In a question and answer session at the University of Rochester, author Amitav Ghosh quoted from his book, The Nutmeg’s Curse, “To look facts in the face is to recognise that it is a grave error to imagine that the world is not preparing for the disrupted world of the future. It’s just not preparing by taking mitigatory measures or by reducing emissions: Instead, it is preparing for war.” The acclaimed author has been taking up the topic of the many nature-related crises we confront, among them the climate crisis in its various aspects, and he has done so again in the slim book The Living Mountain: A Fable of Our Times which spans not just man’s destructive exploitation of resources but also touches on the issues of colonialism and greed. Quite a gamut of issues, but all delivered in the crisp pristine prose which is Ghosh’s trademark. This makes the book deceptively easy to read but raises many disquieting questions for which we still don’t have all the answers.
The narrator of the fable is a girl who is part of the ancient Valley People who live in a world untouched by the problems that progress brings in its wake. Their lives are as mystical and magical as the great mountain in their midst. He could be talking about the Everest but he calls it Mahaparbat. The Valley People are guileless and live on nuts from a Magic Tree and spend their days in song and laughter, their actions regulated by Elderpeople and Adepts who are able to interpret the message of the mountain through vibrations in their feet when they dance.
But unto each life some rain must fall, and when it begins to, it pours for the Valley People with the appearance of the Anthropoi who soon subjugates them. As with colonial rulers, the Anthropoi change the idyllic society of the Valley People and throw aside their aversion to climbing the great mountain.
The mountain reacts violently and both the Valley People now rechristened the Varvaroi and the Anthropoi blame each other as they near the summit. What happens to the people who have lost all touch with their heritage and traditional wisdom? Ghosh leaves it to our imagination. But we get the drift in the words of an elderly woman, a former Adept, who admonishes both parties of having been feckless and ignorant of the mountain and what it meant to them. The thread throughout the book is fairly simple – it is all about how the human race, in its mad rush for advancement, fails to understand that it cannot sustain this without being in sync with the natural world and how we need to listen to its rhythms and cadences.
A little simplistic you might say but when read with his other books on the environment and climate and the inherent ability of the human species to wreak havoc on its surroundings, it is clear that the author is telling us what many of us know but do not wish to act on. If you haven’t done so already, this is well worth a read and won’t take up too much of your time. It does not offer any startling insights into the future of the planet but does tell a compelling story on how little it takes for the ground to slip away from beneath our feet.
In a question and answer session at the University of Rochester, author Amitav Ghosh quoted from his book, The Nutmeg’s Curse, “To look facts in the face is to recognise that it is a grave error to imagine that the world is not preparing for the disrupted world of the future. It’s just not preparing by taking mitigatory measures or by reducing emissions: Instead, it is preparing for war.” The acclaimed author has been taking up the topic of the many nature-related crises we confront, among them the climate crisis in its various aspects, and he has done so again in the slim book The Living Mountain: A Fable of Our Times which spans not just man’s destructive exploitation of resources but also touches on the issues of colonialism and greed. Quite a gamut of issues, but all delivered in the crisp pristine prose which is Ghosh’s trademark. This makes the book deceptively easy to read but raises many disquieting questions for which we still don’t have all the answers.
The narrator of the fable is a girl who is part of the ancient Valley People who live in a world untouched by the problems that progress brings in its wake. Their lives are as mystical and magical as the great mountain in their midst. He could be talking about the Everest but he calls it Mahaparbat. The Valley People are guileless and live on nuts from a Magic Tree and spend their days in song and laughter, their actions regulated by Elderpeople and Adepts who are able to interpret the message of the mountain through vibrations in their feet when they dance.
But unto each life some rain must fall, and when it begins to, it pours for the Valley People with the appearance of the Anthropoi who soon subjugates them. As with colonial rulers, the Anthropoi change the idyllic society of the Valley People and throw aside their aversion to climbing the great mountain.
The mountain reacts violently and both the Valley People now rechristened the Varvaroi and the Anthropoi blame each other as they near the summit. What happens to the people who have lost all touch with their heritage and traditional wisdom? Ghosh leaves it to our imagination. But we get the drift in the words of an elderly woman, a former Adept, who admonishes both parties of having been feckless and ignorant of the mountain and what it meant to them. The thread throughout the book is fairly simple – it is all about how the human race, in its mad rush for advancement, fails to understand that it cannot sustain this without being in sync with the natural world and how we need to listen to its rhythms and cadences.
A little simplistic you might say but when read with his other books on the environment and climate and the inherent ability of the human species to wreak havoc on its surroundings, it is clear that the author is telling us what many of us know but do not wish to act on. If you haven’t done so already, this is well worth a read and won’t take up too much of your time. It does not offer any startling insights into the future of the planet but does tell a compelling story on how little it takes for the ground to slip away from beneath our feet.