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The Price of Total Disengagement
Disregard Your Neighbors’ Woes at Your Own Peril
Water and air, the two essential fluids on which all life depends, have become global garbage cans — Jacques Cousteau
I write this story from Sydney, Australia. My service apartment sits in the heart of Sydney’s Central Business District (CBD) — a short walk from the iconic Queen Victoria Building (QVB) shopping centre. I have been living in Sydney, Australia for a total of 175 days (a little less than six months). During that time, my travels took me to one more country — Aotearoa (or New Zealand in popular culture). Over the span of those days, I read about tourists dying in New Zealand’s North Island because of a volcano eruption (Whitaker/Whale Isand eruption), millions of species impacted and people rendered homeless by bushfires that ravaged Australia and escalated the natural disaster to a global disaster. Now, as I plan to board a plane to Mumbai, I cannot help but imagine how returning to one of the most polluted cities on the planet will feel like. Don’t get me wrong — I am and will continue to remain a proud ‘Mumbaikar’ (ex-citizen and eternal lover of Mumbai).However, when smog blankets out the blue sky, I am left with nothing but a throbbing heartache.
