality of telepathy? But other scientists were apparently so threatened by this unknown thing that they ridiculed the findings. I was surprised to hear that science was every bit as close-minded as the church.
‘The church took three hundred and fifty years to acknowledge that Galileo was right. But science never allowed itself to acknowledge that telepathy might be right, and that things have an aura, that thoughts travel through space, that objects hold memories. Science has its own flat-earth adherents when it comes to the mysteries.’
I had been talking for a while when I realised that she was silent. I looked at her. There was a puzzled expression on her face. I felt that I was boring her, or that I was wearying her, so I got up and left the room. I went out to the garden and sat in a chair and watched the green cloud drifting ever closer.
After a moment she came out to the garden and sat next to me. She sat really close. Her proximity terrified me. Her intelligence was like a consuming fire. She was staring straight ahead, but something about her was burning me. I got up and walked away from her towards the laurel bush. She gave me a look that was like a flash of anger. I looked away from her, up to the sky, at the green cloud approaching. It hovered over about a quarter of the faraway sky. I was staring at it when I heard her coming towards me. I wanted to run. Her energy was overwhelming, even from yards away. There was a fence nearby, and I began, irrationally, to climb it. I got over, stumbled through the ragged rose bushes, and made it to the wildly overgrown street beyond. The mood she was in seemed like a madness. I don’t know why it frightened me so suddenly. I’d felt the same sort of fear in the emptiness of the city, with no human life around, just the insurgent trees splitting the squares and the climbing vines suffocating the buildings and obscuring the churches till nothing could be seen but this century-old takeover of the city, its palaces and government offices, its fountains and cinemas. That’s the terror I felt near her.
I walked along for a while and made my way back through the tangle of bushes that was the street. I found her sitting where I had last seen her, with a dreamy expression in her eye.
‘Why are you afraid of me?’ she asked.
I looked at her. Did she really mean that question?
‘You have a sharp intelligence,’ I said. ‘But it’s like an old chainsaw – you don’t know what you cut, or what you decapitate.’
‘Am I that bad?’
‘Not bad at all. It’s just that your equipment is more powerful than your consciousness.’
She looked crestfallen.
‘Nobody wants me,’ she said.
‘Nobody wants to be lectured at all the time,’ I said, and felt ashamed of it.
‘I promise I won’t lecture you again,’ she said.
I went over to her, not wanting to seem intimidated. Her eyes widened as I approached. Then she caught my arm and, with a lazy swaying gesture, said:
‘You’re strong. When did you become so strong?’
‘Am I strong? I’m not so sure. Sometimes I—’
‘I always admired your strength.’
‘Really?’ I found myself backing away. There was something panther-like about her swinging, swaying mood. Was she toying with me?
‘How you can be here by yourself, alone in all the world. That’s strength.’
‘Or disgust with the others.’
‘A sense of disgust is strength too.’
I looked into her eyes. For a moment I could not see the person I had seen before. A new person stood before me, but I could not trust my eyes.
‘Let’s start everything again. Let’s begin again at the beginning. I was a little mad before, but I’m better now. It’s like something has swept the sickness out of my head. I feel new. I am ready for a new—’
She lowered her head. Then she began, silently, to weep. I felt heartless and miserable watching her. My fear of her moods stopped me going towards her for a moment. Then I realised that nothing in the world was ever going to happen again if I didn’t get past my fear, my doubt, or the love that I had buried deep in my pride, buried and smothered. Nothing was ever going to happen again. The flowers wouldn’t be the same, and the green cloud would conquer the sky, and the tunnels would find a way to open up right in the midst of our immemorial solitude. All of the past, with its tragic arc, would live again if I did not find a way to cross the abyss that shone between us. She stopped weeping, stood up, and began walking away from the garden. She paused at the tall roses, red and fleshy and bright in the afternoon sun. She began moving again, past the roses, and I said:
‘Wait!’
She turned eyes of pure clarity towards me and held me with a question. The look in her eyes restored me to a self I had never known, gave me to my new self. I was changing as I walked towards her, all my uncertainty gone, and I understood now the meaning of that green cloud slowly obliterating the sky. Nothing but the purest dream of a new beginning was left between us when she lifted her face to meet my kiss.
11
A week later we returned to the tunnels. We settled in places where they did not know us, where we were strangers. We said nothing about coming from the outside world and told a plausible story about the collapse of our section of the tunnel. That sort of thing happened often.
We kept our secret and awaited the time when we could emerge again, when the green cloud would be gone.
And during that time, as the child grew in her, we made plans. We clarified our ideas. We bided our time. We did not want our child born in the captivity of the tunnels. For her, for him, for us, it would be either freedom or nothing. We knew what kind of future we wanted. It would bear no resemblance to the past.
A year later, we disappeared, and must have been presumed dead. That’s what we wanted them to think.
A SHORT INTERVIEW
Why do you think humans have been so irresponsible when making choices related to the future of our planet earth?
People are irresponsible about this because we do not see the immediate evidence of the destruction we are causing, or the effect of that destruction. There is a time gap and even a spatial gap between pollution and the effects of global warming. Also, we don’t think that our local actions, the fumes from an industrial plant or from our cars, can possibly affect anything as huge as the global climate. Science has enabled us to see the damage we are causing. Imagination is needed to see how our small causes have global effects.
So many Africans are unaware of the dangers related to climate change, even though many parts of Africa are suffering from desertification and massive pollution. How can one raise awareness of climate change across Africa?
One can raise awareness in Africa through education, online information, protests, stories, folktales, films, television, art, dances, etc. We need continent-wide campaigns. We need local ones too. The voices of the young need to be heard. We need to make environmental sustainability a cultural and social priority. Africa will suffer most from the effects of climate change. Whole portions of the continent could be uninhabitable because of rising temperatures and desertification. Though Africa is responsible for less than ten per cent of global emissions, Africa still needs to play its part in dealing with the problem. Africa can’t just leave it to the Western nations. I know we have urgent problems of our own, but climate change ought to be high up in our concern.
Can you explain what you see in what you call the natural tendency of the earth towards balance and harmony?
For every cause there is an effect. Nature is a dynamic system. Energy is constant in the universe. If you heat water, the water doesn’t disappear. It becomes air, then forms condensation, then returns to its condition as water. Whatever we do to nature, nature responds, absorbs, adjusts. You pour chemicals into it and chemical reactions occur, and when these come in contact with living beings they suffer the consequences of that chemical action. Our seas are polluted by the gases we emit, and these contaminate marine life. Then marine life suffers, and we have fewer fish. Nature adjusts, but we suffer the form that adjustment takes. Nature strives to maintain its equilibrium, its balance. When we spit at nature, the spit flies back in our face, or in the faces of our children. Nature doesn’t do it with intent. If you throw a big stone in a lake, water flies everywhere. It is not directed at you, but this scattering is the response of water to violent displacement. Nature is neutral. It follows its own laws. If we transgress those laws, we suffer. Or generations to come will. And the generations to come will be shocked at our stupidity, our irresponsibility, our lack of vision. Even now we are destroying life on this planet for unborn generations, who will curse us from beyond. So we must act now to save the future.
THE DEVIL’S FUEL
or
I SING THE DAWN OF
BRIGHT, FRESH ENERGY
1
It lives beneath the earth.
Mass of ancient power
Coiled, vast and dark;
A part of the earth’s form,
Compressing all that’s dead.
Changing like the stars.
Mineralised potential.
And then we smash
The earth’s surface to bring
This silent power up
Through water and fire,
From a stillness
That’s turned
Old bones and trees
Into fuel and fumes.
It’s poisoning the air
Thinning the ecosphere
Destroying lungs
In the world’s most
Inefficient way of making
Time turn the wheels
Of a civilisation,
Dying because
All that it does
Contributes to its death.
2
They destroy the delta,
Drilling for oil.
They ruin rivers,
Smother forests.
And they uproot
Whole tribes
Dredging up the
Devil’s fuel
That every day
Devastates our
Future.
See, the pedal
Of the car drives
That much of our
Lives away.
Our flying through
The air sends us
Faster to the end
We fear.
Our ships that sail
Polluted seas
Sail with us to
Time’s darkened lees.
We’re chained to it
Like slaves,
Addicts to some
Self-devouring
Drug. We can’t seem
To find another way
To make our societies
Work but through this
Form of energy that’s
Murdering us
Each hour.
3
It is a strange vision
Of the human race
To build its life
On that which will
Not last.
It’s running out
Beneath the earth.
It’s running out.
A finite form
Of energy.
But we can now
Make metal out
Of plants
Make energy
From thought
We can power
Our industries
With dreams
We can lift our
Civilisation with
The sun
We are made so
That wondrous things
Are done.
We are not prisoners
Of the earth
Manacled to lower
Forms of power,
While the earth is
Cleansed, lashed,
With the rage of the tides
The fury of the storms
The god-like streaks
Of electricity
The ceaseless rush
Of wind.
We live in tornadoes
Of energy
Our earth’s ringed with
Electromagnetic
Pulses
In our own way
We are home to
Vast energies
Of the universe.
But poverty of heart
And imagination
Stops us seeing
That we should long ago
Have gone beyond
The primitive
Phase of fossil fuel
And entered the nobler
Stage of solar
Power. We’ve more
Energy than
We can use in
A million years.
No need to mine
The liquidised
Bones of the dead
